Around the hardest cark and toil lies the imaginative world of the
poets and romancists, and thither we sometimes escape to snatch a
mouthful of serener air.—ALEXANDER SMITH, DREAMTHORP.
Let that which I borrow be survaied, and then tell me whether I have
made good choice of ornaments to beautify and set forth the
invention.... I number not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I
would have made their number to prevaile, I would have had twice as
many.—MONTAIGNE, OF BOOKES.
IF my rugs and porcelains are a study and delight in color, what shall I
say of my books, these manifold colors and hues of the mind that rejoice
the inward eye? When what François de Sales terms a “dryness of soul”
comes over me, are not the genii of the library alway ready to instruct
and charm? Not a myth, but a reality is the fabled lamp of Aladdin,
luminous still on many an immortal author’s page.
“_Un bon feu, des livres, et des plumes, que de ressources contre
l’ennui!_” exclaims De Maistre. With a well-chosen library, even
sickness loses its sting, and often a good book may prove a more
efficient remedial agent than a physician’s draught. Somewhere among the
volumes there exists a balm for nearly every ill—books to stimulate and
books to soothe, books for instruction and books for _ennui_. Every mood
of the mind should be reflected from the library shelves, just as Bacon
holds it that in the royal ordering of gardens there ought to be gardens
for every month in the year. Books there should be in abundance that may
be read again and again; books that may be taken in installments, every
page of each one of which is a golden page; books to pore over as a
miser conns his gold; books to be dipped into, or looked at “with
half-shut eyes.” From each page or each chapter of a good book there
should be extracted a beautiful thought, as the wind in passing through
a wood draws from each tree a musical note. That we possessed the memory
of Scheherazade and could remember the books we have read!
No doubt, books are the great instructors, though Gautier’s idea is an
excellent one, that each college possess a well-equipped ship to make
the voyage around the world to read the universal book, the best written
book of all. Unfortunately, every one may not sail round the world, but
very many of us must be content, like De Maistre, with a voyage around
our room. And wise, far-seeing Pascal long ago told us that nearly all
our troubles arose from our not knowing how to remain in our own room.
Perhaps, on the whole, this is among the pleasantest ways of journeying.
You have but to step on board one of the numerous crafts in waiting, and
with no further trouble than that of turning over the pages, set sail
for any port of the universe. All this with a merely nominal price for
passage, and relieved of every discomfort of travel.
May I not, with Symonds, muse upon the staircase of the Propylæa and
wander through the theatre of Dionysus? Do I not visit the most romantic
of all castles with Thomson? and what wood so cool and shadowy to stroll
in as the forest of Arden? With Jennings I ramble among the Derbyshire
hills and breast the breeze of the Sussex Downs; with Hamerton I float
down the Unknown River; and with Higginson rock in a wherry and lounge
about the Oldport wharves. Arm in arm with sweet Mariette, Murger again
leads me through the Latin Quarter and the old lilac-scented gardens of
the Luxembourg. Reposing in my easy chair, I may almost make the tour of
the world in the sprightliest, most instructive company it is possible
to imagine—Dumas _père_, in his inimitable Impressions de Voyage, is my
guide, philosopher, and friend. The delightful dinners he invites me to,
the delicious wines he sets before me, the sparkling anecdotes that are
ever bubbling from his entrancing pen! I mount his easy Pegasus with De
Amicis, and exchange the blinding snow for soft Andalusian sunshine.
What an entertaining _raconteur_ I have in Francis Francis to explain
the traditions of manor and castle, and discourse upon British scenery;
and what lovely trout I catch when, rod in hand, I follow him By Lake
and River! Hawthorne raises his wand, and I am sauntering through the
Borghese gardens. With Jefferies I accompany lovely Amaryllis at the
Fair; and with Robinson I wander through an Indian Garden and listen to
the bulbul’s song. There is no dust, the sun does not glare, I require
no waterproof or courier in these easy voyages. I turn the enchanted
pages, and the sun shines for me at just the right angle. My rambles
never fatigue, however long the lane or steep the hillside. I need not
worry over the arrival or departure of trains, dispute with landlords,
or bother with luggage. At a signal, my ship is in waiting, ready to
stop at the port I designate; in an hour a smooth roadbed carries me
across a kingdom, without a delay, without a jar. There can be nothing
more delightful than these imaginary journeys.
