PAGE 1. _Lamb._--The extracts from the works of Charles Lamb are from
the Oxford edition, edited by T. Hutchinson. Not content with 'grace'
before Milton and Shakespeare, Lamb suggests elsewhere (see p. 130)
a solemn service.
P. 1. _Petrarch._--When the love-sick Petrarch retired from Avignon to
Vaucluse, in 1338, his only companions were his books; for his friends
rarely visited him, alleging that his mode of life was unnatural.
Petrarch replied as in the text, which is quoted from Mrs. S. Dodson's
_Life_. On another occasion, however, Petrarch wrote: '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.' See Leigh Hunt's
reference on page 20 to Petrarch as 'the god of the Bibliomaniacs'.
P. 2. _Waller._--Carlyle, aged 22, wrote to Robert Mitchell that,
lacking society, he found 'books are a ready and effectual resource'.
'It is lawful,' he added, 'for the solitary wight to express the love he
feels for those companions so steadfast 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.'
Walter Pater, in _Appreciations: Style_, observes that 'different
classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very various
demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not only
scholars but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it,
as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from
a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem like _Lycidas_,
a perfect fiction like _Esmond_, the perfect handling of a theory like
Newman's _Idea of a University_, has for them something of the uses of a
religious "retreat".'
P. 4. _Chesterfield._--Folio, a book whose sheets are folded into two
leaves; quarto, sheets folded into four leaves, abbreviated into 4to;
octavo, sheets folded into eight leaves, 8vo; duodecimo, sheets folded
into twelve leaves, 12mo. The first three words come to us from the
Italian, through the French; the last is from the Latin _duodecim_.