One of his faults is his proneness to regard books as mere merchandise and
not as vehicles of intellectual profit, that is to say, to be read. Too
many collectors buy books simply for their rarity and with too little
regard to the value of their contents. The Circassian slave-dealer does
not care whether his girls can talk sense or not, and too many men buy
books with a similar disregard to their capacity for instructing or
entertaining. It seems to me that a man who buys books which he does not
read, and especially such as he cannot read, merely on account of their
value as merchandise, degrades the noble passion of bibliomania to the
level of a trade. When I go through such a library I think of what
Christ said to the traders in the Temple. Another fault is his lack of
independence and his tendency to imitate the recognized leaders. He is too
prone to buy certain books simply because another has them, and thus even
rare collections are apt to fall into a tiresome routine. The collector
who has a hobby and independence to ride it is admirable. Let him addict
himself to some particular subject or era or "ana," and try to exhaust it,
and before he is conscious he will have accumulated a collection precious
for its very singularity. It strikes me that the best example of this
idea that I have ever heard of is the attempt, in which two collectors in
this country are engaged, to acquire the first or at least one specimen of
every one of the five hundred fifteenth century printers. If this should
ever succeed, the great libraries of all the world would be eager for it,
and the undertaking is sufficiently arduous to last a lifetime.
Sometimes out of this fault, sometimes independently of it, arises the
fault by which book collecting degenerates into mere rivalry--the vulgar
desire of display and ambition for a larger or rarer or costlier
accumulation than one's neighbor has. The determination not to be
outdone does not lend dignity or worth to the pursuit which would
otherwise be commendable. During the late civil war in this country the
chaplain of a regiment informed his colonel, who was not a godly person,
that there was a hopeful revival of religion going on in a neighboring and
rival regiment, and that forty men had been converted and baptized.
"Dashed if I will submit to that," said the swearing colonel: "Adjutant,
detail fifty men for baptism instantly!" So Mr. Roe, hearing that Mr. Doe
has acquired a Caxton or other rarity of a certain height, and absolutely
flawless except that the corners of the last leaf have been skillfully
mended and that six leaves are slightly foxed, cannot rest night or day
for envy, but is like the troubled sea until he can find a copy a
sixteenth of an inch taller, the corners of whose leaves are in their
pristine integrity, and over whose brilliant surface the smudge of the fox
has not been cast, and then how high is his exaltation! Not that he cares
anything for the book intrinsically, but he glories in having beaten
Doe. Now if any speaks to him of Doe's remarkable copy, he can draw out
his own and create a surprise in the bosom of Doe's adherent. The laurels
of Miltiades no longer deprive him of rest. He has overcome in this
trivial and childish strife concerning size and condition, and he holds
the champion's belt for the present. He not only feels big himself but he
has succeeded in making Doe feel small, which is still better. I don't
know whether there will be any book-collecting in Mr. Bellamy's Utopia,
but if there is, it will not be disfigured by such meanness, but
collectors will go about striving to induce others to accept their
superior copies and everything will be as lovely as in Heine's heaven,
where geese fly around ready cooked, and if one treads on your corn it
conveys a sensation of exquisite delight.
It has been several times remarked by moralists that human nature is
selfish. One of course does not expect another to relinquish to him his
place in a "queue" at a box-office or his turn at a barber's shop, but in
the noble and elegant pursuit of book-collecting it would be well to
emulate the politeness of the French at Fontenoy, and hat in hand offer
our antagonist the first shot. But I believe the only place where the
Book-Worm ever does that is the auction room.
I no sooner come into the library, but I bolt the door to me,
excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is
idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the
very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with
so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones
and rich men that know not this happiness.
--Heinsius.
