I was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some books which
had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous
station others which were of less value and in worse dress, when Sir
Thomas entered. You are employed, said he, to your heart's content. Why,
Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant
society, what have you to covet or desire?
_Montesinos_
Nothing, ... except more books.
_Sir Thomas More_
Crescit, indulgens sibi, dirus hydrops.
_Montesinos_
Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is no diseased desire! If I
covet more, it is for the want I feel and the use which I should make of
them.
'Libraries,' says my good old friend George Dyer, a man as learned as he
is benevolent, ... 'libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence
men, properly informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much
for curiosity, and more for use.' These books of mine, as you well know,
are not drawn up here for display, however much the pride of the eye may
be gratified in beholding them; they are on actual service. Whenever
they may be dispersed, there is not one among them that will ever be
more comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by its possessor; and
generations may pass away before some of them will again find a
reader.... It is well that we do not moralize too much upon such
subjects, ...
For foresight is a melancholy gift,
Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.
But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or in
anticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing.
_Sir Thomas More_
How many such dispersions must have taken place to have made it possible
that these books should thus be brought together here among the
Cumberland mountains!
_Montesinos_
Many, indeed; and in many instances most disastrous ones. Not a few of
these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family or convent
libraries during the late Revolution. Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to
the Capuchines, at Ghent. This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in
which not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every
capital throughout the volume was coloured, came from the Carmelite
Nunnery at Bruges. That copy of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits'
College at Louvain; that _Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis_, from their
college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's library; here others
from the Lamoignon one.... A book is the more valuable to me when I know
to whom it has belonged, and through what 'scenes and changes' it has
past.
_Sir Thomas More_
You would have its history recorded in the fly-leaf, as carefully as the
pedigree of a race-horse is preserved.
_Montesinos_
I confess that I have much of that feeling in which the superstition
concerning relics has originated; and I am sorry when I see the name of
a former owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his arms defaced.
Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something saved for awhile
from oblivion; and I should be almost as unwilling to destroy them, as
to efface the _Hic jacet_ of a tombstone. There may be sometimes a
pleasure in recognizing them, sometimes a salutary sadness....
_Sir Thomas More_
How peaceably they stand together,--Papists and Protestants side by
side!
_Montesinos_
Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and
Modern, Jew and Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and English,
Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their old
battles, silently now, upon the same shelf: Fernand Lopez and Pedro de
Ayala; John de Laet and Barlaeus, with the historians of Joam Fernandes
Vieira; Foxe's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of Father Parsons;
Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and
_Philosophe_ (equally misnamed); Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads
and Cavaliers!
Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here
Is nature's secretary, the philosopher:
And wily statesman, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city's mystic body;
Here gathering chroniclers: and by them stand
Giddy fantastic poets of each land.
Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many
generations, laid up in my garners: and when I go to the window, there
is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable
sky.... Never can any man's life have been passed more in accord with
his own inclinations, nor more answerably to his own desires. Excepting
that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is derived from a higher
source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, not
only for the means of subsistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy;
... health of mind and activity of mind, contentment, cheerfulness,
continual employments, and therewith continual pleasure. _Suavissima
vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem_; and this, as Bacon has said, and
Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in
retirement. To the studies which I have faithfully pursued, I am
indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour
to have lived in friendship; and as for the enemies which they have
procured to me in sufficient numbers, ... happily I am not of the
thin-skinned race, ... they might as well fire small shot at a
rhinoceros, as direct their attacks upon me. _In omnibus requiem
quaesivi_, said Thomas à Kempis, _sed non inveni nisi in angulis et
libellis_. I too have found repose where he did, in books and
retirement, but it was there alone I sought it: to these my nature,
under the direction of a merciful Providence, led me betimes, and the
world can offer nothing which should tempt me from them.--R. SOUTHEY.
_Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of
Society. Colloquy xiv: 'The Library.'_