t is not fitting, Conscript Fathers, that the studies of most
learned men, Fellows, should be interrupted in this way. Moreover, they
also have a library, that to them also it may be possible to say that
wheels should be kept afar off: they have keys, bolts, bars, a gate, a
porter: they will exclude, reject, expectorate them. Which act I blame
in such a way that I confess and acknowledge that it will be done with
the greatest legality.

IV. If the Founder of the Library, if Sir Thomas Bodley himself, I say,
should stand forth from the Elysian fields, it is not necessary that I
should remind you with what ancient severity he would inveigh against
this new power, against the Bibliothecarius, nay rather, against the
Curators themselves: for you can calculate (it) in (your) minds. He
would say to them, "Did I give you authority over books, that you should
use it against bicycles? did I place you in an upper part of a most
convenient building, that you should also rule the lower? did I endow you
with huge wealth and an enormousness of stipend, that you should
therefore the more exercise a kingly dominion over the common utility,
and the necks, heads, lives, fortunes of the poorer citizens?" To which
interrogation and most stern reproach I do not think they, although they
are of a remarkable audacity, could answer anything: for neither is there
(anything) that can be replied.

V. Although I wish to say more things, I am deterred by the will of the
editor of that most known Magazine (than which paper I do not think that
anything is more conjoined with the safety of the republic): nor am I not
also prevented by tears and weeping itself. Conscript Fathers, if there
is anything in you of constancy, if of gravity, if of fortitude, if of
humanity (which that there is I most certainly know), fortify this common
citadel of the good: open the Pig Market, closed by the intolerable
influence of bad men: be unwilling, be unwilling that the seat of the
Muses, the School of Divinity, the most delightful meeting-places of
Boards of Faculties, should be stained by royal power and polluted by
cruelty. Which that it will certainly happen if you do not prevent it by
your votes, I most confidently predict and vaticinate.

THE EIGHTS IN FICTION

I. OLD STYLE

"There's nothing that emphasizes the _amari aliquid_ of life like one's
tobacconist," mused Fane Trevyllyan as he flung a box of eighteenpenny
Emeticos into the fire