I poured out whatever came into my mind, out of a confused company of notes, and writ with as small deliberation as I do ordinarily speak, without all affectation of big words, fustian phrases, jingling terms, tropes, strong lines, that like Acestes’ arrows caught fire as they flew, strains of wit, brave heats, elogies, hyperbolical exornations, elegancies, etc. which many so much affect.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

His face was certainly overcast with anxiety, but his soul was calm and resolute. Having lit his fire, he placed his candle on the table, and, leaning back for a moment in his chair, while the flickering increasing light of his crackling fire and candle revealed to him, with a sense of snugness, his shelves crammed with books, and the windows covered with an ample crimson curtain, effectually excluding the chill morning air — he reflected with a heavy sigh upon the precarious tenure by which he held the little comforts that were left to him. Oh! — thought he — if heaven were but to relieve me from the frightful pressure of liability under which i am bound to the earth, what labor, what privation would I repine at! What gladness would not spring up in my heart!

For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world on the border between terra incognita and Hades. They were dominated by the library, by its promises and by its prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets.