Transcribed from the 1881 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pgflaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: Frontispiece]
THE LIBRARY
BY
ANDREW LANG
WITH A CHAPTER ON
MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY
AUSTIN DOBSON
[Picture: Decorative graphic, ‘Art at Home’]
London
MACMILLAN & CO.
1881
_The right of reproduction is reserved_.
* * * * *
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARKE, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * *
TO
DR. JOHN BROWN
AUTHOR OF
_RAB AND HIS FRIENDS_.
PREFATORY NOTE
THE pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the
exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet)
have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also written on
early printed books (pp. 94–95). The pages on the Biblioklept (pp.
46–56) are reprinted, with the Editor’s kind permission, from the
_Saturday Review_; and a few remarks on the moral lessons of bookstalls
are taken from an essay in the same journal.
Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub-Librarian of
the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs of chapters I.,
II., and III., and suggested some alterations.
Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls College,
for two plates from his “Book-bindings in All Souls Library” (printed for
private circulation), which he has been good enough to lend me. The
plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by Dr. J. J. Wild. Messrs.
George Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., and Messrs. Chatto &
Windus, must be thanked for the use of some of the woodcuts which
illustrate the concluding chapter.
A. L.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER 1
“Every man his own Librarian”—Bibliography
and Literature—Services of the French to
Bibliography—A defence of the taste of the
Book-collector—Should Collectors buy for
the purpose of selling again?—The sport of
Book-hunting—M. de Resbecq’s
anecdotes—Stories of success of
Book-hunters—The lessons of old
Bookstalls—Booksellers’
catalogues—Auctions of Books—Different
forms of the taste for collecting—The
taste serviceable to critical
Science—Books considered as literary
relics—Examples—The “Imitatio Christi” of
J. J. Rousseau—A brief vision of mighty
Book-hunters.
CHAPTER II.
THE LIBRARY 31
The size of modern collections—The Library
in English houses—Bookcases—Enemies of
Books—Damp, dust, dirt—The
bookworm—Careless readers—Book
plates—Borrowers—Book stealers—Affecting
instance of the Spanish Monk—The
Book-ghoul—Women the natural foes of
books—Some touching exceptions—Homage to
Madame Fertiault—Modes of preserving
books; binding—Various sorts of coverings
for books—Half-bindings—Books too good to
bind, how to be entertained—Iniquities of
Binders—Cruel case of a cropped play of
Molière—Recipes (not infallible) for
cleaning books—Necessity of possessing
bibliographical works, such as catalogues.
CHAPTER III.
THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR 76
Manuscripts, early and late—Early Printed
Books—How to recognise them—Books printed
on VELLUM—“Uncut” copies—“Livres de Luxe,”
and Illustrated Books—Invective against
“Christmas Books”—The “Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili”—Old woodcuts—French vignettes
of the eighteenth century—Books of the
Aldi—Books of the Elzevirs—“Curious”
Books—Singular old English poems—First
editions—Changes of fashion in
Book-collecting—Examples of the variations
in prices—Books valued for their bindings,
and as relics—Anecdotes of Madame du Barry
and Marie Antoinette.
CHAPTER IV.
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS 123
Beginnings of Modern Book-Illustration in
England—Stothard, Blake, Flaxman—Boydell’s
“Shakespeare,” Macklin’s “Bible,” Martin’s
“Milton”—The “Annuals”—Rogers’s “Italy”
and “Poems”—Revival of
Wood-Engraving—Bewick—Bewick’s Pupils—The
“London School”—Progress of
Wood-Engraving—Illustrated “Christmas” and
other Books—The Humorous
Artists—Cruikshank—Doyle—Thackeray—Leech—
Tenniel—Du Maurier—Sambourne—Keene—Minor
Humorous Artists—Children’s
Books—Crane—Miss Greenaway—Caldecott—The
“New American School”—Conclusion.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES.
PAGE
M. ANNEI LUCANI DE BELLO CIVILI LIBRI X. APUD SEB. 62
GRYPHIUM LUGDUNI. 1551 _To face_
PUB. VIRGILII MARONIS OPERA PARISIIS. APUD HIERONYMUM DE 64
MARNEF, SUB PELICANO, MONTE D’HILURII. 1558 _To face_
TITLE-PAGE of “Le Rommant de la Rose,” Paris, 1539 _To 94
face_
WOODCUTS.
