K5i' 'lih e * University of California • Berkeley Gift of Chaklotte and Norman Strouse ^3 ^« u^ THE BOOK-LOVER'S ENCHIRIDION, IRcviaeb anb Jgnlargeb, A. IRELAND AND CO., PRINTERS, MANCHESTER. {Entered at Stationers' Hall.] ^fft l$oxiJt=ILobeif'8 lEncl^irrtrton: THOUGHTS ON THE Solace AND Companionship OF Books, AND TOPICS INCIDENTAL THERETO; GATHERED FROM THE BEST WRITERS OF EVERY AGE, AND ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. BY ^lexanbet Srelanti, AUTHOR OP " MEMOIR AND RECOLLECTIONS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON J " "BlBLIOaRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE WRITINGS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT AND LEIGH HUNT, WITH A PAPER ON CHARLES AND MARY LAMB] " ETC., ETC. Uonlron : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. W. & R. CHAMBERS. mm SiiiiMsS r n-<< rr:rr^ : -n-f-fj p W^0^ HjSHSgSHSBsgsgsgsgsgsgsgsgsHsgsHsgsgsgsESE ! g5E5H555E5Egg5g5HEg5B5E5H5H5S5H5H5H5H5H5l Infinite Riches in a little room. Indocti discant et ameni inemi7tisse periti. PREFACE. One of the mottoes to this volume gives the key-note to its contents. *' Infinite riches in a little room" — a line from Christopher Marlowe, the dramatist — describes aptly what the reader will find in it. My object has been to present, in chronological order, the summed-up testimonies of the most notable Book- Lovers on the subject of Books, and the Habit and Love of Reading. The writers from whom I have made selections range from Solomon and Cicero to Carlyle, Emerson, and Ruskin. On this bead-roll of illustrious names — Which down the steady breeze of honour sail, will be found those of Horace, Seneca, Plutarch, Richard de Bury, Petrarch, Chaucer, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Luther, Ascham, Montaigne, Bacon, Shakespeare, Daniel, Bishop Hall, Fuller, Milton, Baxter, Cowley, Locke, Addison, Johnson, Gibbon, Goethe, Wordsworth, Lamb, Southey, Hazlitt, Landor, DeQuincey, Leigh Hunt, Bulwer, Macaulay, Herschel, Carlyle, Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Ruskin, and more than two hundred others. The reader will find in the following pages the deliberate utterances of the wisest and most searching vi PREFACE. spirits upon the subject of Books — their steadfast and unpresuming friendship and silent counsels — the con- solation they afford in every variety of circumstance and fortune, and the ceaseless delights they bring us at a trifling cost, without trouble or previous arrangement. The writers of the present century have contributed, as a matter of course, most largely to the general store of thought on the subject to which this volume is specially devoted. It will be seen that I have confined myself to no peculiar class of authors, but have welcomed every variety of thought, from whatever quarter it may have come. Wherever I could find a passage suitable to my purpose, I have not hesitated to adopt it, no matter who was the author. No section of the world's literature (English and American literature more especially) which was likely to contribute to my subject has been left unexplored. Apostles and philosophers, archbishops, bishops, and learned doctors of both the churches, dissenting divines, heretical writers of every shade of unorthodoxy, legislators, historians, biographers and men of science, novelists, dramatists, writers on art, critics, essayists grave and gay, and the sons and daughters of song, have been laid under tribute to furnish material for this garner of thought bearing upon Books. To some readers it may appear that my selections from certain writers occupy a disproportionate space when compared with that assigned to others, I may be permitted to say a word in explanation. It has PREFACE. vii been with regret that I have been unable to find any passages on the subject-matter of this volume in the works of some authors from whom I would have been only too glad to quote. I may mention, among others, Fielding, Goldsmith, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Browning, and Tennyson. When the reader finds only a sentence or two — perhaps not even a line — from writers whom we know to have beqn ardent Book-Lovers, he may conclude that they have left no recorded thoughts exactly suitable to the object of the present volume. Beautiful passages in the domains of reflection, emotion, description, and imagination I could have found in abundance in the works of many authors who have yielded nothing to the present store ; for it must be borne in mind that I have had to confine myself strictly and rigidly to what was applicable to my special subject— resolutely rejecting matter of surpassing excellence which was not pertinent to it, either directly or incidentally. I may also say that I have, in the case of almost every author, gone to the original sources for my matter, so that the correctness of the text may be relied upon. In a few cases only have I adopted passages from existing collections of extracts. It is hoped that this volume will meet some of the special needs and moods of those earnest minds which seek in books something more enduring than passing amusement— something that will yield a satisfying and tranquil joy, and beautify the hours of common daily viii PREFACE. life by unfolding deeply-hidden verities only revealed to meditative souls. My desire has been to bring together, from the reading of a life-time, a body of thought, old and new, which will be welcomed by those who find their highest and purest enjoyment in contemplation — who fervently long to escape when they can from "the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world," and to dwell for a time in the serene heaven of aspiration and self-communion, and breathe its calm, restoring air. Such minds will be refreshed and invigorated by a knowledge of the con- solations and ennobling companionship which the most gifted of our race have ever found in Books. If these pages should assist the young by strengthening good resolutions in the direction of self-culture and self- help, and thus aid in fostering a love of literature which may afterwards prove a resource and solace ; or, in the case of those who have passed life's meridian, help to beguile or brighten hours made heavy by care or feeble health, by bringing them into closer contact with superior souls, who in similar — perhaps even more trying circumstances— have sought and found comfort in communion with other men's thoughts, I shall feel that my labour of love has been appreciated and rewarded. Alexander Ireland. Ingle WOOD, Bowdon, Cheshire, September, 1883. PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. The Third Edition of this work (enlarged by upwards of two hundred pages), consisting of 3,700 copies, was published in October last, and is now nearly exhausted. The preparation of a Fourth Edition has given me the opportunity of carefully revising and improving it. I have corrected some typographical errors, made a few excisions — substitu- ting other extracts in place of those which have been removed — and have, besides, enriched its contents by the addition of sixteen pages of new matter, among which the reader will find striking passages from an address on Reading by Mr. John Morley, the dis- tinguished biographer and critic, as well as some pithy remarks from a paper on Books by the lately deceased eminent scholar. Dr. Mark Pattison, of Lincoln College. By the kindness of Mr. Charles Bray, of Coventry, the venerable author of several interesting philoso- phical works, I have been permitted to give a few extracts, bearing on the special subject of this volume, from his unpublished Autobiography. I now submit the volume to the public in its improved form, in the hope that it may continue to attract a steadily in- creasing number of thoughtful readers. A. I. August, 1884. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED. B.C. Solomon 1033 — 975 Socrates 468 — 399 Plato 427— 347 Alexandrian Library .. .. .. 300 — Cicero . . 106 — 41 Horace 65— 8 B.C. A.D. Seneca • 58— 32 A.D. St. Paul — 65 Quintilian .. .. .". • .. .. 42 — 115 Plutarch 46 — 120 Pliny, the Younger 61 — 105 Gospel of St. Matthew Aulus Gellius • 117 — 180 From the Persian Hindu Saying , From the Persian Bishop Richard de Bury 1287 — 1345 Francesco Petrarca , . . 1304— 1374 DoMiNico Mancini Geoffrey Chaucer 1328 — 1400 Thomas A Kempis 1380 — 1471 J. Fortius Ringelbergius — 1536 Desiderius Erasmus 1467 — 1536 NiccoLO Machiavelli 1469 — 1527 Antonio de Guevara — 1544 Martin Luther.. .. .. .. .. 1483 — 1546 Roger Ascham 1515 — 1568 Michel de Montaigne 1537 — 1592 Joseph Scaliger 1540 — 1609 LIST OF AUTHORS. xi John Florio 1545— 1625 Book of Common Prayer . . . . . . 1549 John Lylye 1553 — 1601 Sir Philip Sidney 1554— 1586 Lord Chandos — 1621 Lord Bacon 1561 — 1629 Samuel Daniel 1562—^1619 Joshua Sylvester 1563 — 1618 William Shakespeare . . . . . . 1564 — i'6i6 Alonzo of Arragon Old English Song — — A Sixteenth Century Writer .. .. Bishop Joseph Hall . . . . . . . . 1574 — 1656 John Fletcher 1576 — 1625 Henry Peacham — 1640 Robert Burton 1576 — 1640 Sir Thomas OvERBURY 1581— 1613 John Hales . . . . 1584— 1656 Balthasar Bonifacius Rhodiginus .. 1584 — 1659 Francis Osborne — 1659 Leo Allatius 1586 — 1669 George Wither 1588—1667 James Shirley 1594 — 1666 Jean Eusebe Nierembergius .. .. 1595— 1658 Sir William Waller 1597— 1668 Rev. Antony Tuckney 1599 — 1670 Francesco Di RiojA 1600 — 1659 Peter du Moulin 1600— 1684 Dr. John Earle 1601 — 1665 Sir William Davenant 1605 — 1668 Sir Thomas Browne 1605 — 1682 Dr. Thomas Fuller .. 1608 — 1661 John Milton 1608— 1674 Earl of Clarendon ,. 1608— 1674 Sir Matthew Hale 1609 — 1676 Samuel Sorbiere . . . . . . . . 1610 — 1670 Owen Feltham 1610— 1678 Dr. Benjamin Whichcote 1610— 1683 xii CHRONOLOGICAL LIST Early English Writer m. toinard Bishop Jeremy Taylor .. .. .. 1613— 1667 Due DE LA Rochefoucauld 1613— 1680 GiLLES Menage 1613 — 1692 Earl of Bedford . . . . , . . . 1613 — 1700 Urban Chevreau 1613— 1701 Rev. Richard Baxter 1615 — 1691 Dr. John Owen 1616— 1683 Abraham Cowley 1618 — 1667 Thomas V. Bartholin 1619 — 1680 Francis Charpentier 1620 — 1702 Henry Vaughan 1621— 1695 John Hall . . . . 1627 — 1656 Sir William Temple 1628 — 1698 Dr. Isaac Barrow 1630 — 1677 Charles Cotton . , 1630 — 1687 Bishop Huet 1630 — 1721 John Locke .. 1632 — 1704 Dr. Robert South .. .. ,. .. 1633 — 1716 Sir George Mackenzie 1636 — 1691 John de la Bruyere .. 1644 — 1696 Pierre Bayle 1647 — 1706 A Seventeenth Century Divine . . . . Rev. Jeremy Collier 1650 — 1726 Archbishop Fenelon 1651 — 1715 Charles Blount 1654 — 1697 Thomas Fuller, M.D 1654— 1734 Edmund Halley 1656 — 1742 Rev. John Norris of Bemerton .. .. 1657 — 1711 Jonathan Swift . . . .' . . . . 1667 — 1745 William Congreve 1670 — 1729 Sir Richard Steele 1671 — 1729 Roger Gale 1672— 1744 Joseph Addison 1672 — 1719 Dr. Isaac Watts 1674— 1748 Rev. Conyers Middleton 1683— 1750 Alexander Pope .. 1688— 1744 OF AUTHORS. xiii Baron Montesquieu 1689— 1755 Ladv Mary Wortley Montagu . . . . 1690 — 1762 Lord Chesterfield . . . . . . . . 1694 — 1773 FRAN901S M. A. de Voltaire .. .. 1694— 1778 Matthew Green 1696 — 1737 James Thomson 1700 — 1748 John Wesley 1703 — 1791 Henry Fielding .. .... .. 1707 — 1754 Samuel Johnson . . 1709 — 1784 David Hume 1712 — 1776 Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712— 1778 Laurence Sterne 1713 — 1768 Denys Diderot 1713 — 1789 William Shenstone 1714 — 1763 Horace Walpole 1717 — 1797 Oliver Goldsmith 1728—1774 Rev. William Dodd 1729—1777 GOTTHOLD EpHRAIM LeSSING .. ., 1729 — 1781 Edmund Burke 1729 — 1797 Dr. John Moore 1730 — 1802 William Cowper 1731— 1800 Edward Gibbon 1737 — 1794 J. G. VON Herder 1744 — 1803 Sir William Jones 1746 — 1794 Daniel Wyttenbach .. • 1746 — 1820 Countess de Genlis 1746— 1830 Dr. John Aikin 1747 — 1822 Richard Cecil 1748— 1816 J. Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 — 1832 ToMAS de Yriarte 1750 — 1791 Elizabeth Inchbald 1753— 1821 William Roscoe 1753 — 1831 George Crabbe 1754— 1832 William Godwin 1756 — 1836 Friedrich Schiller 1759 — 1805 William Cobbett 1762 — 1835 Sir S. Egerton Brydges 1762 — 1837 Jean Paul F. Richter 1763— 1825 xiv CHRONOLOGICAL LIST Dk. John Ferriar 1764- IsAAC Disraeli 1767- JoHN Foster .. 1770 — : William Wordsworth 1770 — : James Montgomery 1771- Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772- Robert Southey 1774 — : Charles Lamb 1775 — : Walter Savage Lai^dor 1775- C. Frognall Dibdin 1776- WiLLiAM Hazlitt- 1 778 — : Lord Brougham 1778- ■ Rev. Charles C. Colton 1780- Dr. William Ellery Channing . . . . 1780- John Kenyon 1783- Washington Irving 1783- Leigh Hunt 1784 — : Thomas Love Peacock 1785 Thomas de Quincey 1786 — : Archbishop Whately . . .. .. .. 1787 — : Isaac Taylor . . . . 1787- Bryan W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) . . 1787 — : Lord Byron 178 Dr. Arnott 178 Arthur Schopenhauer 178 Charles Knight 1791 — : Lord Mahon 1791 Sir John Herschel 1792 — : Dr. Arnold 1795- Judge Talfourd i795- Rev. Julius C. Hare 1795 — : Thomas Carlyle 1795 — : Hartley Coleridge 1796 — : Bishop Thirl wall . . .... . . 1797 — : A. Bronson Alcott i799(li' Lord Macaulay 1800 — : William Chambers .. 1800 — : James Crossley 1800 — : OF AUTHORS. Earl of Shaftesbury Robert Chambers Chief Justice CocKBURN Victor Hugo Hugh Miller . . Lord Lytton (E. L. Bulwer) Ralph Waldo Emerson Richard Cobden Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice Samuel Palmer Lord Beaconsfield Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .. Mrs. Caroline Norton George S. Hillard Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rev. Robert Aris Willmott Dr. John Hill Burton Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes William Ewart Gladstone Lord Houghton (R. M. Milnes) . . Rev. Theodore Parker Dr. John Brown .. .. W. M. Thackeray John Bright Lord Sherbrooke (Robert Lowe) Charles Bray . . . . . . Francis Bpnnoch Rev. George Gilfillan Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Mark Pattison.. Sara P. Parton (Fanny Fern) .. Anthony Trollope John Cameron . . Rev. Frederick William Robertson George S. Phillips (January Searle) John G. Saxe Philip James Bailey Sir Arthur Helps 80 1 (living) 802 — I 87 I 802—1880 8o2(liyiAgl Lt^-O^X (tiS 802—1856 803—1873 803—1882 804—1865 805 — 1872 805— .1881 805—1881 807—1882 808—1877 808— (?) 809—1861 809 — 1862 809—1881 8o9(Uving) 810—1860 810—1882 811— 1863 8ii(Uving) 811 „ 811 „ 812 „ 813—1878 813 (living) 813—1884 8i4-(?) 815—1882 (Living) 816—1853 8i6-(?) 816— 816 (living) 817—1875 xvi LIST OF AUTHORS. Eliza Cook i8i8(living) Rev. Charles Kingsley 1819— 1875 John Ruskin iSigOiving) James Russell Lowell .. .. .. 1819 ,, Walt Whitman 1819 ,, Marian Evans (George Eliot) .. .. 1820— 1881 George Dawson.. 1821 — 1876 Robert Leighton 1822 — 1869 Charles Buxton 1822 — 1871 J. A. Langford i823(living) Rev. Robert Collyer 1823 ,, James Hain Friswell 1827 — 1878 C. Kegan Paul i828(living) Alexander Smith 1830 — 1867 W. H. Rands (Matthew Browne) . . — 1882 Frederic Harrison 1831 (living) Earl Lytton (Owen Meredith) .. .. 1831 ,, Philip Gilbert Hamerton 1834 ,, Frank Carr (Launcelot Cross) .. .. 1834 ,, Frances R. Havergal 1836— 1879 William Blades (Living) William Freeland .. ,, John Morley ,, Edwin P. Whipple ,, William E. A. Axon .. ,, Andrew Lang „ Rev. James Freeman Clarke .. .. ,, Austin Dobson • ,, Robert Louis Stevenson ,, Charles F. Richardson ,, John Cameron ,, ' Anonymous Authors. A Woman's Tribute to Books. Remarks on Book-Borrowers. PRELUDE OF MOTTOES. Solomon. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. St. Paul. Give attendance to reading. Seneca. If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life ; nor will you long for the approach of night, being tired of the day; nor will you be a burden to yourself, nor your society insupportable to others. Petrarch. Books never pall on us. . . . They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living familiarity. It is easy to gain access to these friends, for they are always at my service, and I admit them to my company, or dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Montaigne. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis but to run to my books. They always receive me with the same kindness. The sick man is not to be lamented, who has his cure in his sleeve. In the experience and practice of this sentence, which is a very true one, all the benefit I reap from books consists. For it is not to ba imagined to what degree I please myself, and rest content in this consideration, that I have them by me, to divert myself with them when I am so disposed, and to call to mind what an ease and assistance they are to my life. 'Tis the best viaticum I have yet foimd out for this human journey, and I very much lament those men of understanding who are unprovided of it. Bacon. For Friends, although your lordship be scant, yet I hope yoit. are not altogether destitute ; if you be, do but look upon good books : they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dis- semble : be you but true to yourself, applying that which they teach unto the party grieved, and you shall need no other com- fort, nor counsel. To them and to God's holy Spirit, directing you in the reading of them, I commend your lordship. — Letter to Chief Justice Coke. Milton. For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. . . . A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life. Sir Thomas Browne. They do most by books, who could do much without them ;. and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Pope. At this day, as much company as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better. I would rather be employed in reading than in the most agreeable conversation. Gibbon. A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. It is a taste which I would not exchange for the wealth of the Indies. The miseries of a vacant life are never known to a man whose hours are insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasure of study. Wordsworth. . . . Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good ; Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood. Our pastime and our happiness will grow. Charles Lamb. I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. ... I can read any- thing which I call a book. There are things in that shape, however, which I cannot allow for such. . . . With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. William Hazlitt. Books wind into the heart. . . . We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others ; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. We owe everything to their authors, on this side barbarism. . . . Even here, on Salisbury Plain, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or winter months, without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at break- fast ; they walk out with me before dinner — and at night, by the blazing hearth, discourse the silent hours away. Books let us into the souls of men, and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home- felt, the most heart-felt of all our enjoyments. Leigh Hunt. How pleasant it is to reflect that the greatest lovers of Books have themselves become books. . . . The little body of thought that lies before me in the shape of a book has existed thousands of years ; nor, since the invention of printing, can anything, short of an universal convulsion of nature, abolish it. . . . May I hope to become the meanest of these existences ? I should like to remain visible in this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself, I could wish t® be accounted worth pleasing others.. I should like to survive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the posses- sion of a friend's mind, when he is no more. • At all events, nothing, while I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation -of them while I last, and love them till I die ; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my over-beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy. Carlyle. It is lawful for the solitary wight to express the love he feels for those companions so stedfast and unpresuming, that go or come without reluctance, and that, when his fellow-animals are proud, or stupid, or peevish, are ever ready to cheer the languor of his soul, and gild the barrenness of life with the treasures of bygone times. If a Book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small account to that. ... In Books lies the soul of th« whole Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. . . All that Mankind has done, thought, gained, or been ; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. Emerson. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He. who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. Angels they are to us of entertain- ment, sympathy, and provocation. With them many of as spend the most of our life, — these silent guides, these tractable prophets, historians, and singers, whose embalmed life is the highest feat of art ; who now cast their moonlight illumination over solitude, weariness, and fallen fortunes. . . . Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. . . . I hold that we have never reached the best use of books until cur own thought rises to such a pitch that we cannot afford to read much. I own this loftiness is rare, and we must long be thankful to our silent friends before the day comes when we can honestly dismiss them. RUSKIN. Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable boy^ when you may talk with kings and queens, while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time ? Into that you may enter always j in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault ; by your aristocracy of companion- ship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead. THE v5 Book^Xovcr's jEncbiriMon* Solomon, b.c. 1033 — 975. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. — Proverbs xiii. 20. A word spoken in due season, how good is it ! — Proverbs xv. 23. Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge. — Proverbs xxiii. 12. Socrates, b.c. 468 — 399. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings ; so you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for. Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. Plato, b.c. 427 — 347. Books are the immortal sons deifying their sires. s CICERO, Inscription on the Library at Alex- andria. Founded about 300 b.c. The Nourishment of the Soul ; or, according to Diodorus, The Medicine of the Mind. Cicero, b.c. 106 — 41. Nam ceterse neque temporum sunt, neque setatum omnium, neque locorum ; at hoec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent ; delectant domi, non impediunt foris ; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur. — Pro Archid Poetd^ cap. 7. Trans. For other occupations are not for all times, or all ages, or all places. But these studies are the ali- ment of youth, the comfort of old age ; an adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity ; a delight in our home, and no incumbrance abroad ; companions in our long nights, in our travels, in our country retirement. \_Translated by R. R. D."] Remember not to give up your books to anybody ; but keep them, as you say, for me. I entertain the strongest affection for them, as I do now disgust for everything else. Keep your books and do not despair of my being able to make them mine ; which, if I accomplish, I shall exceed Croesus in riches, and look down with contempt upon the houses and lands of all the world. — Epistles to Attiais, vii. ix. \_HeherderC s TransIatio7i.'\ HORA CE— SENECA . 3 I have at all times free access to my books ; they are never occupied. — De Rep.^ i. Horace, b.c. 65 — 8. Lectio, quae placuit, decies repetita placebit. — De Arte Poet., line 365. Trans. The reading which has pleased, will please when repeated ten times. O rus, quando ego te aspiciam ? quandoque licebit. Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis, Ducere solicitae jucunda oblivia vitae? c / tt Trans. O country, when shall I behold thee? When shall I be permitted to enjoy a sweet oblivion of the anxieties of life, sometimes occupied with the writings of the men of old, sometimes in slumbrous ease, or tranquil abstraction ? \1 r an slated by R. R. D.\ Seneca, b.c. 58 — a.d. 32. The reading of many authors, and of all kinds of works, has in it something vague and unstable. — Epist. 2. The multitude of books distracts. — Id. 2. It does not matter how many, but how good, books you have. — Id. 15. Definite reading is profitable ; miscellaneous reading is pleasant. — Id. 45. Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man. — Id. 82. If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life ; nor will you long for the 4 SENECA. approach of night, being tired of the day ; nor will you be a burden to yourself, nor your society insup- portable to others. — Id. 82. Reading nourishes the mind, and, when it is wearied with study, refreshes it, but not without study. — Id. 84. We ought to imitate the bees, and to separate all the materials which we have gathered from multifarious reading, for they keep best separate; and then, by applying the study and ability of our own minds, to concoct all those various contributions into one flavour. —Id. 84. He that is well employed in his study, though he may seem to do nothing, yet does the greatest things of all others. — Id. 84. What is the use of countless books and libraries whose owner hardly reads through their titles in his whole life ? — De Tranq. An. 9. The crowd of teachers is burdensome and not in- struetive ; and it is much better to trust yourself to a few good authors than to wander through several. — Id. 9. Procure a sufficient number of books, but not for show. — Id. 9. As long as the aliments of which we have partaken retain their own nature and float as solids in our stomach, they are burdensome ; but when they have changed from their former state, then, and not till then, they enter into our strength and blood. Let us do the same with the foods which nourish our minds, so that we do not suffer the things we have taken in PLUTARCH— ST. MATTHEW-QUINTILIAN. 5 to remain whole and foreign. Let us digest them ! otherwise they enter our memory, but not our mind. — Id. 84. [Translated by /. N.^ Plutarch, a.d. 46 — 120. We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest ; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. AuLUS Gellius. cir. 117 — 180 a.d. The things which are well said do not improve the disposition of the young so much as those which are wickedly said corrupt them. — Noct. Att. 12, 2. Gospel of St. Matthew. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bfingeth forth good things. By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. — St. Matthew xii. 35 «^^ 37. QUINTILIAN. A.D. 42 — II5. Reading is free, and does not exhaust itself with the act, but may be repeated, in case you are in doubt, or wish to impress it deeply on the memory. Let us repeat it; and — just as we swallow our food masti- cated and nearly fluid, in order that it may be more easily digested — so our reading should not be delivered to the memory in its crude state, but sweetened and worked up by frequent repetition. — Inst. Or at. 10, i. 6 PLINY— ST. PAUL. Every good writer is to be read, and diligently ; and, when the volume is finished, is to be gone through again from the beginning. — Id. lo. The reader should not at once persuade himself that all things that the best writers have said are absolutely perfect. — Id. lo. {Translated by J. N.'