Wordsworth and Dickens disliked each other cordially. Having been asked his opinion of the young novelist, Wordsworth answered: "Why, I'm not much given to turn critic on people I meet; but, as you ask me, I will cordially avow that I thought him a very talkative young person--but I dare say he may be very clever. Mind, I don't want to say a word against him, for I have never read a line he has written." The same inquirer subsequently asked Dickens how he liked Wordsworth. "Like him!" roared Dickens, "not at all; he is a dreadful Old Ass!" XIX OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN Where one has the time and the money to devote to the collection of missals and illuminated books, the avocation must be a very delightful one. I never look upon a missal or upon a bit of antique illumination that I do not invest that object with a certain poetic romance, and I picture to myself long lines of monkish men bending over their tasks, and applying themselves with pious enthusiasm thereto. We should not flatter ourselves that the enjoyment of the delights of bibliomania was reserved to one time and generation; a greater than any of us lived many centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way, gathering together treasures from every quarter, and diffusing every where a veneration and love for books. Richard de Bury was the king, if not the father, of bibliomaniacs; his immortal work reveals to us that long before the invention of printing men were tormented and enraptured by those very same desires, envies, jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms, and passions which possess and control bibliomaniacs at the present time. That vanity was sometimes the controlling passion with the early collectors is evidenced in a passage in Barclay's satire, "The Ship of Fools"; there are the stanzas which apply so neatly to certain people I know that sometimes I actually suspect that Barclay's prophetic eye must have had these nineteenth-century charlatans in view. But yet I have them in great reverence And honor, saving them from filth and ordure By often brushing and much diligence. Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure, I keep them sure, fearing lest they should be lost, For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast. But if it fortune that any learned man Within my house fall to disputation, I draw the curtains to show my books them, That they of my cunning should make probation; I love not to fall into altercation, And while they come, my books I turn and wind, For all is in them, and nothing in my mind.