The modern Book-Worm is not the simple and absent-minded creature who went
by this name a century ago or more. He is no mere antiquarian, Dryasdust
or Dominie Sampson, but he is a sharp merchant, or a relentless broker, or
a professional railroad wrecker, or a keen lawyer, or a busy physician, or
a great manufacturer--a wide awake man of affairs, quite devoid of the
conventional innocency and credulity which formerly made the name of
Book-Worm suggestive of a necessity for a guardian or a committee in
lunacy. No longer does he inquire, as Becatello inquired of Alphonso,
King of Naples, which had done the better--Poggius, who sold a Livy,
fairly writ in his own hand, to buy a country home near Florence, or he,
who to buy a Livy had sold a piece of land? No longer is the scale turned
in the negotiation of a treaty between princes by the weight of a rare
book, as when Cosimo dei Medici persuaded King Alphonso of Naples to a
peace by sending him a codex of Livy. No longer does the Book-Worm sit in
his modest book-room, absorbed in his adored volumes, heedless of the
waning lamp and the setting star, of hunger and thirst, unmindful of the
scent of the clover wafted in at the window, deaf to the hum of the bees
and the low of the kine, blind to the glow of sunsets and the soft contour
of the blue hills, and the billowy swaying of the wheat field before the
gentle breath of the south. No longer can it be said that
THE BOOK-WORM DOES NOT CARE FOR NATURE.
I feel no need of nature's flowers--
Of flowers of rhetoric I have store;
I do not miss the balmy showers--
When books are dry I o'er them pore.
Why should I sit upon a stile
And cause my aged bones to ache,
When I can all the hours beguile
With any style that I would take?
Why should I haunt a purling stream,
Or fish in miasmatic brook?
O'er Euclid's angles I can dream,
And recreation find in Hook.
Why should I jolt upon a horse
And after wretched vermin roam,
When I can choose an easier course
With Fox and Hare and Hunt at home?
Why should I scratch my precious skin
By crawling through a hawthorne hedge,
When Hawthorne, raking up my sin,
Stands tempting on the nearest ledge?
No need that I should take the trouble
To go abroad to walk or ride,
For I can sit at home and double
Quite up with pain from Akenside.
The modern Book-Worm deals in sums of six figures; he keeps an agent "on
the other side;" he cables his demands and his decisions; his name
flutters the dovecotes in the auction-room; to him is proffered the first
chance at a rarity worth a King's ransom; too busy to potter in person
with such a trifle as the purchase of a Mazarine Bible, he hires others to
do the hunting and he merely receives the game; the tiger skin and the
elephant's tusk are laid at his feet to order, but he misses all the joy
and ardor of the hunt. How different is all this from Sir Thomas
Urquhart's account of his own library, of which he says: "There were not
three works therein which were not of mine own purchase, and all of them
together, in the order wherein I had ranked them, compiled like to a
complete nosegay of flowers, which in my travels I had gathered out of the
gardens of sixteen several kingdoms."
Another fault of the Book-Worm is the affectation of collecting books on
subjects in which he takes no practical interest, simply because it is the
fashion or the books are intrinsically beautiful. Many a man has a fine
collection on Angling, for example, who hardly knows how to put a worm on
a hook, much less attach a fly. I fear I am one of these hypocritical
creatures, for this is
HOW I GO A-FISHING.
Tis sweet to sit in shady nook,
Or wade in rapid crystal brook,
Impervious in rubber boots,
And wary of the slippery roots,
To snare the swift evasive trout
Or eke the sauntering horn-pout;
Or in the cold Canadian river
To see the glorious salmon quiver,
And them with tempting hook inveigle,
Fit viand for a table regal;
Or after an exciting bout
To snatch the pike with sharpened snout;
Or with some patient ass to row
To troll for bass with motion slow.
Oh! joy supreme when they appear
Splashing above the water clear,
And drawn reluctantly to land
Lie gasping on the yellow sand!
But sweeter far to read the books
That treat of flies and worms and hooks,
From Pickering's monumental page,
(Late rivalled by the rare Dean Sage),
And Major's elder issues neat,
To Burnand's funny "Incompleat."
I love their figures quaint and queer,
Which on the inviting page appear,
From those of good Dame Juliana,
Who lifts a fish and cries hosanna,
To those of Stothard, graceful Quaker,
Of fishy art supremest maker,
Whose fisherman, so dry and neat,
Would never soil a parlor seat.
I love them all, the books on angling,
And far from cares and business jangling,
Ensconced in cosy chimney-corner,
Like the traditional Jack Horner,
I read from Walton down to Lang,
And hum that song the Milkmaid sang.
I get not tired nor wet nor cross,
Nor suffer monetary loss--
If fish are shy and will not bite,
And shun the snare laid in their sight--
In order home at night to bring
A fraudulent, deceitful string,
And thus escape the merry jeers
Of heartless piscatory peers;
Nor have to listen to the lying
Of fishermen while fish are frying,
Who boast of draughts miraculous
Which prove too large a draught on us.
