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!