Rare things and precious, as manuscripts were before the invention
of typography, are well preserved, but when the printing press was
invented and paper books were multiplied in the earth; when libraries
increased and readers were many, then familiarity bred contempt; books
were packed in out-of-the-way places and neglected, and the oft-quoted,
though seldom seen, bookworm became an acknowledged tenant of the library,
and the mortal enemy of the bibliophile.
Anathemas have been hurled against this pest in nearly every
European language, old and new, and classical scholars of bye-gone
centuries have thrown their spondees and dactyls at him.
Pierre Petit, in 1683, devoted a long Latin poem to his
dis-praise, and Parnell's charming Ode is well known.
Hear the poet lament:--
"Pene tu mihi passerem Catulli,
Pene tu mihi Lesbiam abstulisti."
and then--
"Quid dicam innumeros bene eruditos
Quorum tu monumenta tu labores
Isti pessimo ventre devorasti?"
while Petit, who was evidently moved by strong personal feelings against
the "invisum pecus," as he calls him, addresses his little enemy as
"Bestia audax" and "Pestis chartarum."
But, as a portrait commonly precedes a biography, the curious reader may
wish to be told what this "Bestia audax," who so greatly ruffles the
tempers of our eclectics, is like.
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