A precious treasure had I long possessed,
A little yellow, canvas-covered book,
A slender abstract of the Arabian Tales;
And, from companions in a new abode,
When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine
Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry—
That there were four large volumes, laden all
With kindred matter, 'twas to me, in truth,
A promise scarcely earthly. Instantly,
With one not richer than myself, I made
A covenant that each should lay aside
The moneys he possessed, and hoard up more,
Till our joint savings had amassed enough
To make this book our own. Through several months,
In spite of all temptations, we preserved
Religiously that vow; but firmness failed,
Nor were we ever masters of our wish.
And when thereafter to my father's house
The holidays returned me, there to find
That golden store of books which I had left,
What joy was mine! How often in the course
Of those glad respites, though a soft west wind
Ruffled the waters to the angler's wish,
For a whole day together, have I lain
Down by thy side, O Derwent! murmuring stream,
On the hot stones, and in the glaring sun,
And there have read, devouring as I read,
Defrauding the day's glory, desperate!
Till with a sudden bound of smart reproach,
Such as an idler deals with in his shame,
I to the sport betook myself again.
A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,
And o'er the heart of man: invisibly
It comes, to works of unreproved delight,
And tendency benign, directing those
Who care not, know not, think not what they do.
The tales that charm away the wakeful night
In Araby, romances; legends penned
For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;
Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised
By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun
By the dismantled warrior in old age,
Out of the bowels of those very schemes
In which his youth did first extravagate;
These spread like day, and something in the shape
Of these will live till man shall be no more.
Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,
And they must have their food. Our childhood sits,
Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne
That hath more power than all the elements.
I guess not what this tells of Being past,
Nor what it augurs of the life to come;
But so it is, and, in that dubious hour,
That twilight when we first begin to see
This dawning earth, to recognise, expect,
And, in the long probation that ensues,
The time of trial, ere we learn to live
In reconcilement with our stinted powers;
To endure this state of meagre vassalage,
Unwilling to forgo, confess, submit,
Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows
To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed
And humbled down;—oh! then we feel, we feel,
We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then,
Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then,
Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape
Philosophy will call you: then we feel
With what, and how great might ye are in league,
Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,
An empire, a possession,—ye whom time
And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom
Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay,
Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,
Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.
W. Wordsworth. The Prelude.
OLD-FASHIONED VERSE
In verse alone I ran not wild
When I was hardly more than child,
Contented with the native lay
Of Pope or Prior, Swift or Gay,
Or Goldsmith, or that graver bard
Who led me to the lone churchyard.
Then listened I to Spenser's strain,
Till Chaucer's Canterbury train
Came trooping past, and carried me
In more congenial company.
Soon my soul was hurried o'er
This bright scene: the 'solemn roar'
Of organ, under Milton's hand,
Struck me mute: he bade me stand
Where none other ambled near....
I obeyed, with love and fear.
W. S. Landor.
LEIGH HUNT'S EARLY READING
Cowley says that even when he was 'a very young boy
at school, instead of his running about on holidays, and
playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them
and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with
some one companion, if he could find one of the same temper'.
When I was at school, I had no fields to run into, or I should
certainly have gone there; and I must own to having
played a great deal; but then I drew my sports as much
as possible out of books, playing at Trojan wars, chivalrous
encounters with coal-staves, and even at religious mysteries.
When I was not at these games I was either reading in
a corner, or walking round the cloisters with a book under
one arm and my friend linked with the other, or with my
thoughts. It has since been my fate to realize all the
romantic notions I had of a friend at that time.—J. H.
Leigh Hunt. My Books.
A KINDLY TIE
Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the kindly, the
generous, the pure—the companion of what countless
delightful hours; the purveyor of how much happiness;
the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our
youth! How well I remember the type and the brownish
paper of the old duodecimo Tales of My Landlord!... Oh!
for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those
books again! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with
which we read them; and, it may be, the brains behind
the eyes! It may be the tart was good; but how fresh the
appetite was!... The boy critic loves the story; grown up,
he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly
tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty
nearly for life.—W. M. Thackeray. Roundabout Papers.
CHARLES DICKENS'S EARLY READING
My father had left a small collection of books in a little
room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my
own), and which nobody else in our house ever troubled.
From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine
Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield,
Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out,
a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my
fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and
time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the
Genii—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in
some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it.
It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst
of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read
those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever
have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were
great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite
characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and
Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I
have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless
creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own
idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily
believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages
and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those
shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have
gone about my region of our house, armed with the centrepiece
out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization
of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger
of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at
a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having
his ears boxed with the Latin grammar. I did; but the
Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the
grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.