\ Pliny, the Younger, a.d. 6i. d. AFTER 105. The elder Pliny used to say that no Book was so bad but that some part of it might be profitable. — Epist. 3. They say we should read much, not many things.— Id. 7. St. Paul. a.d. 65. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning. — Romans xv. 4. All may learn, and all may be comforted. — I Corin- thians xiv. 31. From the Persian. A wise man knows an ignorant one, because he has been ignorant himself ; but the ignorant cannot recog- nise the wise, because he has never been wise. Hindu Saying. The words of the good are like a staff in a slippery place. persian sa ying-richard de bury 7 From the Persian. They asked their wisest man by what means he had attained to such a degree of knowledge ? He replied : "Whatever I did not know, I was not ashamed 10 inquire about. Inquire about everything that you do not know ; since, for the small trouble of asking, you will be guided in the road of knowledge." Richard de Bury. 1287 — 1345. In Books we find the dead as it were living ; in Books we foresee things to come ; in Books warlike affairs are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed from Books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. Saturn never ceases to devour those whom he generates ; insomuch that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had not provided mortals with a remedy in Books. Alexander t«he ruler of the world ; Julius the invader of the world and of the city, the first who in unity of person assumed the empire in arms and arts ; the faithful Fabricius, the rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a memorial if the aid of Books had failed them. Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown, triumphal arches mouldered to dust; nor can the King or Pope be found, upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than by Books. A Book made, renders succession to the author : for as long as the Book exists, the author remaining a^amTo?, im- mortal, cannot perish. . . . The holy Boetius attributes a threefold existence to Truth, — in the mind. 8 RICHARD DE BURY. in the voice, and in writing ; it appears to abide most usefully and fructify most productively of advantage in Books. For the Truth of the voice perishes with the sound. Truth latent in the mind, is hidden wisdom and invisible treasure ; but the Truth which illuminates Books desires to manifest itself to every disciplinable sense, to the sight when read, to the hearing when heard : it, moreover, in a manner commends itself to the touch, when submitting to be transcribed, collated, corrected and preserved. Truth confined to the mind, though it may be the possession of a noble soul, while it wants a companion and is not judged of, either by the sight, or the hearing, appears to be inconsistent with pleasure. But the Truth of the voice is open to the hearing only, and latent to the sight (which shows us many differences of things fixed upon by a most subtle motion, beginning and ending as it were simul- taneously). But the Truth written in a Book, being not fluctuating, but permanent, shows itself openly to the sight, passing through the spiritual ways of the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagi- nation ; it enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the couch of memory, and there congene- frates the eternal Truth of the mind. Lastly, let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in Books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human igno- rance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep ; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal RICHARD DE B UR Y—PE TRA RCH. 9 nothing ; if you mistake them, they never grumble ; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. You only, O Books, are liberal and independent. You give to all who ask, and enfranchise all who serve you assiduously. . . . Truly you are the ears filled with most palatable grains. . . ' . You are golden urns in which manna is laid up, rocks flowing with honey, or rather indeed honeycombs ; udders most copiously yielding the milk of life, store- rooms ever full ; the four-streamed river of Paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the arid intellect moistened and watered ; . . . fruitful olives, vines of Engaddi, fig-trees knowing no sterility; burning lamps to be ever held in the hand. The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever, therefore, acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a Lover of Books. — Philobiblon, a Treatise on the Love of Books : written in Latin in 1344, and translated fro7?i the first edition , 1473, by J. B. Inglis. (London^ 1832.^ Francesco Petrarca. 1304 — 1374. Books never pall on me. . . . They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other. — Epistolce de Rebus Familiarihiis (Jos. FrancasettC s Edition). lo PETRARCH. Epistle viii., Book xvii., is devoted to shewing "how contemptible is the lust of wealth when compared with the noble thirst for learning." Joy \loquitu7'\ : I consider Books aids to learning. Reason : But take care lest they are rather hin- drances ; some have been prevented from conquering by the numbers of their soldiers, so many have found the multitude of their books a hindrance to learning, and abundance has bred want, as sometimes happens. But if the many Books are at hand, they are not to be cast aside, but to be gleaned, and the best used ; and care should be taken that those which might have proved seasonable auxiliaries,'do not become hindrances out of season. — De Reinediis utritisque Fortunes^ Edition of 1613, p. 174. {Translated by /. N.'\ The friends of Petrarch apologized to him for the length of time between their visits : *' It is impossible for us to follow your example : the life you lead is contrary to human nature. In winter, you sit like an owl, in the chimney corner. In summer, you are running incessantly about the fields." Petrarch smiled at these observations : "These people," said he, "consider the pleasures of the world as the supreme good, and cannot bear the idea of renouncing them. I have Friends, whose society is extremely agreeable to me : they are of all ages, and of every country. They have dis- tinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honours for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them ; PETRARCH— MANCINL it for they are always at my service, and I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits, while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information I safely rely, in all emergencies. In return for all these services, they only ask me to ac- commodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace : for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement, than with the tumults of society." DoMiNico Mancini (a contemporary OF Petrarch). In vain that husbandman his seed doth sow, If he his crop not in due season mow. A general sets his army in array In vain, unless he fight, and win the day. 'Tis virtuous action that must praise bring forth. Without which slow advice is little worth. Yet they who give good counsel, praise deserve, Though in the active part they cannot serve ; 12 MANCINI—CHA UCER. In action, learned counsellors their age, Profession, or disease, forbids t' engage. Nor to philosophers is praise deny'd. Whose wise instructions after-ages guide ; Yet vainly most their age in study spend ; No end of writing books, and to no end : Beating their brains for strange and hidden things, Whose knowledge, nor delight nor profit brings : Themselves with doubt both day and night perplex. Nor gentle reader please, or teach, but vex. Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use. Then seek to know those things which make us blest, And having found them, lock them in thy breast. In vain on study time away we throw. When we forbear to act the things we know. God, who to thee reason and knowledge lent, Will ask how these two talents have been spent. Libellus de quattuor Virtutibus, Paj-iSy 1484. Translated by Sir John Denham. Chal- mers* English Poets y vol. vii. /. 255. Geoffrey Chaucer. 1328 — 1400. A Gierke ther was of Oxenford also, That unto logik hadde long i-go For him was lever have at his beddes head Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed, Of Aristotil, and of his philosophic. CHAUCER— THOMAS A KEMP IS, 13 But al though he were a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litul gold in cofre ; But al that he might of his frendes hente, On bookes and his lernyng he it spente. Prologue to the Canterbury. Tales, And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, " And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But yt be seldome on the holy day, Save, certeynly, whan that the monethe of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farwel my boke; and my devocion ! Prologue to the Legende of Goode Women. For out of old fieldes, as men saithe, Cometh all this new come fro yere to yere, And out of old bookes, in good faithe, Cometh al this new science that men lere. The Assefnbly of Foules. Thomas a Kempis. 1380 — 1471. If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, sim- plicity, and faith ; and seek not at any time the fame of being learned. — Book I. chap. v. Verily, when the day of judgment comes, we shall not be examined what we have read, but what we have 14 RINGELBERGIUS. done ; nor how learnedly we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived. — Book I. chap. vi. JoACHiMUS Fortius Ringelbergius. d. 1536. Let no one be dejected, if he is not conscious of any great advantage in study at first. For as we know, that the hour-hand of a timepiece moves progressively onward, notwithstanding we cannot discern its mo- mentary motion; and as we see trees and herbs increase and grow to maturity, although we are not able to perceive their hourly progress ; so do we know that learning and study, although their transitions be imperceptible at the moment of observation, are sure in their advancement. The merchant thinks himself happy if after a ten years voyage, after a thousand dangers, he at length improves his fortune ; and shall we, like poor- spirited creatures, give up all hopes after the first onset ? No ! let us rather adopt this as our maxim, that whatever the mind has commanded itself to do, it is sure of obtaining its purpose. To those who are accustomed to spend more time in slumber than the nature of their studies, and these our admonitions will admit of; an alarum clock, which might be set to any hour they chose, would be found highly serviceable. I myself, when I have been upon a journey, or sojourning in any place where a machine of this kind could not be obtained, have actually slept upon two flat pieces of wood, laid transversely upon RINGELBERGIUS. 15 my bed, lest I should slumber too long. Nor have I felt any inconvenience from this, for I have uniformly found by experience, that when weary, I have slept soundly, notwithstanding the hardness of my couch, and when sufficiently refreshed, the hardness of my couch has compelled me to quit it. But this to most men would be a harsh experiment, and one which per- haps few, however attached they may be to literary pursuits, would care to try. I therefore recommend the alarum in preference ; or what is infinitely better than either, a firm resolution not to continue to slumber after a certain hour of the morning. Let us detach ourselves from things trifling and insignificant, and give ourselves up to the study of things worthy our nature and capacity. We all value our possessions, much more ought we to estimate our time. Yet such is the irrationality of our conduct, that if we should happen by some mischance to lose a portion of our property, which by industry may be easily recovered, we fill the air with our lamentations ; but we not only bear the loss of time, which can never be recovered, with equanimity, but with manifest indications of joy and satisfaction. He who aspires to the character of a man of learning, has taken upon himself the performance of no common task. The ocean of literature is without limit. How then will he be able to perform a voyage, even to a moderate distance, if he waste his time in dalliance on the shore ? Our only hope is in exertion. i6 ERASMUS. Let our only reward be that of industry. Unless we are vigilant to gather the fruit of time, whilst the autumn of life is yet with us ; we shall, at the close of its winter, descend into the grave as the beasts which perish, without having left a record behind us to in- form posterity that we ever existed. — "Z>^ Ratione Studii;" translated by G. B, Earp^from the Edition of Erpenius [1619], who gave it the title of ^^ Liber vere Aureus,'''' or " The truly Golden Treatise.''^ Desiderius Erasmus. 1467 — 1536. At the first it is no great Matter how much you Learn ; but how well you learn it. And now take a Direction how you may not only learn well, but easily too ; for the right Method of Art qualifies the Artist to perform his Work not only well and expeditiously, but easily too. Divide the Day into Tasks, as we read Pliny the Second, and Pope Pius the Great did, Men worthy to be remember'd by all Men. In the first Part of it, which is the chief Thing of all, hear the Master interpret, not only attentively, but with a Sort of Greediness, not being content to follow him in his Dissertations with a slow Pace, but striving to out-strip him a little. Fix all his Sayings in your Memory, and commit the rnost material of them to Writing, the faithful Keeper of Words. And be sure to take Care not to rely upon them, as that ridiculous rich Man that Seneca speaks of did, who had form'd a Notion, that whatsoever of Literature any of his Servants had, was his own. By no Means have your Study furnish'd with learned Books, and be unlearned yourself. Don't ERASMUS. 17 sufferwhat you hear to slip out of your Memory, butrecite it either with yourself, or to other Persons. Nor let this suffice you, but set apart some certain Time for Medita- tion ; which one Thing as St. Aurelius writes does most notably conduce to assist both Wit and Memory. An Engagement and combating of Wits does in an extraor- dinary Manner both shew the Strength of Genius's, rouzes them, and augments them. If you are in Doubt of any Thing, don't be asham'd to ask ; or if you have committed an Error, to be corrected. Avoid late and unseasonable Studies, for they murder Wit, and are very prejudicial to Health. The Muses love the Morning, and that is a fit Time for Study, After you have din'd, either divert yourself at some Exercise, or take a Walk, and discourse merrily, and Study between whiles. As for Diet, eat only as much as shall be sufficient to preserve Health, and not as much or more than the Appetite may crave. Before Supper, take a little Walk, and do the same after Supper. A little before you go to sleep read some- thing that is exquisite, and worth remembring ; and contemplate upon it till you fall asleep ; and when you awake in the Morning, call yourself to an Account for it. Alwa)^ keep this Sentence of Pliny's in your Mind, All that time is lost that you donH bestow on Study, Think upon this, that there is nothing more fleeting than Youth, which, when once it is past, can never be recall'd. But now I begin to be an Exhorter, when I promis'd to be a Director. My sweet Christian, follow this Method, or a better, if you can ; and so farewell.— "C^//^^«/>j; Of the Method of Study ; To Chrisiianus of Ltibeck.^^ [Fj^om the Latin text of P. Scriver's Edition, printed by the Elzevirs, 1643.] C 1 8 MA CHI A VEL L I—L U THER . NiccoLo Machiavelli. 1469 — 1527. When evening has arrived, I return home, and go into my study. ... I pass into the antique courts of ancient men, where, welcomed lovingly by them, I feed upon the food which is my own, and for which I was hjorn. Here, I can speak with them without show, and can ask of them the motives of their actions ; and they respond to me by virtue of their humanity. For hours together, the miseries of life no longer annoy me ; I forget every vexation ; I do not fear poverty ; and death itself does not dismay me, for I have altogether transferred myself to those with whom I hold converse. — Opere di Machiavelli^ Editione Italia, 1813, z/^/. viii. {Translated by E. H.^ Martin Luther. 1483 — 1546. Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book. All who would study with advantage in any art what- soever, ought to betake themselves to the reading of some sure and certain books oftentimes over ; for to read many books produceth confusion, rather than learning, like as those who dwell everywhere are not anywhere at home. — Table Talk, Roger Ascham. 15 15 — 15'68. Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. ROGER AS CHAM. xg Her parents, the duke and duchess, with all the house- hold, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading Phado Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccace. After salutation, and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she would leese such pastime in the park? Smiling, she answered me; "I wist, all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas ! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant. " * * And how came you, madam, " quoth I, "to this deep knowledge of pleasure? and what did chiefly allure you into it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?" "I will tell you," quoth she, "and tell you a truth, which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother ; whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else ; I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world ; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes •with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer ; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called 20 ROGER ASCHAM. from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me." I remember this talk gladly, both because it is so worthy of memory, and because also it was the last talk that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady. And I do not mean by all this my talk, that young gentlemen should always be poring on a book, and by using good studies should leese honest pleasure, and haunt no good pastime : I mean nothing less. For it is well known that I both like and love, and have always, and do yet still use all exercises and pastimes that be fit for my nature and ability: and beside natural disposition, in judgment also I was never either stoic in doctrine or anabaptist in religion, to mislike a merry, pleasant, and playful nature, if no outrage be committed against law, measure, and good order. Therefore I would wish, that beside some good time fitly appointed, and constantly kept, to increase by reading the knowledge of the tongues and learning; young gentlemen should use, and delight in all courtly exercises, and gentlemanlike pastimes. And good cause why: for the self same noble city of Athens, justly commended of me before, did wisely, and upon great consideration, appoint the Muses, Apollo and Pallas, to ROGER ASCHAM. 21 be patrons of learning to their youth. For the Muses, besides learning, were also ladies of dancing, mirth, and minstrelsy : Apollo was god of shooting, and author of cunning playing upon instruments ; Pallas also was lady mistress in wars. Whereby was nothing else meant, but that learning should be always mingled with honest mirth and comely exercises ; and that war also should be governed by learning and moderated by wisdom. Indeed books of common places be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he readeth, ad certa rerum capita, and not wander in study. But to dwell in Epitomes, and books of common places, and not to bind himself daily by orderly study, to read with all diligence principally the holiest Scripture, and withal the best doctors, and so td learn to make true difference betwixt the authority of the one and the counsel of the other, maketh so many seeming and sun-burnt ministers as we have ; whose learning is gotten in a summer heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again. And this exercise is not more needfully done in a great work, than wisely done in your common daily writing either of letter or other thing else ; that is to say, to peruse diligently, and see and spy wisely, what is always more than needeth. For twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little : even as twenty to one fall into sickness, rather by overmuch fulness, than by any lack or emptiness. And there- fore is he always the best English physician, that best 22 ROGER ASCHAM. can give a purgation : that is by way of Epitome to cut all over-much away. And surely men's bodies be not more full of ill humours, than commonly men's minds (if they be young, lusty, proud, like and love them- selves well, as most men do) be full of fancies, opinions, errors, and faults, not only in inward invention, but also in all their utterance, either by pen or talk. And of all other men, even those that have the inventivest heads for all purposes,' and roundest tongues in all matters and places (except they learn and use this good lesson of Epitome)^ commit com- monly greater faults than dull, staying, silent men do. For quick inventors, and fair ready speakers, being boldened with their present ability to say more, and perchance better too, at the sudden for that present, than any other can do, use less help of diligence and study, than they ought to do ; and so have in them commonly less learning, and weaker judgment for all deep considerations, than some duller heads and slower tongues "have. In every separate kind of learning, and study by itself, ye must follow choicely a few, and chiefly some one, and that namely in our school of eloquence, either for pen or talk. And as in por- traiture and painting, wise men choose not that workman that can only make a fair hand, or a well- fashioned leg; but such a one as can furnish up fully all the features of the whole body of a man, woman, and child ; and withal is able too, by good skill, to give to every one of these three, in their proper kind, the right form, the true figure, the natural colour, that is fit and due to the dignity of a man, to the ROGER ASCHAM. 23 beauty of a woman, to the sweetness of a young babe : even likewise do we seek such one in our school to follow ; who is able always in all matters to teach plainly, to delight pleasantly, and to carry away by force of wise talk, all that shall hear or read him. But for ignorance men cannot like, and for idleness men will not labour, to come to any perfectness at all. For as the worthy poets in Athens and Rome were more careful to satisfy the judgment of one learned, than rash in pleasing the humour of a rude multitude ; even so, if men in England now had the like reverend regard to learning, skill, and judgment, and durst not presume to write, except they came with the like learning, and also did use like diligence in searching out, not only just measure in every metre (as every ignorant person may easily do), but also true quantity in every foot and syllable (as only the learned shall be able to do, and as the Greeks and Romans were wont to do), surely then rash ignorant heads, which now can easily reckon up fourteen syllables, and easily stumble on every rhyme, either durst not, for lack of such learning, or else would not, in avoiding such labour, be so busy, as every where they be ; and shops in London should not be so full of lewd and rude rhymes, as commonly they are. But now the ripest of tongue be readiest to write. And many daily in setting out books and ballads, make great show of blossoms and buds ; in whom is neither root of learning nor fruit of wisdom at all. — The Schole- master^ Book i., Aschain^s Works ^ by Dr. Giles. 1864. Vol. iii. 24 michel de montaigne. Michel de Montaigne. 1537— -1592. The Commerce of Books is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other Advantages to the other two ; but has the Constancy and Facility of it's Service for it's own Share : it goes side by side with me in my whole Course, and everywhere is assisting to me. It comforts me in my Age and Soli- tude ; it eases me of a troublesome Weight of Idleness, and delivers me at all Hours from Company that I dislike ; and it blunts the Point of Griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire Possession of my Soul. To divert myself from a troublesome Fancy, 'tis but to run to my Books ; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my Thoughts ; and do not mutiny to see that I have only* recourse to them for want of other more real, natural and lively Conveniences ; they always receive me with the same Kindness. . . . The sick Man is not to be la- mented, who has his Cure in his Sleeve. In the Experience and Practice of this Sentence, which is a very true one, all the Benefit I reap from Books consists ; and yet I make as little use of it almost as those who know it not ; I enjoy it as a Miser does his Money, in knowing that I may enjoy it when I please; my Mind is satisfied with this Right of Possession. I never travel without Books, either in Peace or War ; and yet sometimes I pass over several Days, and sometimes Months, without looking into them ; I will read by and by, say I to myself, or to Morrow, or when I please, and Time steals away without any InGonvenience. For it is not to be imagin'd to what MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. 25 Degree I please my self, and rest content in this Consideration, that I have them by me, to divert my self with them when I am so dispos'd, and to call to mind what an Ease and Assistance they are to my Life. 'Tis the best Viaticum I have yet found out for this human Journey, and I very much lament those Men of Understanding who are unprovided of it. And yet I rather accept of any sort of diversion, how light soever, because this can never fail me. When at Home, I a little more frequent my Library, from whence I at once survey all the whole Concerns of my Family : As I enter it, I from thence see under my Garden, Court, and Base- court, and into all the parts of the Building. There I turn over now one Book, and then another, of various Subjects without Method or Design : One while I meditate, another I record, and dictate as I walk to and fro, such Whimsies as these with which I here present you. 