Love of Books - Cicero

No wonder Cicero says that he would part with all he was worth so he might live and die among his books ... No wonder Petrarch was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his desk. Buckle's last words, "My poor book!" tell a passion that forgot death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tears stole down the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open or read, is altogether pathetic.-

Cunningham Geikie, D.D.