This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think
of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer
evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting
on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood,
every stone in the church, and every foot of the
churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind,
connected with these books, and stood for some locality
made famous in them.—C. Dickens. David Copperfield.
THE VISIONARY GLEAM
Books have in a great measure lost their power over me;
nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly.
I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is
true,
'Marcian Colonna' is a dainty book;
and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made
me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and
tender images there conjured up, 'come like shadows—so
depart.' The 'tiger-moth's wings', which he has spread
over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy;
the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over
again in his verse, to me 'blushes' almost in vain 'with
blood of queens and kings'. I know how I should have
felt at one time in reading such passages; and that is all.
The sharp luscious flavour, the fine aroma is fled, and
nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is
left.—W. Hazlitt. On Reading Old Books.
READING FOR LOVE'S SAKE
If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rime,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'
W. Shakespeare. Sonnet XXXII.
VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK
I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do
To anger destiny, as she doth us;
How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus,
And how posterity shall know it too;
How thine may out-endure
Sibyl's glory, and obscure
Her who from Pindar could allure,
And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.
Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have passed 'twixt thee and me;
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love's subliming fire invades
Rule and example found;
There the faith of any ground
No schismatic will dare to wound,
That sees how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.
This book, as long-lived as the elements,
Or as the world's form, this all-gravèd tome
In cypher writ, or new-made idiom;
We for Love's clergy only are instruments;
When this book is made thus,
Should again the ravenous
Vandals and the Goths invade us,
Learning were safe; in this our universe,
Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.
Here Love's divines—since all divinity
Is love or wonder—may find all they seek,
Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see;
Or, loth so to amuse
Faith's infirmity, they choose
Something which they may see and use;
For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it.
Here more than in their books may lawyers find,
Both by what titles mistresses are ours,
And how prerogative these states devours,
Transferred from Love himself to womankind;
Who, though from heart and eyes,
They exact great subsidies,
Forsake him who on them relies;
And for the cause, honour or conscience give;
Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative.
Here statesmen—or of them, they which can read—
May of their occupation find the grounds;
Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds,
If to consider what 'tis, one proceed.
In both they do excel,
Who the present govern well,
Whose weakness none doth, or dares, tell;
In this thy book, such will there something see,
As in the Bible some can find out alchemy.
Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee,
As he removes far off, that great heights takes;
How great love is, presence best trial makes,
But absence tries how long this love will be;
To take a latitude
Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed
At their brightest, but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have we,
But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?
J. Donne.
THE BOOK OF THE BRAIN
... From the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain.
LOVE'S PURVEYOR
No greater grief than to remember days
Of joy, when misery is at hand. That kens
Thy learned instructor. Yet so eagerly
If thou art bent to know the primal root,
From whence our love gat being, I will do
As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day,
For our delight we read of Lancelot,
How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wishèd smile so rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed. The book and writer both
Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more.
Dante. Inferno.
THE DOUBLE LESSON
Maiden of Padua, on thy lap
Thus lightly let the volume lie;
And as within some pictured map
Fair isles and waters we descry,
Trace out, with white and gliding finger,
Along the truth-illumined page,
Its golden lines and words that linger
In memory's cell, from youth to age.
The young Preceptor at thy side
Had pupil ne'er before so fair;
And though that scholar be thy guide,
He sits that fellow-learner there.
As every page unfolds its meaning,
As every rustling leaf turns o'er,
He finds, whilst o'er thy studies leaning,
Beauty where all was dull before.
Familiar is the book to him,
A record of heroic deed;
Yet deems he now his eyes were dim,
And thine have taught them first to read.
Now fades in him the scholar's glory;
For he would give the fame he sought,
With thee to read the simplest story,
And learn what sages never taught.
The precious wealth of countless books,
Lies stowed within his grasping mind;
Yet should he not peruse thy looks,
He now were more than Ignorance blind.
From many a language, old, enchanting,
Rare truths to nations he enrolls;
But one old language yet was wanting,
The one you teach him—tis the soul's.
Full long this lesson, Pupil fair!
All pupils else hath he forsook;
He draws still nearer to thy chair,
And bends yet closer o'er the book.
As time flies on, now fast, now fleeter,
More slowly is the page turned o'er;
The lesson seems to both the sweeter,
And more enchanting grows the lore.
The book now yields a tenderer theme;
The Master loses all his art,
The Pupil droops as in a dream,
And both are reading with one heart.
His eyes upraised a moment glisten
With hope, and joy, and fear profound;
While thine, oh, Maiden! do they listen?
They seem to hear his sigh's faint sound.
But hark! what sound indeed breaks through
The silence of that life-long hour!
Melodious tinklings, such as sue
For favour near a lady's bower.
Ah! Maid of Padua, music swelling
In tribute to thy radiant charms,
Now greets thee in thy father's dwelling,
To woo thee from a father's arms.