'Tis in the third Story of a Tower, of which the Ground-Room is my Chapel, the second Story an Apartment with a withdrawing Room and Closet, where I often lie to be more retired. Above it is a great Wardrobe, which formerly was the most useless part of the House. In that Library I pass away most of the Days of my Life, and most of the Hours of the Day. In the Night I am never there. There is within it a Cabinet handsom and neat enough, with a very convenient Fire-place for the Winter, and Windows that afford a great deal of light, and very pleasant Prospects. And were I not more afraid of the Trouble than the Expence, the Trouble that frights me from all Business, I could very easily adjoin on either Side, and on the same Floor, a Gallery of an hundred Paces long, 26 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. and twelve broad, having found Walls already rais'd for some other design, to the requisite height. Every Place of Retirement requires a Walk. My Thoughts sleep if I sit still ; my Fancy does not go by it self, my legs must move it ; and all those who study without a Book are in the same Condition. The Figure of my Study is round, and has no more flat Wall than what is taken up by my Table and Chairs ; so that the remaining parts of the Circle present me a View of all my Books at once, set upon five Degrees of Shelves round about me. It has three noble and free Prospects, and is sixteen Paces Diameter. I am not so continually there in Winter ; for my House is built upon an Emi- nence, as it's Name imports, and no part of it is so much expos'd to the Wind and Weather as that, which pleases me the better, for being of a painful Access, and a little remote, as well upon the account of Exercise, as being also there more retir'd from the Crowd. 'Tii there that I am in my Kingdom, as we say, and there I endeavour to make my self an absolute Monarch, and to sequester this one Corner from all Society, whether Conjugal, Filial, or Civil. Elsewhere I have but verbal Authority only, and of a confus'd Essence. That Man, in my Opinion, is very miserable, who has not at home, where to be by himself, where to entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself from others. . . . I think it much more supportable to be always alone than never to be so. If any one shall tell me, that it is to under-value the Muses, to make use of them only for Sport, and to pass away the Time ; I shall tell him, that he does not know the value of Sport and Pastime so well as I do ; I can hardly forbear to add further, MONTAIGNE-yOHN FLO RIO. 27 that all other end is ridiculous. I live from Hand to Mouth, and, with Reverence be it spoken, I only live for my self; to that all my Designs do tend, and in . that terminate. I studied when young for Ostentation ; since to make my self a little wiser ; and now for my Diversion, but never for any Profit. A vain and prodigal Humour I had after this sort of Furniture, not only for supplying my own needs and defects, but moreover for Ornament and outward show; I have since quite abandon'd it. Books have many charming Qualities to such as know how to choose them. But every Good has it's 111 ; 'tis a Pleasure that is not pure and clean, no more than others : It has it's Inconve* niences, and great ones too. The Mind indeed is exercised by it, but the Body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the mean time without Action, grows heavy and melancholy. I know no Excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining Age. — Of Three Commerces, {Charles Cotton's Translation, 1685.) John Florio. 1545 — 1625. Concerning the Honour of Books, Since honour from the honourer proceeds, How well do they deserve, that memorize And leave in books for all posterities The names of worthies and their virtuous deeds ; When all their glory else, like water-weeds Without their element, presently dies. And all their greatness quite forgotten lies. And when and how they flourished no man heeds ! 88 JOHN FLO RIO-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, How poor remembrances are statues, tombs And other monuments that men erect To princes, which remain in closed rooms, Where but a few behold them, in respect Of Books, that to the universal eye Show how they lived ; the other where they lie ! Prefixed to the second edition of John Florid' $ Translation ofMo7itaigne\ Essays, 1 6 1 3 . — ■ [ Vide Notes to D. M, Main's Treasury of English Sonnets^ p, 248, in reference to this Sonnet. ] Book of Common Prayer. 1549. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. — Collect for Second Sunday in Advent, John Lylye [or Lilly]. 1553 — 1601. . . . far more seemely were it for thee to have ihy Studie full of Bookes, than thy Purses full of Mony. — Euphues ; the Anatomy of Wit, Sir Philip Sidney. 1554 — 1586. It is manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge, best, by gather- ing many knowledges, which is reading. Lord Bacon. 1561 — 1629. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for abiUty. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring ; for ornament is in discourse ; and for LORD BACON. 29 ability is in the judgment and disposition of business. . . . Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and dis- course, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested ; that is, some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. . . . Reading maketh a full man ; conference a ready man ; and writing an exact man ; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory : if he confer little, he had need have a present wit : and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. We enter into a desire of knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for ornament and reputation ; sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man : — as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for a wandering and 30 LORD BACON. variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair pros- pect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. As the eye rejoices to receive the light, the ear to hear sweet music; so the mind, which is the man, rejoices to discover the secret works, the varieties and beauties of nature. The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying it, is the sovereign good of our nature. The unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, or the pleasure of that "suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem." The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and extremely covet that it may not be pensile ; but that it may light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support itself in its swift motions and disquisitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that in all motions of bodies there is some point quiescent ; and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bore up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the under- standing, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven. LORD BACON—SAMUEL DANIEL. 31 In studies whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself let him set hours for it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves. Such letters as are written from wise men are of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best ; for they are more natural than orations, public speeches, and more advanced than conference or present speeches. Samuel Daniel. 1562 — 1619. O blessed Letters ! that combine in one All Ages past, and make one live with all. By you we do confer with who are gone, And the Dead-living unto Council call ; By you th' unborn shall have Communion Of what we feel and what doth us befal. Soul of the World, Knowledge without thee ; What hath the Earth that truly glorious is ? . . . What Good is like to this, To do worthy the writing, and to write Worthy the Reading, and the World's Delight? Mtisophilus ; containing a General Defence of Leai'ning. And tho' books, madam, cannot make this Mind, Which we must bring apt to be set aright ; Yet do they rectify it in that Kind, And touch it so, as that it turns that Way Where Judgment lies. And tho' we cannot find The certain Place of Truth ; yet do they stay, And entertain us near about the same : 32 SHA KESPEA R E. And give the Soul the best Delight that may Enchear it most, and most our Spirits enflame To Thoughts of Glory, and to worthy Ends. To the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedfoi'd, William Shakespeare. 1564 — 1616. Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough. Tempest, i. 2. Knowing I loved my books, hre furnished me, From my own library, with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. Tempest, i. 2. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. Love's Labour Lost, iv. 2. The books, the arts, the academes. That show, contain, and nourish all the world. Lovers Labour Lost, iv, 3. Come, and take a choice of all my library ; And so beguile thy sorrow. Titus Andronicus, iv. I. Alonzo of Arragon. Alonzo of Arragon was wont to say in commen- dation of Age, that Age appeared to be best in four things : old wood best to burn ; old wine to drink ; old friends to trust ; and old authors to read. — Bacoti^s Apophthegms, No. 1 01. GUEVARA. 33; Antonio de Guevara, d. 1544. He that lives in his own fields and habitation, which God hath given him, enjoys true peace. . . . The very occasion of ill-doing is by his presence taken away. He busieth not himself in a search of pleasures, but in regulating and disposing of his family ; in the education of his children and domestick discipline. No violent tempestuous motions distract his rest, but soft gales and a silent aire, refresh and breath upon him. He doth all things commodiously, ordereth his life discreetly, not after the opinion of the people, but by the rules of his own certain experience. He knows he must not live here for ever, and therefore thinks frequently of dissolution and the day of death. . . . He that lives in the country, hath Time for his servant, and whatsoever occasions offer themselves — if he be but a discreet observer of his hours — he can have no cause to complaine that they are unseasonable. Nothing will hinder him from the pleasure of books, from devotion, or the fruition of his friends. More happy then, yea by m.uch more happy than any king, if not nearer to a divine felicitie, is that person who lives and dwels in the country upon the rents and profits of his own grounds. There without danger he may act and speake as it becomes simplicity and naked truth. He hath liberty and choice in all his imployments. ... In the country we can have a harmelesse and cheerfull conversation with Qur familiar friends, either in our houses or under some shade ; whereas in publick company there are many D 34 GUEVARA. things spoken at randome, which bring more of weari- nesse than of pleasure to the hearers. But the quiet retyr'd liver, in that calme silence, reads over some profitable histories or books of devotion, and very often — stird up by an inward and holy joy — ^breaks out into divine praises and the singing of hymnes and psalms ; with these sacred recreations — more delightfull than romances, and the lascivious musick of fidlers, which only cloy and weary the ears — doth he feed his soule and refresh his body. The day it self — in my opinion — seems of more length and beauty in the country, arwi can be better enjoyed than any where else. There the years passe away calmly, and one day gently drives on the other, insomuch that a man may be sensible of a certaine satietie and pleasure from every houre, and may be said to feed upon Time it self, which devours all other things. O who can never fully expresse the pleasures and happinesse of the country-life ! . . , what oblec- tation and refreshment it is, to behold the green shades, the beauty and majesty of the tall and ancient groves, to be skill'd in planting and dressing of orchards, flowres, and pot-herbs, to temper and allay these harmlesse imployments with an innocent merry song, to ascend sometimes to the fresh and healthfull hils, to descend into the bosome of the valleys, and the fragrant, deawy meadows, to heare the musick of birds, the murmurs of bees, the falling of springs, and the pleasant discourses of the old plough-men, where without any impediment or trouble a man may walk, SCALIGER—OLD SONG. 35 and — as Caio Censorius. us'd to say— discourse with the dead, that is, read the pious works of learned men, who departing this life, left behind them their noble thoughts for the benefit of posterity and the preserva- tion of their own worthy names. — The Praise and Happinesse of the Cotmtrie-Life ; wjHiten origmally in Spanish by Don Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of Carthagena, and Counsellour of Estate to Charts the Fifth Emperour of Germany. Put into English by H, Vaughan, Silurist, 1 65 1. Joseph Scaliger. 1540 — 1609. I wish I were a skilful grammarian. No one can understand any author, without a thorough knowledge of grammar. Those who pretend to undervalue learned grammarians, are arrant blockheads without any ex- ception. From whence proceed so many dissensions in religious matters, but from ignorance of grammar ? — Scaligerana. Old English Song. O for a Booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out ; With the grene leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the Streete cryes all about. Where I male Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Okie ; For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke, is better to me than Golde. I 36 SIXTEENTH CENTURY WRITER. A Sixteenth Century Writer. *' Bookes lookt on as to their Readers or Authours, do at the very first mention, challenge Preheminence above the Worlds admired fine things. Books are the Glasse of Counsell to dress ourselves by. They are iifes best business : Vocation to these hath more Emolument coming in, than all the other busie Termes of life. They are Feelesse Counsellours, no delaying Patrons, of easie Accesse, and kind Expedition, never sending away empty any Client or Petitioner. They are for Company, the best Friends; in doubts, Coun- sellours ; in Damp, Comforters ; Time's Perspective ; the home Traveller's Ship, or Horse, the busie man's best Recreation, the Opiate of Idle weariness ; the mind's best Ordinary ; Nature's Garden and Seed-plot of Immortality. Time spent (needlessly) from them, is consumed, but with them, twice gain'd. Time cap- tivated and snatched from thee, by Incursions of busi- ness. Thefts of Visitants, or by thy own Carelessnesse lost, is by these, redeemed in life ; they are the soul's Viaticum ; and against death its Cordiall. In a true verdict, no such Treasure as a Library." — Fro77i the Introduction toAllibone^s Critical Dictionary of English Literature, Name of Author not given, Joseph Hall. 1574 — 1656. I can wonder at nothing more than how a man can be idle ; but of all others, a scholar ; in so many im- provements of reason, in such sweetness of knowledge, in such variety of studies, in such importunity of JOSEPH HALL. 37 thoughts : other artizans do but practice, we still learn ; others run still in the same gyre to weariness, to satiety ; our choice is infinite ; other labours require recreations ; our very labour recreates our sports ; we can never want either somewhat to do, or somewhat that we would do. How numberless are the volumes which men have written of arts, of tongues ! How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world ! wherein every creature is a letter ; every day a new page. Who can be weary of either of these? To find wit in poetry; in philosophy, profoundness; in mathematics, acuteness ; in history, wonder of events ; in oratory, sweet eloquence; in divinity, supernatural light, and holy devotion ; as so many rich metals in their proper mines ; whom would it not ravish with delight ? After all these, let us but open our eyes, we cannot look beside a lesson, in this universal book of our Maker, worth our study, worth taking out. What creature hath not his miracle ? what event doth not challenge his observation ? And, if, weary of foreign employment, we list to look home into ourselves, there we find a more private world of thoughts which set us on work anew, more busily and not less profitably: now our silence is vocal, our solitariness popular ; and we are shut up, to do good unto many ; if once we be cloyed with our own company, the door of conference is open; here interchange of discourse (besides pleasure) benefits us ; and he is a weak companion from whom we return not wiser. I could envy, if I could believe that anchoret, who, secluded from the world, and pent up in his voluntary prison walls, denied that he thought 38 JOSEPH HALL. the day long, whiles yet he wanted learning to vary his thoughts. Not to be cloyed with the same conceit is diffi- cult, above human strength ; but to a man so furnished with all sorts of knowledge, that according to his disposi- tions he can change his studies, I should wonder that ever the sun should seem to pass slowly. How many busy tongues chase away good hours in pleasant chat, and complain of the haste of night ! What ingenious mind can be sooner weary of talking with learned authors, the most harmless and sweetest companions ? What a heaven lives a scholar in, that at once in one close room can daily converse with all the glorious martyrs and fathers ? that can single out at pleasure, either sententious Tertullian, or grave Cyprian, or resolute Hierome, or flowing Chrysostome, or divine Ambrose, or devout Bernard, or, (who alone is all these) heavenly Augustine, and talk with them and hear their wise and holy counsels, verdicts, resolutions ; ' yea, (to rise higher) with courtly Esay, with learned Paul, with all their fellow-prophets, apostles; yet more, like another Moses, with God himself, in them both? Let the world contemn us ; while we have these delights we cannot envy them ; we cannot wish ourselves other than we are. Besides, the way to all other contentments is troublesome ; the " only recompense is in the end. To delve in the mines, to scorch in the fire for the getting, for the fining of gold is a slavish toil ; the comfort is in the wedge to the owner, not the labourers ; where our very search of knowledge is delightsome . Study itself is our life ; from which we would not be barred for a world. JOSEPH HALL. 3^, How much sweeter then is the fruit of study, the conscience of knowledge? In comparison whereof the soul that hath once tasted it, easily contemns all human comforts. Go now, ye worldlings, and insult over our paleness, our neediness, our neglect. Ye could not be so jocund if you were not ignorant ; if you did not want knowledge, you could not overlook him that hath it ; for me, I am so far from emulating you, that I profess I had as lieve be a brute beast, as an ignorant rich man. How is it then, that those gallants, which have privilege of blood and birth, and better education, do so scornfully turn off these most manly, reasonable, noble exercises of scholarship? a hawk becomes their fist better than a book ; no dog but is a belter company : any thing or nothing, rather than what we ought. O minds brutishly sensual ! Do they think that God made them for disport, -who even in his paradise, would not allow pleasure without work ? And if for business, either of body or mind : those of the body are commonly servile, like itself. The mind therefore, the mind only, that honourable and divine part, is fittest to be employed of those which would reach to the highest perfection of men, and would be more than the most. And what work is there of the mind but the trade of a scholar, study? Let me therefore fasten this problem on our school gates, and challenge all comers, in the defence of it ; that no scholar, cannot but be truly noble. And if I make it not good let me never be admitted further then to the subject of our question. Thus we do well to con- gratulate to ourselves our own happiness ; if others will come to us, it shall be our comfort, but "more theirs ;. 40 JOSEPH HALL, if not, it is enough that we can joy in ourselves, and in him in whom we are that we are. — Epistle to Mr, Milward. Every day is a little life : and our whole is but a day repeated. . . . Those therefore that dare lose a day, are dangerously prodigal ; those that dare misspend it, desperate. We can best teach others by ourselves ; let me tell your lordship, how I would pass my days, whether common or sacred. . . . All days are his, who gave time a beginning and continuance ; yet some he hath made ours, not to command, but to use. In none may we forget him ; in some we must forget all, besides him. First, therefore, I desire to awake at those hours, not when I will, but when I must ; pleasure is not a fit rule for rest, but health ; neither do I consult so much with the sun, as mine own necessity, whether of body or in that of the mind. If this vassal could well serve me waking, it should never sleep ; but now it must be pleased, that it must be serviceable. Now when sleep is rather driven away than leaves me, I would ever awake with God ; my first thoughts are for him, who hath made the night for rest, and the day for travel ; and as he gives, so blesses both. If my heart be early seasoned with his presence, it will savour of him all day after. While my body is dressing, not with an effeminate curiosity, nor yet with rude neglect ; my mind addresses itself to her ensuing task, bethinking what is to be done, and in what order ; and marshalling (as it may) my hours with my work ; that done, after some whiles meditation, I walk ifp to my masters and companions, my books ; and JOSEPH HALL. 41 -sitting down amongst them, with the best contentment, I dare not reach forth my hand to salute any of them, till I have first looked up to heaven, and craved favour of him to whom all my studies are duly referred : without whom, I can neither profit, nor labour. After this, out of no over great variety, I call forth those which may best fit my occasions ; wherein I am not too scrupulous of age ; sometimes I put myself to school, to one of those ancients, whom the church hath honoured with the name of Fathers ; whose volumes I confess not to open, without a sacred reverence of their holiness and gravity ; sometimes to those Utgr doctors, which want nothing but age to make them classical ; always to God's book. That day is lost, whereof some hours are not improved in those divine monuments : others I turn over out of choice : these out of duty. Ere I can have sate unto weariness, my family, having now overcome all house- hold distractions, invites me to our common devotions ; not without some short preparation. These heartily per- formed, send me up with a more strong and cheerful . appetite to my former work, which I find made easy to me by intermission, and variety ; now therefore can I deceive the hours with change of pleasures, that is, of labours. One while mine eyes are busied, another while my hand, and sometimes my mind takes the burthen from them both ; wherein I would imitate the skilfullest cooks, which make the best dishes with manifold mixtures ; one hour is spent in textual divinity, another in controversy ; histories relieve them both. Now, when the mind is weary of other 42 JOSEPH HALL. labours, it begins to undertake her own ; sometimes it meditates and winds up for future use ; sometimes it lays forth her conceits into present discourse ; some- times for itself, ofter for others. Neither know I whether it works or plays in these thoughts ; I am sure no sport hath more pleasure, no work more use : only the decay of a weak body makes me think these dehghts insensibly laborious. Thus could I all day (as ringers use) make myself music with changes, and complain sooner of the day for shortness, than of the business for toil ; were it not that this faint monitor interrupts me still in the midst of my busy pleasures, and en- forces me both to respite and repast ; I must yield to both ; while my body and mind are joined together in unequal couples, the better must follow the weaker. Before my meals, therefore, and after, I let myself loose from all thoughts ; and now, would forget that I ever studied ; a full mind takes away the body's appetite no less than a full body makes a dull and un- unwieldy mind ; company, discourse, recreations, are now seasonable and welcome : these prepare me for a diet, not gluttonous, but medicinal ; the palate may not be pleased, but the stomach ; nor that for its own sake; neither would I think any of these comforts worth respect in themselves but in their use, in their end ; so far as they may enable me to better things. If I see any dish to tempt my palate, I fear a serpent . in that apple, and would please myself in a wilful denial ; I rise capable of more, not desirous ; not now immediately from my trencher to my book ; but after some intermission. Moderate speed is a sure help tO' JOSEPH HALL. 4 J all proceedings; where those things which are prosecuted with violence of endeavour or desire, either succeed not, or continue not. After my later meal, my thoughts are slight ; only my memory may be charged with her task, of recalling what was committed to her custody in the day ; and my heart is busy in examining my hands and mouth, and all other senses, of that day's behaviour. And now the evening is come, no tradesman doth more carefully take in his wares, clear his shopboard, and shut his windows, than I would shut up my thoughts, and clear my mind. That student shall live miserably, which like a camel lies down under his burden. All this done, calling together my family, we end the day with God. — "How a day shozild be spent,''' In an Epistle to My Lord Den7iy. What a world of wit is here packed up together ! I know not whether this sight doth more dismay or comfort me ; it dismays me to think, that here is so much that I cannot know ; it coniforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon — there is no end of making many books ; this sight verifies it — there is no end ; indeed, it were pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul, the agitation whereof cannot but through time and expe- rience work out many hidden truths ; to suppress these would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds, like unto so many candles, should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberation are most accurate ; these we vent into our papers ; what 44 JOHN FLETCHER. a happiness is it, that without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts ! — that I can at pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers, and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well- • studied judgments in all points of question which I propose ! Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn somewhat : it is a wantonness to complain of choice. No law binds me to read all ; but the more we can take in and digest, the better liking must the mind's needs be. Blessed be God that hath set up so many clear lamps in his church. Now, none but the wilfully blind can plead darkness ; and blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers, and have wil- lingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others. — Occasional Meditations. John Fletcher. 1576 — 1625. Give me Leave to enjoy myself. That place, that does Contain my books, the best companions, is To me a glorious court, where hourly I Converse with the old sages and philosophers. And sometimes for variety, I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels ; Calling their victories, if unjustly got, -Unto a strict account : and in my fancy. Deface their ill-planed statues. Can I then H. PEACH AM— ROBERT BURTON. 45, Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace Uncertain vanities ? No : be it your care To augment a heap of wealth ; it shall be mine To increase in knowledge. Lights there for my study !- If all thy pipes of wine were fill'd with books, Made of the barks of trees, or mysteries writ In old moth-eaten vellum, he would sip thy cellar Quite dry, and still be thirsty. Then, for's diet. He eats and digests more volumes at a meal. Than there would be larks (though the sky should fall) Devour'd in a month in Paris. The Elder Brother, Act i. Scene 2. Henry Peacham. d. 1640. Affect not, as some do, that bookish ambition, to be stored with books, and have well-furnished libraries, yet keep their heads empty of knowledge. To desire to have many books, and never to use them, is. like a child tha^ will have a candle burning by him all the while he is sleeping. — The Complcat Gentleman, Robert Burton. 1576 — 1640. But amongst those exercises or recreations of the mind within doors, there is none so general, so aptly to be applied to all sorts of men, so fit and proper to expel idleness and melancholy, as that of study. [Here Cicero is quoted, the passage from whom is given ante p. 2.] What so full of content, as to read, walk, and see maps, pictures, statues, &c. . . . Who is he that is now wholly overcome with idleness, or otherwise encircled in a labyrinth of worldly care, 46 ' ROBERT BURTON. troubles, and discontents, that will not be much lightened in his mind by reading of some enticing story, true or feigned, where as in a glass he shall observe what our forefathers have done, the beginnings, ruins, falls, periods of commonwealths, private men's actions displayed to the life, &c. Plutarch therefore calls them, secundas mensas et bellaria, the second course and junkets, because they were generally read at noblemen's feasts. Who is not earnestly affected with a passionate speech, well penned, an eloquent poem, or some pleasant bewitching discourse, like that of Heliodorus (Melancthon de Heliodoro), uhi ohlectatio qucedam placide Jiuit cum hilaritate con- jimcta? ... To most kind of men it is an extraordinary delight to study. For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and science, to the rival contest and capacity of the reader ! . . . What is there so sure, what so pleasant? . . . What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose ! Their names alone are the subject of whole volumes ; we know thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates ; and he is a very block that is affected with none of them. . , . Such is the excellency of these studies that all those ornaments, and childish bubbles of wealth, are not worthy to be compared to them ; I would even live and die with such meditations, and take more delight, true content of mind in them, than thou hast in all thy wealth and sport, how rich soever thou art. And as Cardan well seconds me — **it is more honour- ROBERT BURTON. 47 able and glorious to understand these truths, than to govern provinces, to be beautiful, or to be young." The like pleasure there is in all other studies, to such as are truly addicted to them ; the like sweetness, which, as Circe's cup bewitcheth a student, he cannot leave off. Julius Scahger . . . brake out into a pathetical protestation, he had rather be the author of twelve verses in Lucan, or such an Ode in Horace, than Emperor of Germany. , . . King James (1605), when he came to see our University of Oxford, and amongst other edifices now went to view that famous Library renewed by Sir Thomas Bodley, in imitation of Alexander, at his departure brake out into that noble speech : " If I were not a king, I would be a University man ; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors." So sweet is the delight ^ of study, the more learning they have (as he that hath a dropsy, the more he drinks, the thirstier he is) the more they covet to learn ; harsh at first learning is, radices amarce, but fructus dukes, according to Isocrates, pleasant at last; the longer they live, the more they are enamoured with the Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden, in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long ; and that which to thy thinking should have bred loathing, caused in him a greater liking. *'I no sooner (saith he) come into the library, but I bolt the doors to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity amongst so 48 ROBERT BURTON. many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness." . . . Whosoever he is therefore that is overrun with solitari- ness, or carried away with pleasing melancholy and vain conceits, and for want of employment knows not how to spend his time ; or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy than this of study . . . provided always that this malady pro- ceed not from overmuch study; for in such case he adds fuel to the fire, and nothing can be more per- nicious; let him take heed he do not overstretch his wits, and make a skeleton of hiiliself. . . . Study is only prescribed to those that are otherwise idle, troubled in mind, or carried headlong with vain thoughts and imaginations to distract their cogitations (although variety of study, or some serious subject, would do the former no harm), and direct their con- tinual meditations another way. ■ Nothing in this case better than study. . . . Read the Scriptures, which HyiDerius holds available of itself; " the mind is erected thereby from all worldly cares, and hath much quiet and tranquillity." For as Austin well hath it, 'tis scientia scientiarum^ 077ini inelle dulcior, omni pane stiavior, omni vino hilar ior: 'tis the best nepenthe, surest cordial, sweetest alterative, presentest diverter; for neither, as Chrysostom well adds, "those boughs and leaves of trees which are plashed for cattle to stand under, in the heat of the day, in summer, so much refresh them with their acceptable shade, as the reading of .the Scripture doth recreate and comfort a distressed soul, in sorrow and afflictior." . . . qtiod SIR THOMAS OFERBURV. 49 cibus corpori, lectio ani?ncs facit, saith Seneca, ** as meat is to the body, such is reading to the soul." , . . Cardan calls a library the physic of the soul ; *' divine authors fortify the mind, make men bold and constant; and (as Hyperius adds) godly conference will not permit the mind to be tortured with absurd cogitations." Rhasis enjoins continual conference to such melancholy men, perpetual discourse of some history, tale, poem, news, &c., which feeds the mind as meat and drink doth the body, and pleaseth as much. . . . Saith Li psius, ** when I read Seneca, methinks I am beyond all human fortune, on the top of a hill above mortality. "... I would for these causes wish him that is melancholy to use both human and divine authors, voluntarily to impose some task upon himself to divert his melancholy thoughts. , . . Or let him demonstrate a proposition in Euclid, in his last five books, extract a square root, or study algebra ; than which, as Clavius holds, "in all human dis- ciplines nothing can be more excellent or pleasant, so abstruse, and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight." — The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part ii., Sec. 2, Memb. 4. Sir Thomas Overbury. 1581 — 1613. Books are a part of man's prerogative, In formal ink they Thoughts and Voices hold. That we to them our Solitude may give. And make Time Present travel that of Old. . Our Life Fame pieceth longer at the End, And Books it farther backward do extend. The Wife, 50 john hales. John Hales. 1584 — 1656. From the order of Reading, and the matters in Reading to be observed, we come to the method of observation. What order we are for our best use to keep in entring our Notes into our Paper- Books. The custom which hath most prevailed hitherto, was common placing a thing at the first Original very plain and simple ; but by after-times much increased, some augmenting the number of the Heads, others inventing quainter forms of disposing them : till at length Common-place-books became like unto the Roman Breviarie or Missal. It was a great part of Clerk- ship to know how to use them. The Vastness of the Volumes, the multitude of Heads, the intricacy of dis- position, the pains of committing the Heads to memory, and last, of the labour of so often turning the Books to enter the observations in their due places, are things so expensive of time and industry, that although at length the work comes to perfection, yet it is but like the Silver Mines in Wales, the profit will hardly quit the pains. I have often doubted with my self, whether or no there were any necessity of being so exactly Methodical. First, because there hath not yet been found a Method of that Latitude, but little reading would furnish you with some things, which would fall without the compass of it. Secondly, because men of confused, dark and clowdy understandings, no beam or light of order and method can ever rectifie ; whereas men of clear understanding, though but in a mediocrity, if they read good Books carefully, and note diligently, it is impossible but they should find incredible profit, JOHN HALES. 51 though their Notes lie never so confusedly. The strength of our natural memory^ especially if we help it, by revising our own Notes ; the nature of things themselves^ many times ordering themselves, and tantum non, telling us how to range them ; a mediocrity of care to see that matters lie not too Chaos-like ^ will with very small damage save us this great labour of being over-superstitiously methodical. And what though perad- venture something be lost, Exilis domus est, dfc. It is a sign of great poverty of Scholarship, where every thing that is lost, is missed ; whereas rich and well accomplished learning is able to lose many things with . little or no inconvenience. In your reading excerpe, and note in your Books such things as you like : going on continually without any respect unto order ; and for the avoiding of confusion, it shall be very profitable to allot some time to the reading again of your own Notes ; which do as much and as oft as you can. For by this means your Notes shall be better fixt in your memory, and your memory will easily supply you of things of the like nature, if by chance you have dispersedly noted them ; that so you may bring them together by marginal references. But because your Notes in time must needs arise to some bulk, that it may be too great a task, and too great loss of time to review them, do thus. Cause a large Index to be fram'd according to Alphabetical order, and Register in it your Heads, as they shall offer themselves in the course of your reading, every Head under his proper Letter. For thus, though your Notes lie confused in your Papers, yet are they digested in 52 RHODIGINUS—LORD CHANDOS. your Index, and to draw them together when you are to make use of them, will be nothing so great pains as it would be, to have ranged them under their several Heads at their first gathering. A little experience of this course will show you the great profit of it, especially if you did compare it with some others that are in use. — Golden Remains of The Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales, of Eaton Colledge, 1673. ^^Miscellanies: The Method of Reading Profane History, "^y Balthasar Bonifacius Rhodiginus. 1584— 1659. But how can I live here without my books ? I really seem to myself crippled and only half myself ; for if, as the great Orator used to say, arms are a soldier's members, surely books are the limbs of scholars. Corasius says : Of a truth, he who would deprive me of books, my old friends, would take away all the delight of my life, nay, I will even say all desire of living. — Historia Ludicra, Lib. ix. cap. ii. p. 148. Edition of Brussels, 1656, d^o. {Translated by J . A^.\ Lord Chandos. d. 162 1. As in the choise, and reading of good bookes, principally consists the enabling and aduancement of a mans knowledge, and learning ; yet if it be not mixed with the conuersation, of discreet, able, and vnder- standing men, they can make little vse of their reading, either for themselues, or the Commonwealth where they Hue. There is not a more common Prouerb, LEO ALL AT I US. 53 then this, That the greatest Clerkes bee not alwayes the wisest men^ and reason for it, being a very vneuen rule, to square all actions, and consultations, onely by booke precedents. Time hath so many changes, & alterations, and such varietie of occasions, and oppor- tunities, interuening, and mingled, that it is impossible to goe new wayes, in the old paths ; so that though reading doe furnish, and direct a mans iudgement, yet it doth not wholly gouerne it. Therefore the necessitie of knowing the present time, and men, wherein we Hue, is so great, that it is the principall guide of our actions, and reading but supplementall. — Hoi'cb Sub- secivcB : Observations and Discovrses : Of a Country Life, 1620. [The authorship of this work is assigned to Grey Bridges, Lord Chandos, — vide Brydges' Censura Literaria, and Park's Edition of Lord Oxford's Royal and Noble Author s.'\ Leo Allatius. 1586 — 1669. For it is wonderful how constantly the mind craves novelty, and succumbs to no fatigue, to no want of sleep. I know that there is another happiness provided for men, for which each of us ought to strive with his whole energy ; but, if I did not know that, I should think it was only to be found in the perusal of the most excellent writers ; and I should consider the office of preserving them the highest felicity. It is the most delightful, and the most worthy thing that all our industry and indulgence should be expended on them. To me, indeed, the light of the sun, the 54 GEORGE WITHER. day, and life itself, would be joyless and bitter, if I had not something to read : if I lacked the works of the most illustrious men ; for, in comparison with their preciousness and delight, wealth and pleasure, and all the things that men prize, are mean and trifling. This thirst, then, or madness (I may so call the insatiable passion of the mind for literature), while it continually inspires me with the desire to investigate new authors, constantly offers the mind something new ; and, when I have acquired it, I am grieved that I have been so long deprived of it. Hence I am evermore driven on by more urgent stimuli. — fo. Alberti Fab7'icii BibliotheccB GraeccB, Liber v., Mich, Pselli, Jtinioris, Scripta Inedita^ p. ^O. Hajfiburg, l'j2'j. \_'^'ranslaled byJ.N.] George Wither. 1588 — 1667. She [The Muse] doth tell me where to borrow Comfort in the midst of sorrow : Makes the desolatest place To her presence be a grace : And the blackest discontents To be pleasing ornaments. In my former days of bliss. Her divine skill taught me this, That from everything I saw, I could some invention draw : And raise pleasure to her height. Through the meanest object's sight, By the murmur of a spring, Or the least bough's rustleing ; J, E. NIEREMBERGIUS. 55 By a daisy, whose leaves spread Shut when Titan goes to bed ; Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me, Than all Nature's beauties can In some other wiser man. She hath taught me by her might To draw comfort and delight. Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, I will cherish thee for this. Poesy ! thou sweet'st content That e'er heaven to mortals lent : Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee. PhilarUe, Jean Eusebe Nierembergius. 1595— 1658. The world hath many things in it which humane affairs have no need of. Virtue also is perfected in few precepts. Though we fill the world with our writings, it is not our volumes that can make us good, but a will to be so. Book-men write out of no other design, but to reform and civilize mankind. . . . To be good there is nothing needful but willingnesse. . . . We care not to use this present life which is our own, but study the secrets of another, which as yet is not ours. We would learn mysteries, and some things that are either out of our way, or else beyond 56 JAMES SHIRLEY. it. Annihilation is more profitable than a fruitlesse being. In this family of Nature, every one hath his task : none may be idle. The best and the noblest are the most laborious. . . . Nothing hath com- merce with heaven, but what is pure : he that would be pure, must needs be active. Sin never prevailes against us, but in the absence of Virtue, and Virtue is never absent, but when wee are idle. To preserve the peace of conscience, wee must not feare sufferings. — Two Excellent Discourses : (i) " Temperance and Patiencey^ (2) " Life and Death^^'' written in Latin hy Johan : Euseb : Nierembergius. Englished by Henry Vaughan, Silurist. 1654. James Shirley. 1594 — 1666. . . . but I hope You have no enmity to the liberal arts : Learning is an addition beyond Nobility of birth ; honour of blood. Without the ornament of knowledge, Is but a glorious ignorance. . . . I never knew More sweet and happy hours than I employ'd Upon my books. The Lady of Pleasure^ Act ii. Scene i. Sir William Waller. 1597—1668. Here is the best solitary company in the world, and in this particular chiefly excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with none but wise SIR WILLIAM WALLER. 57 men ; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools. What an advantage have I, by this good fellowship, that, besides the help which I receive from' hence, in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived ! — that I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occur- rences ! Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times, the learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellers, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of . felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, without trespassing, go into their vineyards and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my pleasure, but put up as much as I will in my vessel, and store it up for my profit and advantage. ... I would therefore do in reading as merchants used to do in their trading ; who, in a coasting way, put in at several ports and take in what commodities they afford, but settle their factories in those places only which are of special note ; I would, by-the-bye, allow myself a traffic with sundry authors, as I happen to light upon them, for my recreation ; and I would make the best advantage that I could of them : but I would fix my study upon those only that are of most importance to fit me for action, which is the true end of all learning. Lord, teach me so to study other men's works as not to neglect mine own ; and so to study Thy word, which is Thy work, that it may be ** a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto 58 ANTONY TUCKNEV. my path " — my candle to work by. Take me off from the curiosity of knowing only to know ; from the vanity of knowing only to be known ; and from the folly of pretending to know more than I do know : and let it be my wisdom to study to know Thee, who art life eternal. Write Thy law in my heart, and I shall be the best book here. — Divine Meditations: Meditation upon the Contentment I have in my Books and Study. Antony Tuckney. 1599 — 1670. What you say of your little reading and more medi- tating ; I impute to your great modestie, in lessening your own due : or if, as I have cause, I must beleeve you; as I cannot but much approve your course of Meditation ; so give mee leave to intreat you, to give diligence to Reading. I have thought, that Bernard was in the right ; when hee said, lectio^ sine meditatione^ arida est ; meditatio, sine lectione, erronea. In our meditations, wee may unawares slip into an errour; which, because our own, of our own selves, we are hardlie restrained from; from which another's hand may easilie helpe mee up. And if, for that and other ends, I would gladlie conferre with the living ; the same motive may persuade mee to converse with others, that are dead ; in their writings : and the rather, because they use to bee more digested ; than others' extemporarie discourses ; especiallie, if, as you do, we make choice of those, that are most pious and learned. I look-at it, as a kind of Communion of Saints ; in which I may expect a greater blessing : but RIOJA—PE TER DU MO ULIN. 59 SO, as not resting on their authoritie. And shoulde not their writings bee better than my thoughts, yett with niee I find itt thus ; that by reading I have more hints, and better rise, for more and better notions ; than otherwise of myself I shou'd have reached unto : hereby I shall bee better acquainted with the true historic, stating, and phrasing, of any point of contro- versie ; which otherwise I shall too often stumble- att. — Third Letter from Dr, Antony Tuckney to Dr. Benjamin Whichcote. — *' The Reconciliation of Sinners unto God." 1 65 1. Francesco di Rioja. 1600— 1659. A little peaceful home Bounds all my wants and wishes ; add to this My book and friend, and this is happiness. Peter du Moulin. 1600 — 1684. Let our dwelling be lightsome, if possible ; in a free air, and near a garden. Gardening is an innocent delight. With these, if one may have a sufficient revenue, an honest employment, little business, sortable companys, and especially the conversation of good books with whom a man may converse as little and as much as he pleaseth ; he needs little more, as for the exteriour to enjoy all the content that this world can afford. . . . He that both learned to know the world and himself, will soon be capable of this counsel — " To retire within one's self." . . . Persons that have some goodness in their soul, have a closet where they may retire at any time, and yet keep in society. 6o PETER DU MOULIN. That closet is their own in-side. . , . That in-side to which the wise man must retire, is his judgment and conscience. Thence to impose silence to business and hush all the noise below, — that with a calm and undisturbed mind, he may consider the nature of the persons and things which he converseth with, what interests he hath in them, and how far they are appli- cable to God's service, and to the benefit of himself and others. . . . There is no possession sooner lost, than that of one's self. The smallest things rob us of it. . . . Tecum habitat. Dwell at home. Keep possession of your soul. Suffer not anything to steal you away from yourself. There is neither profit nor pleasure worth so much, that the soul should go from home to get it. . . . One is always a loser at that game which robs his soul of serenity. . . . Nothing is so great, that for it we should set our mind out of frame. A wise man should not suffer his soul to stir out of her place, and run into disorder. . . . Keep company with a few well-chosen persons, lending our- selves freely to them, but giving ourselves to none but God, nor suffering friendship to grow to slavery. With all sorts of men we must deal ingenuously, yet re- servedly, saying what we think, but thinking more than we say, lest we give power to others to take hold of the rudder of our mind. . . . Let them not be admitted by too much familiarity to know the secret avenues of our souls. For in all souls there are some places weaker than the rest. ^A Treatise of Peace and Contentment of Mind : Book VI. To Retire within one's self: To avoid Idleness : Of the care of the Body, and other little Contentments of Life. 1678. john earle—sir thomas browne. 6i John Earle. i6oi — 1665. The hermitage by his study has made him somewhat uncouth in the world . . . but practice him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall out-balance those glisterers, as far as a solid substance does a feather, or gold, gold-lace. — Microcosmography : A Down-right Scholar, Sir William Davenant. 1605 — 1668. Books shew the utmost conquests of our minds. Gondibert. Sir Thomas Browne. 1605 — 1682. 'Tis an unjust way of compute, to magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities ; and to undervalue a solid judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of Hector. When that notable king of France would have his son to know but one sentence in Latin, had it been a good one, perhaps it had been enough. Natural parts and good judgments rule the world. States are not governed by ergotisms.* Many have ruled well, who could not, perhaps, define a common- wealth ; and they who understand not the globe of the earth, command a great part of it. Where natural logick prevails not, artificial too often faileth. Where nature fills the sails,, the vessel goes smoothly on ; and when judgment is the pilot, the ensurance need not be high. When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids : where that foundation is wanting, * Conclusions deduced according to the forms of logick. 62 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. the structure must be low. They do most by books, who could do much without them ; and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man. — Christian Morals, I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero ; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria : for my own part, I think there be too many in the world ; and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. . . . 'Tis not a melancholy utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod — not to unite the in- compatible difference of religion, but, — for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors ; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my know- ledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a THOMAS FULLER. 63 man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection ; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose ; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined ; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled ; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions ; and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. . . . Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius's razor ; their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko than in the fury of a merciless pen. — Religio Medici. Thomas Fuller. 1608 — 1661. When there is no recreation or business for thee abroad, thou may'st have a company of honest old fellows in their leathern jackets in thy study which will find thee excellent divertisement at home. ... To divert at any time a troublesome fancy, run to thy books ; they presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness. Some hooks are only cursorily to be tasted of. Namely first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to 64 JOHN MILTON. read them over ; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions ; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look through them ; and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously sX.Vi^\^^. — The Holy State: Of Books. John Milton. 1608 — 1674. For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of Life in them to be as active as that Soule was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a violl, the purest efficacie and ex- traction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book ; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills Reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a Man lives a burden to the Earth ; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a Life beyond Life. MILTON— LORD CLARENDON. 