THE LIBRARY
THE Library which is to be spoken of in these pages, is all unlike the
halls which a Spencer or a Huth fills with treasure beyond price. The
age of great libraries has gone by, and where a collector of the old
school survives, he is usually a man of enormous wealth, who might, if he
pleased, be distinguished in parliament, in society, on the turf itself,
or in any of the pursuits where unlimited supplies of money are strictly
necessary. The old amateurs, whom La Bruyère was wont to sneer at, were
not satisfied unless they possessed many thousands of books. For a
collector like Cardinal Mazarin, Naudé bought up the whole stock of many
a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper as if a
tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away. In our modern times, as
the industrious Bibliophile Jacob, says, the fashion of book-collecting
has changed; “from the vast hall that it was, the library of the amateur
has shrunk to a closet, to a mere book-case. Nothing but a neat article
of furniture is needed now, where a great gallery or a long suite of
rooms was once required. The book has become, as it were, a jewel, and
is kept in a kind of jewel-case.” It is not quantity of pages, nor lofty
piles of ordinary binding, nor theological folios and classic quartos,
that the modern amateur desires. He is content with but a few books of
distinction and elegance, masterpieces of printing and binding, or relics
of famous old collectors, of statesmen, philosophers, beautiful dead
ladies; or, again, he buys illustrated books, or first editions of the
modern classics. No one, not the Duc d’Aumale, or M. James Rothschild
himself, with his 100 books worth £40,000, can possess very many copies
of books which are inevitably rare. Thus the adviser who would offer
suggestions to the amateur, need scarcely write, like Naudé and the old
authorities, about the size and due position of the library. He need
hardly warn the builder to make the _salle_ face the east, “because the
eastern winds, being warm and dry of their nature, greatly temper the
air, fortify the senses, make subtle the humours, purify the spirits,
preserve a healthy disposition of the whole body, and, to say all in one
word, are most wholesome and salubrious.” The east wind, like the
fashion of book-collecting, has altered in character a good deal since
the days when Naudé was librarian to Cardinal Mazarin. One might as well
repeat the learned Isidorus his counsels about the panels of green marble
(that refreshes the eye), and Boethius his censures on library walls of
ivory and glass, as fall back on the ancient ideas of librarians dead and
gone.
The amateur, then, is the person we have in our eye, and especially the
bibliophile who has but lately been bitten with this pleasant mania of
collecting. We would teach him how to arrange and keep his books orderly
and in good case, and would tell him what to buy and what to avoid. By
the _library_ we do not understand a study where no one goes, and where
the master of the house keeps his boots, an assortment of walking-sticks,
the “Waverley Novels,” “Pearson on the Creed,” “Hume’s Essays,” and a
collection of sermons. In, alas! too many English homes, the Library is
no more than this, and each generation passes without adding a book,
except now and then a Bradshaw or a railway novel, to the collection on
the shelves. The success, perhaps, of circulating libraries, or, it may
be, the Aryan tendencies of our race, “which does not read, and lives in
the open air,” have made books the rarest of possessions in many houses.
There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are
fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather, and
these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and manuals,
some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an English
household. But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be
satisfied with these commonplace supplies. He has a taste for books more
or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in short, for books, in the
fabrication of which _art_ has not been absent. He loves to have his
study, like Montaigne’s, remote from the interruption of servants, wife,
and children; a kind of shrine, where he may be at home with himself,
with the illustrious dead, and with the genius of literature. The room
may look east, west, or south, provided that it be dry, warm, light, and
airy. Among the many enemies of books the first great foe is _damp_, and
we must describe the necessary precautions to be taken against this
peril. We will suppose that the amateur keeps his ordinary working
books, modern tomes, and all that serve him as literary tools, on open
shelves. These may reach the roof, if he has books to fill them, and it
is only necessary to see that the back of the bookcases are slightly
removed from contact with the walls. The more precious and beautifully
bound treasures will naturally be stored in a case with closely-fitting
glass-doors. {2} The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois
leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact
with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will
also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the
bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as
well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of
mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These
close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is
fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic scents of cedar, sandal
wood, and Russia leather. There was once a bibliophile who said that a
man could only love one book at a time, and the darling of the moment he
used to carry about in a charming leather case. Others, men of few
books, preserve them in long boxes with glass fronts, which may be
removed from place to place as readily as the household gods of Laban.
But the amateur who not only worships but reads books, needs larger
receptacles; and in the open oak cases for modern authors, and for books
with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed _armoire_ for books
of rarity and price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of
arranging his treasures. His shelves will decline in height from the
lowest, where huge folios stand at case, to the top ranges, while
Elzevirs repose on a level with the eye. It is well that each upper
shelf should have a leather fringe to keep the dust away.
As to the shape of the bookcases, and the furniture, and ornaments of the
library, every amateur will please himself. Perhaps the satin-wood or
mahogany tabernacles of rare books are best made after the model of what
furniture-dealers indifferently call the “Queen Anne” or the
“Chippendale” style. There is a pleasant quaintness in the carved
architectural ornaments of the top, and the inlaid flowers of marquetry
go well with the pretty florid editions of the last century, the books
that were illustrated by Stothard and Gravelot. Ebony suits theological
tomes very well, especially when they are bound in white vellum. As to
furniture, people who can afford it will imitate the arrangements of
Lucullus, in Mr. Hill Burton’s charming volume “The Book-hunter”
(Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1862).—“Everything is of perfect finish,—the
mahogany-railed gallery, the tiny ladders, the broad winged lecterns,
with leathern cushions on the edges to keep the wood from grazing the
rich bindings, the books themselves, each shelf uniform with its facings,
or rather backings, like well-dressed lines at a review.” The late Sir
William Stirling-Maxwell, a famous bibliophile, invented a very nice
library chair. It is most comfortable to sit on; and, as the top of the
back is broad and flat, it can be used as a ladder of two high steps,
when one wants to reach a book on a lofty shelf. A kind of square
revolving bookcase, an American invention, manufactured by Messrs.