I spare the rod, and rods don't break;
Nor fish in sight the hook forsake;
My lines ne'er snap like corset laces;
My lines are fallen in pleasant places.
And so in sage experience ripe,
My fishery is but a type.
XV.
POVERTY AS A MEANS OF ENJOYMENT IN COLLECTING.
Poor collectors are not only not at a disadvantage in enjoyment, but they
have a positive advantage over affluent rivals. If I were rich, probably I
should not throw my money away just to experience this superiority, but it
nevertheless exists. I do not envy, but I commiserate my brother collector
who has plenty of money. He who only has to draw his check to obtain his
desire fails to reach the keenest bliss of the pursuit. If diamonds were
as common as cobble stones there would be no delight in picking them up.
To constitute a bibliomaniac in the true sense, the love of books must
combine with a certain limitation of means for the gratification of the
appetite. The consciousness of some extravagance must be always present
in his mind; there must be a sense of sacrifice in the attainment; in a
rich man the disease cannot exist; he cannot enter the kingdom of the
Bibliomaniac's heaven. There is the same difference of sensation between
the acquirement of books by a wealthy man and by him of slender purse,
that there is between the taking of fish in a net and the successful
result of a long angling pursuit after one especially fat and evasive
trout. When a prince kills his preserved game, with keepers to raise it
for him and to hand him guns ready loaded, so that all he has to do is to
squint and pull the trigger, this is not hunting; it is mere vulgar
butchery. What knows he of the joys of the tramper in the forest, who
stalks the deer, or scares up smaller game, singly, and has to work hard
for his bag? We read in Dibdin's sumptuous pages of the celebrated contest
between the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of Blandford for the
possession of the Valdarfar Decameron; we read with admiration, but we
also read of the immortal battle of Elia with the little squab-keeper of
the old book-stall in Ninety-four alley, over the ownership of a ragged
duodecimo for a sixpence; we read with affection. So we read Leigh
Hunt's confession that when he "cut open a new catalogue of old books, and
put crosses against dozens of volumes in the list, out of the pure
imagination of buying them, the possibility being out of the question."
Poverty hath her victories no less renowned than wealth. To haunt the
book-stores, there to see a long-desired work in luxurious and tempting
style, reluctantly to abandon it for the present on account of the price;
to go home and dream about it, to wonder, for a year, and perchance
longer, whether it will ever again greet your eyes; to conjecture what act
of desperation you might in heat of passion commit toward some more
affluent man in whose possession you should thereafter find it; to see it
turn up again in another book-shop, its charms slightly faded, but yet
mellowed by age, like those of your first love, met in later life--with
this difference, however, that whereas you crave those of the book more
than ever, you are generally quite satisfied with yourself for not having,
through the greenness of youth, yielded untimely to those of the lady; to
ask with assumed indifference the price, and learn with ill-dissembled joy
that it is now within your means; to say you'll take it; to place it
beneath your arm, and pay for it (or more generally order it "charged");
to go forth from that room with feelings akin to those of Ulysses when he
brought away the Palladium from Troy; to keep a watchful eye on the parcel
in the railway coach on your way home, or to gloat over the treasures of
its pages, and wonder if the other passengers have any suspicion of your
good fortune; and finally to place the volume on your shelf, and
thenceforth to call it your own--this is indeed a pleasure denied to the
affluent, so keen as to be akin to pain, and only marred by the palling
which always follows possession and the presentation of your book-seller's
account three months afterwards.
XVI.
THE ARRANGEMENT OF BOOKS.
There was a time when I loved to see my books arranged with a view to
uniformity of height and harmony of color without respect to subjects.
