to have a very large or very curious collection of books. You very sensibly wish to have a library for use, rather than ostentation.

Let the first compartment be entitled, " AUCTORES LINGUÆ LATINE ETATIS AUREE." And here place the works of Cicero complete; Plautus, Terence, Corpus Poetarum, Lucretius, Cæsar, Cornelius Nepos, Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius, Varro, Virgil, Horace, Sallust, Livy, Justin, Cato, Columella, Rei Rustici Scriptores, Vitruvius, and Ovid.

As to the editions, as new ones are frequently coming out, consult your very respectable booksellers, Messrs. Egertons, or Robson, or Payne, or White, and they will inform you with judgment and fidelity. Harwood on the Classics, though not without mistakes and improprieties, will be useful to you as a directory; especially with the additional assistance of the most eminent booksellers of London. I do not wish you to be a mere book-collector. Get your information of the best editions as easily and as soon as you can, and acquiesce in them. Your Lordship's business is to read the contents, and not to dwell on title pages and dates. Others may perform that ministerial office, unless, from a love of books, you should take delight in the research, as an innocent amusement of your leisure.

The second compartment is to be marked with the title "ÆTATIS ARGENTEÆ;" and must contain Curtius, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Cornelius Celsus, Dictys Cretensis, Phædrus, Seneca Rhetor, and Seneca Philosophus, Senecæ Tragediæ, Persius, Lucan, Petronius, Manilius and Gratius.

The third compartment includes the authors ÆTATIS ENEÆ, some of whom deserve a better denomination; particularly the excellent Quintilian, Juvenal, Plinius Major, Plinius Minor, Suetonius, Tacitus, Florus,

Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Martialis, and Silius. Italicus.

The fourth compartment is of a still lower character and comprehends the authors ÆTATIS FERREÆ ;' A. Gellius, Apuleius, Tertullianus, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Vegetius et Frontinus, Lactantius Censorinus, Aurelius Victor, Symmachi Epistolæ, Macrobius, Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudianus, Calphurnius et Numerianus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Apicius, Martianus Capella, Julius Fermicus, and Boethius; and conclude with Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores. So much for your Latin classical library. I shall resume the subject of your library in my next letter. I am, &c.

MY LORD,

LETTER XXXII.

In recommending a library, I do not mean to transcribe a bookseller's catalogue. Books are so numerous in all departments, that I might fill volumes in the enumeration of the titles alone. But yours is to be a select library. Your life is to be a life of action, as well as contemplation. You will not crowd your shelves with books, that are valuable only because they are rare or curious. Excellence of composition, and copiousness or authenticity of information, will alone render books valuable in your opinion. The most excellent books are the commonest. Why became they common? Because they were demanded. And why were they demanded? Because they were well written; illuminated with genius, or furnished with treasures of knowledge.

But I proceed to your Greek classical collection. You are not to be a professor of the Greek lan

guage; but as a general and polite scholar, you are to form a just idea of the poets, the orators, the historians, and the philosophers, of that enlightened country. You read Greek with facility; therefore you will not object to admitting the best Greek authors into your library; they will not be strangers to you. Enter therefore Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Pindar, Strabo, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Athenæus, Marcus Antoninus, Longinus, Epictetus, Theocritus, Lucian, and Anacreon. Here will be Greek enough; and probably much more than you will be able, in an active life, to read with attention. But you will read something of all of them, that you may not be ignorant of what the world has so long admired, and that you may derive something from them for the improvement of your own style.

There are many other Greek authors of inferior note, whom you will add to your collection, if you find any occasion for them, or are impelled by a desire of singular eminence in Grecian literature; an ambition which, perhaps, is not to be expected in one who is elevated to high rank, that he may take an active part in legislation, and the government of his country. Your models are not a Barnes, a Bentley, a Toup; but a Chatham. Lord Chatham was an excellent scholar, and, I believe, a good Grecian ; but, then, he read Greek as a statesman and a philosopher, not as a critic or a grammarian. So will you, my Lord, if you follow the advice of your friend.

I am, &c.

LETTER XXXIII.

MY LORD,

EXPECT not that I shall assume the office of dictating to you every book which you are to place in your library. Choose for yourself; go into the booksellers? shops, and make purchases according to your inclination. You will have a great pleasure in exercising your own judgment in selecting your library. You will love your books the better for it, and read them with more avidity. It is a misfortune attending great riches and high rank, that their possessors do not act enough for themselves; but procure the easiest and pleasantest things to be done for them by their dependents, agents, factors, and officious friends. In vain has Providence given them eyes, hands, and common sense; they must see, act and think, by the organs of others. If such be the privilege of noble birth, it should be deprecated as a calamity. The powers of action and of thinking are gifts of nature, superior to any which monarchs have to bestow. Beware of falling into that indolence, to which a facility of obtaining substitutes, in your Lordship's situation, too easily seduces the incautious.

I will not therefore undertake to furnish your English library. Look into the catalogues; frequent the shops; obtain a knowledge of books sufficient for your purpose, by actual inspection. You will have great pleasure in finding a book you want in a catalogue; and will hasten, with all the ardour of an amateur, to purchase it before it is gone. Much literary amusement and knowledge may be acquired

by collecting your own books in person. Arrange them according to your own judgment; and let not your library be furnished, as it is papered or painted, by the yard and without your own interposition.

Maps, charts, chronological tables, globes, telescopes, and all the proper furniture of the library, you will not fail to procure; but you will choose for yourself by actual observation, and by comparison: the very choice is an improving amusement; and you will like the various articles better, and use them more attentively, when they have cost you some time, and some pains in their selection.

Do you not think it a great disgrace to nobility, that certain rich lords (I hope they are few) possess little or no library, never purchase a book, and consider all money thrown away, that is not expended on horses, dogs, wine, and elections? Such men are all body without mind; corpus sine mente, as Horace says. But if such should increase, will not the peerage sink in public esteem; and may not an enlighted people rise with indignation, and demolish the aristocracy? Noblemen are lights upon a hill, they attract universal attention. If their light burns dimly, or emits an evil odour in the socket, there is danger lest it should be extinguished, and the useless beacon levelled with the earth. There are times when the people are ready enough to pay homage to talents and virtue, but they were never less disposed to worship golden calves.

"Nobility (says Agrippa, as quoted by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy) is a sanctuary of knavery and haughtiness, a cloak for wickedness, and the execrable vices of pride, fraud, contempt, boasting, oppression, dissimulation, lust, gluttony, malice, ignorance. and impiety."

God forbid that this representation should be