Just the other day I was musing on the question, "What is the minimum number
of books needed for a basic library." I figured about ten thousand, which
would fulfill the two basic requirements of a library: 1) whenever you read
one of the books in it, you would be reminded that there are other books
in it of related interest, and 2) whenever you rummaged around it in you
would come across interesting books which you had forgotten you had. I'm
only at about fifteen per cent of that, though, and unfortunately all the
book cases I can fit into the premises are full. The obvious solution is to
buy a bigger house.
P.S. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading
that Donne and Marvell, among many other notable poets, never published a
line of verse in their lives. (I'm not sure if this applies to their Latin
verses though -- were things like that also circulated mostly in manuscript?)
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