65 'Tis true, no age can restore a Life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse ; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected Truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season'd Life of Man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus com- mitted, sometimes a martyrdome; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall Life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of Reason it selfe, slaies an Immortality rather than a Life. — Areopagitica, \Edition with Notes ^ ^c, by T, Holt White, 1819.] Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior. Uncertain and unsettled still remains ; Deep-versed in books, but shallow in himself. Paradise Regained'. Earl of Clarendon. 1608- 1674. The wisdom of a learned man comes by opportunity of leisure. That is true ; when there is wisdom and learning, they will both grow, and be improved by the opportunity of leisure ; but neither wisdom nor learning will be ever got by doing nothing. He that hath little business shall become wise, but he that hath none, shall remain a fool ; he that doth not think at all upon what he is to do, will never do any thing well ; F 66 LORD CLARENDON—SIR MATTHEW HALE, and he who doth nothing but think, had as good do nothing at all. The mind that is unexercised, that takes not the air, that it may know the minds of other men, contracts the same aches and cramps in the faculties of the understanding that the body labours with by the want of exercising its limbs ; and he that resolves to sit still, can never come to the other end of his journey by other men's running never so fast. There is evidence, by the observation and experience of every man, enough to convince him of the great advantages which attend upon an active life, above what waits upon pure contemplation ; that there is a great difference between the abilities of that man who hath contracted himself to any one study, though he excels in it, and him who hath with much less labour attained to a general experimental knowledge of things and persons ; and so the greatest divine who hath read all the school men, and all the fathers, and is as wise as most of them were, will be sooner deceived in the market, and pay more for his clothes and for his meat, than his groom will do, who understands that and his horse too. — An Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life ; and why the one shotild he preferred before the other. Sir Matthew Hale. 1609 — 1676. Read the Bible reverently and attentively, set your heart upon it, and lay it up in your memory, and make it the direction of your life : it will make you a wise and good man. I have been acquainted somewhat with. men and books, and have had long experience in learning, and in the world : there is no book like the FRANCIS OSBORNE— DR. WHICHCOTE. 67 Bible for excellent learning, wisdom, and use ; and it is want of understanding in them that think or speak otherwise. ... Be diligent in study and in your calling. ... It will be your wisdom and benefit. It will be a good expense of time, and a prevention from a thousand inconveniences and temptations . that otherwise will befall on main. — Cotinsels of a Father to one of His Sons, recovering from the Small Pox, Francis Osborne, d, 1659. A few books well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but- gargled in the mouth. . . . Company, if good, is a better refiner of the spirits, than ordinary books. . . . The more you seem to have borrowed from books, the poorer you proclaim your natural parts, which only can properly be called yours. . . . • Much reading, like a too great repletion, stops up, through a concourse of diverse, sometimes, contrary opinions, the access of a nearer, newer and quicker invention of your own. — Advice to a Son, 2 Parts, 1656-8. Benjamin Whichcote. 1610 — 1683. The Improvement of a little Time may be a gain to all Eternity. A good Booke may be a Benefactor representing God Himself. A man is twice his own in those Things that come to him by Studie, if he has the Power to use and enjoy them. — Sermons, 68 sorbiere—0 wen fel tha m. Samuel Sorbiere. i6io — 1670. To appreciate literary toil justly, we should con- sider what is the value of the subjects on which it is employed ; it is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which is valuable. A glass of water may be as full as the same glass of the most precious fluid. A person may walk as much in a small space, in a course of time, as if in the same period he had marched over the world. In a fleet of ships we value those higher which carry the most precious wares, not the most numerous. — So7'be7'iana. Owen Feltham. 16 10 — 1678. All endeavours aspire to eminency: all eminencies do beget an admiration. And this makes me believe that contemplative admiration is a large part of the worship of the Deity. Nothing can carry us so near to God and heaven as this. The mind can walk beyond the sight of the eye ; and (though in a cloud) can lift us into heaven while we live. Meditation is the soul's perspective glass : whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer hand. I persuade no man to make it his whole life's business. We have bodies, as well as souls. And even this world, while we are in it, ought somewhat to be cared for: contemplation generates; action propagates. St. Bernard compares contemplation to* Rachel, which was the more fair; but action to Leah, which was the more fruitful. I will neither always be busy and doing, nor ever shut up in nothing but EARLY ENGLISH WRITER— MENAGE. 6g thoughts. Yet, that which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest part of my life : and that is — my thinking. — Resolves, Early English Writer (unknown). The philosopher Zeno, being demanded on a time by what means a man might attain to happiness, made answer : By resorting to the dead, and having familiar conversation with them. Intimating thereby the reading of Ancient and Modern Histories, and endeavouring to have such good instructors, as have been observed in our predecessors. A question also was moved by great King Ptolemy, to one of the wise learned Interpreters : In what occasions a King should exercise himself? Whereto this he replyed. To know those things which formerly have been done ; and to read Books of those matters which offer themselves daily, or are fittest for our instant office. . . . Such as are ignorant of things done and past, before themselves had any being ; continue still in the estate of children, able to speak or behave themselves no otherwise, and even within the bounds of their Native Countries (in respect of knowledge or manly capacity) they are no more than well seeming dumb Images. — Preface to First English Ti'anslation of Boccacio. 1620 — 1625. / GiLLES Menage. 16 13 — 1692. The following sentence from Menage ( " Menagiana, " vol. IV.) is copied from David Garrick's book-plate, in the possession of the compiler : — 70 MENAGE— yEREMY TAYLOR. La premiere chose qu'on doit faire quand on a emprunte un Livre, c'est de le lire, afin de pouvoir le rendre pliitot. Trans. The first thing one ought to do, after having borrowed a book, is to read it, so as to be able to return it as soon as possible. In the *'M6nagiana" is a good pendant to the above : — M. Toinard dit que la raison pour laquelle on rend si peu les livres pretez : c'est qu'il est plus aise de les retenir que ce qui est dedans. Trans, M. Toinard says that the reason why borrowed books are seldom returned, is that it is easier to retain the books themselves than what is inside of them. Jeremy Taylor. 1613^ — 1667. It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those things which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous ; that by the repre- sentation of the better, the worse maybe blotted out. It may be thou art entered into the cloud which will bring a gentle shower to refresh thy sorrows. I am fallen into the hands of publicans and seques- trators, and they have taken all from me : what now ? let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerfal spirit, and a good conscience ; they still have left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, ROCHEFO UCA ULD—EARL OF BED FOR D. 7 1 and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too : and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself. — Holy Living. Due DE LA Rochefoucauld. 1.6 13 — 1680. II est plus necessaire d' etudier les hommes que les livres. Trans, To study men is more necessary than to study books. La sagesse est a I'ame ce que la sant^ est pour le corps. Irans. Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body. — Reflexions oic Sentences et Maxims Morales. Earl of Bedford. 161 3 — 1700. As a great advantage, not only to your book, but health and business also, I cannot but advise and enjoin you to accustom yourself to rise early ; for,, take it from me, Frank, no lover of his bed did ever yet form great and noble things. . . . Borrow, therefore, of those golden morning hours, and bestow them on your book. — Advice to His Sons, Urban Chevreau. 1613 — 1701. A gentleman told me, who had studied under Box- •horne, at Leyden (successor to Heinsius, as professor 72 CHEVREAU^RICHARD BAXTER, of politics and history in 1653), that this learned pro. fessor was equallyindefatigable in reading and smoking. To render these two favourite amusements compatible with each other, he pierced a hole through the broad brim of his hat, through which his pipe was conveyed, when he had lighted it. In this manner he read and smoked at the same time. When the bowl of the pipe was empty, he filled it, and repassed it through the same hole ; and so kept both his hands at leisure for other employments. At other times he was never without a pipe in his mouth. — Chevrceana, Richard Baxter. 1615 — 1691. But books have the advantage in many other respects : you may read an able preacher, when you have but a mean one to hear. Every congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers ; but every single person may read the books of the most powerful and judicious. Preachers may be silenced or banished, when books may be at hand : books may be kept at a smaller charge than preachers : we may choose books which treat of that very subject which we desire to hear of ; but we cannot choose what subject the preacher shall treat of. Books we may have at hand every day and hour ; when we can have sermons but seldom, and at set times. If sermons be forgotten, they are gone. But a book we may read over and over until we remember it ; and, if we forget it, may again peruse it at our pleasure, or at our leisure. So that good books are a very great mercy to the world. — Christian Directory^ Parti.y Chapter i\. RICHARD BAXTER. 73 As for play-books, and romances, and idle tales, T have already shewed in my "Book of Self-Denial," how pernicious they are, especially to youth, and to frothy, empty, idle wits, that know not what a man is, «or what he hath to do in the world. They are powerful baits of the devil, to keep more necessary things out of their minds, and better books out of their hands, and to poison the mind so much the more dangerously, as they are read with more delight and pleasure : and to fill the minds of sensual people with such idle fumes and intoxicating fancies, as may divert them from the serious thoughts of their salvation : and (which is no small loss) to rob them of abundance of that precious time, which was given them for more important business ; and which they will wish and wish again at last that they had spent more wisely. — Christian Directory, Parti., Direction xvi. Because God hath made the excellent holy writings of his servants the singular blessing of this land and age, and many an one may. have a good book even any day or hour of the week, that cannot at all become a good preacher ; I advise all God's servants to be thankful for so great a mercy, and to make use of it, and be much in reading ; for reading with most doth more conduce to knowledge than hearing doth, because you may choose what subjects and the most excellent treatises you please, and may be often at it, and may peruse again and again what you forget, and may take time as you go to fix it on your mind : and with very many it doth more than hearing also to move the heart, though hearing of itself, in this hath 74 RICHARD BAXTER. the advantage; because lively books may be more easily had, than lively preachers. . . . The truth is, it is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good ; but the well- reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject in great deal of loss of precious time. — Christian Directory, Part ii.. Chapter xwi. . . . And yet the reading of as many as is possible tendeth much to the increase of knowledge, and were the best way, if greater matters were not that way unavoidably to be omitted ; life therefore being short, and work great, and knowledge being for love and practice, and no man having leisure to learn all things, a wise man must be sure to lay hold on that which is most useful . . . and the very subjects that are to be understood are numerous, and few men write of all. And on the same subject men have several modes of writing ; as one excelleth in accurate method, and another in clear, convincing argumentation, and another in an affectionate, taking style : and the same book that doth one, cannot well do the other, because the same style will not do it. — Christian Directory, Part iii., Question clxxiv. Great store of all sorts of good books (through the great- mercy of God) are common among us : he that cannot buy, may borrow. But take heed that you lose not your time in reading romances, play-books, vain jests, seducing or reviling disputes, or needless con- troversies. This course of reading Scripture and good books will be many ways to your great advantage. JOHN OWEN. 75: (i.) It will, above all other ways, increase your know- ledge. (2.) It will help your resolutions and holy affections, and direct your lives. (3.) It will make" your lives pleasant. The knowledge, the usefulness, and the variety to be found in these works, will be a continual recreation to you, unless you are utterly besotted or debauched. (4.} The pleasure of this will turn you from your fleshly pleasures. You will have no need to go for delight to a play-house, a drinking- house . . . (5.) It will keep you from the sinful loss of time, by idleness or unprofitable employment or pastimes. You will cast away cards and dice, when- you find the sweetness of youthful learning. — Com- passionate Counsel to Young Men. John Owen, i 616— 1683. Nor was he {i.e.^ Sir Thomas Bodley] content with defending the University, for so many years, by the shadow of his invincible name ; but promoted and enriched, by his munificence and most acceptable . liberality, that universally renowned Treasury of Books, the great ornament not only of the University, but of our whole nation, the Bodleian Library. Fortunate Soul of Bodley ! that found so many and such great rivals of its excellence, and then augmenters of its fame ! While oblivion covers, and will cover, in long obscurity, innumerable descendants who believed their only duty was to fare sumptuously. Thou hast so widely spread thyglorious memory, that no succession of years, no lapse of time, can obliterate it. Fortunate Bodley ! thou shalt not wholly perish ; so long as kings, princes,. 76 JOHN OWEN— ABRAHAM COWLEY, conquerors shall emulously strive to deposit in thy Treasury whatever monuments can anywhere be found of ancient virtue or true learning ; and shall not disdain to decorate thy halls with their own statues and images. Here the Prince, then the Count, then the Bishop, in long array, distinguished by various representations of their honours, — the most eminent men — have caused the name of Bodley to be now celebrated by the unanimous voice of the whole world. If only the Divine favour attend us, there is no room to doubt that the University will rise to the most enviable summits of virtue and science, and the loftiest heights of dignity in the literary world. — From the Third Latin Oration^ held before the University of Oxford, by Johjz Owen, D.D., Vice- Chancellor. Works, vol. xvi., p. 496. \Translated by /. N,'\ Abraham Cowley. 1618 — 1667. . . . In the second place he [the man who is to make himself capable of the good of solitude,] must learn the art and get the habit of thinking ; for this to6, no less than well speaking, depends upon much practice ; and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the solitude of a god from a wild beast. Now, because the soul of man is not by its own nature or observation furnished with sufficient materials to work upon, it is necessary for it to have continual recourse to learning and books for fresh supplies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, and be ready to starve, without them ; but if once we be thoroughly engaged in the ABRAHAM COIVLEV. 77 love of letters, instead of being wearied with the length of any day, we shall only complain of the shortness of our whole life. **0 vita, stulto longa, sapienti brevis !" [O life, long to the fool, short to the wise !] The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private : if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in company ; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, **thata man does not know how to pass his time." It would have been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred sixty-ninth year of his life ; so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this, you will say, is work only for the learned ; others are not capable either of the employ- ments or divertisements that arrive from letters. I know they are not ; and therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally illiterate. But, if any man be so unlearned, as to want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently occur in almost all conditions (except the very meanest of the people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for life,) it is truly a great shame both to his parents and himself; for a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time ; either music, or painting, or 78 ABRAHAM COWLEV. designing, or chemistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly ; and, if he happen to set his affections upon poetry (which I do not advise him too immoderately), that will over-do it ; no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or business, which would abstract him from his beloved, — Essays: Of Solitude. As far as my memoiy can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing, what the world, or the glories or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar ; in which they dis- pensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now, (which, I confess, I wonder at myself) may appear by the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning ABRAHAM COWLEY, 79 of it is boyish ; but of this part, which I here set down (if a very little were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed. This only grant me ; that my means rnay lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high. Some honour I would have. Not from great deeds, but good alone ; The unknown are better than ill known : Rumour can ope the grave. Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends Not on the number, but the choice, of friends. Books should, not business, entertain the light ; And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night. My house a cottage more Than palace ; and should fitting be For all my use, not luxury. My garden painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's ; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field. Thus would I double my life's fading space ; For he that runs it well, twice runs his race. And in this true delight, These unbought sports, this happy state, I would not fear, nor wish, my fate ; But boldly say each night ; To-morrow let my sun his beams display, Or in clouds hide them ; I have lived to-day. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was 8o ABRAHAM COJVLEV. soon torn from thence by that violent public storm^ which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet, I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into "the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses, of the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty, which I did not fall in love with, when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me, when I saw that it was adulterate. I met with several great persons, whom I liked very well ; but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it: a storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found any- where; though I was in business of great and honourable trust ; though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not ABRAHAM COWLEY. 8t abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect : " Well then;^ I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree," &c. And I never then proposed to myself any other ad- vantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country; which I thought, in that case, I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to ex- traordinary fortunes. . . . However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on ; I cast myself into it a corps perdu, without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, **Take thy ease:" I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine: yet I do neither repent, or alter my course. "Non ego perfidum dixi sacramen- tum;" nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her: Nee vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos, Musse, Libertas, Otia, Libri, Hortique Silvseque^ anima remanente, relinquam. G 82 BARTHOLIN-CHARPENTIER. Nor by me e'er shall you, You, of all names the sweetest and the best. You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest ; You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be As long as life itself forsakes not me. But this is a very pretty ejaculation ! Because I liave concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last. — Essays: Of Myself, Thomas V. Bartholin. 1619 — 1680. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian dark- ness. — Dissertationes de libi'is legendis. Copenhagiie^ 1672. Francis Charpentier. 1620 — 1702. I could not help laughing at the expression, though 1 agree in the sentiment of Heinsius, who with a simple frankness, very natural to a Dutchman, declares, that on reading Plato, he felt so much delight and enthusiasm, that one page of that philosopher's work operated upon him like the intoxication produced by swallowing ten bumpers of wine. I have read some bacchanalian passage very similar to this in Scaliger the Elder: *' Herodotus is so charming an author," says he, " that I have as much pain to quit him as I feel in leaving my bottle." — Carpeitteriana. HENRY V A UGH an: 83 Henry Vaughan. 162 i — 1695. To His Books. Bright books ! the perspectives to our weak sights, The clear projections of discerning lights, Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day, The track of fee'd souls, and their milkie way ; The dead alive and busie, the still voice Of enlarged spirits, kind Heaven's white decoys 1 Who lives with you lives like those knowing flowers, Which in commerce with light spend all their hours ; Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun, But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun. Beneath you all is dark and a dead night. Which whoso lives in wants both health and right. By sucking you the wise, like bees, do grow Healing and rich, though this they do most slow, Because most choicely ; for as great a store Have we of Books as bees of herbs, or more ; And the great task to try, then know, the good, To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food, Is a rare scant performance. For man dyes Oft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flyes. But you were all choice flowers ; all set and dressed By old sage florists, who well knew the best ; And I amidst you all am turned to weed, Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed. Then thank thyself, wild fool, that would'st not be Content to know, — what was too much for thee. Silex Scintillans : Sacred Poems (Sr* Private Ejaculations. Part iii. Thalia Redi- viva. 1650-5. Ne7v Edition, with Memoir , by H. F. Lyie. 1S47, 84 john hall— sir william temple. John Hall. 1627 — 1656. We see seldome Learning and Wisdoin concurre, because the former is got sub umbra, but business doth winnow observations, and the better acquaintance with breathing volumes of men ; it teacheth us both better to read them, and to apply what we have read. Health ought to be nicely respected by a Student. . . . How can a Spirit actuate when she is caged in a lump of fainting flesh? Unseasonable times of study are very obnoxious, as after meales, when Nature is wholy retired to concoction ; or at night times, when she begins to droope for want of rest. ... I have heard it spoken of one of the greatest Ambulatory Pieces of learning at this day, that he would redeeme (if possible) his health with the losse of halfe his Learning. Some Studies would be hug'd as imployments, others only dandled as sports ; the one ought not to trespasse on the other ; for to be employed in needlesse things is halfe to be idle. — Horce Vacivce, 1646. Sir William Temple. 1628— 1698. This admirable writer, in discoursing on Ancient and Modern Learning — its encouragements and hind- rances — points out two great obstacles to its advance- ment in proportion to what might have been expected from the revival of letters, viz., the absorption of the highest intellects of the time in disputes and contests about religion, and the perpetual succession of foreign and civil wars resulting therefrom j — SIR IVILLIAM TEMPLE. 