FRONTISPIECE. _Drawn by Walter Crane_; _engraved by
Swain_.
INITIAL. _Drawn by Walter Crane_; _engraved by Swain_ 1
GROUP OF CHILDREN. _Drawn by Kate Greenaway_; _engraved by 122
O. Lacour_
INITIAL. From Hughes’s “Scouring of the White Horse, 123
1858.” _Drawn by Richard Doyle_; _engraved by W. J.
Linton_
“INFANT JOY.” From Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” 1789. 129
_Engraved by J. F. Jungling_
“COUNSELLOR, KING, WARRIOR, MOTHER AND CHILD, IN THE TOMB.” 131
From Blair’s “Grave,” 1808. _Designed by William Blake_;
_facsimiled on wood from the engraving by Louis
Schiavonetti_
“THE WOODCOCK.” From Jackson & Chatto’s “History of 141
Wood-Engraving,” 1839. _Engraved_, _after T. Bewick_, _by
John Jackson_
TAILPIECE. From the same. _Engraved_, _after T. Bewick_, 143
_by John Jackson_
HEADPIECE. From Rogers’s “Pleasures of Memory, with other 145
Poems,” 1810. _Drawn by T. Stothard_; _engraved_, _after
Luke Clennell_, _by O. Lacour_
“GOLDEN HEAD BY GOLDEN HEAD.” From Christina Rossetti’s 149
“Goblin Market and other Poems,” 1862. _Drawn by D. G.
Rossetti_; _engraved by W. J. Linton_
“THE DEAF POST-BOY.” From Clarke’s “Three Courses and a 153
Dessert,” 1830. _Drawn by G. Cruikshank_; _engraved by S.
Williams_ [?]
“THE MAD TEA-PARTY.” From “Alice’s Adventures in 162
Wonderland,” 1865. _Drawn by John Tenniel_; _engraved by
Dalziel Brothers_
BLACK KITTEN. From “Through the Looking-Glass,” 1871. 163
_Drawn by John Tenniel_; _engraved by Dalziel Brothers_
“THE MUSIC OF THE PAST.” From “Punch’s Almanack,” 1877. 165
_Drawn by George du Maurier_; _engraved by Swain_
LION AND TUB. From “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” 1879. _Drawn by 167
Linley Sambourne_; _engraved by Swain_
BOY AND HIPPOCAMPUS. From Miss E. Keary’s “Magic Valley,” 171
1877. _Drawn by_ “_E. V. B._” (Hon. Mrs. Boyle); _engraved
by T. Quartley_
“LOVE CHARMS.” From Irving’s “Bracebridge Hall,” 1876. 173
_Drawn by Randolph Caldecott_; _engraved by J. D. Cooper_
* * * * *
Books, books again, and books once more!
These are our theme, which some miscall
Mere madness, setting little store
By copies either short or tall.
But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
We rather write for you that hold
Patched folios dear, and prize “the small,
Rare volume, black with tarnished gold.”
A. D.
CHAPTER I.
AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER
“ALL men,” says Dr. Dibdin, “like to be their own librarians.” A writer
on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the books that
even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to collect. There are
books which no lover of literature can afford to be without; classics,
ancient and modern, on which the world has pronounced its verdict. These
works, in whatever shape we may be able to possess them, are the
necessary foundations of even the smallest collections. Homer, Dante and
Milton Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristophanes and Molière, Thucydides,
Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and Scott,—these every lover of letters will
desire to possess in the original languages or in translations. The list
of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the tastes of
men begin to differ very widely. An assortment of broadsheet ballads and
scrap-books, bought in boyhood, was the nucleus of Scott’s library, rich
in the works of poets and magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists. A
childish liking for coloured prints of stage characters, may be the germ
of a theatrical collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin.
People who are studying any past period of human history, or any old
phase or expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little
contemporary volumes which seem trash to other amateurs. For example, to
a student of Molière, it is a happy chance to come across “La Carte du
Royaume des Prétieuses”—(The map of the kingdom of the
“Précieuses”)—written the year before the comedian brought out his famous
play “Les Précieuses Ridicules.” This geographical tract appeared in the
very “Recueil des Pieces Choisies,” whose authors Magdelon, in the play,
was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his appearance. There
is a faculty which Horace Walpole named “serendipity,”—the luck of
falling on just the literary document which one wants at the moment. All
collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the exercise of
serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home
hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of
catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide
great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he
went a book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by
the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however
various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one
point,—the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can sympathise
with Charles Lamb’s attachment to “that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which
he dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden.” But it is
another thing when Lamb says, “I do not care for a first folio of
Shakespeare.” A bibliophile who could say this could say anything.
