Call'st a book good, or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so too; I give thee leave; but crave,
For the luck's sake, it thus much favor have,
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought;
Not offered, as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving-man,
Who scarce can spell thy hard names; whose knight less can.
If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 't will well.
TO SIR HENRY GOODYERE.
_This is the eighty-sixth of the poet's first
book of epigrams, and, like its immediate_
BEN JONSON. _predecessor, it was addressed
to a gentleman bound in bonds of
friendship to many of the men of
genius of his time._
When I would know thee, Goodyere, my thought looks
Upon thy well-made choice of friends and books;
Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends
In making thy friends books, and thy books friends:
Now must I give thy life and deed the voice
Attending such a study, such a choice;
Where, though 't be love that to thy praise doth move,
It was a knowledge that begat that love.
IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON.
CHARLES LAMB. _Written in 1824 for the daughter of his
friend Bernard Barton._
Little Book, surnamed of _white_,
Clean as yet and fair to sight,
Keep thy attribution right.
Never disproportioned scrawl;
Ugly blot, that's worse than all;
On thy maiden clearness fall!
In each letter, here designed,
Let the reader emblemed find
Neatness of the owner's mind.
Gilded margins count a sin,
Let thy leaves attraction win
By the golden rules within;
Saying fetched from sages old;
Laws which Holy Writ unfold,
Worthy to be graved in gold:
Lighter fancies not excluding;
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in,
Sometimes mildly interluding,
Amid strains of graver measure:
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure.
Riddles dark, perplexing sense;
Darker meanings of offence;
What but _shades_--he banished hence.
Whitest thoughts in whitest dress,
Candid meanings, best express
Mind of quiet Quakeress.
BALLADE OF THE BOOK-HUNTER.
A. LANG. _From 'Ballades in Blue China.' 1880._
In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter _bise_,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly,--
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,
And heedless of the public jeers,
For these, for these, he hoards his fees,--
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.
No dismal stall escapes his eye,
He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled Romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;
Each tract that flutters in the breeze
For him is charged with hopes and fears,
In mouldy novels fancy sees
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!
With restless eyes that peer and spy,
Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,
In dismal nooks he loves to pry,
Whose motto evermore is _Spes_!
But ah! the fabled treasure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,
In rich men's shelves they take their ease,
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!
ENVOY.
Prince, all the things that tease and please,
Fame, love, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears,
What are they but such toys as these--
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?
BALLADE OF TRUE WISDOM.
A. LANG. _From 'Ballades in Blue China.' 1880._
While others are asking for beauty or fame,
Or praying to know that for which they should pray,
Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame,
Or chasing the Muses the weary and gray,
The sage has found out a more excellent way,--
To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers,
And his humble petition puts up day by day,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Inventors may bow to the God that is lame,
And crave from the light of his stithy a ray;
Philosophers kneel to the God without name,
Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they;
The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay,
The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours,--
But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Oh grant me a life without pleasure or blame
(As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day
With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame).
Oh grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
ENVOY.
Gods, give or withhold it! Your "yea" and your "nay"
Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours:
But life _is_ worth living, and here we would stay
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
BALLADE OF THE BOOKMAN'S PARADISE.
A. LANG. _From 'Rhymes à la Mode.' 1885._
There _is_ a Heaven, or here, or there,--
A Heaven there is, for me and you,
Where bargains meet for purses spare,
Like ours, are not so far and few.
Thuanus' bees go humming through
The learned groves, 'neath rainless skies,
O'er volumes old and volumes new,
Within that Bookman's Paradise!
There treasures bound for Longepierre
Keep brilliant their morocco blue,
There Hookes' 'Amanda' is not rare,
Nor early tracts upon Peru!
Racine is common as Rotrou,
No Shakspere Quarto search defies,
And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew,
Within that Bookman's Paradise!
There's Eve,--not our first mother fair,--
But Clovis Eve, a binder true;
Thither does Bauzonnet repair,
Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup!
But never come the cropping crew,
That dock a volume's honest size,
Nor they that "letter" backs askew,
Within that Bookman's Paradise!
ENVOY.
Friend, do not Heber and De Thou,
And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise,
_La chasse au bouquin_ still pursue
Within that Bookman's Paradise?
THE ROWFANT BOOKS.
_Ballade en guise de rondeau, written for_
A. LANG. _the catalogue of Mr. Frederick Locker's
books._
The Rowfant books, how fair they show,
The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall,
Print, autograph, portfolio!
