other, You take the dog, and I'll take the book," as though the two were
comparable in value. Poor, primitive Judah the Pious! We wiser moderns
should never dream of making the comparison between a dog and a book, but
for the opposite reason. Judah shrank from equalling a book to a dog, but
we know better than to undervalue a dog so far as to compare it with a
book. The kennel costs more than the bookcase, and love of dogs is a higher
solace than love of books. To those who think thus, what more convincing
condemnation of books could be formulated than the phrase coined by Gilbert
de Porre in praise of his library, "It is a garden of immortal fruits,
without dog or dragon."

I meant to part with Richard of Bury, but I must ask permission to revert
to him. Some of the delight he felt in books arose from his preference of
reading to oral intercourse. "The truth in speech perishes with the sound:
it is patent to the ear only and eludes the sight: begins and perishes as
it were in a breath." Personally I share this view, and I believe firmly
that the written word brings more pleasure than the spoken word.

Plato held the opposite view. He would have agreed with the advice given by
Chesterfield to his son, "Lay aside the best book when you can go into the
best company--depend upon it you change for the better." Plato did, indeed,
characterize books as "immortal sons deifying their sires." But, on the
opposite side, he has that memorable passage, part of which I now quote,
from the same source that has supplied several others of my quotations, Mr.
Alexander Ireland's "Book-Lover's Enchiridion." "Writing," says Plato, "has
this terrible disadvantage, which puts it on the same footing with
painting. The artist's productions stand before you, as if they were alive:
but if you ask them anything, they keep a solemn silence. Just so with
written discourse: you would fancy it full of the thoughts it speaks: but
if you ask it something that you want to know about what is said, it looks