“The ever-widening realm of books!” Over two centuries ago, echoing the
voice of the ancients, Henry Vaughan decried against their constantly
increasing multitude:
... As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more;
And the great task to try, then know the good,
To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance.
What a sifting there must be among them some day, as the volumes
continue to accumulate—the mediocre cast aside to make room for the
meritorious! Will there not eventually be some invention to preserve old
books, an enamel for musty tomes, as wood is vulcanized or bodies are
embalmed? Or must many works now existing in numerous volumes be reduced
to extracts to find shelf-room for them all?
But to those who may be anxious regarding the accumulation of books, De
Merrier offers this consolation: “The indefatigable hand of the grocers,
the druggists, the butter merchants, etc., destroy as many books and
_brochures_ daily as are printed; the paper-gatherers come next; and all
these hands, happily destructive, preserve the equilibrium. Without them
the mass of printed paper would increase to an inconvenient degree, and
in the end chase all the proprietors and tenants out of their houses.
The same proportion is to be observed between the making of books and
their decomposition as between life and death—a balm I address to those
that the multitude of books worries or grieves.”
What works will survive, and what books shall we read? “If the writers
of the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself to them,
and leave those of the Augustan age to dust and the bookworms,” says the
transcendentalist of Walden. “Something like the woodland sounds,” the
same author observes, “will be heard to echo through the leaves of a
good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh emphatic note of the oven-bird and
am tempted to turn many pages; sometimes the hurried chuckling sound of
the squirrel when he dives into the wall.” “In science read by
preference the newest works; in literature the oldest. The classic
literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas;
old books suggest and invigorate new ideas,” says Bulwer. For knowledge
of the world and literature, for polished grace of diction, for elevated
and refined thought, and for the rhythm of beautiful prose, Bulwer might
have called attention to his own essays, individual in the language. The
publisher is yet to be thanked who will present Life, Literature, and
Manners in a worthy and convenient form.
We read and learn and forget from the classics and the modern novelist
as well. I sometimes wonder how posterity will regard the great writers
of the present generation—whether Holmes will hold a more exalted place
a century hence, or the Scarlet Letter fade. Will a mightier Shakespeare
rise, and a sweeter Tennyson sing? And instead of sending posterity to
Addison and Goldsmith for beautiful style, will the twenty-first century
mentor refer the reader to a Spectator of an age that is yet to dawn?
The multitude of books one should read! It takes one’s breath away to
think of the titles. They are as innumerable as the buttercups of the
meadow. Think of them! the miles and leagues of folios, quartos,
octavos, duodecimos, 16, 18, 24, and 32 mos. on every conceivable
subject that are sent out every year! The rows and rows of shelves,
fathoms deep, of old books in numberless editions, cut and uncut, in
cloth, parchment, sheep, pigskin, and calf, reposing in the book-stalls
and libraries! Books grave and gay, comic and serious, storehouses of
knowledge that are constantly shifting hands; others precious beyond
price that are buried out of sight, their beautiful thoughts unread! The
tons and tons of printed pages, in poetry and prose, awake and asleep in
the public and private libraries of the great cities! They are as
clover-tops in a field.
“The best hundred books!” Who shall single them out from the mighty
multitude? It is like attempting to name the most beautiful flower, the
most lovely woman—no one may know them all, and every one has his
preferences. In life, art, and the study of literature it is at best a
difficult question to point out the right way, as there are numerous
considerations which require to be left largely to the discrimination of
the person most concerned.
To decide on the merits of a work one may not take another’s opinion;
one must needs read, mark, and digest it for himself. The reader who
blindly submits to the dictum of another rarely does so to advantage.
Far better to please one’s self and scout the arbiters. Every person
should form his own estimate of the merits or demerits of a work. When
Robert Buchanan terms the author of such exquisite verse as Les Tâches
Jaunes, and such finished prose as La Morte Amoureuse “a hair-dresser’s
dummy of a stylist,” how is one to be governed in the choice of his
reading, save from the standpoint of his own taste! Because Sir Oracle
admires Gil Blas and the Pantagruel, is no reason why you should do so,
and because a Taine may proclaim Pope a purloiner and a mere juggler of
phrase it does not necessarily follow that the Essay on Man is not one
of the brightest jewels of the language. Wisest is he who maps out his
own course of study and reading. The predication of others can not make
that pleasing to him which is in utter variance to his tastes and
sympathies. “A literary judgment is generally supposed to be formed by
canons of criticism,” remarks Van Dyke, “but the canons are generally
individual canons, and the criticism is but the synonym of a
preference.”