No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from their
literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for themselves,
then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness. These books
are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and
illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of
the past, or for their rarity. It is about these books, the method of
preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them,
that the following pages are to treat. It is a subject more closely
connected with the taste for curiosities than with art, strictly so
called. We are to be occupied, not so much with literature as with
books, not so much with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint
_duenna_ of literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its
humours. And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions and
anecdotes derived from French writers. These are as unavoidable, almost,
as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in fencing. In
bibliography, in the care for books _as_ books, the French are still the
teachers of Europe, as they were in tennis and are in fencing. Thus,
Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his “Philobiblon:”
“Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as
often as I have a chance of going to Paris! There the days seem always
short; there are the goodly collections on the delicate fragrant
book-shelves.” Since Dante wrote of—
“L’onor di quell’ arte
Ch’ allumare è chiamata in Parisi,”
“the art that is called illuminating in Paris,” and all the other arts of
writing, printing, binding books, have been most skilfully practised by
France. She improved on the lessons given by Germany and Italy in these
crafts. Twenty books about books are written in Paris for one that is
published in England. In our country Dibdin is out of date (the second
edition of his “Bibliomania” was published in 1811), and Mr. Hill
Burton’s humorous “Book-hunter” is out of print. Meanwhile, in France,
writers grave and gay, from the gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier’s
quaint fancy, and Janin’s wit, and the always entertaining bibliophile
Jacob (Paul Lacroix), have written, or are writing, on books,
manuscripts, engravings, editions, and bindings. In England, therefore,
rare French books are eagerly sought, and may be found in all the
booksellers’ catalogues. On the continent there is no such care for our
curious or beautiful editions, old or new. Here a hint may be given to
the collector. If he “picks up” a rare French book, at a low price, he
would act prudently in having it bound in France by a good craftsman.
Its value, when “the wicked day of destiny” comes, and the collection is
broken up, will thus be made secure. For the French do not suffer our
English bindings gladly; while we have no narrow prejudice against the
works of Lortic and Capé, but the reverse. For these reasons then, and
also because every writer is obliged to make the closest acquaintance
with books in the direction where his own studies lie, the writings of
French authorities are frequently cited in the following pages.
This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste and passion
of book-collecting, and of the class of men known invidiously as
book-worms and book-hunters. They and their simple pleasures are the
butts of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who cannot endure in others
a taste which is absent in themselves. Important new books have actually
been condemned of late years because they were printed on good paper, and
a valuable historical treatise was attacked by reviewers quite angrily
because its outward array was not mean and forbidding. Of course,
critics who take this view of new books have no patience with persons who
care for “margins,” and “condition,” and early copies of old books. We
cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not necessary to be
disturbed by his clamour. People are happier for the possession of a
taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons of
Scripture, possess them. The wise collector gets instruction and
pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long run, he
and his family do not lose money. The amusement may chance to prove a
very fair investment.
As to this question of making money by collecting, Mr. Hill Burton speaks
very distinctly in “The Book-hunter:” “Where money is the object let a
man speculate or become a miser. . . Let not the collector ever, unless
in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any of his
treasures. Let him not even have recourse to that practice called
barter, which political philosophers tell us is the universal resource of
mankind preparatory to the invention of money. Let him confine all his
transactions in the market to purchasing only. No good comes of
gentlemen-amateurs buying and selling.” There is room for difference of
opinion here, but there seems to be most reason on the side of Mr. Hill
Burton. It is one thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the
money he expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find
themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste. It is
quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to
sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers. It is necessary also
to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes. He must buy
experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to
disappoint him. He will pay dearly for the wrong “Cæsar” of 1635, the
one _without_ errors in pagination; and this is only a common example of
the beginner’s blunders. Collecting is like other forms of sport; the
aim is not certain at first, the amateur is nervous, and, as in angling,
is apt to “strike” (a bargain) too hurriedly.
I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of sport.
