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Memoirs of Libraries: Part the first. History of libraries.
Memoirs of Libraries Part the first History of libraries Author:Edward Edwards Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Book i. of the hopes and fears, the obstacles and encourage- Uhaptrr I. introductor), mcnts, which by turns chilled or stimulated the exertions of these wo... more »rkers for posterity; not a few of whom must occasionally have braced their relaxing energies with the conviction that the result of their labours would be living and working, when they themselves had long slept with the dead. To very few of any generation can it be given to write immortal books. Such books will live, be the care taken about Libraries great or small. But. though the immortality of books cannot (since the invention of printing) depend on the pains taken to form Libraries, yet the best fruits of that immortality may in this way be widely diffused; and written words be sown broadcast throughout the world, to become (in a different sense from that of the old Cadmean fable) the "dragon's teeth" which everywhere shall spring up "armed men," fighting for truth and right, and assured of ultimate victory. And in that diffusion very humble men may play a great part. The future historian of Libraries will have incidents to relate, some of which are quite, as strange as any that occur in the life-battles of statesmen, or in the wanderings of travellers. Chance has not infrequently helped to furnish these storehouses of the intellect almost as efficient!v as world-wide research. Fire and flood, cru- t/ sades and sieges, foreign invasion and domestic revolution, would all figure in the tale,—sometimes as the eau se of irreparable losses, at others as bringing to light long-buried treasures. Nor would it be the least interesting portion of the narrator's task to record some of the many ambitious literary projects known to have beenfirst conceived within those book-lined walls; in certain oo i. P , l . . - . . ...« less