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!
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 ofbookshas 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 hisvolumes 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.
The Bibliomania, or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they themselves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called themadhouses of the human mind; and again, thetomb of books, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library—and as it was facetiously observed, these collections are not without aLock on the Human Understanding.—I. d'Israeli.Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania.
'I will frankly confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant bibliomaniac—that I love books dearly—that the very sight, touch, and mere perusal——'
'Hold, my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon; 'you have renounced your profession—you talk ofreadingbooks—do bibliomaniacs everreadbooks?'—T. F. Dibdin.Bibliomania.
You observe, my friends, said I, softly, yonder active and keen-visaged gentleman? 'Tis Lepidus. Like Magliabechi, content with frugal fare and frugal clothing and preferring the riches of a library to those of house-furniture, he is insatiable in his bibliomaniacal appetites. 'Long experience has made him sage:' and it is not therefore without just reason that his opinions are courted and considered as almost oracular. You will find that he will take his old station, commanding the right or left wing of the auctioneer; and that he will enliven, by the gaiety and shrewdness of his remarks, the circle that more immediately surrounds him. Some there are who will not bid till Lepidus bids; and who surrender all discretion and opinion of their own to his universal book-knowledge. The consequence is that Lepidus can, with difficulty, make purchases for his own library, and a thousand dexterous and happy manoeuvres are of necessity obliged to be practised by him, whenever a rare or curious book turns up.... Justly respectable as are his scholarship and good sense, he is not what you may call afashionablecollector; for old chronicles and romances are most rigidly discarded from his library. Talk to him of Hoffman, Schoettgenius, Rosenmuller, and Michaelis, and he will listen courteously to your conversation; but when you expatiate, however learnedly and rapturously, upon Froissart and Prince Arthur, he will tell you that he has a heart of stone upon the subject; and that even a clean uncut copy of an original impression of each, by Verard or by Caxton, would not bring a single tear of sympathetic transport to his eyes.—T. F. Dibdin.Bibliomania.
The character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere bookworm. There is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives among old authors, if he does not enter much into theirspirit. He handles the covers, and turns over the page, and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow; but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk and leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things. He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names of these things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many figures in acamera obscura. He reads the world, like a favourite volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old work which he is preparing for the press, only to make emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, affectionate creatures—if Tray could but read! His mind cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others, or the consciousness of one in itself.—W. Hazlitt.On the Conversation of Authors.
A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know anything of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows nothingof thethingwhich it means in any one of them. He stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotations quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge', except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,—'of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, thecorregioscityof Correggio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand contour of Michael Angelo',—of all those glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead letter, a byword; and no wonder, for he neither sees nor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens' Watering-place, or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging on the walls of his room for months without his once perceiving them; and if you point them out to him he will turn away from them. The language of nature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does not understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works as prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of it,' from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of school-learning.—W. Hazlitt.On the Ignorance of the Learned.
The collection was indeed a curious one, and might well be envied by an amateur. Yet it was not collected at the enormous prices of modern times, which are sufficient to have appalled the most determined as well as earliest bibliomaniac upon record, whom we take to have been none else than the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, as, among other slight indications of an infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for folios and quartos of chivalry.... Mr. Oldbuck did not follow these collectors in such excess of expenditure; but, taking a pleasure in the personal labour of forming his library, saved his purse at the expense of his time and toil.... 'Davy Wilson,' he said, 'commonly called Snuffy Davy, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old black-letter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find aneditio princepsunder the mask of a school Corderius.' ... 'Even I, sir,' he went on, 'though far inferior in industry and discernment and presence of mind to that great man, can show you a few—a very few things, which I have collected, not by force of money, as any wealthy man might,—although, as my friend Lucian says, he might chance to throw away his coin only to illustrate his ignorance,—but gained in a manner that shows I know something of the matter. See this bundle of ballads, not one of them later than 1700, and some of them a hundred years older. I wheedled an old woman out of these, who loved them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco, sir, snuff, and theComplete Syren, were the equivalent! For that mutilated copy of theComplaynt of Scotland, I sat out the drinking of two dozen bottles of strong ale with the late learned proprietor, who, in gratitude, bequeathed it to me by his last will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and trophies of many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Bow, Saint Mary's Wynd,—wherever, in fine, there were to befound brokers and traders, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare and curious. How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect, the value I set upon the article!—how have I trembled, lest some passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall, as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise!—And then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure!—Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this' (displaying a little black smoked book about the size of a primer); 'to enjoy their surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity;—these, my young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil, and pains, and sedulous attention, which our profession, above all others, so peculiarly demands!' ...
Here were editions esteemed as being the first, and there stood those scarcely less regarded as being the last and best; here was a book valued because it had the author's final improvements, and there another which (strange to tell!) was in request because it had them not. One was precious because it was a folio, another because it was a duodecimo; some because they were tall, some because they were short; the merit of this lay in the title-page—of that in the arrangement of the letters in the word Finis. There was, it seemed, no peculiar distinction, however trifling or minute, which might not give value to a volume, providing the indispensable quality of scarcity, or rare occurrence, was attached to it.—Sir W. Scott.The Antiquary.
