unthinking enough to be more frequently readers of such papers as this, than of Sacred Writ, may be advertised that the greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with are to be found there, and that even the style of the Scriptures is more than human. SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 233. No translation our own country ever yet produced hath come up to that of the Old and New Testament; and I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole. SWIFT. With the history of Moses no book in the world, in point of antiquity, can contend. TILLOTSON. Many persons have never reflected on the circumstance that one of the earliest translations of the Scriptures into a vernacular tongue was made by the Church of Rome. The Latin Vulgate was so called from its being in the vulgar -ie., the popular-language then spoken in Italy and the neighbouring countries: and that version was evidently made on purpose that the Scriptures might be intelligibly read by, or read to, the mass of the people. But gradually and imperceptibly Latin was superseded by the languages derived from it,-Italian, Spanish, and French,-while the Scriptures were still left in Latin; and when it was proposed to translate them into modern tongues, this was regarded as a perilous innovation, though it is plain that the real innovation was that which had taken place imperceptibly, since the very object proposed by the Vulgate version was that the Scriptures might not be left in an unknown tongue. WHATELY: Annot, on Bacon's Essay, Of Innovations. BIBLIOMANIA. He is a universal scholar, so far as the titlepage of all authors; knows the manuscripts in which they were discovered, the editions through which they have passed, with the praises or censures which they have received from the several members of the learned world. He has a greater esteem for Aldus and Elzevir than for Virgil and Horace. If you talk of Herodotus, he breaks out into a panegyric upon Harry Stephens. He thinks he gives you an account of an author when he tells you the subject he treats of, the name of the editor, and the year in which it was printed. Or, if you draw him into further particulars, he cries up the goodness of the paper, extols the diligence of the cor rector, and is transported with the beauty of the letter. This he looks upon to be sound learning and substantial criticism. As for those who talk of the fineness of style, and the justness of thought, or describe the brightness of any particular passages, nay, though they themselves write in the genius and spirit of the author they admire, Tom looks upon them as men of superficial learning and flashy parts. ADDISON: Tatler, No. 158. LYSAND. Our friend makes these books a sort of hobby-horse, and perhaps indulges his vanity in them to excess. They are undoubtedly useful in their way. PHIL. You are averse, then, to the study of bibliography? LYSAND. By no means. I have already told you of my passion for books, and cannot, therefore, dislike bibliography. I think, with Lambinet, that the greater part of bibliographical works are sufficiently dry and soporific; but I am not insensible to the utility, and even entertainment, which may result from a proper cultivation of it; although both De Bure and Peignot appear to me to have gone greatly beyond the mark, in lauding this study as "one of the most attractive and vast pursuits in which the human mind can be engaged." PHIL. But to know what books are valuable and what are worthless; their intrinsic and extrinsic merits; their rarity, beauty, and particularities of various kinds; and the estimation in which they are consequently held by knowing men-these things add a zest to the gratification we feel in even looking at and handling certain volumes. DIBDIN: Bibliomania, ed. 1842, Pt. II. : The Cabinet, 24. It was just coming on to the winter of that same year, a very raw, unpromising season I well recollect, when I received one morning, with Messrs. Sotheby's respects, a catalogue of the extensive library of a distinguished person, lately deceased, which was about to be submitted to public competition. Glancing down its long files of names, my eye lit upon a work I had long sought and yearned for, and which, in utter despair, I had set down as introuvable. This coveted lot was no other than the famed Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in black-letter, and adorned with curious and primitive cuts. At different times, some stray copies had been offered to me, but these were decayed, maimed, cut-down specimens, very different from the one now before me, which, in the glowing language of the catalogue, was a "Choice, clean copy, in admirable condition. Antique-richly embossed binding and metal clasps. A unique and matchless impression." So it was undoubtedly. For the next few days I had no other thought but that one. I discoursed Nuremberg Chronicle; I ate, drank, and inhaled nothing but Nuremberg Chronicle. I dropped in at stray hours to look after its safety, and glared savagely at other parties who were turning over its leaves. Household Words, March 26, 1857. LORD MACAULAY : Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Revolution, July, 1835. But the Chronicle-the famous Chronicle! I the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my had utterly forgotten it! I felt a cold thrill all duty to persecute