One of the most delightful of the _Last Essays of Elia_ is entitled
'Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading', a title which would serve very
well to indicate the contents of this anthology. In bringing together
into one volume the tributes and opinions of a galaxy of writers, my
object has been the glorification of books as books, a book being
regarded as a real and separate entity, and often as an end in itself.
There is a wide circle to whom this collection should appeal, in
addition to bibliomaniacs or mere collectors of first or rare editions
to whom the contents are often anathema, for the love of books is not
confined to scholars or great readers. This love is incommunicable: it
comes, but happily seldom goes, as the wind which bloweth where it
listeth; it is perfectly sincere, and knows nothing of conventions and
sham admirations.
No greater lover of books has ever lived than that Englishman who was
born at Bury St. Edmunds seven hundred and thirty years ago--Richard de
Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of _Philobiblon_, and, as Lord Campbell
said, undoubtedly the founder of the order of book-lovers in England.
Centuries passed, and then the more modern worship of books was promoted
by one of even higher station than this lord chancellor and lord high
treasurer of England--by King James, whom sycophants and cynics called
the British Solomon. The sixteenth century saw also the births of
Bacon, Burton, and Florio, the inspired translator of Montaigne, and Ben
Jonson, who all deserved well of the order. Milton, with prose and
poetry, handed down the sacred fire in the seventeenth century, and his
soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart.
Dr. Johnson, nearly a hundred years later, filled a niche of his own,
irreverent though he was to books except for their message. The latter
half of the eighteenth century is especially memorable, for it
synchronized with the early years of Southey, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, the
very temples of the spirit which I have sought to enshrine in these
pages, and of Hazlitt, and of two who should be dear to librarians,
Crabbe and John Foster. I should like to claim an honoured place in the
nineteenth century for Bulwer Lytton, who, although he understood 'the
merits of a spotless shirt', understood books also and appreciated them
thoroughly; and for the Brownings, especially the author of _Aurora
Leigh_. Emerson is conspicuous, not only as a book-lover, but also as a
professor of books, and as a missionary in the sense that Carlyle and
Ruskin preached the gospel of books. Many others deserve honourable
mention, but I must pass on to some of those who adorn the present day.
It would have been very pleasant to have seen Lord Morley, Mr. Frederic
Harrison, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Andrew Lang, and Mr.
Augustine Birrell appearing in this cloud of witness, but happily they
are alive to testify to the faith that is in them, and for that reason
are beyond the scope of an anthology confined to authors who are dead.
It may be pointed out that there has been an increasing tendency to
write not so much about books as about the authors of books; but to have
included literary criticism, except incidentally, would have increased
this volume to prodigious size. While I have been obliged for the same
reason to ignore, as a rule, individual volumes, an exception has been
made of the Bible, which is itself a library, and this is justified by
the fact that many pages are devoted to libraries. Scores of poems have
been prefixed to volumes or addressed in apology to possible readers,
but these, and colophons, interesting though they may be, do not fit in
with my scheme. However tempting it seemed to give versions of Catullus,
Horace, or Martial, translations from ancient classic writers have been
excluded; but room has been found for classic writers of comparatively
modern times, for it would have been ridiculous to have passed over, for
example, Montaigne, whose immortal essays have been handed down in the
splendid English dress of John Florio's design. For the rest, the
contents of this volume, in which more than 200 authors bear their
varying testimony, must speak for themselves.