Trübner, is useful to the working man of letters. Made in oak, stained
green, it is not unsightly. As to ornaments, every man to his taste.
You may have a “pallid bust of Pallas” above your classical collection,
or fill the niches in a shrine of old French light literature, pastoral
and comedy, with delicate shepherdesses in Chelsea china. On such
matters a modest writer, like Mr. Jingle when Mr. Pickwick ordered
dinner, “will not presume to dictate.”
Next to damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of books. At short
intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur himself.
Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of volumes lent to
him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own books. Boswell found
him one day with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his
library, as was his custom. There is nothing so hideous as a dirty
thumb-mark on a white page. These marks are commonly made, not because
the reader has unwashed hands, but because the dust which settles on the
top edge of books falls in, and is smudged when they are opened.
Gilt-top edges should be smoothed with a handkerchief, and a small brush
should be kept for brushing the tops of books with rough edges, before
they are opened. But it were well that all books had the top edge gilt.
There is no better preservative against dust. Dust not only dirties
books, it seems to supply what Mr. Spencer would call a fitting
environment for book-worms. The works of book-worms speak for
themselves, and are manifest to all. How many a rare and valuable volume
is spoiled by neat round holes drilled through cover and leaves! But as
to the nature of your worm, authorities differ greatly. The ancients
knew this plague, of which Lucian speaks. Mr. Blades mentions a white
book-worm, slain by the librarian of the Bodleian. In Byzantium the
black sort prevailed. Evenus, the grammarian, wrote an epigram against
the black book-worm (“Anthol. Pal.,” ix. 251):—
Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies that lurkest,
Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil;
Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm! wert thou born for the evil thou
workest?
Wherefore thine own foul form shap’st thou with envious toil?
The learned Mentzelius says he hath heard the book-worm crow like a cock
unto his mate, and “I knew not,” says he, “whether some local fowl was
clamouring or whether there was but a beating in mine ears. Even at that
moment, all uncertain as I was, I perceived, in the paper whereon I was
writing, a little insect that ceased not to carol like very chanticleer,
until, taking a magnifying glass, I assiduously observed him. He is
about the bigness of a mite, and carries a grey crest, and the head low,
bowed over the bosom; as to his crowing noise, it comes of his clashing
his wings against each other with an incessant din.” Thus far
Mentzelius, and more to the same purpose, as may be read in the “Memoirs
of famous Foreign Academies” (Dijon, 1755–59, 13 vol. in quarto). But,
in our times, the learned Mr. Blades having a desire to exhibit
book-worms in the body to the Caxtonians at the Caxton celebration, could
find few men that had so much as seen a book-worm, much less heard him
utter his native wood-notes wild. Yet, in his “Enemies of Books,” he
describes some rare encounters with the worm. Dirty books, damp books,
dusty books, and books that the owner never opens, are most exposed to
the enemy; and “the worm, the proud worm, is the conqueror still,” as a
didactic poet sings, in an ode on man’s mortality. As we have quoted
Mentzelius, it may not be amiss to give D’Alembert’s theory of
book-worms: “I believe,” he says, “that a little beetle lays her eggs in
books in August, thence is hatched a mite, like the cheese-mite, which
devours books merely because it is compelled to gnaw its way out into the
air.” Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but D’Alembert
adds that they cannot endure absinthe. Mr. Blades finds too that they
disdain to devour our adulterate modern paper.
“Say, shall I sing of rats,” asked Grainger, when reading to Johnson his
epic, the “Sugar-cane.” “No,” said the Doctor; and though rats are the
foe of the bibliophile, at least as much as of the sugar-planter, we do
not propose to sing of them. M. Fertiault has done so already in “Les
Sonnets d’un Bibliophile,” where the reader must be pleased with the
beautiful etchings of rats devouring an illuminated MS., and battening on
morocco bindings stamped with the bees of De Thou. It is unnecessary and
it would be undignified, to give hints on rat-catching, but the amateur
must not forget that these animals have a passion for bindings.
The book-collector must avoid gas, which deposits a filthy coat of oil
that catches dust. Mr. Blades found that three jets of gas in a small
room soon reduced the leather on his book-shelves to a powder of the
consistency of snuff, and made the backs of books come away in his hand.
Shaded lamps give the best and most suitable light for the library. As
to the risks which books run at the hands of the owner himself, we surely
need not repeat the advice of Richard de Bury. Living in an age when
tubs (if not unknown as M. Michelet declares) were far from being common,
the old collector inveighed against the dirty hands of readers, and
against their habit of marking their place in a book with filthy straws,
or setting down a beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages
open. But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who
love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the
latter, and light their pipes with the former. After seeing the wreck of
a book which these persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine
Greek hyperbole. The Greeks did not speak of “thumbing” but of “walking
up and down” on a volume (_πατεῖν_). To such fellows it matters not that
they make a book dirty and greasy, cutting the pages with their fingers,
and holding the boards over the fire till they crack. All these
slatternly practices, though they destroy a book as surely as the flames
of Cæsar’s soldiers at Alexandria, seem fine manly acts to the grobians
who use them. What says Jules Janin, who has written “Contre
l’indifference des Philistins,” “il faut à l’homme sage et studieux un
tome honorable et digne de sa louange.” The amateur, and all decent men,
will beware of lending books to such rude workers; and this consideration
brings us to these great foes of books, the borrowers and robbers. The
lending of books, and of other property, has been defended by some great
authorities; thus Panurge himself says, “it would prove much more easy in
nature to have fish entertained in the air, and bullocks fed in the
bottom of the ocean, than to support or tolerate a rascally rabble of
people that will not lend.” Pirckheimer, too, for whom Albert Durer
designed a book-plate, was a lender, and took for his device _Sibi et
Amicis_; and _Jo. Grolierii et amicorum_, was the motto of the renowned
Grolier, whom mistaken writers vainly but frequently report to have been
a bookbinder. But as Mr. Leicester Warren says, in his “Study of
Book-plates” (Pearson, 1880), “Christian Charles de Savigny leaves all
the rest behind, exclaiming _non mihi sed aliis_.” But the majority of
amateurs have chosen wiser, though more churlish devices, as “the ungodly
borroweth and payeth not again,” or “go to them that sell, and buy for
yourselves.” David Garrick engraved on his book-plate, beside a bust of
Shakspeare, these words of Ménage, “La première chose qu’on doit faire,
quand on a emprunte’ un livre, c’est de le lire, afin de pouvoir le
rendre plûtôt.” But the borrower is so minded that the last thing he
thinks of is to read a borrowed book, and the penultimate subject of his
reflections is its restoration. Ménage (Menagiana, Paris, 1729, vol. i.
