'Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead. Do I want to speak to Cicero?—I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?—I write down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up Aristophanes.... But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming to vie with these "spirits elect": to say to them, "Make way—I too claim place with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after the death that consumes my dust."'—E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton. The Caxtons.
BOOKS IN A NEW LIGHT
I should explain that I cannot write unless I have a sloping desk, and the reading-room of the British Museum, where alone I can compose freely, is unprovided with sloping desks. Like every other organism, if I cannot get exactly what I want, I make shift with the next thing to it; true, there are no desks in the reading-room, but, as I once heard a visitor from the country say, 'it contains a large number of very interesting works.' I know it was not right, and hope the Museum authorities will not be severe upon me if any one of them reads this confession; but I wanted a desk, and set myself to consider which of the many very interesting works which a grateful nation places at the disposal of its would-be authors was best suited for my purpose.
For mere reading I suppose one book is pretty much as good as another: but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter. It must be neither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough to make a substantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not to yield or give; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards and forwards; and it must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there need be no stooping or reaching too high.... For weeks I made experiments upon sundry poetical and philosophical works, whose names I have forgotten, but could not succeed in finding my ideal desk, until at length, more by luck than cunning, I happened to light upon Frost's 'Lives of Eminent Christians', which I had no sooner tried than I discovered it to be the very perfection and ne plus ultra of everything that a book should be.... On finding myself asked for a contribution to the Universal Review, I went, as I have explained, to the Museum, and presently repaired to bookcase No. 2008 to get my favourite volume. Alas! it was in the room no longer. It was not in use, for its place was filled up already; besides, no one ever used it but myself.... Till I have found a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how to find even a tolerable one. I should try a volume of Migne's Complete Course of Patrology, but I do not like books in more than one volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never can remember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede in Giles's Anglican Fathers are not open to this objection, and I have reserved them for favourable consideration. Mather's Magnalia might do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's Corpus Ignatianum might also do if it were not too thin. I do not like taking Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels, as it is just possible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuine or not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book. Baxter's Church History of England, Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church, and Cardwell's Documentary Annals, though none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I think Arvine's Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote is perhaps the one book in the room which comes within measurable distance of Frost.... Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether, and this I should be sorry to do.—S. Butler. Essays on Life, Art, and Science.
ON THE SIGHT OF A GREAT LIBRARY
What a world of wit is here packed up together! I know not, whether this sight doth more dismay, or comfort me: it dismays me, to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me, to think that this variety yields so good helps, to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon: 'There is no end of making many books.' This sight verifies it. There is no end: it were pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul; the agitation whereof cannot but, through time and experience, work out many hidden truths: to suppress these, would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds like unto so many candles should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberation are most accurate: these we vent into our papers. What a happiness is it, that, without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts! that I can, at pleasure, summon whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgements, in all points of question, which I propose! Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn somewhat. It is a wantonness, to complain of choice. No law binds us to read all: but the more we can take in and digest, the better-liking must the mind needs be. Blessed be God, that set up so many clear lamps in his Church: now, none, but the wilfully blind, can plead darkness. And blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers; and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others.—Joseph Hall. Occasional Meditations.
REFLECTIONS IN A LIBRARY
There are more ways to derive instruction from books than the direct and chief one of applying the attention to what they contain. Things connected with them, by natural or casual association, will sometimes suggest themselves to a reflective and imaginative reader, and divert him into secondary trains of ideas. In these, the mind may, indeed, float along in perfect indolence and acquire no good; but a serious disposition might regulate them to a profitable result....
Even in the most cursory notice of them, when the attention is engaged by no one in particular, ideas may be started of a tendency not wholly foreign to instruction. A reflective person, in his library, in some hour of intermittent application, when the mind is surrendered to vagrant musing, may glance along the ranges of volumes with a slight recognition of the authors, in long miscellaneous array of ancients and moderns. And that musing may become shaped into ideas like these:—What a number of our busy race have deemed themselves capable of informing and directing the rest of mankind! What a vast amount is collected here of the results of the most strenuous and protracted exertions of so many minds! What were in each of these claimants that the world should think as they did, the most prevailing motives? How many of them sincerely loved truth, honestly sought it, and faithfully, to the best of their knowledge, declared it? What might be the circumstances and influences which determined in the case of that one author, and the next, and the next again, their own modes of opinion?