error. over me as I took out my watch. Just two o'clock! I flew into a cab, and set off at a headlong pace for Sotheby's. But my fatal presentiment was to be verified. It was over; I was too late. The great Chronicle, the choice, the beautiful, the unique, had passed from me forever, and beyond recall; and, as I afterwards learned, for the ridiculous sum of nineteen pounds odd shillings. Household Words, March 26, 1857. BIGOTRY. A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side. ADDISON. Mr. T. sees religion not as a sphere, but as a line; and it is the identical line in which he is moving. He is like an African buffalo,-sees right forward, but nothing on the right hand or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels or of devils at the distance of ten yards on one side or the other. JOHN FOSTER: Journal. Any sect whose reasonings, interpretations, and language I have been used to will, of course, make all chime that way; and make another, and perhaps the genuine, meaning of the author seem harsh, strange, and uncouth to LOCKE. me. How ready zeal for interest and party is to charge atheism on those who will not, without examining, submit and blindly follow their nonsense! LOCKE. It is true that he professed himself a supporter of toleration. Every sect clamours for toleration when it is down. We have not the smallest doubt that when Bonner was in the Marshalsea he thought it a very hard thing that a man should be locked up in a gaol for not being able to understand the words "This is my body" in the same way with the lords of the council. It would not be very wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity because he assures you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat. The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am Unhappy those who hunt for a party, and scrape together out of every author all those things only which favour their own tenets. DR. I. WATTS. He that considers and inquires into the reason of things is counted a foe to received doctrines. DR. I. WATTS. We ought to bring our minds free, unbiassed, and teachable, to learn our religion from the word of God. DR. I. WATTS. Histories do rather set forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof. But Lives, if they be well written, propounding to themselves a person to represent, in whom actions both greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture, must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively repreLORD BACON: sentation. Advancement of Learning. I am only aware of one objection that has been seriously urged against me as a writer,— and this I confess I have not at all attempted to correct, that, forgetting the dignity of history, my style is sometimes too familiar and colloquial. If I err here, it is on principle and by design. The felicity of my subject consists in the great variety of topics which it embraces. My endeavour has been to treat them all appropri ately. If in analyzing the philosophy of Bacon, or expounding the judgments of Hardwicke, or drawing the character of Clarendon, I have forgotten the gravity and severity of diction suitable to the ideas to be expressed, I acknowledge myself liable to the severest censure; but in my opinion the skilful biographer when he has to narrate a ludicrous incident will rather try to imitate the phrases of Mercutio than of Ancient Pistol "projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba." I cannot understand why, in recording a jest in print, an author should be debarred from using the very language which he might with propriety adopt if he were telling it in good society by word of mouth. LORD CAMPBELL: Lord Chancellors, vi., Preface. A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man. CARLYLE. Of all the species of literary composition perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history. The train of incidents through which it conducts the reader suggests to his imagination a multitude of analogies and comparisons; and while he is following the course of events which mark the life of him who is the subject of the narrative, he is insensibly compelled to take a retrospect of his own. In no other species of writing are we permitted to scrutinize the character so exactly, or to form so just and accurate an estimate of the excellences and defects, the lights and shades, the blemishes and beauties, of an individual mind. ROBERT HALL: The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 60. But biography has often been allotted to writers who seem very little acquainted with the nature of their task, or very negligent about the performance. They rarely afford any other account than might be collected from public papers, but imagine themselves writing a life when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or preferments; and so little regard the manners or behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 60. The variety and splendour of the lives of such men render it often difficult to distinguish the portion of time which ought to be admitted into history from that which should be preserved for biography. Generally speaking, these two parts are so distinct and unlike that they cannot be confounded without much injury to both: either when the biographer hides the portrait of the individual by a crowded and confined picture of events, or when the