p. 265), mentions, as if it were a notable misdeed, this of Angelo
Politian’s, “he borrowed a ‘Lucretius’ from Pomponius Laetus, and kept it
for four years.” Four years! in the sight of the borrower it is but a
moment. Ménage reports that a friend kept his “Pausanias” for three
years, whereas four months was long enough.
“At quarto saltem mense redire decet.”
There is no satisfaction in lending a book; for it is rarely that
borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for new stores,
as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr. Johnson, who “greased and
dogs-eared such volumes as were confided to his tender mercies, with the
same indifference wherewith he singed his own wigs.” But there is a race
of mortals more annoying to a conscientious man than borrowers. These
are the spontaneous lenders, who insist that you shall borrow their
tomes. For my own part, when I am oppressed with the charity of such, I
lock their books up in a drawer, and behold them not again till the day
of their return. There is no security against borrowers, unless a man
like Guibert de Pixérécourt steadfastly refuses to lend. The device of
Pixérécourt was _un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais_. But he knew
that our books change when they have been borrowed, like our friends when
they have been married; when “a lady borrows them,” as the fairy queen
says in the ballad of “Tamlane.”
“But had I kenn’d, Tamlane,” she says,
“A lady wad borrowed thee,
I wad ta’en out thy twa gray een,
Put in twa een o’ tree!
“Had I but kenn’d, Tamlane,” she says,
“Before ye came frae hame,
I wad ta’en out your heart o’ flesh,
Put in a heart o’ stane!”
Above the lintel of his library door, Pixérécourt had this couplet
carved—
“Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.”
M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own daughter.
Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little value. Pixérécourt
frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto.
“Yes,” said M. Lacroix, “but I thought that verse applied to every one
but me.” So Pixérécourt made him a present of the volume.
We cannot all imitate this “immense” but unamiable amateur. Therefore,
bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates,
quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their
claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren
and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of
art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate
his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore not again. The
process is futile, but may comfort the heart, like the curses against
thieves which the Greeks were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and
deposit in the temple of Demeter. Each amateur can exercise his own
taste in the design of a book-plate; and for such as love and collect
rare editions of “Homer,” I venture to suggest this motto, which may move
the heart of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic—
_πέμψον ἐπισταμένως_, _δύνασαι γάρ_
_ὥς κε γάλ’ ἀσκηθὴς ἣν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἵκηται_. {3}
Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, “The Enemies of Books”
(Trübner), makes no account of the book-thief or biblioklept. “If they
injure the owners,” says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, “they do no
harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them from one set of
book-shelves to another.” This sentence has naturally caused us to
reflect on the ethical character of the biblioklept. He is not always a
bad man. In old times, when language had its delicacies, and moralists
were not devoid of sensibility, the French did not say “un voleur de
livres,” but “un chipeur de livres;” as the papers call lady shoplifters
“kleptomaniacs.” There are distinctions. M. Jules Janin mentions a
great Parisian bookseller who had an amiable weakness. He was a
bibliokleptomaniac. His first motion when he saw a book within reach was
to put it in his pocket. Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was
lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to
the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price. When he went to a private
view of books about to be sold, the officials at the door would ask him,
as he was going out, if he did not happen to have an Elzevir Horace or an
Aldine Ovid in his pocket. Then he would search those receptacles and
exclaim, “Yes, yes, here it is; so much obliged to you; I am so absent.”
M. Janin mentions an English noble, a “Sir Fitzgerald,” who had the same
tastes, but who unluckily fell into the hands of the police. Yet M.
Janin has a tenderness for the book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover
of books. The moral position of the malefactor is so delicate and
difficult that we shall attempt to treat of it in the severe, though
_rococo_, manner of Aristotle’s “Ethics.” Here follows an extract from
the lost Aristotelian treatise “Concerning Books”:—
“Among the contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books. Now
this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess,
and its defect. The defect is indifference, and the man who is
defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance.
Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will
cut the leaves of his own or his friend’s volumes with the
butter-knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to
mistake the double sense of the term ‘fly-leaves,’ and to stick the
‘fly-leaves’ of his volumes full of fly-hooks. He also loves
dogs’-ears, and marks his place with his pipe when he shuts a book in
a hurry; or he will set the leg of his chair on a page to keep it
open. He praises those who tear off margins for pipe-lights, and he
makes cigarettes with the tissue-paper that covers engravings. When
his books are bound, he sees that the margin is cut to the quick. He
tells you too, that ‘_he_ buys books to read them.’ But he does not
say why he thinks it needful to spoil them. Also he will drag off
bindings—or should we perhaps call this crime _θηριοτης_, or
brutality, rather than mere vice? for vice is essentially human, but
to tear off bindings is bestial. Thus they still speak of a certain
monster who lived during the French Revolution, and who, having
purchased volumes attired in morocco, and stamped with the devices of
the oligarchs, would rip off the leather or vellum, and throw them
into the fire or out of the window, saying that ‘now he could read
with unwashed hands at his ease.’ Such a person, then, is the man
indifferent to books, and he sins by way of defect, being deficient
in the contemplative virtue of book-loving. As to the man who is
exactly in the right mean, we call him the book-lover. His happiness
consists not in reading, which is an active virtue, but in the
contemplation of bindings, and illustrations, and title-pages. Thus
his felicity partakes of the nature of the bliss we attribute to the
gods, for that also is contemplative, and we call the book-lover
‘happy,’ and even ‘blessed,’ but within the limits of mortal
happiness. But, just as in the matter of absence of fear there is a
mean which we call courage, and a defect which we call cowardice, and
an excess which is known as foolhardiness; so it is in the case of
the love of books. As to the mean, we have seen that it is the
virtue of the true book-lover, while the defect constitutes the sin
of the Robustious Philistine. But the extreme is found in
covetousness, and the covetous man who is in the extreme state of
book-loving, is the biblioklept, or book-stealer. Now his vice shows
itself, not in contemplation (for of contemplation there can be no
excess), but in action. For books are procured, as we say, by
purchase, or by barter, and these are voluntary exchanges, both the
seller and the buyer being willing to deal. But books are, again,
procured in another way, by involuntary contract—that is, when the
owner of the book is unwilling to part with it, but he whose own the
book is not is determined to take it. The book-stealer is such a man
as this, and he possesses himself of books with which the owner does
not intend to part, by virtue of a series of involuntary contracts.
Again, the question may be raised, whether is the Robustious
Philistine who despises books, or the biblioklept who adores them out
of measure and excessively, the worse citizen? Now, if we are to
look to the consequences of actions only (as the followers of Bentham
advise), clearly the Robustious Philistine is the worse citizen, for
he mangles, and dirties, and destroys books which it is the interest
of the State to preserve. But the biblioklept treasures and adorns
the books he has acquired; and when he dies, or goes to prison, the
State receives the benefit at his sale. Thus Libri, who was the
greatest of biblioklepts, rescued many of the books he stole from
dirt and misuse, and had them bound royally in purple and gold.
Also, it may be argued that books naturally belong to him who can
appreciate them; and if good books are in a dull or indifferent man’s
keeping, this is the sort of slavery which we call “unnatural” in our
_Politics_, and which is not to be endured. Shall we say, then, that
the Robustious Philistine is the worse citizen, while the Biblioklept
is the worse man? But this is perhaps matter for a separate
disquisition.”
This fragment of the lost Aristotelian treatise “Concerning Books,” shows
what a difficulty the Stagirite had in determining the precise nature of
the moral offence of the biblioklept. Indeed, both as a collector and as
an intuitive moralist, Aristotle must have found it rather difficult to
condemn the book-thief. He, doubtless, went on to draw distinctions
between the man who steals books to sell them again for mere pecuniary
profit (which he would call “chrematistic,” or “unnatural,”
book-stealing), and the man who steals them because he feels that he is
their proper and natural possessor. The same distinction is taken by
Jules Janin, who was a more constant student of Horace than of Aristotle.
In his imaginary dialogue of bibliophiles, Janin introduces a character
who announces the death of M. Libri. The tolerant person who brings the
sad news proposes “to cast a few flowers on the melancholy tomb. He was
a bibliophile, after all. What do you say to it? Many a good fellow has
stolen books, and died in grace at the last.” “Yes,” replies the
president of the club, “but the good fellows did not sell the books they
stole . . . Cest une grande honte, une grande misère.” This Libri was an
Inspector-General of French Libraries under Louis Philippe. When he was
tried, in 1848, it was calculated that the sum of his known thefts
amounted to £20,000. Many of his robberies escaped notice at the time.
It is not long since Lord Ashburnham, according to a French journal, “Le
Livre,” found in his collection some fragments of a Pentateuch. These
relics had been in the possession of the Lyons Library, whence Libri
stole them in 1847. The late Lord Ashburnham bought them, without the
faintest idea of Libri’s dishonesty; and when, after eleven years, the
present peer discovered the proper owners of his treasure, he immediately
restored the Pentateuch to the Lyons Library.
Many eminent characters have been biblioklepts. When Innocent X. was
still Monsignor Pamphilio, he stole a book—so says Tallemant des
Réaux—from Du Monstier, the painter. The amusing thing is that Du
Monstier himself was a book-thief. He used to tell how he had lifted a
book, of which he had long been in search, from a stall on the Pont-Neuf;
“but,” says Tallemant (whom Janin does not seem to have consulted),
“there are many people who don’t think it thieving to steal a book unless
you sell it afterwards.” But Du Monstier took a less liberal view where
his own books were concerned. The Cardinal Barberini came to Paris as
legate, and brought in his suite Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards
became Innocent X. The Cardinal paid a visit to Du Monstier in his
studio, where Monsignor Pamphilio spied, on a table, “L’Histoire du
Concile de Trent”—the good edition, the London one. “What a pity,”
thought the young ecclesiastic, “that such a man should be, by some
accident, the possessor of so valuable a book.” With these sentiments
Monsignor Pamphilio slipped the work under his _soutane_. But little Du
Monstier observed him, and said furiously to the Cardinal, that a holy
man should not bring thieves and robbers in his company. With these
words, and with others of a violent and libellous character, he recovered
the “History of the Council of Trent,” and kicked out the future Pope.
Amelot de la Houssaie traces to this incident the hatred borne by
Innocent X. to the Crown and the people of France. Another Pope, while
only a cardinal, stole a book from Ménage—so M. Janin reports—but we have
not been able to discover Ménage’s own account of the larceny. The
anecdotist is not so truthful that cardinals need flush a deeper scarlet,
like the roses in Bion’s “Lament for Adonis,” on account of a scandal
resting on the authority of Ménage. Among Royal persons, Catherine de
Medici, according to Brantôme, was a biblioklept. “The Marshal Strozzi
had a very fine library, and after his death the Queen-Mother seized it,
promising some day to pay the value to his son, who never got a farthing
of the money.” The Ptolemies, too, were thieves on a large scale. A
department of the Alexandrian Library was called “The Books from the
Ships,” and was filled with rare volumes stolen from passengers in
vessels that touched at the port. True, the owners were given copies of
their ancient MSS., but the exchange, as Aristotle says, was an
“involuntary” one, and not distinct from robbery.
