2.7.2023 sound, like the tone of

sound, like the tone of
that bell – then passing away …
a thing that was not

THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection.

I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library.

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with such indifference, cost some aching head!

How many weary days!

How many sleepless nights!

How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection!

And all for what?

To occupy an inch of dusty shelf — to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance.

Such is the amount of this boasted immortality.

A mere temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has just tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment—lingering transiently in echo — and then passing away like a thing that was not.

From The Mutability of Literature – A colloquy in Westminster Abbey by Washington Irving (1783-1859) in The Oxford Book of American Essays (NEW YORK, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1914).

Mr. Irving wrote this out after looking through the bookcase upon bookcase of books in the library at Westminster Abbey.

It came to mind as I walked through the aisle upon aisle of books at the Bookstore on the Hill in Richmond Hill, GA.

I met the owner but did not think to ask if the Bookstore on the Hill was in reference to the town of Richmond Hill or to the sermon of John Winthrop.

All those books.

To occupy an inch of dusty shelf — to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance.