Page:The Duties and Qualifications of a Librarian (1780).djvu/39



O receive a public testimony of esteem from an assembly of illustrious personages, whose merit places them above eulogium, has always appeared to me the highest and most glorious of distinctions. On learning that your suffrages had designated me as the guardian of your library, I experienced some difficulty, I must confess, in subduing a slight feeling of presumption; but reflection soon gave me to understand, that what you desired by this circumstance to honour and reward in me was