Books are our Prime Subject

Abstract

“I could not love thee” said the young librarian, apostrophising the volume he was trying to classify, “I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov'd I not Dewey more.” The spirit of Richard Lovelace will, I pray, forgive me for turning upside down those lovely lines of his. The problem which the poet, going to the wars, posed to his Lucasta always seems to me to have been a trifle twisted for the sake of poetic neatness, and I doubt whether Lucasta derived much comfort from it. The real antithesis is not between two different loves, but between love and duty; there is room for tragedy here, but not the rivalry of passion. What Lovelace meant was that the coward would make an unworthy lover. It is an aphorism we can all appreciate in theory, even though most of us would try desperately to have things both ways.

Citation

RAYMOND IRWIN, P. (1960), "Books are our Prime Subject", Library Review, Vol. 17 No. 5, pp. 314-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012319