Back from the outer air they call,
The athletes from the Tennis ball,
This Rhymer from his rod and hooks,--
Would I could sing them, one and all,--
The Rowfant books!
The Rowfant books! In sun and snow
They're dear, but most when tempests fall;
The folio towers above the row
As once, o'er minor prophets,--Saul!
What jolly jest books, and what small
"Dear dumpy Twelves" to fill the nooks.
You do not find on every stall
The Rowfant books!
The Rowfant books! These long ago
Were chained within some College hall;
These manuscripts retain the glow
Of many a colored capital;
While yet the satires keep their gall,
While the Pastissier puzzles cooks,
Theirs is a joy that does not pall,--
The Rowfant books!
ENVOY.
The Rowfant books,--ah, magical
As famed Armida's golden looks,
They hold the Rhymer for their thrall,--
The Rowfant books!
THE ROWFANT LIBRARY.
A. LANG. _Written for the catalogue of Mr. Frederick
Locker's books._
I mind me of the Shepherd's saw,
For, when men spoke of Heaven, quoth he,
"It's everything that's bright and braw,
But _Bourhope's_ good enough for me."
Among the green deep bosomed hills
That guard St. Mary's Loch it lies,
The silence of the pastures fills
That yeoman's homely paradise!
Enough for him his mountain lake,
His glen the burn goes singing through;
And _Rowfant_, when the thrushes wake,
Might well seem Paradise to you!
For all is old, and tried, and dear,
And all is fair, and all about
The brook that murmurs from the mere
Is dimpled with the rising trout.
And when the skies of shorter days
Are dark, and all the paths are mire,
How kindly o'er your _Books_ the blaze
Sports from the cheerful study fire;
O'er Quartos, where our Fathers read
Entranced, the Book of Shakspere's play,
O'er all that Poe has dreamed of dread,
And all that Herrick sang of gay!
Rare First Editions, duly prized,
Among them dearest far I rate
The tome where _Walton's_ hand revised
His magical receipts for bait.
Happy, who rich in toys like these
Forgets a weary nation's ills,
Who, from his study window sees
The circle of the Sussex hills!
But back to town my Muse must fly,
And taste the smoke, and list to them
Who cry the News, and seem to cry
(With each Gladstonian victory),
_Woe, woe unto Jerusalem!_[20]
[20] During the General Election, November, 1885.
GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY.
A. LANG. _From 'Longman's Magazine,' July, 1886._
Suppose, when now the house is dumb,
When lights are out, and ashes fall,--
Suppose their ancient owners come
To claim our spoils of shop and stall,
Ah me! within the narrow hall
How strange a mob would meet and go,
What famous folk would haunt them all,
Octavo, quarto, folio!
The great Napoleon lays his hand
Upon this eagle-headed N,
That marks for his a pamphlet banned
By all but scandal-loving men,--
A libel from some nameless den
Of Frankfort--_Arnaud, à la Sphère_,
Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,
Lies o'er the loves of Molière.[21]
Another shade--he does not see
"Boney," the foeman of his race--
The great Sir Walter, this is he
With that grave homely Border face.
He claims his poem of the chase
That rang Benvoirlich's valley through;
And _this_, that doth the lineage trace
And fortunes of the bold Buccleuch;[22]
For these were his, and these he gave
To one who dwelt beside the Peel,
That murmurs with its tiny wave
To join the Tweed at Ashestiel.
Now thick as motes the shadows wheel,
And find their own, and claim a share
Of books wherein Ribou did deal,
Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert.[23]
What famous folk of old are here!
A royal duke comes down to us,
And greatly wants his Elzevir,
His Pagan tutor, Lucius.[24]
And Beckford claims an amorous
Old heathen in morocco blue;[25]
And who demands Eobanus
But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou![26]
They come, the wise, the great, the true,
They jostle on the narrow stair,
The frolic Countess de Verrue,
Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre,
The new and elder dead are there--
The lords of speech, and song, and pen,
Gambetta,[27] Schlegel,[28] and the rare
Drummond of haunted Hawthornden.[29]
Ah, and with those, a hundred more,
Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:
Brave 'Smiths' and 'Thompsons' by the score,
Scrawled upon many a shabby 'lot.'
This play-book was the joy of Pott[30]--
Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves.
Our names, like his, remembered not,
Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!
At least in pleasant company
We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;
A man may turn a page, and sigh,
Seeing one's name, to think of it.
Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit,
May ope our book, and muse awhile,
And fall into a dreaming fit,
As now we dream, and wake, and smile!
[21] 'Histoire des Intrigues Amoureuses de Molière et de celles de sa
femme. (A la Sphère.) A Francfort, chez Frédéric Arnaud, MDCXCVII.'
This anonymous tract has actually been attributed, among others, to
Racine. The copy referred to is marked with a large N in red, with an
eagle's head.
[22] 'The Lady of the Lake,' 1810.
'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' 1806.
"To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw. Peel. From the Author."
[23] 'Dictys Cretensis.' Apud Lambertum Roulland. Lut. Paris. 1680. In
red morocco, with the arms of Colbert.
[24] 'L. Annæi Senecæ Opera Omnia.' Lug. Bat., apud Elzevirios. 1649.
With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex.
[25] 'Stratonis Epigrammata.' Altenburgi, 1764. Straton bound up in
one volume with Epictetus! From the Beckford library.
[26] 'Opera Helii Eobani Hessi.' Yellow morocco, with the first arms
of De Thou. Include a poem addressed "LANGE, _decus meum_." Quantity
of penultimate "Eobanus" taken for granted, _metri gratiâ_.
[27] 'La Journée du Chrétien.' Coutances, 1831. With inscription,
"Léon Gambetta. Rue St. Honoré. Janvier 1, 1848."
[28] Villoison's 'Homer.' Venice, 1788. With Tessier's ticket and
Schlegel's book-plate.
[29] 'Les Essais de Michel.' Seigneur de Montaigne. "Pour François le
Febvre de Lyon, 1695." With autograph of Gul. Drummond, and _cipresso
e palma_.
[30] "The little old foxed Molière," once the property of William
Pott, unknown to fame.
THE BOOK BATTALION.
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. _Written for the present collection._
Wherever I go, there's a trusty battalion
That follows me faithfully, steady, and true;
Their force, when I falter, I safely may rally on,
Knowing their stoutness will carry me through:
Some fifteen hundred in order impartial,
So ranged that they tell what they mean by their looks.
Of all the armies the world can marshal
There are no better soldiers than well-tried books.
Dumb in their ranks on the shelves imprisoned,
They never retreat. Give the word, and they'll fire!
A few with scarlet and gold are bedizened,
But many muster in rough attire;
And some, with service and scars grown wizened,
Seem hardly the mates for their fellows in youth;
Yet they, and the troops armed only with quiz and
Light laughter, all battle alike for the truth.
Here are those who gave motive to sock and to buskin;
With critics, historians, poets galore;
A cheaply uniformed set of Ruskin,
Which Ruskin would hate from his heart's very core;
Molière ('99), an old calf-bound edition,
"_De Pierre Didot l'aîné, et de Firmin Didot_."
Which, meek and demure, with a sort of contrition,
Is masking its gun-lights, with fun all aglow;
And Smollett and Fielding, as veterans battered--
Cloth stripped from their backs, and their sides out of joint,
Their pictures of life all naked and tattered
Being thus applied to themselves with a point;
And six or eight books that I wrote myself,
To look at which, even, I'm half afraid;
They brought me more labor and pleasure than pelf,
And are clamoring still because they're not paid.
But these raw levies remain still faithful,
Because they know that volumes old
Stand by me, although their eyes dim and wraithful
Remind me they seldom at profit were sold.
So I say, be they splendid or tatterdemalion,
If only you know what they mean by their looks,
You will never find a better battalion
Of soldiers to serve you than well-tried books.
ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS.
WALTER LEARNED. _Written for the present collection._
At Cato's-Head in Russell Street
These leaves she sat a-stitching;
I fancy she was trim and neat,
Blue-eyed and quite bewitching.
Before her, in the street below,
All powder, ruffs, and laces,
There strutted idle London beaux
To ogle pretty faces;
While, filling many a Sedan chair
With hoop and monstrous feather,
In patch and powder London's fair
Went trooping past together.
Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
They sauntered slowly past her,
Or printer's boy, with gown and cap
For Steele, went trotting faster.
For beau nor wit had she a look,
Nor lord nor lady minding;
She bent her head above this book,
Attentive to her binding.
And one stray thread of golden hair,
Caught on her nimble fingers,
Was stitched within this volume, where
Until to-day it lingers.
Past and forgotten, beaux and fair;
Wigs, powder, all out-dated;
A queer antique, the Sedan chair;
Pope, stiff and antiquated.
Yet as I turn these odd old plays,
This single stray lock finding,
I'm back in those forgotten days
And watch her at her binding.
TOO MANY BOOKS.
