One Homer was enough to blazon forth In a full lofty style Ulysses' praise, Caesar had Lucan to enrol his worth Unto the memory of endless days. Of thy deeds, Bodley, from thine own pure spring A thousand Homers and sweet Lucans sing. One volume was a monument to bound The large extent of their deserving pains, In learning's commonwealth was never found So large a decade to express thy strains, Which who desires to character aright, Must read more books than they had lines to write. Yet give this little river leave to run, Into the boundless ocean of thy fame; Had they first ended I had not begun, Sith each is a Protogenes to frame So curiously the picture of thy worth That when all's done, art wants to set it forth. PETER PRIDEAUX (Exeter College, 1613). TO BE CHAINED WITH GOOD AUTHORS King James, 1605, when he came to see our University of Oxford, and amongst other edifices now went to view that famous library, renewed by Sir Thomas Bodley in imitation of Alexander at his departure, brake out into that noble speech, 'If I were not a king, I would be a University man: and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors, _et mortuis magistris_.' So sweet is the delight of study, the more learning they have (as he that hath a dropsy, the more he drinks the thirstier he is) the more they covet to learn, and the last day is _prioris discipulus_; harsh at first learning is, _radices amarae_, but _fructus dulces_, according to that of Isocrates, pleasant at last; the longer they live, the more they are enamoured with the Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden, in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long; and that which to thy thinking should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. 'I no sooner (saith he) come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignorance, and Melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness.' I am not ignorant in the meantime (notwithstanding this which I have said) how barbarously and basely, for the most part, our ruder gentry esteem of libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so inestimable a benefit, as Aesop's cock did the jewel he found in the dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education.--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._ AN ODE ADDRESSED TO MR. JOHN ROUSE LIBRARIAN, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD On a lost volume of my poems, which he desired me to replace, that he might add them to my other works deposited in the library.