Since honour from the honourer proceeds, How well do they deserve, that memorize And leave in books for all posterities The names of worthies and their virtuous deeds; When all their glory else, like water-weeds Without their element, presèntly dies, And all their greatness quite forgotten lies, And when and how they flourished no man heeds! How poor remembrances are statues, tombs, And other monuments that men erect To princes, which remain in closèd rooms, Where but a few behold them, in respect Of books, that to the universal eye Show how they lived; the other where they lie! S. DANIEL. ENDURING MONUMENTS We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. So that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._ THE STRANGE QUALITY OF BOOKS