To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume.
Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be
lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a
set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or
half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is _our_ costume. A Shakespeare,
or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick
out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The
exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to
say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the
owner. Thomson's _Seasons_, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little
torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are
the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond
Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an
old 'Circulating Library' _Tom Jones_, or _Vicar of Wakefield_! How they
speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with
delight!--of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner,
or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil,
running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared
from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out
their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What
better condition could we desire to see them in?
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.
Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually
self-reproductive volumes--Great Nature's Stereotypes--we see them
individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them
to be 'eterne'. But where a book is at once both good and rare--where
the individual is almost the species, and when _that_ perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine--
such a book, for instance, as the _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_, by
his Duchess--no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable,
to honour and keep safe such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to
be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sidney,
Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller--of whom we _have_
reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked
of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves (nor
possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock
books--it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do
not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. I rather prefer the common
editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with _plates_, which,
being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers to the
text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so
much better than the Shakespeare gallery _engravings_, which _did_. I
have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I
like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest tumbled about
and handled.--On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but
in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy
with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the
other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do
not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the _Anatomy of
Melancholy_. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that
fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest
fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton
ever becoming popular?--The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he
bribed the sexton of Stratford Church to let him white-wash the painted
effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion
depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair,
the very dress he used to wear--the only authentic testimony we had,
however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They
covered him over with a coat of white paint. By----, if I had been a
justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator
and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious
varlets.
I think I see them at their work--these sapient trouble-tombs.--C. LAMB.
_Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._