THE STRANGE QUALITY OF BOOKS
Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble; and though their habitations and walls, by uncivil hands, be many times overthrown; and they themselves, by foreign force, be turned prisoners, yet do they often, as their authors, keep their giver's names; seeming rather to change places and masters than to suffer a full ruin and total wreck. So, many of the books of Constantinople changed Greece for France and Italy; and in our time, that famous Library in the Palatinate changed Heidelberg for the Vatican. And this I think no small duty, nor meaner gift and retribution, which I render back again to my benefactor's honest fame, being a greater matter than riches; riches being momentany and evanishing, scarce possessed by the third heir; fame immortal, and almost everlasting; by fame riches is often acquired, seldom fame by riches; except when it is their good hap to fall in the possession of some generous-minded man. And though a philosopher said of famous men, disdainfully, that they died two deaths, one in their bodies, another, long after, in their names, he must confess, that where other men live but one life, famous men live two.—W. Drummond. Bibliotheca Edinburgena Lectori.