. . . . . . . .
And in this boke were writen fables
That clerkes hadde, in olde tyme,
And other poets, put in ryme...."[1]
[1] Book of the Duchesse, 44.
So he found solace and delight, as countless thousands
have done, in his Ovid. The world of books and of
reading is apt to seem stuffy, the favoured home of the
moody spirit, a lair to which a dirty and ragged Magliabechi
retreats, a palace where a Beckford gloats solitary
over his treasures--a world whence we often desire to
escape, since we know we can return to it when we will.
For if good books shelter us from the realities of life, life
itself refreshes the student like cool rain upon the fevered
brow. Chaucer was the bright spirit who let his books fill
their proper place in his life. In books, he says--
"I me delyte,
And to hem give I feyth and ful credence,
And in myn heart have hem in reverence
So hertely that ther is game noon
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon."
Yet books are something much less than life: there is the
open air,--the meadows bright with flowers,--the melody
of birds,--
".
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