That time I regard as my vealy period. That was the time when we admired
"Somnambula," and when the housewife used to have all the pictures hung on
the same level, and to buy vases in pairs exactly alike and put them on
either side of the parlor clock, which was generally surmounted by a
prancing Saracen or a weaving Penelope. Granting that a collection is not
extensive enough to demand a strict arrangement by subjects, I like to see
a little artistic confusion--high and low together here and there, like a
democratic community; now and then some giants laid down on their sides to
rest; the shelves not uniformly filled out as if the owner never expected
to buy any more, and alongside a dainty Angler a book in red or blue cloth
with a white label--just as childred in velvet and furs sit next a
newsboy, or a little girl in calico with a pigtail at Sunday School, or as
beggars and princes kneel side by side on the cathedral pavement. It is
good to have these "swell" books rub up against the commoners, which
though not so elegant are frequently a great deal brighter. At a country
funeral I once heard the undertaker say to the bearers, "size yourselves
off." There is no necessity or artistic gain in such a ceremony in a
library, and a departure from stiff uniformity is quite agreeable. Then
I do not care to have the book cases all of the same height, nor even of
the same kind of wood, nor to have them all "dwarfs," with bric-a-brac on
the top. I would rather have more books on top. In short, it is pleasant
to have the collection remind one in a way of Topsy--not that it was
"born," but "growed" and is expected to grow more. There is a modern
notion of considering a library as a room rather than as a collection of
books, and of making the front drawing-room the library, which is
heretical in the eyes of a true Book-Worm. This is probably an invention
of the women of the house to prevent any additions to the books without
their knowledge, and to discourage book-buying. We have surrendered too
much to our wives in this; they demand book cases as furniture and to
serve as shelves, without any regard to the interior contents or whether
there are any, except for the color of the bindings and the regularity of
the rows. All of us have thus seen "libraries" without books worthy the
name, and book-cases sometimes with exquisite silk curtains, carefully and
closely drawn, arousing the suspicion that there were no books behind
them. My ideal library is a room given up to books, all by itself, at
the top or in the rear of the house, where "company" cannot break through
and say to me, "I know you are a great man to buy books--have you seen
that beautiful limited holiday edition of Ben Hur, with illustrations?"
XVII.
ENEMIES OF BOOKS.
Mr. Blades regards as "Enemies of Books" fire, water, gas, heat, dust and
neglect, ignorance and bigotry, the worm, beetles, bugs and rats,
book-binders, collectors, servants and children. He does not include
women, borrowers, or thieves. Perhaps he considers them rather as enemies
of the book-owners. The worm is not always to be considered an enemy to
authors, although he may be to books. James Payn, in speaking of the
recent discovery, in the British Museum, of a copy on papyrus of the
humorous poems of the obscure Greek poet, Herodles, says: "The humorous
poems of Herodles possess, however, the immense advantage of being
'seriously mutilated by worms'; wherever therefore an hiatus occurs, the
charitable and cultured mind will be enabled to conclude that (as in the
case of a second descent upon a ball supper) the 'best things' have been
already devoured." It was doubtless to guard against thieves that the
ancient books were chained up in the monasteries, but the practice was
effectual also against borrowers. De Bury, in his "Philobiblon" has a
chapter entitled "A Provident Arrangement by which his Books may be lent
to Strangers," in which the utmost leniency is to lend duplicate books
upon ample security. Not to adopt the harsh judgment of an ancient
author, who says, "to lend a book is to lose it, and borrowing but a
hypocritical pretense for stealing," we may conclude, in a word, that to
lend a book is like the Presidency of the United States, to be neither
desired nor refused. Collectors are not so much exposed to the ravages of
thieves as book-sellers are, and a book-thief ought to be regarded with
leniency for his good taste and his reliance on the existence of culture
in others. After all, it is one's own fault if he lends a book. One
should as soon think of lending one of his children, unless he has
duplicate or triplicate daughters. It would be difficult to foretell what
would happen to a man who should propose to borrow a rare book. Perhaps
death by freezing would be the safest prediction. Although Grolier stamped
"et amicorum" on his books, that did not mean that he would lend them, but
only that his friends were free of them at his house. It is amusing to
note, in Mr. Castle's monograph on Book-Plates, how many of them indicate
a stern purpose not to lend books. Mr. Gosse regards book-plates as a
precaution not only against thieves, but against borrowers. He observes of
the man who does not adopt a book-plate: "Such a man is liable to great
temptations. He is brought face to face with that enemy of his species,
the borrower, and does not speak with him in the gate. If he had a
book-plate he would say, 'Oh! certainly I will lend you this volume, if it
has not my book-plate in it; of course one makes it a rule never to lend
a book that has.' He would say this and feign to look inside the volume,
knowing right well that this safeguard against the borrower is there
already." One may make a gift of a book to a friend, but there is as much
difference between giving a book and lending one as there is between
indorsing a note and giving the money. I have considerable respect for and
sympathy with a good honest book-thief. He holds out no false hopes and
makes no false pretences. But the borrower who does not return adds
hypocrisy and false pretences to other crime. He ought to be committed to
the State prison for life, and put at keeping the books of the
institution. In a buried temple in Cnidos, in 1857, Mr. Newton found rolls
of lead hung up, on which were inscribed spells devoting enemies to the
infernal gods for sundry specified offenses, among which was the failure
to return a borrowed garment. On which Agnes Repplier says: "Would that
it were given to me now to inscribe, and by inscribing doom, all those who
have borrowed and failed to return our books; would that by scribbling
some strong language on a piece of lead we could avenge the lamentable
gaps on our shelves, and send the ghosts of the wrong-doers howling
dismally into the eternal shades of Tartarus."
