The most distinguished of living Englishmen, who, great as he is in
many directions, is perhaps inherently more a man of letters than
anything else, has been overheard mournfully to declare that there
were more book-sellers' shops in his native town sixty years ago, when
he was a boy in it, than are to-day to be found within its boundaries.
And yet the place "all unabashed" now boasts its bookless self a city!
Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to second-hand bookshops.
Neither he nor any other sensible man puts himself out about new
books. When a new book is published, read an old one, was the advice
of a sound though surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters to
have glorified the term "second-hand," which other crafts have "soiled
to all ignoble use." But why it has been able to do this is obvious.
All the best books are necessarily second-hand. The writers of to-day
need not grumble. Let them "bide a wee." If their books are worth
anything, they, too, one day will be second-hand. If their books are
not worth anything there are ancient trades still in full operation
amongst us--the pastrycooks and the trunkmakers--who must have paper.
But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books,
meaning thereby second-hand books? The late Mark Pattison, who had
16,000 volumes, and whose lightest word has therefore weight, once
stated that he had been informed, and verily believed, that there were
men of his own University of Oxford who, being in uncontrolled
possession of annual incomes of not less than L500, thought they were
doing the thing handsomely if they expended L50 a year upon their
libraries. But we are not bound to believe this unless we like. There
was a touch of morosity about the late Rector of Lincoln which led him
to take gloomy views of men, particularly Oxford men.
No doubt arguments _a priori_ may readily be found to support the
contention that the habit of book-buying is on the decline. I confess
to knowing one or two men, not Oxford men either, but Cambridge men
(and the passion of Cambridge for literature is a by-word), who, on
the plea of being pressed with business, or because they were going to
a funeral, have passed a bookshop in a strange town without so much as
stepping inside "just to see whether the fellow had anything." But
painful as facts of this sort necessarily are, any damaging inference
we might feel disposed to draw from them is dispelled by a comparison
of price-lists. Compare a bookseller's catalogue of 1862 with one of
the present year, and your pessimism is washed away by the tears which
unrestrainedly flow as you see what _bonnes fortunes_ you have lost. A
young book-buyer might well turn out upon Primrose Hill and bemoan his
youth, after comparing old catalogues with new.
Nothing but American competition, grumble some old stagers.
Well! why not? This new battle for the books is a free fight, not a
private one, and Columbia has "joined in." Lower prices are not to be
looked for. The book-buyer of 1900 will be glad to buy at to-day's
prices. I take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so. Good
finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that but a few short weeks
ago I picked up (such is the happy phrase, most apt to describe what
was indeed a "street casualty") a copy of the original edition of
_Endymion_ (Keats's poem--O subscriber to Mudie's!--not Lord
Beaconsfield's novel) for the easy equivalent of half-a-crown--but
then that was one of my lucky days. The enormous increase of
booksellers' catalogues and their wide circulation amongst the trade
has already produced a hateful uniformity of prices. Go where you will
it is all the same to the odd sixpence. Time was when you could map
out the country for yourself with some hopefulness of plunder. There
were districts where the Elizabethan dramatists were but slenderly
protected. A raid into the "bonnie North Countrie" sent you home again
cheered with chap-books and weighted with old pamphlets of curious
interests; whilst the West of England seldom failed to yield a crop of
novels. I remember getting a complete set of the Bronte books in the
original issues at Torquay, I may say, for nothing. Those days are
over. Your country bookseller is, in fact, more likely, such tales
does he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues does he receive
by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than to part with
them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, "just to clear my
shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room." The only compensation
for this is the catalogues themselves. You get _them_, at least, for
nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty pretty reading.
These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us the
conviction that there never were so many private libraries in course
of growth as there are to-day.
Libraries are not made; they grow. Your first two thousand volumes
present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly little money. Given L400
and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course,
without undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround
himself with this number of books, all in his own language, and
thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is
possible to be happy. But pride is still out of the question. To be
proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well
be proud of having two top-coats. After your first two thousand
difficulty begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less
you say about your library the better. _Then_ you may begin to speak.
It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a library left you. The
present writer will disclaim no such legacy, but hereby undertakes to
accept it, however dusty. But good as it is to inherit a library, it
is better to collect one. Each volume then, however lightly a
stranger's eye may roam from shelf to shelf, has its own
individuality, a history of its own. You remember where you got it,
and how much you gave for it; and your word may safely be taken for
the first of these facts, but not for the second.
The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate
himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own
existence. No other man but he would have made precisely such a
combination as his. Had he been in any single respect different from
what he is, his library, as it exists, never would have existed.
Therefore, surely he may exclaim, as in the gloaming he contemplates
the backs of his loved ones, "They are mine, and I am theirs."
But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even through the
keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar page, of Shakespeare it
may be, and his "infinite variety," his "multitudinous mind," suggests
some new thought, and as you are wondering over it you think of
Lycidas, your friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having his
opinion of your discovery the very next time when by the fire you two
"help: waste a sullen day." Or it is, perhaps, some quainter, tenderer
fancy that engages your solitary attention, something in Sir Philip
Sydney or Henry Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, ever
the best interpreter of love, human or divine. Alas! the printed page
grows hazy beneath a filmy eye as you suddenly remember that Lycidas
is dead--"dead ere his prime"--and that the pale cheek of Phyllis will
never again be relumined by the white light of her pure enthusiasm.
And then you fall to thinking of the inevitable, and perhaps, in your
present mood, not unwelcome hour, when the "ancient peace" of your old
friends will be disturbed, when rude hands will dislodge them from
their accustomed nooks and break up their goodly company
"Death bursts amongst them like a shell,
And strews them over half the town."
They will form new combinations, lighten other men's toil, and soothe
another's sorrow. Fool that I was to call anything _mine_!
_Augustine Birrell._