“Believe me,” says one writer, “it will be sweet to die in the study of the mathematical arts.” I could live and die with such reflections, and find more delight and true contentment of mind in them than you find in all your wealth and amusements, however rich you may be. And Cardano aptly supports me: “It is more honourable and glorious to understand these things than to govern provinces, or to be a handsome or wealthy young man.”

All other studies give a similar pleasure to those truly devoted to them: “such sweetness,” one writer holds, “that once someone has tasted them, as though enchanted by Circe’s cups, he can never be torn away.” The same sweetness bewitches a student like Circe’s cup, so that he cannot stop. The many laborious hours, days, and nights spent on the vast treatises they write bear witness to that same contentment.

Julius Caesar Scaliger was so moved by poetry that he burst into a passionate declaration: he would rather have written twelve verses in Lucan, or a certain ode of Horace, than be emperor of Germany.

Nicholas Gerbelius, that good old man, was so transported by a few Greek authors restored to the light, and by the hope and desire of enjoying the rest, that he immediately exclaimed, “We shall be richer than all the Arabs and Indians.” We shall be richer than all the Arabian or Indian princes: so highly did he prize them, as things of incomparable worth and value.

Seneca prefers Zeno and Chrysippus, two doting Stoics—he was so enamoured of their works—to any prince or army commander. And Orontius the mathematician so admires Archimedes that he calls him “divine and greater than a human being”: a little god, more than a man. So he well might, as far as I can see, if fame or worth is the measure.

Pindar of Thebes is as renowned for his poems as his fellow citizens Epaminondas, Pelopidas, Hercules, or Bacchus are for their warlike deeds. “And if you consider fame, no fewer people remember Aristotle than Alexander,” as Cardano observes. Aristotle is better known than Alexander: we have only an account of Alexander’s deeds, but Aristotle “lives entire in his writings”—he is wholly present in his works. Yet I do not insist on this. Delight is what I am aiming at: such great pleasure, such sweet contentment lies in study.

When King James visited our University of Oxford in 1605, and, among its other buildings, went to see that famous library restored by Sir Thomas Bodley, he imitated Alexander and, on leaving, burst into this noble declaration: “If I were not a king, I would be a university man. And if I had to be a prisoner, if I could have my wish, I would ask for no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors,” and with “dead teachers.”

So sweet is the pleasure of study that the more learning people possess, the more they desire to learn—like someone with dropsy, who grows thirstier the more he drinks. The latest day is “the pupil of the one before.” Learning is harsh at first: “bitter roots,” but “sweet fruits,” according to Isocrates—pleasant in the end. The longer they live, the more they fall in love with the Muses.

Heinsius, keeper of the library at Leiden in Holland, was shut up in it all year long. What you might think would have bred disgust only increased his delight. “No sooner,” he says, “do I enter the library than I bolt the door behind me, shutting out lust, ambition, greed, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance—and Melancholy herself. In the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with such an elevated spirit and such sweet contentment that I pity all our great and wealthy people who do not know this happiness.”

Meanwhile, despite what I have said, I know how barbarously and meanly most of our less cultivated gentry regard libraries and books: how they neglect and despise so great a treasure, so priceless a benefit, as Aesop’s cock did the jewel he found in the dungheap—all through error, ignorance, and lack of education.

It is astonishing, too, to see how much they squander on needless expenses. “In how many ways,” says Erasmus, “does the money of the great disappear! How much is consumed by gambling, prostitutes, drinking parties, unnecessary journeys, displays of splendour, wars deliberately sought, ambition, the flatterer, the fool, the player,” and so on! What sums go on hawks, hounds, lawsuits, vain buildings, gluttony, drinking, sports, plays, pastimes, and the rest!

If someone well disposed towards the Muses were to ask some of them for financial support towards maintaining or enlarging such a work—a college, lectureship, library, or anything else that might advance learning—they are so unwilling, so opposed, that they would rather see the institutions already built at such expense and with such care utterly ruined, demolished, or put to other uses. Many of them resent and grudge the gifts and revenues devoted to such purposes.

It would therefore be in vain, as Erasmus aptly observes, “to demand such a service either from these men or from merchants who have devoted themselves to Mammon—perhaps an unreasonable demand.” To solicit or ask anything for this purpose from men so likely damned to riches! For my part, I pity them: “I gladly bid them remain fools.” Let them go as they are, in the catalogue of ignoramuses.

How deeply, on the other hand, are all of us scholars indebted to those munificent Ptolemies, generous Maecenases, heroic patrons, and divine spirits—“who have provided this leisure for us; for he will always be a god to me”—who have furnished us with so many well-stocked libraries, both in the public academies of most cities and in our individual colleges?