The great pattern of biblioklepts, a man who carried his passion to the
most regrettable excesses, was a Spanish priest, Don Vincente, of the
convent of Pobla, in Aragon. When the Spanish revolution despoiled the
convent libraries, Don Vincente established himself at Barcelona, under
the pillars of Los Encantes, where are the stalls of the merchants of
_bric-à-brac_ and the seats of them that sell books. In a gloomy den the
Don stored up treasures which he hated to sell. Once he was present at
an auction where he was out-bid in the competition for a rare, perhaps a
unique, volume. Three nights after that, the people of Barcelona were
awakened by cries of “Fire!” The house and shop of the man who had
bought “Ordinacions per los gloriosos reys de Arago” were blazing. When
the fire was extinguished, the body of the owner of the house was found,
with a pipe in his blackened hand, and some money beside him. Every one
said, “He must have set the house on fire with a spark from his pipe.”
Time went on, and week by week the police found the bodies of slain men,
now in the street, now in a ditch, now in the river. There were young
men and old, all had been harmless and inoffensive in their lives,
and—all had been _bibliophiles_. A dagger in an invisible hand had
reached their hearts but the assassin had spared their purses, money, and
rings. An organised search was made in the city, and the shop of Don
Vincente was examined. There, in a hidden recess, the police discovered
the copy of “Ordinacions per los gloriosis reys de Arago,” which ought by
rights to have been burned with the house of its purchaser. Don Vincente
was asked how he got the book. He replied in a quiet voice, demanded
that his collection should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and
then confessed a long array of crimes. He had strangled his rival,
stolen the “Ordinacions,” and burned the house. The slain men were
people who had bought from him books which he really could not bear to
part with. At his trial his counsel tried to prove that his confession
was false, and that he might have got his books by honest means. It was
objected that there was in the world only one book printed by Lambert
Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen this, the only
copy, from the library where it was treasured. The defendant’s counsel
proved that there was another copy in the Louvre; that, therefore, there
might be more, and that the defendant’s might have been honestly
procured. Here Don Vincente, previously callous, uttered an hysterical
cry. Said the Alcalde:—“At last, Vincente, you begin to understand the
enormity of your offence?” “Ah, Señor Alcalde, my error was clumsy
indeed. If you only knew how miserable I am!” “If human justice prove
inflexible, there is another justice whose pity is inexhaustible.
Repentance is never too late.” “Ah, Señor Alcalde, but my copy was not
unique!” With the story of this impenitent thief we may close the roll
of biblioklepts, though Dibdin pretends that Garrick was of the company,
and stole Alleyne’s books at Dulwich.
There is a thievish nature more hateful than even the biblioklept. The
Book-Ghoul is he who combines the larceny of the biblioklept with the
abominable wickedness of breaking up and mutilating the volumes from
which he steals. He is a collector of title-pages, frontispieces,
illustrations, and book-plates. He prowls furtively among public and
private libraries, inserting wetted threads, which slowly eat away the
illustrations he covets; and he broods, like the obscene demon of Arabian
superstitions, over the fragments of the mighty dead. His disgusting
tastes vary. He prepares books for the American market. Christmas books
are sold in the States stuffed with pictures cut out of honest volumes.
Here is a quotation from an American paper:—
“Another style of Christmas book which deserves to be mentioned,
though it is out of the reach of any but the very rich, is the
historical or literary work enriched with inserted plates. There has
never, to our knowledge, been anything offered in America so
supremely excellent as the $5000 book on Washington, we
think—exhibited by Boston last year, but not a few fine specimens of
books of this class are at present offered to purchasers. Scribner
has a beautiful copy of Forster’s ‘Life of Dickens,’ enlarged from
three volumes octavo to nine volumes quarto, by taking to pieces,
remounting, and inlaying. It contains some eight hundred engravings,
portraits, views, playbills, title-pages, catalogues, proof
illustrations from Dickens’s works, a set of the Onwhyn plates, rare
engravings by Cruikshank and ‘Phiz,’ and autograph letters. Though
this volume does not compare with Harvey’s Dickens, offered for $1750
two years ago, it is an excellent specimen of books of this sort, and
the veriest tyro in bibliographical affairs knows how scarce are
becoming the early editions of Dickens’s works and the plates
illustrating them. {4} Anything about Dickens in the beginning of
his career is a sound investment from a business point of view.
Another work of the same sort, valued at $240, is Lady Trevelyan’s
edition of Macaulay, illustrated with portraits, many of them very
rare. Even cheaper, all things considered, is an extra-illustrated
copy of the ‘Histoire de la Gravure,’ which, besides its
seventy-three reproductions of old engravings, is enriched with two
hundred fine specimens of the early engravers, many of the
impressions being in first and second states. At $155 such a book is
really a bargain, especially for any one who is forming a collection
of engravings. Another delightful work is the library edition of
Bray’s ‘Evelyn,’ illustrated with some two hundred and fifty
portraits and views, and valued at $175; and still another is
Boydell’s ‘Milton,’ with plates after Westall, and further
illustrations in the shape of twenty-eight portraits of the painter
and one hundred and eighty-one plates, and many of them before
letter. The price of this book is $325.”
But few book-ghouls are worse than the moral ghoul. He defaces, with a
pen, the passages, in some precious volume, which do not meet his idea of
moral propriety. I have a Pine’s “Horace,” with the engravings from
gems, which has fallen into the hands of a moral ghoul. Not only has he
obliterated the verses which hurt his delicate sense, but he has actually
scraped away portions of the classical figures, and “the breasts of the
nymphs in the brake.” The soul of Tartuffe had entered into the body of
a sinner of the last century. The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages
and colophons. The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials out of
manuscripts. The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic ghoul of our own
days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books for the purpose of
cribbing the book-plates. An old “Complaint of a Book-plate,” in dread
of the wet sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by Mr. Austin
Dobson:—{5}
THE BOOK-PLATE’S PETITION.