The passages will be found grouped more or less according to subjects,
though the dividing lines are fine, and chronological order within the
limits of the groups has been a secondary consideration. After forewords
by Lamb, the anthology deals with books as companions, the love of and
delight in books, the immortality of books and the immortality which
they convey, the multiplicity of books and the distraction of choice;
ancient and modern books and their respective claims; books that are or
may be thought injurious; novels and romances; bookmaking of various
kinds--plagiarism, books about books, anthologies, abridgements,
dedications, presentation copies, bibliographies, translations, and
quotations; books and preachers, and books as 'the true university of
these days'; critics and criticism; rules for reading,
commonplace-books, abstracts, epitomes, and marginalia; casual and
superficial reading, talking from books, brains turned by books,
over-reading; books and life; books as an enemy to health and as
pharmaceutical preparations for mental indisposition; reading in bed, at
meal-times, and out-of-doors, and the call of the book of nature; the
horn-book and other books for children; advice on youthful reading, and
the early preferences of some notable book-lovers; love and literature,
and the conflict between matrimony and the library; women and books and
libraries; the human species of book-worms, bibliomaniacs, and pedants;
the proper handling of books; bindings, book illustrations, &c.; book
pests--worms and moths; 'finds' at second-hand bookshops and what Leigh
Hunt calls 'bookstall urbanity'; booksellers and publishers; mammon and
books; book borrowers and book borrowing; bookish similes; books for
magic; the Bible; literary geography; libraries--as studies and keys to
character, private libraries real and imaginary, public libraries--from
the provincial reference library to the British Museum, reflections in
libraries, Crabbe's masterpiece, the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge
with fitting tributes to Bodley; and, finally, a memorable tribute to
books and the priceless treasury that a library affords. The source of
the quotations is generally given; and the index of authors quoted or
referred to, together with a full list of contents, and, it is hoped,
the notes, should serve the convenience of the reader.
Many years ago Mr. Alexander Ireland gave me a copy of _The Book-Lover's
Enchiridion_, and my debt to that 'treasury of thoughts on the Solace
and Companionship of Books' is great. Mr. Ireland's object was 'to
present, in chronological order, a selection of the best thoughts of the
greatest and wisest minds on the subject of Books--their solace and
companionship--their efficacy as silent teachers and guides--and the
comfort, as of a living presence, which they afford amidst the changes
of fortune and the accidents of life.' In this volume I have taken the
subject and myself less seriously than would have been possible to Mr.
Ireland. The 'thoughts' which I have collected are more 'detached', and
they cover a wider field. I am under much obligation also to the
_Ballads of Books_, which Mr. Brander Matthews compiled nearly a quarter
of a century ago and Mr. Andrew Lang recast, and to Mr. W. Roberts's
_Book-Verse_. Mainly, however, I have relied upon my own personal
reading--'blessing,' as Lamb said, 'my stars for a taste so catholic, so
unexcluding'--and upon research, in which I have had invaluable
assistance from friends and colleagues. I am fortunately able to include
many copyright pieces, and I have to thank the following for the
necessary permission:--
Messrs. G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., for B. W. Procter's autobiographical
fragment, 'My Books'; Messrs. Chapman & Hall, for what I have taken from
a contribution to the _Fortnightly Review_ by Mark Pattison, and for the
passage from Carlyle's _Historical Sketches_; Messrs. Chatto & Windus,
for the poems by Laman Blanchard, also for the passage from R.
Jefferies' _Life of the Fields_; and Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for the
excerpt from the same author's _The Dewy Morn_; Messrs. Constable &
Co., and the executors of the late George Gissing, for the passages from
_The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_; Mr. A. C. Fifield, for Samuel
Butler's whimsical irreverence quoted from _Quis Desiderio_; Mr. Edward
Garnett, for Richard Garnett's poem; the Houghton Mifflin Co., for
Whittier's 'The Library'; Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for R. L.
Stevenson's 'Picture Books in Winter' (and Messrs. Charles Scribner's
Sons in respect of copyright in America); Mr. Elkin Mathews, for Lionel
Johnson's poem; Messrs. G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., for Longfellow's 'My
Books', and 'Bayard Taylor' (and the Houghton Mifflin Co. in respect of
copyright in America); Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., for J. A. Symonds's
poem from _Lyrics of Life_; and Dr. A. Stoddart Walker, for permission
to quote from J. S. Blackie's _Self-Culture_.
In _Guesses at Truth_ the brothers Hare wrote: 'They who cannot weave a
uniform net, may at least produce a piece of patchwork, which may be
useful, and not without a charm of its own.' It is my modest ambition
that book-lovers shall find this volume useful and not without charm.