But I digress. Cast your eye over this little
group of foreign writers. Here is Dumas,--Jean Baptiste Dumas,--whose
'Lecons sur la philosophic chimique,' delivered in 1835, were considered
worthy of being published thirty years later. The quaint volume that
comes next is by Du Maurier, who was French ambassador to the Hague
about 1620. The title, in the Dutch, is 'Propositie gedan door den
Heere van Maurier,' etc.--'Propositions Advanced by the Sieur du
Maurier,' one of the Regent's able and merry-hearted diplomats, I take
it. And here is Goethe; he would repay your reading. Rudolf Goethe's
'Mitteilungen ueber Obst- und Gartenbau' is one of the standard works on
horticulture.
"And finally," said Cooper with a flash of pride quite unusual in him,
"the treasure of my little library--Homer; again a first edition."
"Homer!" I cried. "An _editio princeps_!"
"Nearly one hundred and fifty years old," he said. "The Rev. Henry Homer
deserved well of his British countrymen when he gave to the world--it
was in 1767--his 'Inquiry Into the Measures of Preserving and Improving
the Publick Roads of this Kingdom.
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