_By a Gentleman of the Temple_.
While cynic CHARLES still trimm’d the vane
’Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
In days that shocked JOHN EVELYN,
My First Possessor fix’d me in.
In days of Dutchmen and of frost,
The narrow sea with JAMES I cross’d,
Returning when once more began
The Age of Saturn and of ANNE.
I am a part of all the past;
I knew the GEORGES, first and last;
I have been oft where else was none
Save the great wig of ADDISON;
And seen on shelves beneath me grope
The little eager form of POPE.
I lost the Third that own’d me when
French NOAILLES fled at Dettingen;
The year JAMES WOLFE surpris’d Quebec,
The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
The day that WILLIAM HOGARTH dy’d,
The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
This was a Scholar, one of those
Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;
He lov’d old Books and nappy ale,
So liv’d at Streatham, next to THRALE.
’Twas there this stain of grease I boast
Was made by Dr. JOHNSON’S toast.
(He did it, as I think, for Spite;
My Master call’d him Jacobite!)
And now that I so long to-day
Have rested post discrimina,
Safe in the brass-wir’d book-case where
I watch’d the Vicar’s whit’ning hair,
Must I these travell’d bones inter
In some Collector’s sepulchre!
Must I be torn from hence and thrown
With frontispiece and colophon!
With vagrant E’s, and I’s, and O’s,
The spoil of plunder’d Folios!
With scraps and snippets that to ME
Are naught but kitchen company!
Nay, rather, FRIEND, this favour grant me:
Tear me at once; but don’t transplant me.
CHELTENHAM, _Septr_. 31, 1792.
The conceited ghoul writes his notes across our fair white margins, in
pencil, or in more baneful ink. Or he spills his ink bottle at large
over the pages, as André Chénier’s friend served his copy of Malherbe.
It is scarcely necessary to warn the amateur against the society of
book-ghouls, who are generally snuffy and foul in appearance, and by no
means so insinuating as that fair lady-ghoul, Amina, of the Arabian
Nights.
Another enemy of books must be mentioned with the delicacy that befits
the topic. Almost all women are the inveterate foes, not of novels, of
course, nor peerages and popular volumes of history, but of books worthy
of the name. It is true that Isabelle d’Este, and Madame de Pompadour,
and Madame de Maintenon, were collectors; and, doubtless, there are other
brilliant exceptions to a general rule. But, broadly speaking, women
detest the books which the collector desires and admires. First, they
don’t understand them; second, they are jealous of their mysterious
charms; third, books cost money; and it really is a hard thing for a lady
to see money expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper
scored with crabbed characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war
against booksellers’ catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have
had to practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase
across their own frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to
collecting Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot
smuggle a folio volume easily. This inveterate dislike of books often
produces a very deplorable result when an old collector dies. His
“womankind,” as the Antiquary called them, sell all his treasures for the
price of waste-paper, to the nearest country bookseller. It is a
melancholy duty which forces one to introduce such topics into a volume
on “Art at Home.” But this little work will not have been written in
vain if it persuades ladies who inherit books not to sell them hastily,
without taking good and disinterested opinion as to their value. They
often dispose of treasures worth thousands, for a ten pound note, and
take pride in the bargain. Here, let history mention with due honour the
paragon of her sex and the pattern to all wives of book-collecting
men—Madame Fertiault. It is thus that she addresses her lord in a
charming triolet (“Les Amoureux du Livre,” p. xxxv):—
“Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
Moi, j’ai ton coeur, et sans partage.
Puis-je désirer davantage?
Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
Heureuse de te voir joyeux,
Je t’en voudrais . . . tout un étage.
Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
Moi, j’ai ton coeur, et sans partage.”
Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
What more can I require of thee?
Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
Contented when thy bliss I see,
I wish a world of books thine own.
Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
[Picture: M. Annei Lucani de Bello Civili Libri X. Apud Seb. Gryphium
Lugduni. 1551]
There is one method of preserving books, which, alas, only tempts the
borrower, the stealer, the rat, and the book-worm; but which is
absolutely necessary as a defence against dust and neglect. This is
binding. The bookbinder’s art too often destroys books when the artist
is careless, but it is the only mode of preventing our volumes from
falling to pieces, and from being some day disregarded as waste-paper. A
well-bound book, especially a book from a famous collection, has its
price, even if its literary contents be of trifling value. A leather
coat fashioned by Derome, or Le Gascon, or Duseuil, will win respect and
careful handling for one specimen of an edition whereof all the others
have perished. Nothing is so slatternly as the aspect of a book merely
stitched, in the French fashion, when the threads begin to stretch, and
the paper covers to curl and be torn. Worse consequences follow, whole
sheets are lost, the volume becomes worthless, and the owner must often
be at the expense of purchasing another copy, if he can, for the edition
may now be out of print. Thus binding of some sort not only adds a grace
to the library, presenting to the eye the cheerful gilded rows of our
volumes, but is a positive economy. In the case of our cloth-covered
English works, the need of binding is not so immediately obvious. But
our publishers have a taste for clothing their editions in tender tones
of colour, stamped, often, with landscapes printed in gold, in white, or
what not. Covers like this, may or may not please the eye while they are
new and clean, but they soon become dirty and hideous. When a book is
covered in cloth of a good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound,
but the primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid of the binder.