People talk of “book-hunting,” and the old Latin motto says that “one
never wearies of the chase in this forest.” But the analogy to angling
seems even stronger. A collector walks in the London or Paris streets,
as he does by Tweed or Spey. Many a lordly mart of books he passes, like
Mr. Quaritch’s, Mr. Toovey’s, or M. Fontaine’s, or the shining store of
M.M. Morgand et Fatout, in the Passage des Panoramas. Here I always feel
like Brassicanus in the king of Hungary’s collection, “non in
Bibliotheca, sed in gremio Jovis;” “not in a library, but in paradise.”
It is not given to every one to cast angle in these preserves. They are
kept for dukes and millionaires. Surely the old Duke of Roxburghe was
the happiest of mortals, for to him both the chief bookshops and auction
rooms, and the famous salmon streams of Floors, were equally open, and he
revelled in the prime of book-collecting and of angling. But there are
little tributary streets, with humbler stalls, shy pools, as it were,
where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an Elzevir, or an old
French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a Restoration comedy. It is
usually a case of hope unfulfilled; but the merest nibble of a rare book,
say Marston’s poems in the original edition, or Beddoes’s “Love’s Arrow
Poisoned,” or Bankes’s “Bay Horse in a Trance,” or the “Mel Heliconicum”
of Alexander Ross, or “Les Oeuvres de Clement Marot, de Cahors, Vallet de
Chambre du Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre Gaultier, 1551;” even a chance at
something of this sort will kindle the waning excitement, and add a
pleasure to a man’s walk in muddy London. Then, suppose you purchase for
a couple of shillings the “Histoire des Amours de Henry IV, et autres
pieces curieuses, A Leyde, Chez Jean Sambyx (Elzevir), 1664,” it is
certainly not unpleasant, on consulting M. Fontaine’s catalogue, to find
that he offers the same work at the ransom of £10. The beginner thinks
himself in singular luck, even though he has no idea of vending his
collection, and he never reflects that _condition_—spotless white leaves
and broad margins, make the market value of a book.
Setting aside such bare considerations of profit, the sport given by
bookstalls is full of variety and charm. In London it may be pursued in
most of the cross streets that stretch a dirty net between the British
Museum and the Strand. There are other more shy and less frequently
poached resorts which the amateur may be allowed to find out for himself.
In Paris there is the long sweep of the _Quais_, where some eighty
_bouquinistes_ set their boxes on the walls of the embankment of the
Seine. There are few country towns so small but that books, occasionally
rare and valuable, may be found lurking in second-hand furniture
warehouses. This is one of the advantages of living in an old country.
The Colonies are not the home for a collector. I have seen an Australian
bibliophile enraptured by the rare chance of buying, in Melbourne, an
early work on—the history of Port Jackson! This seems but poor game.
But in Europe an amateur has always occupation for his odd moments in
town, and is for ever lured on by the radiant apparition of Hope. All
collectors tell their anecdotes of wonderful luck, and magnificent
discoveries. There is a volume “Voyages Littéraires sur les Quais de
Paris” (Paris, Durand, 1857), by M. de Fontaine de Resbecq, which might
convert the dullest soul to book-hunting. M. de Resbecq and his friends
had the most amazing good fortune. A M. N— found six original plays of
Molière (worth perhaps as many hundreds of pounds), bound up with Garth’s
“Dispensary,” an English poem which has long lost its vogue. It is worth
while, indeed, to examine all volumes marked “Miscellanea,” “Essays,” and
the like, and treasures may possibly lurk, as Snuffy Davy knew, within
the battered sheepskin of school books. Books lie in out of the way
places. Poggio rescued “Quintilian” from the counter of a wood merchant.
The best time for book-hunting in Paris is the early morning. “The
take,” as anglers say, is “on” from half-past seven to half-past nine
a.m. At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares, and the
agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up everything worth
having. These agents quite spoil the sport of the amateur. They keep a
strict watch on every country dealer’s catalogue, snap up all he has
worth selling, and sell it over again, charging pounds in place of
shillings. But M. de Resbecq vows that he once picked up a copy of the
first edition of La Rochefoucauld’s “Maxims” out of a box which two
booksellers had just searched. The same collector got together very
promptly all the original editions of La Bruyère, and he even found a
copy of the Elzevir “Pastissier Français,” at the humble price of six
sous. Now the “ Pastissier Français,” an ill-printed little cookery-book
of the Elzevirs, has lately fetched £600 at a sale. The Antiquary’s
story of Snuffy Davy and the “Game of Chess,” is dwarfed by the luck of
M. de Resbecq. Not one amateur in a thousand can expect such good
fortune. There is, however, a recent instance of a Rugby boy, who picked
up, on a stall, a few fluttering leaves hanging together on a flimsy
thread. The old woman who kept the stall could hardly be induced to
accept the large sum of a shilling for an original quarto of
Shakespeare’s “King John.” These stories are told that none may despair.
