I've been browsing Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and was amused to come across this typically Burtonian statement on those who do not value libraries. It could well apply to our modern ruder gentry in councils and parliament.
'I am not ignorant in the meantime (notwithstanding this which I have said) how barbarously and basely, for the most part, our ruder gentry esteem of libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so inestimable a benefit, as Aesop's cock did the jewel he found in the dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education.'