[Picture: Pub. Virgilii Maronis Opera Parisiis. Apud Hieronymum de
Marnef, sub Pelicano, Monte D’Hilurii. 1558]
Much has been written of late about book-binding. In a later part of
this manual we shall have something to say about historical examples of
the art, and the performances of the great masters. At present one must
begin by giving the practical rule, that a book should be bound in
harmony with its character and its value. The bibliophile, if he could
give the rein to his passions, would bind every book he cares to possess
in a full coat of morocco, or (if it did not age so fast) of Russia
leather. But to do this is beyond the power of most of us. Only works
of great rarity or value should be full bound in morocco. If we have the
luck to light on a Shakespeare quarto, on some masterpiece of Aldus
Manutius, by all means let us entrust it to the most competent binder,
and instruct him to do justice to the volume. Let old English books, as
More’s “Utopia,” have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf. Let the
binder clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by
Grolier, in leather tooled with geometrical patterns. Let a Molière or
Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon, where
the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian point-lace,
for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself. Let a binding, _à la
fanfare_, in the style of Thouvenin, denote a novelist of the last
century, let panelled Russia leather array a folio of Shakespeare, and
let English works of a hundred years ago be clothed in the sturdy fashion
of Roger Payne. Again, the bibliophile may prefer to have the leather
stamped with his arms and crest, like de Thou, Henri III., D’Hoym, Madame
du Barry, and most of the collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Yet there are books of great price which one would hesitate
to bind in new covers. An Aldine or an Elzevir, in its old vellum or
paper wrapper, with uncut leaves, should be left just as it came from the
presses of the great printers. In this condition it is a far more
interesting relic. But a morocco case may be made for the book, and
lettered properly on the back, so that the volume, though really unbound,
may take its place with the bound books on the shelves. A copy of any of
Shelley’s poems, in the original wrappers, should I venture to think be
treated thus, and so should the original editions of Keats’s and of Mr.
Tennyson’s works. A collector, who is also an author, will perhaps like
to have copies of his own works in morocco, for their coats will give
them a chance of surviving the storms of time. But most other books, not
of the highest rarity and interest, will be sufficiently clothed in
half-bindings, that is, with leather backs and corners, while the rest of
the cover is of cloth or paper, or whatever other substance seems most
appropriate. An Oxford tutor used to give half-binding as an example of
what Aristotle calls _Μικροπρέπεια_, or “shabbiness,” and when we
recommend such coverings for books it is as a counsel of expediency, not
of perfection. But we cannot all be millionaires; and, let it be
remembered, the really wise amateur will never be extravagant, nor let
his taste lead him into “the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary
embarrassment.” Let the example of Charles Nodier be our warning; nay,
let us remember that while Nodier could get out of debt by selling his
collection, _ours_ will probably not fetch anything like what we gave for
it. In half-bindings there is a good deal of room for the exercise of
the collector’s taste. M. Octave Uzanne, in a tract called “Les Caprices
d’un Bibliophile,” gives some hints on this topic, which may be taken or
let alone. M. Uzanne has noticed the monotony, and the want of meaning
and suggestion in ordinary half-bindings. The paper or cloth which
covers the greater part of the surface of half-bound books is usually
inartistic and even ugly. He proposes to use old scraps of brocade,
embroidery, Venice velvet, or what not; and doubtless a covering made of
some dead fair lady’s train goes well with a romance by Crébillon, and
engravings by Marillier. “Voici un cartonnage Pompadour de notre
invention,” says M. Uzanne, with pride; but he observes that it needs a
strong will to make a bookbinder execute such orders. For another class
of books, which our honest English shelves reject with disgust, M. Uzanne
proposes a binding of the skin of the boa constrictor; undoubtedly
appropriate and “admonishing.” The leathers of China and Japan, with
their strange tints and gilded devices may be used for books of fantasy,
like “Gaspard de la Nuit,” or the “Opium Eater,” or Poe’s poems, or the
verses of Gérard de Nerval. Here, in short, is an almost unexplored
field for the taste of the bibliophile, who, with some expenditure of
time, and not much of money, may make half-binding an art, and give
modern books a peculiar and appropriate raiment.
M. Ambrose Firmin Didot has left some notes on a more serious topic,—the
colours to be chosen when books are full-bound in morocco. Thus he would
have the “Iliad” clothed in red, the “Odyssey” in blue, because the old
Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the Wrath of
Achilles, a blue one when they chanted of the Return of Odysseus. The
writings of the great dignitaries of the Church, M. Didot would array in
violet; scarlet goes well with the productions of cardinals; philosophers
have their sober suit of black morocco, poets like Panard may be dressed
in rose colour. A collector of this sort would like, were it possible,
to attire Goldsmith’s poems in a “coat of Tyrian bloom, satin grain.” As
an antithesis to these extravagant fancies, we may add that for ordinary
books no binding is cheaper, neater, and more durable, than a coat of
buckram.
The conditions of a well bound book may be tersely enumerated. The
binding should unite solidity and elegance. The book should open easily,
and remain open at any page you please. It should never be necessary, in
reading, to squeeze back the covers; and no book, however expensively
bound, has been properly treated, if it does not open with ease. It is a
mistake to send recently printed books to the binder, especially books
which contain engravings. The printing ink dries slowly, and, in the
process called “beating,” the text is often transferred to the opposite
page. M. Rouveyre recommends that one or two years should pass before
the binding of a newly printed book. The owner will, of course, implore
the binder to, spare the margins; and, almost equally of course, the
binder, _durus arator_, will cut them down with his abominable plough.
One is almost tempted to say that margins should always be left
untouched, for if once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist
the seductive joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed
matter. Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over
some Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back _minus_ £500
worth of margin. Margins make a book worth perhaps £400, while their
absence reduces the same volume to the box marked “all these at
fourpence.” _Intonsis capillis_, with locks unshorn, as Motteley the old
dealer used to say, an Elzevir in its paper wrapper may be worth more
than the same tome in morocco, stamped with Longepierre’s fleece of gold.
But these things are indifferent to bookbinders, new and old. There lies
on the table, as I write, “Les Provinciales, ou Les Lettres Ecrites par
Louis de Montalte à un Provincial de ses amis, & aux R.R. P.P. Jesuites.
A Cologne, Ches PIERRE de la VALLÉE, M.DC.LVIII.” It is the Elzevir
edition, or what passes for such; but the binder has cut down the margin
so that the words “Les Provinciales” almost touch the top of the page.