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.—Lord Macaulay.
Sitting, last winter, among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me; to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet; I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books: how I loved them, too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and myArabian Nights; then above them at my Italian poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on a writing-desk; and thought how natural it was in C[harles] L[amb] to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman'sHomer.... I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to lean my head against them.—J. H. Leigh Hunt.My Books.
I must have my literaryharem, myparc aux cerfs, where my favourites await my moments of leisure and pleasure,—my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap; the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part.... The bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it, and would bag in case of fire before all the rest.—O. W. Holmes.The Poet at the Breakfast-Table.
Dead he lay among his books!The peace of God was in his looks.As the statues in the gloomWatch o'er Maximilian's tomb;So those volumes from their shelvesWatched him, silent as themselves.Ah! his hand will never moreTurn their storied pages o'er:Never more his lips repeatSongs of theirs, however sweet.Let the lifeless body rest!He is gone, who was its guest;Gone, as travellers haste to leaveAn inn, nor tarry until eve.Traveller! in what realms afar,In what planet, in what star,In what vast, aerial space,Shines the light upon thy face?In what gardens of delightRest thy weary feet to-night?Poet! thou, whose latest verseWas a garland on thy hearse;Thou hast sung, with organ tone,In Deukalion's life, thine own;On the ruins of the PastBlooms the perfect flower at last.Friend! but yesterday the bellsRang for thee their loud farewells;And to-day they toll for thee,Lying dead beyond the sea;Lying dead among thy books,The peace of God in all thy looks!H. W. Longfellow.
Dead he lay among his books!The peace of God was in his looks.
As the statues in the gloomWatch o'er Maximilian's tomb;
So those volumes from their shelvesWatched him, silent as themselves.
Ah! his hand will never moreTurn their storied pages o'er:
Never more his lips repeatSongs of theirs, however sweet.
Let the lifeless body rest!He is gone, who was its guest;
Gone, as travellers haste to leaveAn inn, nor tarry until eve.
Traveller! in what realms afar,In what planet, in what star,
In what vast, aerial space,Shines the light upon thy face?
In what gardens of delightRest thy weary feet to-night?
Poet! thou, whose latest verseWas a garland on thy hearse;
Thou hast sung, with organ tone,In Deukalion's life, thine own;
On the ruins of the PastBlooms the perfect flower at last.
Friend! but yesterday the bellsRang for thee their loud farewells;
And to-day they toll for thee,Lying dead beyond the sea;
Lying dead among thy books,The peace of God in all thy looks!
H. W. Longfellow.
To afford the reader an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in d'Israeli'sCuriositiesfrom theChasse aux Bibliographes et Antiquaires mal advisésof Jean-Joseph Rive:
'A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.'
'A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.'
'A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.'
'A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.'
'A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.'
The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive is bibliotapht. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a classifier of books; and bibliopée 'l'art d'écrire ou de composer des livres', or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author.—J. H. Burton.The Book Hunter.
Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads; for they may profit of the former. But take care not to understand editions and title-pages too well. It always smells of pedantry, and not always of learning.—Lord Chesterfield.Letters to his Son.
Plague take all your pedants, say I!He who wrote what I hold in my hand,Centuries back was so good as to die,Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;This, that was a book in its time,Printed on paper and bound in leather,Last month in the white of a matin-primeJust when the birds sang all together.Into the garden I brought it to read,And under the arbute and laurustineRead it, so help me grace in my need,From title-page to closing line.Chapter on chapter did I count,As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;Added up the mortal amount;And then proceeded to my revenge.Yonder's a plum-tree with a creviceAn owl would build in, were he but sage;For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levisIn a castle of the middle age,Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;When he'd be private, there might he spendHours alone in his lady's chamber:Into this crevice I dropped our friend.Splash, went he, as under he ducked,—I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate;Next a handful of blossoms I pluckedTo bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;Lay on the grass and forgot the oafOver a jolly chapter of Rabelais.Now, this morning, betwixt the mossAnd gum that locked our friend in limbo,A spider had spun his web across,And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:So, I took pity, for learning's sake,And,de profundis, accentibus laetis,Cantate!quoth I, as I got a rake,And up I fished his delectable treatise.Here you have it, dry in the sun,With all the binding all of a blister,And great blue spots where the ink has run,And reddish streaks that wink and glisterO'er the page so beautifully yellow:Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?Here's one stuck in his chapter six!How did he like it when the live creaturesTickled and toused and browsed him all over,And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,Came in, each one, for his right of trover?—When the water-beetle with great blind deaf faceMade of her eggs the stately deposit,And the newt borrowed just so much of the prefaceAs tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?All that life and fun and romping,All that frisking and twisting and coupling,While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swampingAnd clasps were cracking and covers suppling!As if you had carried sour John KnoxTo the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,Fastened him into a front-row box,And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?Back to my room shall you take your sweet self!Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft,sufficit!See the snug niche I have made on my shelf.A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,Dry-rot at ease till the Judgement-day!R. Browning.Garden Fancies.
