"
"My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the
circulation of which you speak, you would long ere this have been no
more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in
years: very few of your contemporaries can be at present in existence;
and those few owe their longevity to being immured like yourself in
old libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems,
you might more properly and gratefully have compared to those
infirmaries attached to religious establishments, for the benefit of
the old and decrepit, and where, by quiet fostering and no employment,
they often endure to an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk
of your contemporaries as if in circulation- where do we meet with
their works? what do we hear of Robert Groteste, of Lincoln? No one
could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He is said to have
written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, at it were, a pyramid of
books to perpetuate his name: but, alas! the pyramid has long since
fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries,
where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian. What do
we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian, antiquary, philosopher,
theologian, and poet? He declined two bishoprics, that he might shut
himself up and write for posterity; but posterity never inquires after
his labors.
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