The truth was, that the human race had now reached a stage of
progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former
ages had ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest
absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their
poor achievements in the literary line. Accordingly a thorough and
searching investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, hawkers'
stands, public and private libraries, and even the little book-shelf
by the country fireside, and had brought the world's entire mass of
printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already mountain
bulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios, containing the
labors of lexicographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, were
flung in, and, falling among the embers with a leaden thump,
smouldered away to ashes like rotten wood. The small, richly gilt
French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes of Voltaire
among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles and little
jets of flame; while the current literature of the same nation
burned red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the visages of
the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of party-colored
fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of
brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel,
generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton's
works, in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening
into a coal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other
material of the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such
marvellous splendor that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's
meridian glory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were
flung upon him did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from
beneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still
blazing as fervidly as ever.