The suitor comes with song and lute,
Youth, riches, pleasures, round him wait;
Go bid him, Paduan Maid, be mute,
Thy lot is cast, he comes too late!
One lesson given, and one received,
The Book prevails, the Lute's denied;
With love thy inmost heart has heaved,
And thou shalt be a student's bride.
S. Laman Blanchard.
CUPID AND THE BOOK OF POEMS
Cadenus many things had writ:
Vanessa much esteemed his wit,
And called for his Poetic Works:
Meantime the boy in secret lurks;
And, while the book was in her hand,
The urchin from his private stand
Took aim, and shot with all his strength
A dart of such prodigious length,
It pierced the feeble volume through,
And deep transfixed her bosom too.
Some lines, more moving than the rest,
Stuck to the point that pierced her breast,
And, borne directly to her heart,
With pains unknown increased her smart.
J. Swift. Cadenus and Vanessa.
BOOKS AS SPOKESMEN
O! LET my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast.
W. Shakespeare. Sonnet XXIII.
TO HIS BOOK: OF HIS LADY
Happy, ye leaves, when as those lily hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands,
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight.
And happy lines on which, with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,
And read the sorrows of my dying spright,
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book.
And happy rhymes bathed in the sacred brook
Of Helicon, whence she derivèd is,
When ye behold that Angel's blessèd look,
My soul's long-lackèd food, my heaven's bliss.
Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.
E. Spenser. Amoretti.
TO THE LADY LUCY, COUNTESS OF BEDFORD
And this fair course of knowledge whereunto
Your studies, learned Lady, are addressed,
Is the only certain way that you can go
Unto true glory, to true happiness:
All passages on earth besides, are so
Incumbered with such vain disturbances;
As still we lose our rest in seeking it,
Being but deluded with appearances;
And no key had you else that was so fit
To unlock that prison of your sex, as this;
To let you out of weakness, and admit
Your powers into the freedom of that bliss
That sets you there where you may oversee
This rolling world, and view it as it is;
And apprehend how the outsides do agree
With the inward being of the things we deem
And hold in our ill-cast accounts, to be
Of highest value and of best esteem;
Since all the good we have rests in the mind,
By whose proportions only we redeem
Our thoughts from out confusion, and do find
The measure of our selves, and of our powers.
And though 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 judgement lies: and though we cannot find
The certain place of truth, yet do they stay
And entertain us near about the same;
And give the soul the best delight that may
Encheer it most, and most our spirits inflame
To thoughts of glory, and to worthy ends.
S. Daniel.
A BOOK OF FLESH AND BLOOD
There's a lady for my humour!
A pretty book of flesh and blood, and well
Bound up, in a fair letter, too. Would I
Had her, with all the Errata.
First I would marry her, that's a verb material,
Then I would print her with an index
Expurgatorius; a table drawn
Of her court heresies; and when she's read,
Cum privilegio, who dares call her wanton?
J. Shirley. The Cardinal.
WOMEN'S EYES
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
W. Shakespeare. Love's Labour's Lost.
My only books
Were woman's looks,—
And folly's all they've taught me.
[Greek: UPOTHÊKÊ EIS EMAUTON]
Back to thy books! The swift hours spent in vain
Are flown and gone:
Thou hast no charm to lure them, or regain
What loss hath won.
Up from thy sleep! The dream of idle love,
So frail and fair,
Hath vanished, and its golden wings above
Melt in mid air.
Stand not, nor gaze astonied at the skies,
Serenely cold:
They have no answer for thine eager eyes;
Thy tale is told.
Fool, in all folly cradled, swathed from sense,
To trust a toy;
To purchase from pronounced indifference
A shallow joy;
To leave thy studious native heights untrod
For that low soil,
Where momentary blossoms deck the sod;
To pant and toil
In hungry chasings of the painted fly,
That fluttered past—
Back to thy summits, where what cannot die
Survives the blast!
There, throned in solitary calm, forget
Who wrung thy heart:
Long hours and days of silent years may yet
Restore a part
Of that large heritage and realm sublime,
Which, love-elate,
Thou fain would'st barter for the fields that time
Makes desolate.
OF A NEW MARRIED STUDENT THAT PLAYED FAST
AND LOOSE
A student, at his book so placed
That wealth he might have won,
From book to wife did flit in haste,
From wealth to woe to run.
Now, who hath played a feater cast,
Since juggling first begun?
In knitting of himself so fast,
Himself he hath undone.
Sir T. More (?)
MARRIAGE AND BOOKS
I understand with a deep sense of sorrow of the indisposition
of your Son: I fear he hath too much mind for his
body, and that superabounds with fancy, which brings him
to these fits of distemper, proceeding from the black humour
of melancholy: moreover, I have observed that he is too
much given to his study and self-society, 'specially to converse
with dead men, I mean Books: you know anything
in excess is naught. Now, sir, were I worthy to give you
advice, I could wish he were well married, and it may
wean him from that bookish and thoughtful humour.—J.
Howell. Familiar Letters.
MARRIAGE! MY YEARS ARE YOUNG
Marriage, uncle! alas! my years are young,
And fitter is my study and my books
Than wanton dalliance with a paramour.
W. Shakespeare. First Part of King Henry the Sixth.
LOVE AND THE LIBRARY
I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but
this I am sure of, that I am never long even in the society
of her I love without a yearning for the company of my
lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.—G.
Gordon, Lord Byron.
A COUNTER ATTRACTION
So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heaped around him,—
Mamurra stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus.
When lo! while all that's learned and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,
And through the window of his study
Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy,
With eyes, as brightly turned upon him as
The angel's were on Hieronymus.
Quick fly the folios, widely scattered,
Old Homer's laurelled brow is battered,
And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in
The reverend eye of St. Augustin.
Raptured he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman, for thy lovelier page:
Sweet book!—unlike the books of art,—
Whose errors are thy fairest part:
In whom the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume!
T. Moore. The Devil among the Scholars.
TO COSMELIA
Some Verses, written in September, 1676, on presenting a Book.
Go, humble gift, go to that matchless saint,
Of whom thou only wast a copy meant:
And all, that's read in thee, more richly find
Comprised in the fair volume of her mind;
That living system, where are fully writ
All those high morals, which in books we meet:
Easy, as in soft air, there writ they are,
Yet firm, as if in brass they graven were.
ON A PRAYER BOOK SENT TO MRS. M. R.
Lo, here a little volume, but great book!
A nest of new-born sweets,
Whose native fires disdaining
To be thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comely bands,
Fair one, from thy kind hands,
And confidently look
To find the rest
Of a rich binding in your breast!
It is in one choice handful, heaven; and all
Heaven's royal host; encamped thus small
To prove that true, schools use to tell,
A thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is love's great artillery,
Which here contracts itself, and comes to lie
Close couched in your white bosom; and from thence,
As from a snowy fortress of defence,
Against your ghostly foes to take your part,
And fortify the hold of your chaste heart.
It is an armoury of light;
Let constant use but keep it bright,
You'll find it yields
To holy hands and humble hearts
More swords and shields
Than sin hath snares, or hell hath darts.
Only be sure
The hands be pure
That hold these weapons, and the eyes
Those of turtles, chaste and true,
Wakeful, and wise;
Here is a friend shall fight for you;
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part.
ON GEORGE HERBERT'S 'THE TEMPLE' SENT TO
A GENTLEWOMAN
Know you, fair, on what you look?
Divinest love lies in this book:
Expecting fire from your fair eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
When your hands untie these strings,
Think, you've an angel by the wings;
One that gladly would be nigh,
To wait upon each morning sigh;
To flutter in the balmy air
Of your well-perfumed prayer;
These white plumes of his he'll lend you,
Which every day to heaven will send you:
To take acquaintance of each sphere,
And all your smooth-faced kindred there.
And though Herbert's name do owe
These devotions, fairest, know
While I thus lay them on the shrine
Of your white hand, they are mine.
R. Crashaw.
TO HELEN
Written in the first leaf of Keble's Christian Year, a birthday Present.
My Helen, for its golden fraught
Of prayer and praise, of dream and thought,
Where Poesy finds fitting voice
For all who hope, fear, grieve, rejoice,
Long have I loved, and studied long,
The pious minstrel's varied song.
Whence is the volume dearer now?
There gleams a smile upon your brow,
Wherein, methinks, I read how well
You guess the reason, ere I tell,
Which makes to me the single rhymes
More prized, more conned, a hundred times.
Ere vanished quite the dread and doubt
Affection ne'er was born without,
Found we not here a magic key
Opening thy secret soul to me?
Found we not here a mystic sign
Interpreting thy heart to mine?
What sympathies up-springing fast
Through all the future, all the past,
In tenderest links began to bind
Spirit to spirit, mind to mind,
As we, together wandering o'er
The little volume's precious store,
Mused, with alternate smile and tear,
On the high themes awakened here
Of fervent hope, of calm belief,
Of cheering joy, of chastening grief,
The trials borne, the sins forgiven,
The task on earth, the meed in heaven.
My Own! oh surely from above
Was shed that confidence of love,
Which in such happy moments nurst
When soul with soul had converse first,
Now through the snares and storms of life
Blesses the husband and the wife!
W. M. Praed.
SENT WITH POEMS