That none may be over confident, an author may recount his own
experience. The only odd _trouvaille_ that ever fell to me was a clean
copy of “La Journée Chrétienne,” with the name of Léon Gambetta, 1844, on
its catholic fly-leaf. Rare books grow rarer every day, and often ’tis
only Hope that remains at the bottom of the fourpenny boxes. Yet the
Paris book-hunters cleave to the game. August is their favourite season;
for in August there is least competition. Very few people are, as a
rule, in Paris, and these are not tempted to loiter. The bookseller is
drowsy, and glad not to have the trouble of chaffering. The English go
past, and do not tarry beside a row of dusty boxes of books. The heat
threatens the amateur with sunstroke. Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a
prose _ballade_ of book-hunters—then, calm, glad, heroic, the
_bouquineurs_ prowl forth, refreshed with hope. The brown old calf-skin
wrinkles in the sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the
cover of a quarto. The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees
seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is
walking the streets. Under his vast umbrella the book-hunter is secure
and content; he enjoys the pleasures of the sport unvexed by poachers,
and thinks less of the heat than does the deer-stalker on the bare
hill-side.
There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in the stalls.
The decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of
ambition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections. The
presentation volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his
heart to the poet who was his “Master,” to the critic whom he feared, to
the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration. The critic
has not even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely torn three or four
apart with his finger and thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let
the poems slip into some corner of his library, whence they were removed
on some day of doom and of general clearing out. The sale of the library
of a late learned prelate who had Boileau’s hatred of a dull book was a
scene to be avoided by his literary friends. The Bishop always gave the
works which were offered to him a fair chance. He read till he could
read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress could
be traced like that of a backwoodsman who “blazes” his way through a
primeval forest. The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty before the
thirtieth page. The melancholy of the book-hunter is aroused by two
questions, “Whence?” and “Whither?” The bibliophile asks about his books
the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul. Whence came
they? Their value depends a good deal on the answer. If they are
stamped with arms, then there is a book (“Armorial du Bibliophile,” by M.
Guigard) which tells you who was their original owner. Any one of twenty
coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of the
volume which it covers. If there is no such mark, the fancy is left to
devise a romance about the first owner, and all the hands through which
the book has passed. That Vanini came from a Jesuit college, where it
was kept under lock and key. That copy of Agrippa “De Vanitate
Scientiarum” is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded ink, with cynical
Latin notes. What pessimist two hundred years ago made his grumbling so
permanent? One can only guess, but part of the imaginative joys of the
book-hunter lies ‘ in the fruitless conjecture. That other question
“Whither?” is graver. Whither are our treasures to be scattered? Will
they find kind masters? or, worst fate of books, fall into the hands of
women who will sell them to the trunk-maker? Are the leaves to line a
box or to curl a maiden’s locks? Are the rarities to become more and
more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices? Some unlucky men are
able partly to solve these problems in their own lifetime. They are
constrained to sell their libraries—an experience full of bitterness,
wrath, and disappointment.
Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which life has no
worse sorrow. A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If
you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it
years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself. As a
man’s tastes and opinions are developed his books put on a different
aspect. He hardly knows the “Poems and Ballads” he used to declaim, and
cannot recover the enigmatic charm of “Sordello.” Books change like
friends, like ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in
the contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them
is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in
him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days.
The vanished past returns when we look at the pages. The vicissitudes of
years are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts
of desire and hope return to their forbidden home in the heart and fancy.