85 Since those accidents which contributed to the restoration of learning, almost extinguished in the western parts of Europe, have been observed, it will be just to mention some that may have hindered the advancement of it, in proportion to what might have been expected from the mighty growth and progress made in the first age after its recovery. One great reason may have been, that, very soon after the entry of learning upon the scene of Christendom, another was made, by many of the new-learned men, into the inquiries and contests about matters of religion — the manners, and maxims, and institutions introduced by the clergy for seven or eight centuries past ; the autho- rity of Scripture and tradition ; of popes and of councils ; of the ancient fathers, and of the latter schoolmen and casuists ; of ecclesiastical and civil power. The humour of travelling into all these mystical or entangled matters, mingling with the interests and passions of princes and of parties, and thereby heightened or inflamed, produced infinite dis- putes, raised violent heats throughout all parts of Christendom, and soon ended in many defections or reformations from the Roman church, and in several new institutions, both ecclesiastical and civil, in divers countries, which have been since rooted and estab- lished in almost all the north-west parts. The endless disputes and litigious quarrels upon all these subjects, favoured and encouraged by the interests of the several princes engaged in them, either took up wholly, or generally employed, the thoughts, the studies, the applications, the endeavours of all or most of the finest wits, the deepest scholars, and the most learned 86 ISAAC BARROW. writers that the age produced. Many excellent spirits, and the most penetrating genii, that might have made admirable progresses and advances in many other sciences, were sunk and overwhelmed in the abyss of disputes about matters of religion, without ever turning their looks or thoughts any other way. To these dis- putes of the pen, succeeded those of the sword; and the ambition of great princes and ministers, mingled with the zeal, or covered with the pretences of religion, has for a hundred years past infested Christendom with almost a perpetual course or succession either of civil or of foreign wars ; the noise and disorders whereof have been ever the most capital enemies of the Muses, who are seated, by the ancient fables, upon the top of Parnassus, that is, in a place of safety and of quiet from the reach of all noises and disturbances of the regions below. Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed. — Essays : On Ancient and Modej-n Leai-ning. Isaac Barrow. 1630 — 1677. Wisdom of itself is delectable and satisfactory, as it implies a revelation of truth and a detection of error to us. 'Tis like light, pleasant to behold, casting a sprightly lustre, and diffusing a benign influence all about ; presenting a goodly prospect of things to the eyes of our mind ; displaying objects in their due shapes, postures, magnitudes, and colours ; quickening our spirits with a comfortable warmth, and disposing our minds to a cheerful activity ; dispelling the dark- ness of ignorance, scattering the mists of doubt, driving ISAAC BARROW. 87 away the spectres of delusive fancy ; mitigating the cold of sullen melancholy ; discovering obstacles, se- curing progress, and making the passages of life clear, open, and pleasant.. We are all naturally endowed with a strong appetite to know, to see, to pursue truth ; and with a bashful abhorrency from being deceived and entangled in mistake. And as success in enquiry after truth affords matter of joy and triumph ; so being conscious of error and miscarriage therein, is attended with shame and sorrow. These desires wisdom in the most perfect manner satisfies, not by entertaining us with dry, empty, fruitless theories upon mean and vulgar subjects ; but by enriching our minds with ex- cellent and useful knowledge, directed to the noblest objects, and serviceable to the highest ends. The calling of a scholar is one the design whereot conspireth with the general end of our being ; the per- fection of our nature in its endowments, and the fruition of it in its best operations. It is a calling, which doth not employ us in bodily toil, in worldly care, in pursuit of trivial affairs, in sordid drudgeries ; but in those an- gelical operations of soul, the contemplation of truth, and attainment of wisdom ; which are the worthiest exercises of our reason, and sweetest entertainments of our mind ; the most precious wealth, and most beautiful ornaments of our soul ; whereby our faculties are im- proved, are polished and refined, are enlarged in their power and use by habitual accessions : the which are conducible to our own greatest profit and benefit, as serving to rectify our wills, to compose our affections, to guide our lives in the ways of virtue, to bring us 88 ISAAC BARROW. unto felicity. It is a calling, which, being duly fol- lowed, will most sever us from the vulgar sort of men, and advance us above the common pitch ; enduing us with light to see further than other men, disposing us to affect better things, and to slight those meaner objects of human desire, on which men commonly dote ; freeing us from the erroneous conceits and from the perverse affections of common people. It is said that men of learning are double- sighted : but it is true, that in many cases they see infinitely further than a vulgar sight doth reach. And if a man by serious study doth acquire a clear and solid judgment of things, so as to assign to each its due weight and price ; if he accordingly be inclined in his heart to affect and pursue them ; if from clear and right notions of things, a meek and ingenuous temper of mind, a command and moderation of passions, a firm integrity, and a cordial love of goodness do spring, he thereby becometh another kind of thing, much different from those brutish men (beasts of the people) who blindly follow the motions of their sensual appetite, or the suggestions of their fancy, or their mistaken prejudices. It is a calling which hath these considerable advan- tages, that, by virtue of improvement therein, we can see with our own eyes, and guide ourselves by our own reasons, not being led blindfold about, or depending precariously on the conduct of others, in matters of highest concern to us; that we are exempted from giddy credulity, from wavering levity, from fond ad- miration of persons and things, being able to distinguish of things, and to settle our judgments about them, and to get an intimate acquaintance with them, assuring to ISAAC BAR 1^0 IV. 89 us their true nature and worth ; that we are also thereby rescued from admiring ourselves, and that overweening self-conceitedness, of which the Wise Man saith, Tke sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason . It is a calling most exempt from the cares, the crosses, the turmoils, the factious jars, the anxious intrigues, the vexatious molestations of the world ; its business lying out of the road of those mischiefs, wholly lying in solitary retirement, or being transacted in the most innocent and ingenuous company. It is a calling least subject to any danger or disappointment; wherein we may well be assured not to miscarry or lose our labour ; for the merchant indeed by manifold accidents may lose his voyage, or find a bad market; the hus- bandman may plough and sow in vain : but the student hardly can fail of improving his stock, and reaping a good crop of knowledge ; especially if he study with a conscientious mind, and pious reverence to God, im- ploring his gracious help and blessing. It is a calling, the business whereof doth so exercise as not to weary, so entertain as not to cloy us ; being not (as other occupations are) a drawing in a mill, or a nauseous tedious repetition of the same work ; but a continued progress towards fresh objects ; our mind not being staked to one or a few poor matters, but having immense fields of contemplation, wherein it may everlastingly expatiate, with great proficiency and pleasure. It is that which recommendeth a man in all company, and procureth regard, every one yielding attention and acceptance to instructive, neat, apposite discourse go ISAAC BARROW. (that which the scripture calleth acceptable ^ pleasant^ gracious tvords ;) men think themselves obHged thereby, by receiving information and satisfaction from it ; and accordingly, Every man (saith the Wise Man) shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer ; Sind— /or the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend ; and the words of a wise man's mouth are gracious. It is that, an eminency wherein purchaseth lasting fame, and a life after death, in the good memory and opinion of pos- terity : Many shall commend his understanding; and so long as the world endureth, it shall not be blotted out: his 77iemo7'ial shall not depart away^ and his name shall live fj'om generation to generation. A fame no less great, and far more innocent, than acts of chivalry and martial prowess ; for is not Aristotle as renowned for teaching the world with his pen, as Alexander for con- quering it with his sAvord? Is not one far oftener mentioned than the other ? Do not men hold them- selves much more obliged to the learning of the philosopher, than to the valour of the warrior ? Indeed the fame of all others is indebted to the pains of the scholar, and could not subsist but with and by his fame : Dignum laude virum Musa vetatmori ; learning consecrateth itself and its subject together to immortal remembrance. It is a calling that fitteth a man for all conditions and fortunes; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain adversity with comfort : he that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an efifectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, so in all fortunes. CHARLES COTTON. 91 The exercise of our mind in rational discursiveness about things in quest of truth ; canvassing questions, examining arguments for and against ; how greatly doth it better us, fortifying our natural parts, enabling us to fix our thoughts on objects without roving, inuring us to weigh and resolve, and judge well about matters proposed ; preserving us from being easily abused by captious fallacies, gulled by specious pretences, tossed about with every doubt or objection started before us ! The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries, who thereby communicate to us their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions, couched in good expression, and digested in exact method ? How doth it supply the room of experience, and furnish us with prudence at the expense of others, informing us about the ways of action, and the conse- quences thereof by examples, without our own danger or trouble ! — Sermons : " Of Industry in our Partiadar Calling as Scholars, " Charles Cotton. 1630 — 1687. [The friend of Isaac Walton, and Translator of Montaigne's Essays.] How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone. To read, and meditate, and write, By none offended, and offending none. To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease. Poems, \(y%(). The jReiirement. To Mr. Isaac Walton. BISHOP HUET. Who from the busy World retires, To be more useful to it still, And to no greater good aspires But only the eschewing ill. Who, with his Angle, and his Books, Can think the longest day well spent, And praises God when back he looks. And finds that all was innocent. This man is happier far than he Whom public Business oft betrays Through labyrinths of Policy, To crooked and forbidden ways. Poems ^ 1689. Contentation. Directed to my Dear Father^ and most Worthy Friend, Mr. Isaac Walton. Peter Daniel Huet. 1630 — 1721. They who endure the toil of study, w^th a view to riches and honours, will be very much disappointed. All the world has heard of a French treatise on the Miseries of Scholars, but none has appeared descriptive of their felicities. In fact, the retired life, the inac- tivity with respect to all business in common life, or public employments, which an attention to study re- quires, and that internal recluseness and abstraction of mind, so peculiar to the student, are all circumstances averse from the acquisition of wealth. He on whom the Muses have smiled in his infancy will scorn the praises of the multitude, the fascination of wealth, and the enticements of honours ; and will find that his toil is the only adequate reward which can satisfy the mind BISHOP HURT. 93 of a scholar. He will not be repelled by the length, nor disgusted by the drudgery of his labours. His passion for learning will increase with his acquire- ments ; and, whilst his diligence procures him fresh information, he will discover his numerous deficiencies, and be induced to redouble his attention. These sentiments are not declamatory. I write from expe- rience of the truths which I advance, the experience of my whole life, which I wish protracted for no other reason than that I may employ it in future investiga- tions. Nor let the hoary student be discouraged, should he find himself sometimes going backward instead of forward ; but impute his misfortune to the incapacities of age, and to the languor that faculties long harassed by continual application must necessarily endure. ...... To constitute a learned man, the gifts of nature are in the first line of desiderata ; a solid understanding, a quick apprehension, a retentive memory, a healthful and vigorous body, a disposition steady, constant, and uniform ; diligence which years cannot impair, an insatiable thirst of knowledge, and an invincible attach- ment to reading, &c. Without the gifts of fortune, nature will have been generous in vain. Cujus conatibus obstat Res angusta domi, must confine his exertions to defend himself from the exigencies of the moment. We must think of merely living, before we can endeavour to live pleasantly and with distinction ; and the conveniences of life must be a consideration superior to the love of study. . . , 94 JOHN LOCKE, An exclusive application to books, as the sole employ- ment and the pleasure of life, is the choice of the student himself, inspired with a love of letters ; v^^hich neither the fascination of riches or ambition can sup- plant, nor the fears of poverty, nor the dread of labour and obscurity, can extinguish. Horace, in the Ode which Julius Scaliger so highly prized, that he would rather have been the writer of it than a King of Spain, has clothed the above sentiments with all the charms that brilliant composition, united with truth, are capable of bestowing. "When we consider," says the Abbe Olivet ( V Eloge Histor, de M. Huet), ** that he lived to the age of ninety years and upwards, that he had been a hard student from his infancy, that he had had almost all his time to himself, that he enjoyed an uninterrupted state of health, that he had always some one to read to him, even at his meals ; that, in one word, to borrow his own language, neither the heat of youth, nor a multiplicity of business, nor the love of company, nor the hurry of the world, had ever been able to moderate his love of study, we may fairly conclude him to have been the most learned man that any age ever pro- duced. " — Huetiana, John Locke. 1632 — 1704. Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too ; but it is not always so- Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of JOHN LOCKE. 95 knowledge ; it is thinking that makes what are read over. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collec- tions ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. The End and Use of a little Insight in those Parts of Knowledge, which are not a Man's proper Business, is to accustom our Minds to all Sorts of Ideas, and the proper Ways of examining their Habitudes, and Rela- tions. This gives the Mind a Freedom ; and the exer- cising the Understanding in the several Ways of Enquiry and Reasoning which the most skilful have made use of, teaches the Mind Sagacity and Wariness, and a Suppleness to apply itself more closely and dex- terously to the Bents and Turns of the matter in all its researches. Besides this universal Taste in all the Sciences, with an Indifferency, before the Mind is possessed of any one in particular, and grown into a Love and Admiration of what is made its Darling, will prevent another Evil very commonly to be observed in those who have been reasoned only by one Part of Knowledge. Let a Man be given to the Contemplation of one Sort of Knowledge and that will become every- thing. The Mind will take such a Tincture from a Familiarity with that Object, that everything else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same View. A Metaphysician will bring Plowing and Gardening immediately to abstract notions. The History of Nature will signify nothing to him. An Alchymist, on the contrary, shall reduce Divinity to the Maxims of the Laboratory, explain Morality by Sal Sulphur and 96 ROBERT SOUTH. Mercury, and allegorise the Scripture itself, and the sacred Mysteries thereof, into the Philosopher's Stone. And I heard once a Man who had a more than ordinary Excellency in Musick seriously accommodate Moses seven Days of the first Week, to the Notes of Musick, as if from thence had been taken the Measure and Method of Creation. 'Tis of no small Consequence to keep the Mind from such a Possession, which I think is best done by giving it a fair and equal View of the whole intellectual World, wherein it may see the Order, Rank, and Beauty of the whole, and give a just allowance to the distinct Provinces of the several Sciences, in the due Order, and usefulness of each of them. — Conduct of the Understanding, Robert South. 1633 — 17 16. The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other in nature : for, shall the plea- sures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner; and must not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections ? We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, their verdure de- parteth ; which sheweth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasure ; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality : and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. 97 Seldom is there much spoke, but something or other had better not been spoke. He who has published an injurious book, sins, as it were, in his very grave ; corrupts others while he is rotting himself. Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion, — Sermons, Sir George Mackenzie. 1636 — 1691. If variety be that which is admired in Society, certainly our own thoughts, or other men's Books,^ can in these far exceed Conversation ; possessing above it this Advantage, that one can never be either impor- tuned or betray'd by these, as is much to be feared from the other. . . . O what a divine State then must Solitude be, wherein a Virtuous and Thoughtful Inactivity begets in us a Tranquility, not conceivable by such as do not possess it ! Solitude requires no avarice to maintain its Table. It is satisfied without Coaches, Lacqueys, Treasurers and Embroideries. The Solitary Man is not disquieted at the Infrequency of Guests. . . . Tranquility of Spirit is peculiar to Philosophy, and is the Guest of Solitude. . . . How can that Soul rust which is in continual Exercise? . . . Really I know no securer Box, from which to behold the world's Comedie, than in safe Solitude ; and it is easier to feel than to express the Pleasure which may be taken aloof, and in contemplating the Rulings of the Multitude, the Excentrick Motions of great Men, and how Fate recreates itself in their Ruin. — A Moral Essay preferring Solitude to Publick Employment, 98 la bruyere— jeremy collier. John de la Bruyere. 1644— 1696. Where a book raises yoUr spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by ; it is good and made by a good workman. x\ Seventeenth Century Divine. (Unverified. ) There be those that ungratefully complain of the heaviness of time, as if we could have too much of God's most precious gift of life and its containings. Let such persons consider that there be daily duties to be well performed which do not exclude innocent recreations and the privileged opportunities of silent conversation with the greatest minds and spirits, in their most chosen words, in their books, that lie ready and offer themselves to us if we would. Jeremy Collier. 1650 — 1726. The Diversions of Reading, though they are not always of the strongest Kind, yet they generally Leave a better Effect than the grosser Satisfactions of Sense : For if they are well chosen, they neither dull the Appetite, nor strain the Capacity. On the contrary, they refresh the Inclinations, and strengthen the Power, and improve under Experiment : And which is best of all, they Entertain and Perfect at the same time ; and convey Wisdom and Knowledge through Pleasure. By Reading a Man does ^s it were Antedate his Life, and makes himself contemporary with the JEREMY COLLIER. gg Ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's Nativity, is much better than Plato's Pre-existence ; because here a Man knows something of the State, and is the wiser for it ; which he is not in the other. In conversing with Books we may chuse our Com- pany, and disengage without Ceremony or Exception. Here we are free from the Formalities of Custom, and Respect : We need not undergo the Penance of a dull Story, from a Fop of Figure ; but may shake off the Haughty, the Impertinent, and the Vain, at Pleasure. Besides, Authors, like Women, commonly Dress when they make a Visit. Respect to themselves makes them polish their Thoughts, and exert the Force of their Understanding more than they would, or can do, in ordinary Conversation : So that the Reader has as it were the Spirit and Essence in a narrow Compass; which was drawn off from a much larger Proportion of Time, Labour, and Expence. Like an Heir, he is born rather than made Rich, and comes into a Stock of Sense, with little or no Trouble of his own. 'Tis true, a Fortune in Knowledge which Descends in this manner, as well as an inherited Estate, is too often neglected, and squandered away; because we do not consider the Difficulty in Raising it. Books are a Guide in Youth, and an Entertainment for Age. They support us under SoHtude, and keep us from being a Burthen to our selves. They help us to forget the Crossness of Men and Things ; compose our Cares, and our Passions ; and lay our Disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the Living, we may repair to the Dead, who have nothing of Peevishness, Pride, or Design, in their Conversation. . However, to loo yEREMY COLLIER. be constantly in the Wheel has neither Pleasure nor Improvement in it. A Man may as well expect to grow stronger by always Eating, as wiser by always Reading. Too much over-charges Nature, and turns more into Disease than Nourishment. 'Tis Jhought and Digestion which makes Books serviceable, and gives Health and Vigour to the Mind. Neither ought we to be too Implicit or Resigning to Authorities, but to examine before we Assent, and preserve our Reason in its just Liberties. To walk always upon Crutches, is the way to lose the Use of our Limbs. Such an absolute Submission keeps us in a perpetual Minority, breaks the Spirits of the Understanding, and lays us open to Imposture. But Books well managed afford Direction and Dis- covery. They strengthen the Organ, and enlarge the Prospect, and give a more universal Insight into Things, than can be learned from unlettered Observation. Pie who depends only upon his own Experience, has but a few Materials to work upon. He is confined to narrow Limits both of Place and Time ; And is not fit to draw a large Model, and to pronounce upon Business which is complicated and unusual. There seems to be much the same difference between a Man of meer Practice, and another of Learning, as there is between an Empirick and a Physician. The first may have a good Receipt, or two ; and if Diseases and Patients were very scarce, and all alike, he might do tolerably well. But if you enquire concerning the Causes of Distempers, the Constitution of human Bodies, the Danger of Symptoms, and the Methods of Cure, upon which the Success of Medicine depends. FENELON— CHARLES BLOUNT. loi he knows little of the Matter. On the other side : To take Measures wholly from Books, without looking into Men and Business, is like travelling in a Map, where though Countries and Cities are well enough distinguished, yet Villages and private Seats are either Over-looked, or too generally Marked for a Stronger to find. And therefore he that would be a Master, must Draw by the Life, as well as Copy from Originals, and joyn Theory and Experience together. — Essays upon Several Moral Subjects : Of the Entertainment of Books, Archbishop Fenelon. 1651 — 17 15. If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the Empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. Charles Blount. 1654 — 1697. Books are the only Records of Time, which excite us to imitate the past Glories of our Ancestors. Secondly, We owe our manner or form of Divine Worship to Books alone. Thirdly, We owe our Philosophy or Contemplation of God in his Works, to the same Cause. For Mens Natural Abilities, like Natural Plants, need pruning by Study : Thus we see that Histories make Men wise ; Poets, witty ; Mathe- jnaticks, subtle ; Natural Philosophy, deep ; Moral Philosophy, grave ; Logick and Rhetorick, able to dispute ; all which Excellencies are to be acquired only from Books ; since no Vocal Learning is so effectual I02 CHARLES BLOUNT, for Instruction, as Reading; for that written Discourses are better digested, and support themselves better on their own weight, than Words disguised by the manner of Expression, cadence or gesture, which corrupt the simplicity of things ; when also the suddenness of Pronunciation allows not the Audience time sufficient to reflect upon what was said. Moreover, Books flatter much less, and have more universal Precepts, than Discourse ; which generally affects Complaisance, and gaining the Hearers good will : Particularly in Morality, where great Persons are better instructed, and more plainly reprehended for their Faults by Books, than by Discourses. Books being therefore in the main so useful to Human Society, I cannot but herein agree with Mr. Milton, and say, that (unless it be effected with great Caution) you had almost as good kill a Man, as a good Book ; for he that kills a Man, kills but a Reasonable Creature, God's Image : whereas he that destroys a good Book, kills Reason it self, which is as it were the "very Eye of God. Having thus demonstrated how much the World owes to Learning and Books, let me not be altogether unmindful of Faust and Guttenburg, the promoters of both ; who by their Ingenuity discovered and made known to the World, that Profound Art of Printing, which hath made Learning not only Easie, but Cheap ; since now, any Person may accommodate himself with a good moderate Library, at the same Price, as hereto- fore Plato payed for Three Books of Philolaus the Pythagorean, viz. Three Hundred Pounds. — A Just Vindication of Learning and the Liberty of the Pt'ess, 1695, t. fuller, m.d.—yohn norris. 103 Thomas Fuller, M.D. 1654 — 1734. Tell me not what thou hast heard and read, and only so ; but what (after thy hearing and reading) thou hast taken into thy Meditation, found to be Truth, settled with Judgment, fixed in thy Memory, embraced in thy affections ; and then a long time practised, and so made up to be truly thine own. This, and only this, is rightly called Learning. — Introductio ad Sapientiam. 1731. John Norris. 