“I must not let you think ill of Verbeyst. He had sundry books to provide for me, some of which are not easily found; for example, the continuators of Baronius, a set of Surius, and Colgar’s very rare Lives of the Irish Saints, without which I could not review O’Connor’s collection of the Res Hibernicarum Script. Last year, when he had collected these, his wife fell ill and died. Bien des malheurs, he says, he has had since he saw me, and that they had left him in a lethargic state, from which he is only beginning to recover. . . . .
“You must not think ill of
Verbeyst: he has the best stock of books I ever met
with, and at the lowest prices. . . . No, H. T., if you
had bought as many books of Verbeyst as I have, and had
them in your eye (as they are now in mine), and had talked with him as much as
I have done (and in as good French), and had drunk his Rhenish wine and his
beer, which is not the best in the world because
| 42 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 55. |
“A joyful day it will be when the books come, and he promises them by the first ship,—perhaps it may be the second. But come they will at last, if wind and waters permit; and, if all be well, when they arrive I shall not envy any man’s happiness (were I given to envy) on that day.
“I have told you of the Spaniard who always put on his spectacles when he was about to eat cherries, that they might look the bigger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my enjoyments, and, though I do not cast my cares away, I pack them in as little compass as I can, carry them as conveniently as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others. God bless you!