It is as well to have the power of recalling them always at hand, and to
be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions which were so
powerful and full of life, and now are more faded and of less account
than the memory of the dreams of childhood. It is because our books are
friends that do change, and remind us of change, that we should keep them
with us, even at a little inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the
world to find a dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls. We are a part of all
that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson’s Ulysses, and we
owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who
have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and the
weakness of human purpose. Old school and college books even have a
reproachful and salutary power of whispering how much a man knew, and at
the cost of how much trouble, that he has absolutely forgotten, and is
neither the better nor the worse for it. It will be the same in the case
of the books he is eager about now; though, to be sure, he will read with
less care, and forget with an ease and readiness only to be acquired by
practice.
But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches moral
lessons, as “dauncyng” also does, according to Sir Thomas Elyot, in the
“Boke called the Gouvernour,” but because it affords a kind of sportive
excitement. Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase. Book
catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him all the
pleasures of the sport at home. He reads the booksellers’ catalogues
eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with pencil, he writes by return of
post, or he telegraphs to the vendor. Unfortunately he almost always
finds that he has been forestalled, probably by some bookseller’s agent.
When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious that Parisians have the
pick of the market before our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M.
Labitte. Still the catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in
bibliography. You see from them how prices are ruling, and you can
gloat, in fancy, over De Luyne’s edition of Molière, 1673, two volumes in
red morocco, _doublé_ (“Trautz Bauzonnet”), or some other vanity
hopelessly out of reach. In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and Fatout
print a facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition. The
bust of Molière occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as
Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the “Précieuses Ridicules”), stand on
either side. In the second volume are Molière, and his wife Armande,
crowned by the muse Thalia. A catalogue which contains such exact
reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a work of art,
and serviceable to the student. When the shop of a bookseller, with a
promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant,
bibliophiles have been known to rush to the spot in the grey morning,
before the doors open. There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay
comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain
outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers’ Row. There is a length
to which enthusiasm cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at
rising early in the morning. But, when we think of the sport of
book-hunting, it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally
turns. Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was
in an auction-room that Guibert de Pixérécourt, being outbid, said, in
tones of mortal hatred, “I will have the book when your collection is
sold after your death.” And he kept his word. The fever of gambling is
not absent from the auction-room, and people “bid jealous” as they
sometimes “ride jealous” in the hunting-field. Yet, the neophyte, if he
strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle.
The chamber has the look of a rather seedy “hell.” The crowd round the
auctioneer’s box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at
Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany, they
would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour.
Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked down for trifling
sums. Let the neophyte try his luck, however, and prices will rise
wonderfully. The fact is that the sale is a “knock out.” The bidders
are professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to
distribute them afterwards among themselves. Thus an amateur can have a
good deal of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper
value, and by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to
“run him up.” The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of
gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the
owner of the books. A bidder must be able to command his temper, both
that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to bid recklessly,
and that he may disregard the not very carefully concealed sneers of the
professionals.
In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the
collector. One man is for bibles, another for ballads. Some pursue
plays, others look for play bills. “He was not,” says Mr. Hill Burton,
speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, “he was not a black-letter man, or a tall
copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early-English
dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old
brown calf man, or a Grangerite, {1} or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt
topper, or a marbled insider, or an _editio princeps_ man.” These
nicknames briefly dispose into categories a good many species of
collectors. But there are plenty of others. You may be a
historical-bindings man, and hunt for books that were bound by the great
artists of the past and belonged to illustrious collectors. Or you may
be a Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the
friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical “Marginalia.” Or you may
covet the earliest editions of modern poets—Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson,
or even Ebenezer Jones. Or the object of your desires may be the books
of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830. Or, being
a person of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country
histories. Again, your heart may be set on the books illustrated by
Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century.
Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and for
the books of the Giunta press. In fact, as many as are the species of
rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of collectors. There
is one sort of men, modest but not unwise in their generations, who buy
up the pretty books published in very limited editions by French
booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and Jouaust. Already their reprints of
Rochefoucauld’s first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the
lyrics attributed to Molière, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch
high prices in the market. By a singular caprice, the little volumes of
Mr. Thackeray’s miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when
they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their old
modest price is increased twenty fold. It is not always easy to account
for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting there are
certain definite laws. “Why do you pay a large price for a dingy, old
book,” outsiders ask, “when a clean modern reprint can be procured for
two or three shillings?” To this question the collector has several
replies, which he, at least, finds satisfactory. In the first place,
early editions, published during a great author’s lifetime, and under his
supervision, have authentic texts. The changes in them are the changes
that Prior or La Bruyère themselves made and approved. You can study, in
these old editions, the alterations in their taste, the history of their
minds. The case is the same even with contemporary authors. One likes
to have Mr. Tennyson’s “Poems, chiefly Lyrical” (London: Effingham
Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830). It is fifty years old, this
little book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a
stately tree. In half a century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn
much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his
“Mariana” is a masterpiece. “Mariana” is in all the collections, but
pieces of which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the
old volume of 1830. In the same way “The Strayed Reveller, and other
poems, by A.” (London: B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much
that Mr. Matthew Arnold has altered, and this volume, like the suppressed
“Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A.” (1852), appeals more to the
collector than do the new editions which all the world may possess.
