"I was in my library," he says, "making room upon the shelves for some books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station others which were of less value, and in worn dress, when Sir Thomas entered.
"'You are employed,' said he, 'to your heart's content. Why, Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what have you to covet or desire more?'
"Montesinos.—'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 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 bears the bald, and speeds the all-too swift."
But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or anticipation, is to me always a melancholy thing.'
"Sir Thomas More.—'How many such dispersions must have taken place to have made it possible that these books should be thus brought together here among the Cumberland mountains!'
"Montesinos.—'Many, indeed; and in many instances, most disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family or convent libraries, during the Revolution. Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent. This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was colored, came from the Carmelite nunnery at Bruges. That copy of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at Louvain; that Imago Primi Sæculi Societatis, from their college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's library; here others from the Lamoignon one. And here are two volumes of a work—Chronicles of the barefooted Franciscans in the Philippines, China, Japan, etc.—for which I am indebted to my friend Sir Robert Harry Inglis; a work, not more rare than valuable for its contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is to be feared forever, from the volume which should stand between these. They were printed in a convent at Manilla, and brought from thence when that city was taken by Sir William Draper. They have given me, perhaps, as many pleasurable hours, passed in acquiring information which I could not otherwise have obtained, as Sir William spent years of anxiety and vexation in vainly soliciting the reward of his conquest.'