Alonso of Aragon was wont to say of himself that he was a great Necromancer, for that he used to ask counsel of the dead: meaning Books.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Apophthegmes._ BOOKS FOR MAGIC Resolve you, doctors, _Bacon_ can by books Make storming _Boreas_ thunder from his cave, And dim fair _Luna_ to a dark Eclipse. The great arch-ruler, potentate of hell, Trembles, when _Bacon_ bids him, or his fiends, Bow to the force of his Pentageron. What art can work, the frolic friar knows, And therefore will I turn my Magic books, And strain out Necromancy to the deep. I have contrived and framed a head of brass (I made _Belcephon_ hammer out the stuff), And that by art shall read Philosophy: And I will strengthen _England_ by my skill, That if ten _Caesars_ lived and reigned in _Rome_, With all the legions _Europe_ doth contain, They should not touch a grasse of English ground: The work that _Ninus_ reared at _Babylon_, The brazen walls framed by _Semiramis_, Carved out like to the portal of the sun, Shall not be such as rings the _English_ strand From _Dover_ to the market place of _Rye_. R. GREENE. _The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay._ THE SECRET OF STRENGTH 'Tis a custom with him I' the afternoon to sleep: there thou may'st brain him, Having first seized his books; or with a log Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember First to possess his books; for without them He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command: they all do hate him As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. W. SHAKESPEARE. _The Tempest._ RED LETTERS AND CONJURING SMITH. The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and cast accompt. CADE. O monstrous! SMITH. We took him setting of boys' copies. CADE. Here's a villain! SMITH. Has a book in his pocket with red letters in't. CADE. Nay, then, he is a conjurer. W. SHAKESPEARE. _Second Part of King Henry the Sixth._ MERLIN'S BOOK _You_ read the book, my pretty Vivien! O aye, it is but twenty pages long, But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot, The text no larger than the limbs of fleas; And every square of text an awful charm, Writ in a language that has long gone by. So long, that mountains have arisen since With cities on their flanks--_you_ read the book! And every margin scribbled, crost, and crammed With comment, densest condensation, hard To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights Of my long life have made it easy to me. And none can read the text, not even I; And none can read the comment but myself; And in the comment did I find the charm.