Often the bell-wether leads the flock astray. Carlyle would have had A
Midsummer Night’s Dream written in prose, and declared that Tennyson
wrote in verse because the schoolmaster had taught him it was great to
do so, and had thus been turned from the true path for a man. Emerson
was always interested in Hawthorne’s fine personality, but could not
appreciate his writings, while, equally strange, the author of the
exquisite Prose Idyls extols the labored Recreations of North. Holmes
“never felt to appreciate Irving as the majority look upon him,” and
thinks the Sketch-Book “an overrated affair.” Fitzgerald did not like In
Memoriam, The Princess, or The Idyls, and wished there were nothing
after the 1842 volume. In Memoriam has the air, he says, of being
evolved by a poetical machine of the very highest order. Voltaire
thought the Æneid the most beautiful monument which remains to us of all
antiquity. Peignot, in his erudite Traité du Choix des Livres, terms the
Georgics the most perfect poem of antiquity, thereby echoing the opinion
of Montaigne, who pronounced it “the most accomplished peece of worke of
Poesie.”
Edmund Gosse finds Tristram Shandy dull; Bulwer asserts that only
writers the most practiced could safely venture an occasional restrained
imitation of its frolicsome zoneless graces. Possibly Horace Walpole
comes nearer the mark in referring to it as a very insipid and tedious
performance, though he might have defined it as a remarkable work on
obstetrics.
Skipping Don Quixote and the Vicar of Wakefield, and not having read Die
Wahlverwandtschaften, Jane Eyre, My Novel, Rob Roy, The Three
Musketeers, The Scarlet Letter, Charles O’Malley, and how many others!
La Harpe terms Tom Jones “the foremost novel of the world” (_le premier
roman du monde_). So, I believe, does Lowell. Wilkie Collins, shortly
before his death, gave the honor to The Antiquary. The same renowned
critic (La Harpe), considered the Divine Comedy “a stupidly barbarous
amplification” (_une amplification stupidement barbare_); Mézières,
another French critic, thinks it deserves to be termed “the epopee of
Christian peoples” (_elle mérite d’être appelée l’épopée des peuples
chrétiens_).
“We read the Paradise Lost as a task,” growls Dr. Johnson. “Nay, rather
as a celestial recreation,” whispers Lamb. “I would forgive a man for
not reading Milton,” Lamb naïvely adds, “but I would not call that man
my friend who should be offended with the divine chit-chat of Cowper.”
Again, though I myself may see much to praise but less to please in
Paradise Lost, infinitely preferring Lycidas, the Allegro, and the
Penseroso, I may, nevertheless, admire Lamb; and though I may recognize
the worth of Mézières, I may dislike the Divine Comedy. All of us may
not care for the Pilgrim’s Progress or Hudibras; and some may prefer
Cellini’s or Rousseau’s autobiography to Boswell’s biography,—it is not
always so easy to read and admire the books one should read and admire
from another’s standpoint.
What two persons look at things precisely the same? Human thought and
human opinion are as varied as the expression of the human face. “There
never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two
grains. The most universal quality is diversity,” observes Montaigne.
“An opinion,” says the sparkling author of Bachelor Bluff, “is simply an
angle of reflection, or the facet which one’s individuality presents to
a subject, measuring not the whole or many parts of it, but the
dimensions of the reflecting surface. It is something, perhaps, if the
reflection within its limits is a true one.” There are particular
writers that, never widely popular, will always have their particular
admirers, and we all of us have our special subjects or predilections
that we wish to know most about, or are most interested in.
“_L’histoire c’est mo gibier en matière des liures, ou la poësie que
i’ayme d’vne particulière inclinatio_” (history is my game in the chase
for books, or poetry, which I especially dote upon), again observes
Montaigne. Montaigne is so quaint he should be mused over in an old
edition; it is like gathering mushrooms from an old pasture on a hazy
autumn day. Plainly, it is out of the question to read everything even
on a single subject, and many good books are practically unattainable.