1657 — 1711. Concerning my Essays and Discourses I have only this to say, that I design'd in them as much Brevity and Clearness as are consistent with each other, and to abound in se^ise rather than words. I wish all men would observe this in their writings more than they do. I'm sure the multitude of Books and the shortness' of Life require it, and sense will lye in a little compass if men would be perswaded to vent no Notions but what they are Masters of, and were Angels to write, I fancy we should have but few Folio'' s. This is what I designed and endeavour' din the whole. Whether I have attain' d it or no, I submit to Judgment. — Introduction to Mis- cellanies. This over-fond and superstitious deference to Autho- rity, makes men, otherwise senseful and Ingenious, quote such things many times out of an old dull Author, and with a peculiar emphasis of commendation too, as would never pass even in ordinary conversation ; and which they themselves would never have took »o4 yOHN NORRIS, notice of, had not such an Author said it. But now, no sooner does a man give himself leave to think, but he perceives how absurd and unreasonable 'tis, that one man should prescribe to all Posterity : that men, like beasts, should follow the foremost of the Herd ; and that venerable non-sense should be prefer'd before new-sense: He considers, that that which we call Antiquity, is properly the nonage of the world ; that the sagest of his Authoritys were once new ; and that there is no other difference between an antient Author and himself, but only that of time ; which, if of any advantage, 'tis rather on his side, as living in a more refined and mature age of the world. And thus having cast off this Intellectual slavery, he addicts himself to no Author, Sect or Party ; but freely picks up Truth where-ever he can find it ; puts to Sea upon his own bottom ; holds the Stern himself ; and now, if ever, we may expect new discoverys. The Solitary and Contemplative man sits as safe in his Retirement as one of Homer's Heroes in a Cloud, and has this only trouble from the follies and extrava- gancies of men, that he pitties them. He does not, it may be, laugh so loud, but he is hoXi&c pleas' d : He is not perhaps so often inei'ry, but neither is he so often disgusted ; he lives to himself and God, full of Serenity and Content. . . . Neither are our intellectual advantages less indebted to Solitude. . . . All kinds of Speculative knowledg as well as practical^ are best improved by Solitude. Indeed there is much talk about the great benefit of keeping Great men company, and thereupon 'tis usually reckon'd among the disad- JOHN NORRIS, 105 vantages of a Country life, that those of that condition want the opportunities of a Learned Conversation. But to confess the truth, I think there is not so much in it as people generally imagine. ... A man may be a constant attendant at the Conclaves of Learned men all his life long, and yet be no more the wiser for't than a Book-worm is for dwelling in Libraries. And therefore, to speak ingenuously, I don't see for my part wherein the great advantage of great Conversation lies, as the humours of men are pleas'd to order it. Were I to inform my self in business, and the management of affairs, I would sooner talk with a plain illiterate Farmer or Trades- man than the greatest Vertuoso, ... So that I find I must take refuge at my Study at last, and there redeem the Time that I have lost among the Learned. — A Collection of Miscellanies : *^ Of the Advantages of Thinking ; " "Of Solitude. " Here in this shady lonely Grove I sweetly think my hours away. Neither with Business vex'd, nor Love^ Which in the World bear such Tyrannic sway : No Tumults can my close Apartment find^ Calm as those Seats above, which know no Storm nor Wind. Let Plots and News embroil the State, Pray what's that to my Books and Me ? Whatever be the Kingdom^ s Fate, Here I am sure t' enjoy a Monarchy. Lord of my iself, accountable to none, Like the first Man in Paradise, alone. io6 6" WIFT- CONGREVE. While the Ambitious vainly sue, And of the partial Staxs complain, I stand upon the S/wre and view The mighty Labours of the distant Main. I'm flush'd with silent ] Digressions incontestably are the sunshine, they are the life, the soul of reading. William Shenstone. 17 14 — 1763. I hate a style, as I do a garden that is wholly flat and regular ; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality. — Essays : ^^ On Writing and Books, " Horace Walpole. 17 17 — 1797. Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged. ... I some- times wish for a catalogue of lounging books— books that one takes up in the gout, low spirits, ennui, or when in waiting for company. Some novels, gay poetry, odd whimsical authors, as Rabelais, &c. A catalogue raisonne of such might be itself a good lounging book. Oliver Goldsmith. 1728 — 1774. ' An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing them. There is improbable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student. The first time I read an excellent I20 DODD—LESSING— BURKE, book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend ; when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old,one. — Citizen of the World. William Dodd. 1729— 1777. Books, dear books, Have been, and are my comforts, morn and night, Adversity, prosperity, at home. Abroad, health, sickness, — good or ill report, The same firm friends ; the same refreshments rich, And source of consolation. Thoughts in Prison. GOTTHOLD EpHRAIM LeSSING. 1729 — 1781. "Yes," said Goethe ; "Lessing himself said, that if God would give him truth, he would decline the gift, and prefer the labour of seeking it for himself. " — Ecker- mann's Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life, [ Translated by Margaret Fuller. ] Edmund Burke. 1729 — 1797. He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding, raises his power to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with. Whatever turns the soul inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights moore—cow per. 121 John Moore. 1730 — 1802. It can hardly be conceived how life, short as it is, can be passed without many intervals of tedium, by those who have not their bread to earn, if they could not call in the assistance of our worthy mute friends, the Books. Horses, hounds, the theatres, cards, and the bottle, are all of use occasionally, no doubt ; but the weather may forbid the two first ; a kind of nonsense may drive us from the third ; the association of others is necessary for the fourth, and also for the fifth, unless to those who are already sunk into the lowest state of wretched- ness and degradation: but the entertainment which BOOKS afford, can be enjoyed in the worst weather, can be varied as we please, obtained in solitude, and instead of blunting, it sharpens the understanding ; but the most valuable effect of a taste for reading is, that it often preserves us from bad company. For those are not apt to go or remain with disagreeable people abroad, who are always certain of a pleasant party at home. — Zeluco ; Various Views of Human Nature^ William Cowper. 1731 — 1800. Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud -hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 22 COW PER. 'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat To peep at such a world. To see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd. To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls in soft murmur on the uninjured ear. Thus sitting and surveying them at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height, That liberates and exempts me from them all. Oh Winter ! ruler of the inverted year. Thy scatter'd hair with sleet-like ashes fiU'd, Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age ; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car indebted to no wheels, But urged by storms along its slippery way ; I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st And dreaded as thou art. , . . I crown thee King of intimate delight. Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know. Come, evening, once again, season of peace, Return, sweet evening, and continue long ! Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm Or make me so. Composure is thy gift. GIBBON^SIR WILLIAM JONES. And whether I devote thy gentle hours To books, to music, or the poet's toil. I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still. How calm is my recess ! and how the frost Raging abroad, and the rough wind endear The silence and the warmth enjoy 'd within. The Task, Book iv. , The Winter Evening. Books are not seldom talismans and spells. The Task, Book vi. , The Winter Walk at Noon, Edward Gibbon. 1737 — 1794. A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. ... I would not exchange it for the wealth of the Indies. . . . The miseries of a vacant life are never known to a man whose hours are insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasures of study. . . . The love of study, a passion which derives great vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual round of independent and rational pleasure. — A utobiography. Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to what our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. Sir William Jones. 1746 — 1794. I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that they contain more 124 WYTTENBACH—DE GENLIS—AIKIN. sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and liner strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written. Daniel Wyttenbach. 1746 — 1820. There is no business, no avo9ation whatever, which will not permit a man, who has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, to study. Countess de Genlis. 1746 — 1830. Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds ; and these invaluable communications are within the reach of all. — Memoires^ ^c, John Aikin. 1747 — 1822. At the head of all the pleasures which offer them- selves to the man of liberal education, may confidently be placed that derived from books. In variety, durability, and facility of attainment, no other can stand in competition with it ; and even in intensity it is inferior to few. Imagine that we had it in our AIKIN. 125 power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics — what an inestimable privilege should we think it ! — how superior to all common enjoyments ! But in a well- furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Csesar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress. We can at pleasure exclude dulness and impertinence, and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. It is needless to repeat the high com- mendations that have been bestowed on the study of letters by persons, who had free access to every other source of gratification. Instead of quoting Cicero to you, I shall in plain terms give you the result of my own experience on this subject. If domestic enjoy- raents have contributed in the first degree to the happiness of my life (and I should be ungrateful not to acknowledge that they have), the pleasures of reading have beyond all question held the second place. Without books I have never been able to pass a single day to my entire satisfaction : with, them, no day has been so dark as not to have its pleasure. Even pain and sickness have for a time been charmed away by them. By the easy provision of a book in my pocket, I have frequently worn through long nights and days in the most disagreeable parts of my profession, with all the difference in my feelings between calm content and fretful impatience. Such occurrences have afforded 126 AIKIN— GOETHE. me full proof both of the possihility of being cheaply pleased, and of the consequence it is of to the sum of human felicity, not to neglect minute attentions to make the most of life as it passes. Reading may in every sense be called a cheap amuse- ment. A taste for books, indeed, may be made expensive enough ; but that is a taste for editions, bindings, paper, and type. If you are satisfied with getting at the sense as an author, in some commodious way, a crown at a stall will supply your wants as well as a guinea at a shop. Learn, too, to distinguish between books to be perused, and books to be possessed. Of the former you may find an ample store in every subscription library, the proper use of which to a scholar is to furnish his mind without loading his shelves. No apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary for the enjoyment of reading. From the midst of bustle and business you may, in an instant, .by the magic of a book, plunge into scenes of remote ages and countries, and disengage yourself from present care and fatigue. "Sweet pliability of man's spirit, (cries Sterne, on relating an occurrence of this kind in his Sentimental Journey) that can at once surrender itself to illusions which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments!" — Letters from a Father to his Son, John Wolfgang von Goethe. 1749— 1832. No productiveness of the highest kind, no re- markable discovery, no great thought which bears GOETHE. 127 fruit and has results, is in the power of any one ; but su-ch things are elevated above all earthly control. Man must consider them as an unexpected gift from above, as pure children of God, which he must receive and venerate with joyful thanks. They are akin to the daemon, which does with him what it pleases, and to which he unconsciously resigns himself, whilst he believes he is acting from his own impulse. In such cases, man may often be considered as an instrument in a higher government of the world, — as a vessel found worthy for the reception of a divine influence. I say this, whilst I consider how often a single thought has given a different form to whole centuries, and how individual men have, by their expressions, imprinted a stamp upon their age, which has remained uneffaced, and has operated beneficially upon succeeding genera- tions. — Conversatio7ts of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. {Translated by John Oxenford.'\ There are three classes of readers ; some enjoy without judgment ; others judge without enjoyment ; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct. It is a peculiarity of the literary world, that nothing in it is ever destroyed without a new production, and one of the same kind too. There is in it an eternal life, for it is always in its old age, in its manhood, youth, and childhood, and all this at one and the same time» 128 GOETHE. Certain books are written, not to instruct you, but to let you know that the author knew something. Our most valuable acquisition from history is the enthusiasm it excites. To understand an author we must first understand his age. Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess. Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind. I have never made a secret of my enmity to parodies and travesties. My only reason for hating them is because they lower the beautiful, noble, and great.* Every week he (Schiller) was different and more perfect ; whenever I saw him he appeared to me to have advanced in reading, learning, and judgment. * One of the papers (that entitled " Debasing the Moral Currency") in "The Impressions of Theophrastus Such" ex- presses a strongly marked characteristic of George Eliot's mind. It is a pithy protest against the tendency of the present generation to turn the grandest deeds and noblest works of art into food for laughter. For she hated nothing so much as mockery and ridicule of what other people reverenced, often remarking that those who considered themselves freest from superstitious fancies were the most intolerant. She carried this feeling to such a pitch that she even disliked a book like ' ' Alice in Wonderland, " because it laughed at the things which children had had a kind of belief in. In censuring this vicious habit of burlesquing the things that ought to be regarded with awe and admiration, she remarks, " Let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty and pathos, and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with virtue. " — George Eliot: by Mathilde Blind. (Eminent Women Series.) GOETHE. 12^ Look at Burns ! What makes him great, but the circumstance that the old songs of his ancestors still lived in the mouth of the people, that they were sung at his cradle, that he heard them and grew up with them in his boyhood, until their high perfection became part and parcel of himself, and until they became for him a living basis on which he could stand and take his start. And again, what makes him great, but the echo which his songs found in the hearts of his countrymen I They came back to him from the field where the labourers sang them, and from the inn, where merry fellows greeted his ear with his own songs. — Goethe's Opinions; from his Correspondence and Conversations; by Otto Wenckste7'n. In the whirlpool of the literature of the day, I have befen dragged into the bottomless abyss of horrors of the recent French romance-literature. I will say in one word — it is a literature of despair. In order to produce a momentary effect, the very contrary of all that should be held up to man for his safety or his comfort is brought before the reader, who at last knows not whether to fly or how to save himself. To push the hideous, the revolting, the cruel, the base, in short the whole brood of the vile and abandoned, to impos- sibility, in their Satanic task. One may, and must, say task; for there is at the bottom a profound study of old times, by-gone events and circumstances, remarkable and intricate plots, and incredible facts ; so that it is impossible to call such a work either empty or bad. And this task even men of remarkable talents have undertaken ; clever, eminent men, men of middle age, J I30 HERDER— CECIL, who feel themselves damned henceforward to occupy themselves with these abominations. . . . Every- thing true — everything sesthetical is gradually and necessarily excluded from this literature. — Goethe's Correspondence with Zelter, J. G. VON Herder. 1744 — 1803. With the greatest possible solicitude avoid author- ship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty ; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads ■only to print, in all probability reads amiss ; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor. To the above passage, quoted in the " Biographia Literaria," Coleridge appends the following note: — To which I may add from myself, that what medical physiologists affirm of certain secretions applies equally to our thoughts ; they too must be taken up again into the circulation, and be again and again re-secreted in order to ensure a healthful vigour, both to the mind and to its intellectual offspring. Richard Cecil. 1748 — 1816. God has given us four books : the book of grace, the book of nature, the book of the world, and the book of providence. Every occurrence is a leaf in one of these books : it does not become us to be negligent in the use of any of them. YRIARTE—INCHBALD—ROSCOE, 131 Tom AS DE Yriarte. 1750 — 1791. For every man of real learning Is anxious to increase his lore, And feels, in fact, a greater yearning, The more he knows, to know the more. Elizabeth Inchbald. 1753 — 182 1. Here, in the country, my books are my sole occupa- tion ; books my sure solace, and refuge from frivolous cares. Books are the calmers as well as the instructors of the mind. — Letters. William Roscoe. 1753 — 1831. To 77iy Books on Parting with Them, As one who, destined from his friends to part. Regrets his loss, yet hopes again erewhile To share their converse and enjoy their smile. And tempers as he may affliction's dart, — Thus, loved associates ! chiefs of elder Art ! Teachers of wisdom ! who could once beguile My tedious hours, and lighten every toil, I now resign you : nor with fainting heart ; For pass a few short years, or days, or hours, And happier seasons may their dawn unfold. And all your sacred fellowship restore ; When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers. Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, And kindred spirits meet to part no more. 132 CRABBE. George Crabbe. 1754 — 1832. But what strange art, what magic can dispose The troubled mind to change its native woes ? Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see Others more wretched, more undone than we ? This, Books can do ;— nor this alone ; they give New views to life, and teach us how to live ; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise. Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise : Their aid they yield to all : they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone : Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd ; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they show to kings. Come, Child of Care ! to make thy soul serene. Approach the treasures of this tranquil scene ; Survey the dome, and, as the doors unfold. The soul's best cure, in all her cares, behold ! "Where mental wealth the poor in thought may find And mental physic the diseased in mind ; See here the balms that passion's wounds assuage ; See coolers here, that damp the fire of rage ; Here alt'ratives, by slow degrees control The chronic habits of the sickly soul ; And round the heart and o'er the aching head. Mild opiates here their sober influence shed. Now bid thy soul man's busy scenes exclude. And view composed this silent multitude : — Silent they are— but, though deprived of sound. Here all the living languages abound ; CRABBE— GODWIN. 133 Here all that live no more ; preserved they lie, In tombs that open to the curious eye. Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind To stamp a lasting image of the mind ! Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing, Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring ; But Man alone has skill and power to send The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend ; 'Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise Ages remote, and nations yet to rise. Here come the grieved, a change of thought to find ; The curious here to feed a craving mind ; Here the devout their peaceful temple choose ; And here the poet meets his favouring muse. With awe, around these silent walks I tread ; These are the lasting mansions of the dead : — ** The dead !" methinks a thousand tongues reply ; * ' These are the tombs of such as cannot die ! *'Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime, *' And laugh at all the little strife of time." The Library, 1 78 1. William Godwin. 1756 — 1836. Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man. Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves reading, has everything within his reach. He has but to desire ; and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge, and power to perform. . ' . . Books 134 , GODWIN— SCHILLER. gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson ; when I read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual cameleon, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, susceptible to every im- pression, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous. — The Enquirer: Of an Early Taste for Reading, Friedrich Schiller. 1759 — 1805. There is no more implacable enemy, no more envious colleague, no more zealous inquisitor, than the man who has set his talents and knowledge to sale. . . . Not in the deep and hidden treasures of his own thoughts does such an one seek his reward ; he seeks it in external applause, in titles and posts of honour or authority. ... In vain has he searched for truth, if he cannot barter her in exchange for gold, for newspaper applause, for court favour. SCHILLER. 13s How far different is the philosophical spirit ! Just as sedulously as the trader in knowledge severs his own peculiar science from all others, does the lover of wisdom strive to extend its dominion and restore its connexion with them, I say, to restore ; for the boundaries which divide the sciences are but the work of abstraction. What the empiric separates, the philosopher unites. He has early come to the conviction that in the territory of intellect, as in the world of matter, every thing is enlinked and com- mingled, and his eager longing for universal harmony and agreement cannot be satisfied by fragments. All his efforts are directed to the perfecting of his know- ledge ; his noble impatience cannot be tranquillized till all his conceptions have arranged themselves into one harmonious whole ; till he stands at the central point of arts and sciences, and thence overlooks the whole extent of their dominion with satisfied glance. New discoveries in the field of his activity, which depress the trader in science, enrapture the philo- sopher. . . . The philosophical mind passes on through new forms of thought, constantly heightening in beauty, to perfect, consummate excellence; while the empiric hoards the barren sameness of his school attainments in a mind eternally stationary. . . . Whatever one conquers in the empire of truth, the philosopher shares with all ; while the man whose only estimate of wisdom is profit, hates his contemporaries and grudges them the light and sun which illumine them ; he guards with jealous care the tottering barriers which feebly defend him from the incursions of victorious truth ; for whatever he undertakes, he is ^36 SCHILLER— WILLIAM COBBETT. compelled to borrow stimulus and encouragement from without, while the philosophical spirit finds in its objects, nay, even in its toils, excitement and reward. With how much more ardour can the true lover of knowledge set about his work, how much more lively is his zeal, how much more persevering his courage and activity, since each labour starts in all the fresh- ness of youth from the bosom of its predecessor ! The small acquires magnitude under his creative hand, for he keeps the great steadily in his eye, and all his conceptions are tinctured by it ; while the empiric sees only minute details, — the small, even in the greatest. Not what is his pursuit, but how he handles whatever he pursues, distinguishes the philosophical mind. Wherever he takes his station, whatever is the field of his activity, he always stands in the centre of the Whole ; and, however widely the object of his pursuit separates him from his brethren, he is near and allied to them by a mind working in harmony with theirs. He meets them on that point where all clear spirits find each other. — Introductory Lecture to a Course on Universal History, delivered at Je?ia, 1789. William Cobbett. 1762 — 1835. Books never annoy ; they cost little, and they are always at hand, and ready at your call. . . . I hope that your taste will keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great COBBE TT—SIR EGER TON BR YDGES. 1 37 virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations ; and they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into writing, even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done ; for the eye greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of ideas, the place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the recollec- tion of facts ; and no circumstance more effectually than stating the facts upon paper. A Journal should be kept by every young man. Put down something against every day in the year, if it be merely a descrip- tion of the weather. You will not have done this for one year without finding the benefit of it. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four hours ; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs ; it is a thing demanding a small portion of attention once only in every day, — Advice to Yomig Men, and (incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life, in a Series of Letters addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen or a Subject, Sir S. Egerton Brydges. 