I have spoken of a certain amount of sympathy as due from a magnanimous
book-owner toward a pilferer of such wares. This is always on the
condition that he steals to add to his own hoard and not for mere
pecuniary gain. The following is suggested as a Christian mode of dealing
with
THE BOOK-THIEF.
Ah, gentle thief!
I marked the absent-minded air
With which you tucked away my rare
Book in your pocket.
'Twas past belief--
I saw you near the open case,
But yours was such an honest face
I did not lock it.
I knew you lacked
That one to make your set complete,
And when that book you chanced to meet
You recognized it.
And when attacked
By rage of bibliophilic greed,
You prigged that small Quantin Ovide,
Although I prized it.
I will not sue,
Nor bring your family to shame
By giving up your honored name
To heartless prattle.
I'll visit you,
And under your unwary eyes
Secrete and carry off the prize,
My ravished chattel.
It greatly rejoices me to observe that Mr. Blades does not include tobacco
among the enemies of books. In one sense tobacco may be ranked as a
book-enemy, for self-denial in this regard may furnish a man with a good
library in a few years. I have known a very pretty collection made out of
the ordinary smoke-offerings of twenty years. Undoubtedly there are
libraries so fine that smoking in them would be discountenanced, but mine
is not impervious to the pipe or cigar, and I entertain the pleasing fancy
that tobacco-smoke is good for books, disinfects them, and keeps them free
from the destroying worm. As I do not myself smoke, I like to see my
friends taking their ease in my book-room, with the "smoke of their
torment ascending" above my modest volumes. I know how they feel, without
incurring the expense, and so to them I indite and dedicate
THE SMOKE TRAVELLER.
When I puff my cigarette,
Straight I see a Spanish girl,
Mantilla, fan, coquettish curl,
Languid airs and dimpled face,
Calculating fatal grace;
Hear a twittering serenade
Under lofty balcony played;
Queen at bull-fight, naught she cares
What her agile lover dares;
She can love and quick forget.
Let me but my meerschaum light,
I behold a bearded man,
Built upon capacious plan,
Sabre-slashed in war or duel,
Gruff of aspect but not cruel,
Metaphysically muddled,
With strong beer a little fuddled,
Slow in love and deep in books,
More sentimental than he looks,
Swears new friendships every night.
Let me my chibouk enkindle,--
In a tent I'm quick set down
With a Bedouin lean and brown,
Plotting gain of merchandise,
Or perchance of robber prize;
Clumsy camel load upheaving,
Woman deftly carpet weaving;
Meal of dates and bread and salt,
While in azure heavenly vault
Throbbing stars begin to dwindle.
Glowing coal in clay dudheen
Carries me to sweet Killarney,
Full of hypocritic blarney;
Huts with babies, pigs and hens
Mixed together; bogs and fens;
Shillalahs, praties, usquebaugh,
Tenants defying hated law,
Fair blue eyes with lashes black,
Eyes black and blue from cudgel-thwack,--
So fair, so foul, is Erin green.
My nargileh once inflamed,
Quick appears a Turk with turban,
Girt with guards in palace urban,
Or in house by summer sea
Slave-girls dancing languidly;
Bow-string, sack and bastinado,
Black boats darting in the shadow;
Let things happen as they please,
Whether well or ill at ease,
Fate alone is blessed or blamed.
With my ancient calumet
I can raise a wigwam's smoke,
And the copper tribe invoke,--
Scalps and wampum, bows and knives,
Slender maidens, greasy wives,
Papoose hanging on a tree,
Chieftains squatting silently,
Feathers, beads and hideous paint,
Medicine-man and wooden saint,--
Forest-framed the vision set.