ROBERT LEIGHTON. _From 'Reuben, and Other Poems.' 1875_
I would that we were only readers now,
And wrote no more, or in rare heats of soul
Sweated out thoughts when the o'er-burden'd brow
Was powerless to control.
Then would all future books be small and few,
And, freed of dross, the soul's refinèd gold;
So should we have a chance to read the new,
Yet not forego the old.
But as it is, Lord help us, in this flood
Of daily papers, books, and magazines!
We scramble blind as reptiles in the mud,
And know not what it means.
Is it the myriad spawn of vagrant tides,
Whose growth would overwhelm both sea and shore,
Yet often necessary loss, provides
Sufficient and no more?
Is it the broadcast sowing of the seeds,
And from the stones, the thorns and fertile soil,
Only enough to serve the world's great needs
Rewards the sower's toil?
Is it all needed for the varied mind?
Gives not the teeming press a book too much--
Not one, but in its dense neglect shall find
Some needful heart to touch?
Ah, who can say that even this blade of grass
No mission has--superfluous as it looks?
Then wherefore feel oppressed and cry, Alas,
There are too many books!
FROM THE FLY-LEAF OF THE ROWFANT MONTAIGNE (FLORIO, 1603).
FREDERICK LOCKER. _Written for the present collection._
Of yore, when books were few and fine,
Will Shakspere cut these leaves of mine,
But when he passed I went astray
Till bought by Pope, a gift for Gay.
Then, later on, betwixt my pages
A nose was poked--the Bolt-Court Sage's.
But though the Fame began with Rawleigh,
And had not dwindled with Macaulay,
Though still I tincture many tomes
Like Lowell's pointed sense, and Holmes',
For me the halcyon days have past--
I'm here, and with a dunce at last.
MY BOOKS.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _Written in December, 1881._
Sadly as some old mediæval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways,
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.
THE SOULS OF BOOKS.
EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. _From 'Earlier Poems.'_
I.
Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room--
High-roof'd, with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There THEY reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave.
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave!--
Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense
Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!--
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense
Becomes our being--who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspere sung!
II.
Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard
The various murmur of the laboring crowd,
How still, within those archive-cells interr'd,
The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud
Passions and tumults of the circling world!
From them, how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardor of the eager Bar;
From them, how many a young Ambition sought
Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar--
By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth--
The unseen sires of all our beings are,--
III.
And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;
I hear it beating through each purple line.
This is thyself, Anacreon--yet, thou art
Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.
I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold,
Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!--
Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,
"It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"[31]
These _are_ yourselves--your life of life! The Wise,
(Minstrel or Sage) _out_ of their books are clay;
But _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels--that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!"
And what the charm that can such health distil
From wither'd leaves--oft poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immoral! _Do they live?_
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace--
God wills that nothing evil shall endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God;
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute--
FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod
Lift us! The life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;[32]--born
Of him,--the Master-Mocker of Mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen,
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,--
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?--
God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!--
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task--its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn--
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguil'd,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!
[31] 'Comus.'
[32] 'Gulliver's Travels.'
IV.
All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who _but_ for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
Traverse all space, and number every star,
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give
Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn:--at our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;[33]--along
Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Ægypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile:--
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!
[33] Plut. in 'Vit. Cim.'
V.
Ye make the Past our heritage and home:
And is this all? No; by each prophet-sage--
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!--and, above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent
The types of Truths whose life is THE TO-COME;
In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given--
Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;--
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one gravestone left upon the Earth?
DE LIBRIS.
COSMO MONKHOUSE. _Written for the present collection._
True--there are books and books. There's Gray,
For instance, and there's Bacon;
There's Longfellow, and Monstrelet,
And also Colton's 'Lacon,'
With 'Laws of Whist' and those of Libel,
And Euclid, and the Mormon Bible.
And some are dear as friends, and some
We keep because we need them;
And some we ward from worm and thumb,
And love too well to read them.
My own are poor, and mostly new,
But I've an Elzevir or two.
That as a gift is prized, the next
For trouble in the finding;
This Aldine for its early text,
That Plantin for the binding;
This sorry Herrick hides a flower,
The record of one perfect hour.
But whether it be worth or looks
We gently love or strongly,
Such virtue doth reside in books
We scarce can love them wrongly;
To sages an eternal school,
A hobby (harmless) to the fool.
Nor altogether fool is he
Who orders, free from doubt,
Those books which "no good library
Should ever be without,"
And blandly locks the well-glazed door
On tomes that issue never more.