Golden volumes! richest treasures!
Objects of delicious pleasures!
You my eyes rejoicing please,
You my hands in rapture seize!
Brilliant wits and moving sages,
Lights who beamed through many ages,
Left to your conscious leaves their story,
And dared to trust you with their glory;
And now their hope of fame achieved,
Dear volumes!--you have not deceived!
This passion for the acquisition and enjoyment of _books_ has been the
occasion of their lovers embellishing their outsides with costly
ornaments: a rage which ostentation may have abused; but when these
volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bindings
are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great Thuanus was
eager to procure the finest copies for his library, and his volumes are
still eagerly purchased, bearing his autograph on the last page. A
celebrated amateur was Grollier, whose library was opulent in these
luxuries; the Muses themselves could not more ingeniously have
ornamented their favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries
of our own curious collectors. He embellished their outside with taste
and ingenuity. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness, the
compartments on the binding are drawn, and painted, with different
inventions of subjects, analogous to the works themselves; and they are
further adorned by that amiable inscription, _Jo. Grollierii et
amicorum_!--purporting that these literary treasures were collected for
himself and for his friends.--I. D'ISRAELI. _Curiosities of Literature:
Libraries._