The learned men of past centuries have left us an example of this treatment of authors, in those gratulatory verses with which they were wont to hail every considerable literary or scientific performance. They knew human nature well. They knew that the author, when he quenches the lamp over which he has grown haggard and pale, and steps from his cell into daylight and the chill outside air, longs, longs unutterably, for kind words, and the cheering fellowship of kindred souls; and with instinctive grace they chose the poetical form of expression, simply because this alone gives full license to the lips of friendship. This old folio which stands by us is not precious only because it contains the quaint wisdom and manifold experience of Ambroise Paré, mingled with his credulous gossip, and again sweetened by his simple reverence; not precious alone because it contains the noblest words ever uttered by one of his profession,--_Ie le pensay et Dieu le guarit_; but also because PIERRE RONSARD, the "Poet of France," has left his deathless name thrice inscribed in its earlier pages at the foot of tributes to its author. And here in the next century comes Schenck of Grafenberg, staggering under his monstrous volume of "Casus Rariores,"--ready to fall fainting by the wayside, when lo! the shining ones meet him too, and lift him and lighten him with the utterance of these _fifty-one_ distinct poems which we see hung up on so many votive tablets at the entrance of this miniature Babel of Science. Even so late as the last century the genial custom survived; for our worthy Stalpart van der Wiel, whose little pair of volumes was published in 1727, can boast of twenty-two pages of well-ordered commendatory verse, much of it in his native Dutch,--a little of which goes a good way with all except Batavian readers.