I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.--A. SMITH. _Dreamthorp._ BOOKS AND FRIENDS One drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true friend;-- So standeth the market, where scarce is ever costly: Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore, A ripe apple would ransom kings before a shining stone: And so, were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend, To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take. M. F. TUPPER. _Proverbial Philosophy._ A blessed companion is a book,--a book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend.--D. JERROLD. _Books._ May I a small house and large garden have! And a few friends, and many books, both true. A. COWLEY. _The Wish._ THE DESIRABLE TABERNACLE O celestial gift of divine liberality, descending from the Father of light to raise up the rational soul even to heaven!... Undoubtedly, indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the Most High, the Light of light, the Book of Life, hath established thee. Here then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those who knock thou openest quickly. In books cherubim expand their wings, that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the sea. In them the most high incomprehensible God Himself is contained and worshipped.... Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.--R. DE BURY. _Philobiblon._ MAN'S PREROGATIVE Books are a part of man's prerogative, In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold, That we to them our solitude may give, And make time present travel that of old. Our life fame pieceth longer at the end, And books it farther backward do extend. SIR T. OVERBURY. _The Wife._ TO HIS BOOKS