A student, at his book so placed That wealth he might have won, From book to wife did flit in haste, From wealth to woe to run. Now, who hath played a feater cast, Since juggling first begun? In _knitting_ of himself so _fast_, Himself he hath _undone_. SIR T. MORE (?) MARRIAGE AND BOOKS I understand with a deep sense of sorrow of the indisposition of your Son: I fear he hath too much _mind_ for his _body_, and that superabounds with fancy, which brings him to these fits of distemper, proceeding from the black humour of melancholy: moreover, I have observed that he is too much given to his study and self-society, 'specially to converse with dead men, I mean Books: you know anything in excess is naught. Now, sir, were I worthy to give you advice, I could wish he were well married, and it may wean him from that bookish and thoughtful humour.--J. HOWELL. _Familiar Letters._ MARRIAGE! MY YEARS ARE YOUNG Marriage, uncle! alas! my years are young, And fitter is my study and my books Than wanton dalliance with a paramour. W. SHAKESPEARE. _First Part of King Henry the Sixth._ LOVE AND THE LIBRARY I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.--G. GORDON, LORD BYRON. A COUNTER ATTRACTION So have I known a hopeful youth Sit down in quest of lore and truth, With tomes sufficient to confound him, Like Tohu Bohu, heaped around him,-- Mamurra stuck to Theophrastus, And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus. When lo! while all that's learned and wise Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes, And through the window of his study Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy, With eyes, as brightly turned upon him as The angel's were on Hieronymus. Quick fly the folios, widely scattered, Old Homer's laurelled brow is battered, And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in The reverend eye of St. Augustin. Raptured he quits each dozing sage, Oh woman, for thy lovelier page: Sweet book!--unlike the books of art,-- Whose errors are thy fairest part: In whom the dear errata column Is the best page in all the volume! T. MOORE. _The Devil among the Scholars._ TO COSMELIA Some Verses, written in September, 1676, on presenting a Book. Go, humble gift, go to that matchless saint, Of whom thou only wast a copy meant: And all, that's read in thee, more richly find Comprised in the fair volume of her mind; That living system, where are fully writ All those high morals, which in books we meet: Easy, as in soft air, there writ they are, Yet firm, as if in brass they graven were. J. OLDHAM. ON A PRAYER BOOK SENT TO MRS. M. R.