The Book-Worm, perched upon his ladder with a duodecimo in one hand, a
quarto under his arm, and a folio between his knees, has at least four
sealed volumes. Each person will read preferably such books as are in
keeping with his tastes and line of thought, though he will greatly
stimulate and enlarge his thought by also reading books diametrically
opposed to his taste. The somewhat prosy mind will be benefited by
familiarity with the poets; the super-poetic is improved by the balance
and adjustment to be found in the study of works of reason and
criticism.
But even then we may not read “the best hundred books” of some one
else’s choosing. “We are happy from possessing what we like, not from
possessing what others like,” La Rochefoucauld remarks; and his maxim is
pertinent to the library. Tastes will ever differ in books and in
bindings, in epics and in lyrics. Many nice people one knows, but one
has not the time, neither does one care to make bosom friends of them
all. Or, to cite Goldsmith, “Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire
an intimacy only with a few.” Seldom do we admire in age that which
captivates us in youth, and that which moves us in one mood may not
appeal to us in another.
The most omnivorous book-worm can read comparatively little. Those who
read slowly and digest what they read—if there is time in life to read
slowly—may read still less. There is much in Bulwer’s sentence: “Reading
without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book
on which the thought settles for a definite end than from libraries
skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage garden gives honey to the
bee, a king’s garden none to the butterfly.”
A happy remark with reference to the best-hundred-books controversy is
that credited to Herman Merivale-“those books which everybody says
everybody else must read, but never reads himself.” “We praise that
which is praised much more than that which is praisable,” is a pithy
saying of La Bruyère. Charles Lamb included in his catalogue of “_books
which are no books_ generally all those volumes which ‘no gentleman’s
library should be without.’” The author of that delicious anonymity, A
Club of One (A. P. Russell), the failure to read which should send the
delinquent to Coventry, is more of a philosopher than many of the
professed literary law-givers. It is true he presents a list of his
favorite books, but the list numbers considerably over two hundred, and
these are delicately suggested, and not dictated in a perfunctory way; I
have no doubt he has since added two hundred more. He must have read and
remembered ten times a hundred to write the volume in question, and
ransacked whole libraries to compose the companion volumes, Library
Notes and In a Club Corner, veritable mines of sparkling sayings,
sententious precepts, and literary anecdote.
Dana and Johnson have selected Fifty Perfect Poems with excellent
judgment, no doubt, though who was responsible for the insertion of
numbers forty-three and fifty is not stated in the preface. The Elegy,
the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Lotus Eaters, and a half-dozen other
selections every one must have included in a similar collection. But
beyond this dozen or so of immortal poems that by no possibility might
be omitted, it is safe to say that almost any other anthologist would
have gathered _Chrysanthema_ totally different—so varied are individual
tastes both in poetry and prose. The fifty best poems and the hundred
best books to Dobson may not be the hundred best books and the fifty
best poems to Gosse or Lang. The marvel is how Johnson and Dana could
agree.
The scholar and the student who live for their books, the author, the
man of elegant leisure, or the bibliophile may be benefited by a very
large library, and share their benefits with the world; though there is
often no little truth in what Gérard de Nerval said of the latter in a
perverted sense of the term: “A serious bibliophile does not share his
books; he does not even read them himself for fear of fatiguing them.”
“The amateur is born,” Derome goes on to say in Le Luxe des Livres; “he
holds the Muses captive. If books could speak they would pronounce him a
hard jailer. The bibliophiles ruin themselves in their calling,
neglecting their duties to their families. Such are not men of letters,
they are _bibliotaphes_. They bury their books, they do not possess
them.... The luxury of bindings is extended to profusion. It is the
_fête_ of red morocco and tawny calf.” La Rousse thus defines the term
bibliotaphe: “From the Greek _biblion_, book; _taphô_, I inter, I hide.
1. He who lends his books to no one, who buries them, inters them in his
library. 2. A reserved portion of a library where precious works or
works that one does not wish to communicate are locked up.” Nodier made
still another discrimination, that of the _bibliophobe_ whom he thus
describes: “The _bibliophobe_ would see nothing out of the way in
burning libraries. He sells the copies that are dedicated to him, and
_does not return the service_.”