historian allows unconnected narratives of the lives of men to break the thread of history. Perhaps nothing more can be universally laid down than that the biographer never ought to introduce public events except as far as they are absolutely necessary to the illustration of character, and that the histoPreface to the Memoirs of Rev. J. Freeston.rian should rarely digress into biographical par Preface to the Memoirs of Rev. J. Freeston. He who desires to strengthen his virtue and purify his principles will always prefer the solid to the specious; will be more disposed to contemplate an example of the unostentatious piety and goodness which all men may obtain than of those extraordinary achievements to which few can aspire : nor is it the mark of a superior, but rather of a vulgar and superficial taste, to consider nothing as great or excellent but that which glitters with titles or is elevated by rank. ROBERT HALL: This is a protest against a growing and intol erable evil to which every reader of these lines will unhesitatingly put his name. Everybody is subject to the nuisance. Some pretend to despise it; some are good-natured, and don't care about it; others are so snobbish and vain that they positively like it; but all this is no argument why you and I should submit to it, or refrain from expressing our disgust and dissatisfaction. I mean the pest of biography. What in the world have I done to have my life written? or my neighbour the doctor? or Softlie, our curate? We have never won battles, nor invented logarithms, nor conquered Scinde, nor done anything whatever out of the most ordinary course of the most prosaic existences. Indeed, I may say the two gentlemen I have mentioned are the dullest fellows I ever knew: they are stupid at breakfast, dinner, and tea; they never said a witty thing in their lives; they never tried to repeat a witty thing without entirely destroying it. I have no doubt they think and say precisely the same of me; and yet we are all three in the greatest danger of having our lives in print every day. Household Words, July 25, 1857. ticulars except as far as they contribute to the clearness of his narrative of political occurSIR J. MACKINTOSH. rences. He [the biographer] is in no wise responsible for the defects of his personages, still less is This conventional etiquette of extenuation mars the their vindication obligatory upon him. utility of historical biography by concealing the compensations so mercifully granted in love, and the admonitions given by vengeance. Why suppress the lesson afforded by the depravity of "the whose defilements teach us that the most trangreatest, brightest, meanest of mankind;" he scendent intellectuality is consistent with the deepest turpitude? The labours of the panegyrists come after all to naught. You are trying to fill a broken cistern. You may cut a hole in the stuff, but you cannot wash out the stain. SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE: History of Normandy and England, B. ii. p. 67. The cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been ransacked to publish private letters, and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments of friendship. POPE. I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memoirs of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections. WORDSWORTH. BLESSINGS. Even the best things, ill used, become evils, and contrarily, the worst things, used well, prove good. A good tongue used to deceit; a good wit used to defend error; a strong arm to murder; authority to oppress; a good profession to 'dissemble; are all evil. Even God's own word is the sword of the Spirit, which, if it kill not our vices, kills our souls. Contrariwise (as poisons are used to wholesome medicine), afflictions and sins, by a good use, prove so gainful as nothing more. Words are as they are taken, and things are as they are used. There are even cursed blessings. BISHOP HALL. The blessings of fortune are the lowest the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind. L'ESTRANGE. execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds, and under the direction of others: for in counsel it is good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them, except they be very great. LORD BACON : Essay XII., Of Boldness. Audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds. LORD BACON. A kind imagination makes a bold man have vigour and enterprise in his air and motion: it stamps value upon his face, and tells the people he is to go for so much. J. COLLIER. The bold and sufficient pursue their game with more passion, endeavour, and application, and therefore often succeed. SIR W. TEMPLE. BOOKS. The ordinary writers of morality prescribe to their readers after the Galenic way; their medicines are made up in large quantities. An essay-writer must practise in the chemical method, and give the virtue of a full draught in a few drops. Were all books reduced thus to their quintessence, many a bulky author would make his appearance in a penny paper. PLATO. Health, beauty, vigour, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just. Man has an unfortunate weakness in the evil hour after receiving an affront to draw together all the moon-spots on the other person into an outline of shadow, and a night-piece, and to transform a single deed into a whole life; and this only in order that he may thoroughly relish the pleasure of being angry. In love, he has fortunately the opposite faculty of crowding together all the light parts and rays of its object into one focus by means of the burning glass of imagination, and letting the sun burn without its spots; but he too generally does this only when the beloved and often censured being is already beyond the skies. In order, however, that we should do this sooner and oftener, we ought to act like Wincklemann, but only in another way. As he, namely, set aside a particular half-hour of each day for the purpose of beholding and meditating on his too happy existence in Rome, so we ought daily or weekly to dedicate and sanctify a solitary hour for the purpose of summing up the virtues of our families, our wives, our children, and our friends, and viewing them in this beautiful crowded assemblage of their good qualities. And, indeed, we should do so for this reason, that we may not forgive and love too late, when the beloved beings are already departed hence and are beyond our reach. RICHTER. BOLDNESS. This is well to be weighed, that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences: therefore it is ill in council, good in There would be scarce such a thing in nature as a folio; the works of an age would be contained on a few shelves; not to mention millions of volumes that would be utterly annihilated. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 124. Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. All other arts of perpetuating our ideas continue but a short time. Statues can last but a few still fewer than edifices. Michael Angelo, Fonthousands of years, edifices fewer, and colours tana, and Raphael will hereafter be what Phidias, Vitruvius, and Apelles are at present,-the names of great statuaries, architects, and paint. ers whose works are lost. The several arts are expressed in mouldering materials. Nature sinks under them, and is not able to support the ideas which are impressed upon it. The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 166. No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially, and expressing his meaning. ADDISON: Whig Examiner. Sour enthusiasts affect to stigmatize the finest and most elegant authors, both ancient and modern, as dangerous to religion. ADDISON. He often took a pleasure to appear ignorant, that he might the better turn to ridicule those that valued themselves on their books. ADDISON. For friends, although your lordship be scant, yet I hope you are not altogether destitute; if you be, do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself, applying that which they teach unto the party grieved, and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel. To them, and to God's Holy Spirit directing you in the reading them, I commend your lordship. LORD BACON : To Chief Justice Coke. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness. BARTHOLIN. There are books extant which they must needs allow of as proper evidence; even the mighty volumes of visible nature, and the everlasting tables of right reason. BENTLEY. Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed is the extent, of a virtuous institution. But if education takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite. BURKE: Letter to a Member of the Nat. Assembly, 1791. Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books. CARLYLE. Readers are not aware of the fact, but a fact it is of daily increasing magnitude, and already of terrible importance to readers, that their first grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly, conscientiously select; and to know everywhere that books, like human souls, are actually divided into what we may call "sheep and goats," the latter put inexorably on the left hand of the Judge; and tending, every goat of them, at all moments, whither we know, and much to be avoided, and, if possible, ignored, by all sane creatures! CARLYLE: To S. Austin Allibone, 18th July, 1859. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach if the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self-Culture. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self-Culture. Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in travelling, in the country. CICERO. In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of studious meditation, or scientific research, to the capacity of the people: presenting in the concrete by instances and examples what had been ascertained in the abstract and by the discovery of the law. Now, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of the public, into a supreme and unappealable tribunal of intellectual excellence. COLERIDGE. 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. JEREMY COLLIier. With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid than which to choose: for good books are as scarce as good companions, and, in both instances, all that we can learn from bad ones is, that so much time of all. In the best books great men talk to us, knowledge and takes from him the least time. That short period of a short existence which is rationally employed is that which alone deserves the name of life; and that portion of our life is most rationally employed which is occupied in enlarging our stock of truth and of wisdom. COLTON: Lacon, Preface. Next to acquiring good friends, the best acC. C. COLTON. |