For the old misers it was pleasant to go down into their bullion vaults and feel that they were rich enough to buy up all the town, with the proud Earl in his mortgaged castle. And to many people there is a peculiar satisfaction in the society of the great and learned; nor can they forget the time when they talked to the great poet, or had a moment's monopoly of Royalty. But--
"That place that doth contain My books, the best companions, is to me A glorious court, where hourly I converse With the old sages and philosophers; And sometimes for variety I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels."
Not only is there the pleasant sense of property,--the rare editions, and the wonderful bargains, and the acquisitions of some memorable self-denial,--but there are grateful memories, and the feeling of a high companionship. When it first arrived, yon volume kept its owner up all night, and its neighbor introduced him to realms more delightful and more strange than if he had taken Dr. Wilkins's lunarian journey. In this biography, as in a magician's mirror, he was awed and startled by foreshadowings of his own career; and, ever since he sat at the feet of yonder sacred sage, he walks through the world with a consciousness, blessed and not vainglorious, that his being contains an element shared by few besides. And even those heretics inside the wires--like caged wolves or bottled vipers--their keeper has come to entertain a certain fondness for them, and whilst he detests the species, he would feel a pang in parting with his own exemplars.
Now that the evening lamp is lit, let us survey the Doctor's library. Like most of its coeval collections, its foundations are laid with massive folios. These stately tomes are the Polyglotts of Antwerp and Paris, the Critici Sacri and Poli Synopsis. The colossal theologians who flank them, are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and Episcopius, Ballarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators,--natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,--Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,--behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the publisher, are the last brochures of Mr. Jeremy Taylor and Mr. Richard Baxter.[J]