Читать книгу The Book-Lovers' Anthology - Various - Страница 40

At his beddes head

A twenty bokes, clothed, in black and red,

Of Aristotle and his philosophy,

Than robès rich, or fiddle, or psaltry—

doubtless beat all our modern collectors in his passion for reading.... Dante puts Homer, the great ancient, in his Elysium, upon trust; but a few years afterwards, Homer, the book, made its appearance in Italy, and Petrarch, in a transport, put it upon his bookshelves, where he adored it, like 'the unknown God'. Petrarch ought to be the god of the Bibliomaniacs, for he was a collector and a man of genius, which is an union that does not often happen. He copied out, with his own precious hand, the manuscripts he rescued from time, and then produced others for time to reverence. With his head upon a book he died.—J. H. Leigh Hunt. My Books.

The sweet serenity of books.—H. W. Longfellow.