Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/102

 86 hardly know we are taking them. But this is not the spirit in which we pursue other pleasures. We do not make an earnest effort to enjoy our friends by admitting one for fifteen minutes' conversation every morning. If we like a thing at all, we are apt to like a good deal of it; and if we are working con amore, we are wont to work very hard. To turn to books, as Jeremy Collier counsels us, when we are weary alike of solitude and companionship, to value them, as he did, because they help us to forget "the crossness of men and things," is to pay a sincere, but not an ardent, tribute to their worth. Even the Bishop of Durham praised his library, which he truly loved, because it soothed his unquiet soul. The friendly volumes forbore, as he gratefully noted, either to chide his errors or to mock at his ignorance; and there were contemporaries—like Petrarch—who affirmed that, for so ardent a bibliophile, the good Bishop had no great store of learning. His words echo pleasantly through the centuries, breathing the secret of quiet hours stolen from stormy times; and we repeat them, wondering less at their eloquence