There are verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough’s “Ambarvalia”
(1849), which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which
“repay perusal.” These minutiæ of literary history become infinitely
more important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and
the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of critical
science. The preservation of rare books, and the collection of materials
for criticism, are the useful functions, then, of book-collecting. But
it is not to be denied that the sentimental side of the pursuit gives it
most of its charm. Old books are often literary _relics_, and as dear
and sacred to the lover of literature as are relics of another sort to
the religious devotee. The amateur likes to see the book in its form as
the author knew it. He takes a pious pleasure in the first edition of
“Les Précieuses Ridicules,” (M.DC.LX.) just as Molière saw it, when he
was fresh in the business of authorship, and wrote “Mon Dieu, qu’un
Autheur est neuf, la première fois qu’on l’imprime.” All editions
published during a great man’s life have this attraction, and seem to
bring us closer to his spirit. Other volumes are relics, as we shall see
later, of some famed collector, and there is a certain piety in the care
we give to books once dear to Longepierre, or Harley, or d’Hoym, or
Buckle, to Madame de Maintenon, or Walpole, to Grolier, or Askew, or De
Thou, or Heber. Such copies should be handed down from worthy owners to
owners not unworthy; such servants of literature should never have
careless masters. A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good clear
reprint. M. Charpentier’s “Montaigne” serves the turn, but it is natural
to treasure more “Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne,” that were
printed by Francoise le Febre, of Lyon, in 1595. It is not a beautiful
book; the type is small, and rather blunt, but William Drummond of
Hawthornden has written on the title-page his name and his device,
_Cipresso e Palma_. There are a dozen modern editions of Molière more
easily read than the four little volumes of Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698),
but these contain reduced copies of the original illustrations, and here
you see Arnolphe and Agnes in their habits as they lived, Molière and
Mdlle. de Brie as the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred
years ago. Suckling’s “Fragmenta Aurea” contain a good deal of dross,
and most of the gold has been gathered into Miscellanies, but the
original edition of 1646, “after his own copies,” with the portrait of
the jolly cavalier who died _ætatis suae_ 28, has its own allurement.
Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth’s edition, or
Ziegler’s; but that which Zacharias Calliergi printed in Rome (1516),
with an excommunication from Leo X. against infringement of copyright,
will always be a beautiful and desirable book, especially when bound by
Derome. The gist of the pious Prince Conti’s strictures on the
wickedness of comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is
natural to like his “Traité de la Comedie selon la tradition de l’Eglise,
Tirée des Conciles et des saints Pères,” published by Lovys Billaine in
1660, especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous
black morocco.
These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little library,
a “twopenny treasure-house,” but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the
nature of the collector’s passion,—the character of his innocent
pleasures. He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more
personal character than mere first editions. A lucky collector lately
bought Shelley’s copy of Ossian, with the poet’s signature on the
title-page, in Booksellers’ Row. Another possesses a copy of Foppens’s
rare edition of Petrarch’s “Le Sage Resolu contre l’une et l’autre
Fortune,” which once belonged to Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon,
and may have fortified, by its stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew
the extremes of either fortune, the captive of St. Helena. But the best
example of a book, which is also a relic, is the “Imitatio Christi,”
which belonged to J. J. Rousseau. Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the
happy owner of this possession, tell his own story of his treasure: It
was in 1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre.
Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the
“Imitatio Christi.” M. de Latour, like other bibliophiles, was not in
the habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were
of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of
the “Imitatio,” a book which brings considerable prices. However, by
some lucky chance, some Socratic dæmon whispering, may be, in his ear, he
picked up the little dingy volume of the last century. It was of a Paris
edition, 1751, but what was the name on the fly-leaf. M. de Latour read
_à J. J. Rousseau_. There was no mistake about it, the good bibliophile
knew Rousseau’s handwriting perfectly well; to make still more sure he
paid his seventy-five centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont
des Arts, to his bookbinder’s, where he had a copy of Rousseau’s works,
with a _facsimile_ of his handwriting. As he walked, M. de Latour read
in his book, and found notes of Rousseau’s on the margin. The
_facsimile_ proved that the inscription was genuine. The happy de Latour
now made for the public office in which he was a functionary, and rushed
into the bureau of his friend the Marquis de V. The Marquis, a man of
great strength of character, recognised the signature of Rousseau with
but little display of emotion. M. de Latour now noticed some withered
flowers among the sacred pages; but it was reserved for a friend to
discover in the faded petals Rousseau’s favourite flower, the periwinkle.
Like a true Frenchman, like Rousseau himself in his younger days, M. de
Latour had not recognised the periwinkle when he saw it. That night, so
excited was M. de Latour, he never closed an eye! What puzzled him was
that he could not remember, in all Rousseau’s works, a single allusion to
the “Imitatio Christi.” Time went on, the old book was not rebound, but
kept piously in a case of Russia leather. M. de Latour did not suppose
that “dans ce bas monde it fût permis aux joies du bibliophile d’aller
encore plus loin.” He imagined that the delights of the amateur could
only go further, in heaven. It chanced, however, one day that he was
turning over the “Oeuvres Inédites” of Rousseau, when he found a letter,
in which Jean Jacques, writing in 1763, asked Motiers-Travers to send him
the “Imitatio Christi.” Now the date 1764 is memorable, in Rousseau’s
“Confessions,” for a burst of sentiment over a periwinkle, the first he
had noticed particularly since his residence at _Les Charmettes_, where
the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens. Thus M. Tenant de
Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle, which caused the tear
of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau. But M. de Latour was an
enthusiast, and this little anecdote of his explains the sentimental side
of the bibliophile’s pursuit. Yes, it is _sentiment_ that makes us feel
a lively affection for the books that seem to connect us with great poets
and students long ago dead. Their hands grasp ours across the ages. I
never see the first edition of Homer, that monument of typography and of
enthusiasm for letters, printed at Florence (1488) at the expense of
young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli, and of their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli,
but I feel moved to cry with Heyne, “salvete juvenes, nobiles et
generosi; _χαίρετέ μοι καὶ ἐιν Άΐδαο δόμοισι_.”
Such is our apology for book-collecting. But the best defence of the
taste would be a list of the names of great collectors, a “vision of
mighty book-hunters.” Let us say nothing of Seth and Noah, for their
reputation as amateurs is only based on the authority of the tract _De
Bibliothecis Antediluvianis_. The library of Assurbanipal I pass over,
for its volumes were made, as Pliny says, of _coctiles laterculi_, of
baked tiles, which have been deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith.
Philosophers as well as immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on
our side. It was objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap
scribblers of to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred minae (£360)
for three treatises of Philolaus, while Aristotle paid nearly thrice the
sum for a few books that had been in the library of Speusippus. Did not
a Latin philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety to purchase an
Odyssey “as old as Homer,” and what would not Cicero, that great
collector, have given for the Ascraean _editio princeps_ of Hesiod,
scratched on mouldy old plates of lead? Perhaps Dr. Schliemann may find
an original edition of the “Iliad” at Orchomenos; but of all early copies
none seems so attractive as that engraved on the leaden plates which
Pausanias saw at Ascra. Then, in modern times, what “great allies” has
the collector, what brethren in book-hunting? The names are like the
catalogue with which Villon fills his “Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps
Jadis.” A collector was “le preux Charlemaigne” and our English Alfred.
The Kings of Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus; the Kings of France, and their
queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all amateurs. So was
our Henry VIII., and James I., who “wished he could be chained to a shelf
in the Bodleian.” The middle age gives us Richard de Bury, among
ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts Sir Thomas More, with that
“pretty fardle of books, in the small type of Aldus,” which he carried
for a freight to the people of Utopia. Men of the world, like Bussy
Rabutin, queens like our Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers
like Colbert (who made the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for
bindings); men of letters like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and
Paul Lacroix; warriors like Junot and Prince Eugène; these are only
leaders of companies in the great army of lovers of books, in which it is
honourable enough to be a private soldier.