To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers
than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more
formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your _borrowers
of books_--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of
shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch [Coleridge],
matchless in his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth
knocked out--(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury,
reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing), once
held the tallest of my folios, _Opera Bonaventurae_, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a
lesser calibre,--Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as
dwarfs,--itself an Ascapart!--_that_ Comberbatch abstracted upon the
faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to
suffer by than to refute, namely, that 'the title to property in a book
(my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's
powers of understanding and appreciating the same'. Should he go on
acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case--two shelves from the
ceiling--scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser--was
whilom the commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will
hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who
introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to
discover its beauties--but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his
mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than
himself.--Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where
Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's
refuse sons, when the Fates _borrowed_ Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of
Melancholy, in sober state.--There loitered the Complete Angler; quiet
as in life, by some stream side.--In yonder nook, John Buncle, a
widower-volume, with 'eyes closed', mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea,
sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich
an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of this
nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has
forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as
mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of
the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in
conjunction; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little
disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am.--I charge no
warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the
ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are
sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no
account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful
K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and
adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the
thrice noble Margaret Newcastle?--knowing at the time, and knowing that
I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the
illustrious folio:--what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and
childish love of getting the better of thy friend?--Then, worst cut of
all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land--
Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!
--hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about
thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy
quips and mirthful tales?--Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done
of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part
Englishwoman!--that _she_ could fix upon no other treatise to bear away
in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville,
Lord Brooke--of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or
England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! _Was
there not Zimmerman on Solitude?_
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of
showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books;
but let it be to such a one as S. T. C.--he will return them (generally
anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations,
tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious
MSS. of his--(in _matter_ oftentimes, and almost in _quantity_ not
unfrequently, vying with the originals)--in no very clerky hand--legible
in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser
cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands.--I
counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.--C.
LAMB. _The Two Races of Men._