Often the wretch—he lived, judging by his style, in Derome’s time, before
the Revolution—has sliced into the head-titles of the pages. Thus the
book, with its old red morocco cover and gilded flowers on the back, is
no proper companion for “Les Pensées de M. PASCAL (Wolfganck, 1672),”
which some sober Dutchman has left with a fair allowance of margin, an
inch “taller” in its vellum coat than its neighbour in morocco. Here
once more, is “LES FASCHEUX, Comedie de I. B. P. MOLIÈRE, Representee sur
Le _Theatre du Palais Royal_. A Paris, Chez GABRIEL QUINET, au Palais,
dans la Galerie des Prisonniers, à l’Ange Gabriel, M.DCLXIII. Avec
privilege du Roy.” What a crowd of pleasant memories the bibliophile,
and he only, finds in these dry words of the title. Quinet, the
bookseller, lived “au Palais,” in that pretty old arcade where Corneille
cast the scene of his comedy, “La Galerie du Palais.” In the Geneva
edition of Corneille, 1774, you can see Gravelot’s engraving of the
place; it is a print full of exquisite charm (engraved by Le Mure in
1762). Here is the long arcade, in shape exactly like the galleries of
the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The bookseller’s booth is arched over,
and is open at front and side. Dorimant and Cléante are looking out; one
leans on the books on the window-sill, the other lounges at the door, and
they watch the pretty Hippolyte who is chaffering with the lace-seller at
the opposite shop. “Ce visage vaut mieux que toutes vos chansons,” says
Dorimant to the bookseller. So they loitered, and bought books, and
flirted in their lace ruffles, and ribbons, and flowing locks, and wide
_canons_, when Molière was young, and when this little old book was new,
and lying on the shelves of honest Quinet in the Palace Gallery. The
very title-page, and pagination, not of this second edition, but of the
first of “Les Fascheux,” had their own fortunes, for the dedication to
Fouquet was perforce withdrawn. That favourite entertained La Vallière
and the King with the comedy at his house of Vaux, and then instantly
fell from power and favour, and, losing his place and his freedom,
naturally lost the flattery of a dedication. But _retombons à nos
__coches_, as Montaigne says. This pleasant little copy of the play,
which is a kind of relic of Molière and his old world, has been
ruthlessly bound up with a treatise, “Des Pierres Précieuses,” published
by Didot in 1776. Now the play is naturally a larger book than the
treatise on precious stones, so the binder has cut down the margins to
the size of those of the work on amethysts and rubies. As the Italian
tyrant chained the dead and the living together, as Procrustes maimed his
victims on his cruel bed, so a hard-hearted French binder has tied up,
and mutilated, and spoiled the old play, which otherwise would have had
considerable value as well as interest.
We have tried to teach the beginner how to keep his books neat and clean;
what men and monsters he should avoid; how he should guard himself
against borrowers, book-worms, damp, and dirt. But we are sometimes
compelled to buy books already dirty and dingy, foxed, or spotted with
red, worn by greasy hands, stained with ink spots, or covered with MS.
notes. The art of man has found a remedy for these defects. I have
never myself tried to wash a book, and this care is best left to
professional hands. But the French and English writers give various
recipes for cleaning old books, which the amateur may try on any old
rubbish out of the fourpenny box of a bookstall, till he finds that he
can trust his own manipulations. There are “fat stains” on books, as
thumb marks, traces of oil (the midnight oil), flakes of old pasty crust
left in old Shakespeares, and candle drippings. There are “thin stains,”
as of mud, scaling-wax, ink, dust, and damp. To clean a book you first
carefully unbind it, take off the old covers, cut the old stitching, and
separate sheet from sheet. Then take a page with “fat stains” of any
kind of grease (except finger-marks), pass a hot flat iron over it, and
press on it a clean piece of blotting paper till the paper sucks up the
grease. Then charge a camel-hair brush with heated turpentine, and pass
it over the places that were stained. If the paper loses its colour
press softly over it a delicate handkerchief, soaked in heated spirits of
wine. Finger-marks you will cover with clean soap, leave this on for
some hours, and then rub with a sponge filled with hot water. Afterwards
dip in weak acid and water, and then soak the page in a bath of clean
water. Ink-stained pages you will first dip in a strong solution of
oxalic acid and then in hydrochloric acid mixed in six times its quantity
of water. Then bathe in clean water and allow to dry slowly.
Some English recipes may also be given. “Grease or wax spots,” says
Hannett, in “Bibliopegia,” “may be removed by washing the part with
ether, chloroform, or benzine, and placing it between pieces of white
blotting paper, then pass a hot iron over it.” “Chlorine water,” says
the same writer, removes ink stains, and bleaches the paper at the same
time. Of chloride of lime, “a piece the size of a nut” (a cocoa nut or a
hazel nut?) in a pint of water, may be applied with a camel’s hair
pencil, and plenty of patience. To polish old bindings, “take the yolk
of an egg, beat it up with a fork, apply it with a sponge, having first
cleaned the leather with a dry flannel.” The following, says a writer in
“Notes and Queries,” with perfect truth, is “an easier if not a better
method; purchase some bookbinder’s varnish,” and use it as you did the
rudimentary omelette of the former recipe. Vellum covers may be cleaned
with soap and water, or in bad cases by a weak solution of salts of
lemon.
Lastly, the collector should acquire such books as Lowndes’s
“Bibliography,” Brunet’s “Manuel,” and as many priced catalogues as he
can secure. The catalogues of Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Bohn, M. Fontaine, M.M.
Morgand et Fatout, are excellent guides to a knowledge of the market
value of books. Other special works, as Renouard’s for Aldines,
Willems’s for Elzevirs, and Cohen’s for French engravings, will be
mentioned in their proper place. Dibdin’s books are inaccurate and
long-winded, but may occasionally be dipped into with pleasure.