Between the _bibliophile_ and the _bibliomane_ Nodier draws this
distinction: “The bibliophile chooses his books, the bibliomane entombs
them; the bibliophile appreciates, the other weighs; the bibliophile has
a magnifying glass, the other a fathom measure.” But the close
consanguinity which exists between the book-lover and the
book-collector; the narrow strip dividing _terra firma_ from the
dangerous marsh ever lighted by _ignes-fatui_ that lure the pursuer on
and on, is well defined by Burton in the introduction to The Book
Hunter, where, referring to the class for whom the volume was written,
he finds it difficult to say whether he should give them a good name or
a bad, whether he should characterize them by a predicate eulogistic or
a predicate dyslogistic.
We all know of the man who paid a fabulous sum for a copy of a very rare
work, only to consign it to the flames on receiving it, in order that
his own copy might have no duplicate. This is an exceptional form of the
bibliolythist, or book-burner. Among this class are included authors
ashamed of their first writings, authors who have changed their
political or religious views, or who have eulogized a friend who has
become a bitter enemy. There exists another form of the bibliolythist
which Fitzgerald has omitted from his Romance of Book-Collecting—the
“burking” of a work by one who has been assailed. I know of a standing
offer from a gentleman of three dollars apiece for every copy that
booksellers send him of a certain volume which retails for a fifth of
the price. The work contains a reflection on one of his ancestors, and
as soon as the volumes are received they are burned. But the book-burner
is by no means a modern institution, Nero and Caliph Omar still
remaining the greatest of bibliolythists.
I would suggest as another desirable term to add to the lexicon of the
bibliopholist the term _bibliodæmon_, or book-fiend—a designation
expressive of something more than the ordinary significance of
“book-borrower,” innocent enough, no doubt, in some of his milder forms,
but exasperating to the last degree in his most depraved phases. The
borrowing of a reference book or a volume, a chapter or a page of which
may touch upon a subject that one desires to consult merely for the time
being, is a matter apart. So also is the exchange of books between
friends, or the borrowing of a work not readily procurable, the
recipient on his part standing ready to return the courtesy, and
forthwith restoring the volume unsullied.
Promptness in returning and scrupulous care of a volume are the tests
which distinguish the comparatively harmless form of the borrower from
the aggravated and exasperating one. The miserly practice of borrowing
books, books from which the well-to-do borrower seeks to derive pleasure
or benefit without returning a just equivalent, simply to shirk the
trifling cost of the volume he covets, deserves the severest stricture.
Such are library dead-heads and defaulters to publishers and authors. It
is this form of the bibliodæmon who retains desumed copies for an
indefinite period, trusting the loan may be forgotten; and who, deaf to
all ordinary appeals and reminders, only relinquishes the
volume—frequently maltreated—when virtually wrested from him at his
home. The celebrated French bibliophile Pixérécourt had inserted on the
frontal of his library-case these pertinent lines:
Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté:
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.
Each book that’s loaned the same sad fate o’ertakes—
’Tis either lost or sent back with the shakes.
There really exists no reason why books should be loaned—there are
always the public libraries in which the borrower may ply his trade.
A former shepherd of the printed flocks in the library of a neighboring
town relates an incident illustrating a singular form of book borrowing,
the offender being a divine. Passionately fond of books, he would take
them home, forgetting to return them, and when interrogated would always
find a happy excuse, the store of borrowed books meanwhile accumulating.
“A scholar and a man of exemplary character and fine sensibilities, I
did not wish to wound his feelings by an imperative demand, being
convinced from what I knew of him, that it was a slight lesion rather
than a fracture of the mind which caused the delinquency. I therefore
awaited his departure, and one morning, driving to his home with a buggy
and a basket, I took possession of the borrowed volumes. He never
referred to it. I do not think he even missed them. His passion was the
joy of first readings, and he was proverbially forgetful.”
My scintillant and learned friend the Doctor, who for years graced the
Greek chair at the University, and whose name is a household word among
scholars, as his presence is a ray of sunlight wherever he appears,
contributes this supplement to the lexicon of the book-lover. The
general reader will skip this passage; the bibliophile will thank him:
_Bibliodæmon_: a book-fiend or demon.
_Bibliophage_ }
_Bibliocataphage_ } a book-eater or devourer.
_Biblioleter_ }
_Bibliopollyon_ } a book-destroyer, ravager, or waster.
_Bibliophthor_ }
_Biblioloigos_: a book-pest or plague.
_Bibliolestes_ }
_Biblioklept_ } a book-plunderer or robber.
_Bibliocharybdis_: a Charybdis of books.
_Biblioriptos_: one who throws books around.
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