I Know And Love The Good, Yet,

Books Come At My Call And Return When I Desire Them; They Are Never Out Of Humor And They Answer All My Questions With Readiness. Some Present In Review Before Me The Events Of Past Ages; Others Reveal To Me The Secrets Of Nature. These Teach Me How To Live, And Those How To Die; These Dispel My Melancholy By Their Mirth, And Amuse Me By Their Sallies Of Wit. Some There Are Who Prepare My Soul To Suffer Everything, To Desire Nothing, And To Become Thoroughly Acquainted With Itself. In A Word, They Open The Door To All The Arts And Sciences.

Each Famous Author Of Antiquity Whom I Recover Places A New Offence And Another Cause Of Dishonor To The Charge Of Earlier Generations, Who, Not Satisfied With Their Own Disgraceful Barrenness, Permitted The Fruit Of Other Minds, And The Writings That Their Ancestors Had Produced By Toil And Application, To Perish Through Insufferable Neglect. Although They Had Nothing Of Their Own To Hand Down To Those Who Were To Come After, They Robbed Posterity Of Its Ancestral Heritage.

I Have Friends Whose Society Is Delightful To Me; They Are Persons Of All Countries And Of All Ages; Distinguished In War, In Council, And In Letters; Easy To Live With, Always At My Command.

Books Never Pall On Me. They Discourse With Us, They Take Counsel With Us, And Are United To Us By A Certain Living Chatty Familiarity. And Not Only Does Each Book Inspire The Sense That It Belongs To Its Readers, But It Also Suggests The Name Of Others, And One Begets The Desire Of The Other.

And Tears Are Heard Within The Harp I Touch.