1762 — 1837. Are books, in truth, a dead letter ? To those who have no bright mirror in' their own bosoms to reflect their images, they are ! but the lively and active scenes, which they call forth in well-framed minds, exceed the T38 SIR EGERTON BRVDGES. liveliness of reality. Heads and hearts of a coarser grain require the substance of material objects to put them in motion. Books instruct us calmly, and with- out intermingling with their instruction any of those painful impressions of superiority, which we must necessarily feel from a living instructor. They wait the pace of each man's capacity ; stay for his want of perception, without reproach ; go backward and for- ward with him at his wish ; and furnish inexhaustible repetitions. How is it possible to express what we owe, as intellectual beings, to the art of printing? When a man sits in a well -furnished library, sur- rounded by the collected wisdom of thousands of the best endowed minds,, of various ages and countries, what an amazing extent of mental range does he com- mand. Every age, and every language, has some advantages, some excellencies peculiar to itself ! I am not sure, that skill in a variety of tongues is always wisdom ; but an acquaintance with various forms of expression, and the operations and results of minds at various times, and under various circumstances of climate, manners and government, must necessarily enrich and strengthen our opinions. A person, who is only conversant with the literature of his own country, and that during only the last ten or twenty years, con- tracts so narrow a taste, that every other form of phrase, or mode of composition, every other fashion of sentiment, or intellectual process, appears to him repulsive, dull and worthless. He reads Spenser, and Milton, if he reads them at all, only as a task ; and he turns with disgust from the eloquence of Sydney, Hooker, and Jeremy Taylor. SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 139 Above all, there is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us. When a person's body is mouldering, cold and insensible, in the grave, we feel a sacred sentiment of veneration for the living memorials of his mind. — The Ruminato?, No. 22, Books. The contempt of many of the innocent trifles of life, which the generality of the world betray, arises from the weakness and narrowness, and not from the superiority, of their understandings. Most of the empty baubles, which mankind pursue as objects of high consideration, are suffered to eclipse those simple amusements which are in no respect less important, and which are so far more valuable as they are more compatible with purity of heart and conduct ! It is from an undue estimate of the points of ordinary ambi- tion, that health, liberty, carelessness of mind, and ease of conscience are sacrificed to the attainment of distinctions, which in the opinion of the truly wise are mere vanity. A just appreciation on the contrary will deem every pursuit, that affords amusement without derogating from virtue, praiseworthy. Of all the human relaxations which are free from guilt, perhaps there is none so dignified as reading. It is no little good to while away the tediousness of existence in a gentle and harmless exercise of the intellectual facul- ties. If we build castles in the air that vanish as quickly as the passing clouds,, still some beneficial result has been obtained ; some hours of weariness I40 RICHTER. have been stolen from us; and probably some cares have been robbed of their sting. I do not here mean to discuss the scale of excellence among the various studies that books afford. It is my purpose to shew that even the most trifling books, which give harmless pleasure, produce a good far exceeding what the world ascribes to more high-sounding occupations. When we recollect of how many it is the lot, even against choice, to pass their days in solitude, how admirable is the substitute for conversation, which the powers of genius and art of printing bestow ! — The Ruminator, No. 24, On the Pleasures of Reading, Jean Paul F. Richter. 1763 — 1825. A scholar has no ennui. ... In this bridal- chamber of the mind (such are our study-chambers), in this concert-hall of the finest voices gathered from all times and places — the aesthetic and philosophic enjoyments almost overpower the faculty of choice. — Hesperus, And now the most beautiful dawn that mortal can behold, arose upon his spirit — the dawn of a new composition. For the book that a person is beginning to create or design, contains within itself half a life, and God only knows what an expanse of futurity also. Hopes of improvement — ideas which are to ensure the development and enlightenment of the human race — swarm with a joyful vitality in his brain, as he Softly paces up and down in the twilight when it has become too dark to write. ferriar— isaac disraeli. 141 Dr. John Ferriar. 1764 — 1815. Like Poets, born, in vain Collectors strive To cross their Fate, and learn the art to thrive. Like Cacus, bent to tame their struggling will, The tyrant-passion drags them backward still : Ev'n I, debarr'd of ease, and studious hours. Confess, mid' anxious toil, its lurking pow'rs. How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold The small, rare volume, black with tarnish'd gold. The Bibliofnania. [Annotated edition, by Mr. J. E. Bailey, in the Palatine Note- book ^ March, 1882.] Isaac Disraell 1767— 1848. No character is more frequently amiable than that of a man of letters. The occupations he has chosen, are justly called the studies of humanity; and they communicate to his manners, his understanding, and his heart, that refined amenity, that lively sensi- bility, and that luminous acuteness which flow from a cultivated taste. He is an enthusiast; but an enthusiast for elegance. He loves literature, like virtue, for the harmony it diffuses over the passions ; and perceives, that like religion, it has the singular art of communicating with an unknown and future state. Men of letters find in books an occupation congenial to their sentiments ; labour without fatigue ; repose with activity ; an employment, interrupted without inconvenience, and exhaustless without satiety. They remain ever attached to their studies. Their library and their chamber are contiguous ; and often in this 142 ISAAC DISRAELI. contracted space, does the opulent owner consume his delicious hours. — His pursuits are ever changing, and he enlivens the austere by the lighter studies. It was said of a great hunter, that he did npt live, but hunted ; and it may be said of the man of letters, that he does not live, but meditates. He is that happy man who creates hourly wants, and enjoys the voluptuousness of imme- diate gratification. . . . Those who feel with enthusiasm the eloquence of a fine writer, insensibly receive some particles from it ; a virtuous writer communicates virtue ; a refined writer, a subtile delicacy; a sublime writer, an elevation of sentiment. All these characters of the mind, in a few years, are diffused throughout the nation. Among us, what acute reasoners has the refined penetration of Hume formed ; what amenity of manners has not Addison introduced ; to how many virtuous youths have not the moral essays of Johnson imparted forti- tude, and illumined with reflection ? . . . It is curious to observe the solitary man of letters in the concealment of his obscure study, separated from the crowd, unknown to his contemporaries, col- lecting the materials of instruction from every age and every country ; combining with the present the example of the past, and the prediction of the future ; pouring forth the valuable secrets of his meditations to posterity ; striking with the concussion of new light the public mind ; and forming the manners, the opinions, the refinement, and the morals of his fellow-citizens. . . . The interruptions of visitors have been feelingly lamented by men of letters. — The mind, occupied in maturing its speculations, feels the approach of the ISAAC DISRAELI. 143 visitor by profession, as the sudden gales of an eastern blast, passing over the blossoms of spring. "We are afraid," said some of the visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time." "To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. . . . The amiable Melancthon, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. Yet let us not confound true philosophers with dreaming theorists. They are not more engaged in cultivating the mind, than the earth ; the annals of agriculture are as valuable as the annals of history; and while they instruct some to think, they teach others to labour. Philosophy extends it's thoughts on what- ever the eye has seen, or the hand has touched ; it herbalises in fields ; it founds mines ; it is on the waters, and in the forests ; it is in the library, and the labora- tory ; it arranges the calculations of finance ; it invents the police of a city ; it erects it's fortifications ; it gives velocity to our fleets ; in a word, it is alike in the solitude of deserts, as in the populousness of manufac- tories. The Genius of Philosophy pierces every where, and on whatever it rests, like the sun, it dis- covers what lay concealed, or matures what it found imperfect. — An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character, 1 795. Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the heart, will write to the heart ; every one is enabled to decide on his merits. 144 ISAAC DISRAELI. and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a distant day. We are I think little interested if an author displays sublimity; but we should be much concerned to know whether he has sincerity. . . . ** Why," says Boileau, " are my verses read by all? it is only because they speak truths, and that I am con- vinced of the truths I write." Why is Addison still the first of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philo- sophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed, in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. . . . Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence ; he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels. — Richardson was sensible of the power with which his minute strokes of description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagination clings. He says "If I give speeches and conversations I ought to give them justly ; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their ?nanner of saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his orange trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France ; with his having had the honour to naturalize in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them because " he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner ISAAC DISRAELI. 145, they are the better." In a word with his passionate attachment to his garden, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed five years with- out going to town, where, by the way, **he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think, that his character and dispositions, may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this man of genius. . . . Dryden confesses that he never read any- thing but for his pleasure. . . . Montaigne's works have been called by a Cardinal "the Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book of man ; for all men are idlers; we have hours which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At those moments miscellanists are comformable to all our humours. We dart along their airy and concise page, and their lively anecdote, or their profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours. We find, in these literary miniatures, qualities incom- patible with more voluminous performances. Some- times a bolder, and sometimes a firmer touch ; for they are allowed but a few strokes. They are permitted every kind of ornament, for how can the diminutive please, unless it charms by it's finished decorations, it's elaborate niceties, and it's exquisite polish ? A concise work preserves a common subject from insi- pidity, and an uncommon one from error. An essayist expresses himself with a more real enthusiasm, than the writer of a volume ; for I have observed that the most fervid genius is apt to cool in a quarto. . . . K 146 ISAAC DISRAELI, The ancients were great admirers of Miscellanies ; and this with some profound students, who affect to contemn these light and beautiful compositions, might be a solid argument to evince their bad taste. Aulus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced in their composition. Among the titles are "a basket of flowers ; " " an em- broidered mantle ; " and " a variegated meadow. " Such amiscellanist as was the admirable Erasmus, deserves the happy description which Plutarch with an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of philosophers fatigued with study ; that they have recourse to his works as to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a purer air. Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold a volume of Miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of its contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those valleys, those rocks, en- circled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look, and behold at once the united seasons. ** All climates in one place, all seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated to the service of the Goddess Variety. ISAAC DISRAELI. 147 On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of composition depend on the author ; for there is something which a reader himself must bring to the book, that the book may please. There is a literary appetite which the author can no more im- part, than the most skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet replied, that it was not his fault. It would indeed be very unreasonable, when a painter exhibits his pictures in public, to expect that he should provide spectacles for the use of the short-sighted. Every man must come prepared as well as he can. Simonides confessed himself incapable of deceiving stupid persons ; and Balzac remarked of the girls of his village, that they were too silly to be duped by a man of wit. Dullness is impenetrable; and there are hours when the liveliest taste loses its sensibility. The temporary tone of the mind may be unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this circumstance. The mind communicates it's infirm dispositions to the book, and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those of his reader. There is something in composition, like the game of shuttlecock, where, if the reader does not quickly rebound the feathered • cork to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work falls extinct. — Literary Miscellanies: including a Dissertation on Anecdotes, A New Edition ^ enlarged, 1801. 148 john foster, John Foster. 1770 — 1843. The man who is supposed to be thoughtfully passing his eye over a large array of books . . . may be arrested by the works of some authors of highest dis- tinction, splendid in literary achievement and lasting fame. While pronouncing their names and looking at these volumes, in which they have left a representative existence on earth, left the form and action of their minds embodied in a more durable vehicle than their once animated clay, how striking to think, that some- where, and in some certain condition, they themselves are existing still — existing as really and personally as when they were revolving the thoughts and writing the sentences which fill these books ! . . . The musing of our contemplatist may at times be led to solemn con- jectures at the award, which these great intellectual performers have found in another state ; and he follows some of them with a very dark surmise. . . . And he may be reminded of that sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his selection and appointment, by which minds greatly below the highest order of natural ability may be rendered pre-eminent in usefulness. It may also occur to him, diverting for an instant from all the ranks and varieties of those who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to reflect how many humble spirits, that never attempted any of the thousand speculations, nor revelled in the literary luxuries con- tained in these books, have nevertheless passed worthily and happily through the world into a region where it viay be the appointed result and reward of fervent piety, in inferior faculties, to overtake, by one mighty JOHN FOSTER. 149- bound, the intellectual magnitude of those who had previously been much more powerful minds. . , . The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range of volumes, of many dates, and a considerable portion of them old, will sometimes be led into a train of con- jectural questions : — ^Who were they, that, in various times and places, have had these in their possession ? Perhaps many hands have turned over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the lines. With what measure of intelligence, and of approval or dissent, did those persons respectively follow the train of thoughts? How many of them were honestly intent on becoming wise by what they read ! How many sincere prayers were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during the perusal ? How many have been determined, in their judgment or their actions, by these books? . . . May not some one of these books be the last that some one person lived to read ? Many that have perused them are dead ; each made an exit in a manner and with circumstances of its own ; what were the manner and circumstances in each instance ? It was a most solemn event to that person ; but how ignorant concerning it am I, who now perhaps have my eye on the book which he read the last! What a power of association, what an element of intense significance, would invest some of these volmnes, if I could have a momentary vision of the last scene of a number of the most remarkable of their former readers ! * Of that the books can tell me nothing ; but let me endeavour to bring the fiact, that persons have read them and died, to bear with a salutary influence on my own mind while I am reading i5«> JOHN FOSTER. any of them. List me cherish that temper of spirit which is sensible of intimations of what is departed, remaining and mingling with what is present, and can thus perceive some monitory glimpses of even the unknown dead. What multiplied traces of them on some of these books are perceptible to the imagina- tion, which beholds successive countenances long since '* changed and sent away," bent in attention over the pages! And the minds which looked from within through those countenances, conversing with the thoughts of other minds perhaps long withdrawn, even at that time, from among men — what and where are they now ? Sometimes the conjectural reference to the former possessors and readers of books seems to be rendered a little less vague, by our finding at the beginning of an old volume one or more names written, in such characters, and perhaps accompanied with such dates, that we are assured those persons must long since have done with all books. The name is generally all we can know of him who inserted it ; but we can thus fix on an individual as actually having possessed this volume ; and perhaps there are here and there certain marks which should indicate an attentive perusal. What manner of person was he ? What did he think of the sentiments, the passages which I see that he particularly noticed ? If there be opinions here which I cannot admit, did he believe them? If there be counsels here which I deem moSt just and important, did they effectually persuade him ? . . . The book is perhaps such a one as he could not read without being cogently admonished that he was going to his yOHN FOSTER. 151 great account. He went to that account — how did he meet and pass through it? This is no vain revery. He, the man who bore and wrote this name, did go, at a particular time, though unrecorded, to surrender himself to his Judge. But I, who handle the book that was his, and observe his name, and am thus directing my thoughts into the dark after the man, I also am in progress toward the same tribunal, when it will be proved to my joy or sorrow, whether I have learned true wisdom from my books, and from my reflections on those who have possessed and read them before. But it may be that the observer's eye fixes on a volume which instantly recalls to his mind a person whom he well knew — a revered parent perhaps, or a valued friend, who is recollected to have approved and inculcated the principles of the book, or perhaps to have given it to the person who is now looking at it as a token of regard, or an inoffensive expedient for drawing attention to an important subject. He may have the image of that relative or friend, as in the emplojnnent of reading that volume, or in the act of presenting it to him. This may awaken a train of remembrances leading away from any relation to the book, and possibly of salutary tendency ; but also, such an association with the book may have an effect, whenever he shall consult it, as if it were the departed friend, still more than the author, that uttered the senti- ments. The author spoke to any one indifferently — to no one in particular; but the sentiments seem to be especially applied to me, when they come in this connection with the memory of one who was my friend. 152 JOHN FOSTER. Thus he would have spoken to me ; thus in effect he does speak to me, while I think of him as having read the book, and regarded it as particularly adapted to me; or seem to behold him, as when reading it in my hearing, and sometimes looking off from the page to make a gentle enforcement of the instruction. He would have been happy to anticipate, that, when- ever I might look into it, my remembrance of him would infuse a more touching significance, a more applying principle, into its important sentiments; thus retaining him, though invisibly, and without his actual presence, in the exercise of a beneficent in- fluence. But indeed I can, at some moments, indulge my mind to imagine something more than this mere ideal intervention to reinforce the impression of truth upon me, insomuch that, supposing it were permitted to receive intimations from those who have left the world, it will seem to me possible that I might, when looking into some parts of that book, in a solitary hour of night, perceive myself to be once more the object of his attention, signified by a mysterious whisper from no visible form ; or by a momentary preternatural luminousness pervading the lines, to intimate that a friendly intelligence that does not forget me, would still and again enforce on my conscience the dictates of piety and wisdom which I am reading. , . . Is all influential relation dissolved by the withdrawment from mortal intercourse ; so that let my friends die, and I am as loose from their hold upon me as if they had ceased to exist, or even never had existed? — Intro- ductory Essay to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. WORDSWORTH. '53 William Wordsworth. 1770 — 1850. Wings have we, and as far as we can go We may find pleasure : wilderness and wood, Blank ocean and mere sky, support that mood Which with the lofty sanctifies the low, Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books, we know. Are a substantial world, both pure and good : Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood Our pastime and our happiness will grow. There find I personal themes, a plenteous store ; Matter wherein right voluble I am : To which I listen with a ready ear ; Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear — The gentle lady married to the Moor ; And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb. Nor can I not believe but that hereby Great gains are mine ; for thus I live remote From evil speaking ; rancour, never sought, Comes to me not : malignant truth, or lie. Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought : And thus from day to day my little boat Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably. Blessings be with them — and eternal praise. Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares — The poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays ! Oh ! might my name be numbered among theirs. Then gladly would I end my mortal days. 1 54 WORDS WOR TH— COLERIDGE. ... Books are yours, Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of gold And orient gems, which for a day of need, The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs, These hoards of truth you can unlock at will. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772 — 1834. With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati^ grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the begin- ning, middle, and end converge to one charge : never pursue literature as a trade. With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession, that is, some regular employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will sufitice to realise in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money, and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry ; but the necessity of acquiring them will in COLERIDGE. 15s all works of genius convert the stimulant into a narcotic. . Motives by excess reverse their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun and stupify the mind. For it is one contradistinction of genius from talent, that its pre- dominant end is always comprised in the means ; and this is one of the many points, which establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now though talents may exist without genius, yet as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice ; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. "My dear young friend," (I would say) "suppose yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory or counting house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last patient, you return at evening. Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home Is sweetest . . . to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of welcome made doubly welcome, by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your shelves you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can con- 156 COLERIDGE. verse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those'books are still living for you ! Even your writing desk with its blank paper and all its other implements will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings as well as thoughts to events and characters past or to come; not a chain of iron, which binds you down to think of the future and the remote by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present. But why should I say retire ? The habits of active life and daily intercourse with the stir of the world will tend to give you such self-command, that the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and in- dependent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients ; of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer at once to later and con- temporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question. — Biographia Literariay