Plague take all your pedants, say I!He who wrote what I hold in my hand,Centuries back was so good as to die,Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;This, that was a book in its time,Printed on paper and bound in leather,Last month in the white of a matin-primeJust when the birds sang all together.
Into the garden I brought it to read,And under the arbute and laurustineRead it, so help me grace in my need,From title-page to closing line.Chapter on chapter did I count,As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;Added up the mortal amount;And then proceeded to my revenge.
Yonder's a plum-tree with a creviceAn owl would build in, were he but sage;For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levisIn a castle of the middle age,Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;When he'd be private, there might he spendHours alone in his lady's chamber:Into this crevice I dropped our friend.
Splash, went he, as under he ducked,—I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate;Next a handful of blossoms I pluckedTo bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;Lay on the grass and forgot the oafOver a jolly chapter of Rabelais.
Now, this morning, betwixt the mossAnd gum that locked our friend in limbo,A spider had spun his web across,And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:So, I took pity, for learning's sake,And,de profundis, accentibus laetis,Cantate!quoth I, as I got a rake,And up I fished his delectable treatise.
Here you have it, dry in the sun,With all the binding all of a blister,And great blue spots where the ink has run,And reddish streaks that wink and glisterO'er the page so beautifully yellow:Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?Here's one stuck in his chapter six!
How did he like it when the live creaturesTickled and toused and browsed him all over,And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,Came in, each one, for his right of trover?—When the water-beetle with great blind deaf faceMade of her eggs the stately deposit,And the newt borrowed just so much of the prefaceAs tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?
All that life and fun and romping,All that frisking and twisting and coupling,While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swampingAnd clasps were cracking and covers suppling!As if you had carried sour John KnoxTo the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,Fastened him into a front-row box,And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.
Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?Back to my room shall you take your sweet self!Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft,sufficit!See the snug niche I have made on my shelf.A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,Dry-rot at ease till the Judgement-day!
R. Browning.Garden Fancies.
Over an ancient scroll I bent,Steeping my soul in wise content,Nor paused a moment, save to chideA low voice whispering at my side.I wove beneath the stars' pale shineA dream, half human, half divine;And shook off (not to break the charm)A little hand laid on my arm.I read until my heart would glow,With the great deeds of long ago;Nor heard, while with those mighty dead,Pass to and fro a faltering tread.On the old theme I pondered long—The struggle between right and wrong;I could not check such visions high,To soothe a little quivering sigh.I tried to solve the problem—Life;Dreaming of that mysterious strife,How could I leave such reasonings wise,To answer two blue pleading eyes?I strove how best to give, and when,My blood to save my fellow-men—How could I turn aside, to lookAt snowdrops laid upon my book?Now Time has fled—the world is strange,Something there is of pain and change;My books lie closed upon the shelf;I miss the old heart in myself.I miss the sunbeams in my room—It was not always wrapped in gloom:I miss my dreams—they fade so fast,Or flit unto some trivial past.The great stream of the world goes by;None care, or heed, or question, whyI, the lone student, cannot raiseMy voice or hand as in old days.No echo seems to wake againMy heart to anything but pain,Save when a dream of twilight bringsThe fluttering of an angel's wings!Adelaide Anne Procter.
Over an ancient scroll I bent,Steeping my soul in wise content,Nor paused a moment, save to chideA low voice whispering at my side.
I wove beneath the stars' pale shineA dream, half human, half divine;And shook off (not to break the charm)A little hand laid on my arm.
I read until my heart would glow,With the great deeds of long ago;Nor heard, while with those mighty dead,Pass to and fro a faltering tread.
On the old theme I pondered long—The struggle between right and wrong;I could not check such visions high,To soothe a little quivering sigh.
I tried to solve the problem—Life;Dreaming of that mysterious strife,How could I leave such reasonings wise,To answer two blue pleading eyes?
I strove how best to give, and when,My blood to save my fellow-men—How could I turn aside, to lookAt snowdrops laid upon my book?
Now Time has fled—the world is strange,Something there is of pain and change;My books lie closed upon the shelf;I miss the old heart in myself.
I miss the sunbeams in my room—It was not always wrapped in gloom:I miss my dreams—they fade so fast,Or flit unto some trivial past.
The great stream of the world goes by;None care, or heed, or question, whyI, the lone student, cannot raiseMy voice or hand as in old days.
No echo seems to wake againMy heart to anything but pain,Save when a dream of twilight bringsThe fluttering of an angel's wings!
Adelaide Anne Procter.
We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety if we just handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places, and commend them to undefiling custody that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their repositories....
In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe....
A stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study ... distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain.... He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it: and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books.... He next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume....
But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrousalphabet, or their unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other frivolous thing whatever, that occurs to their imagination.... There are also certain thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins for letter paper, leaving only the letters or text, or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which they take away for various uses and abuses, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema.
But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholar that washing should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from his meals to study, before his fingers, besmeared with grease, loosen a clasp or turn over the leaf of a book.—R. de Bury.Philobiblon.
The most meek Moses instructs us about making cases for books in the neatest manner, wherein they may be safely preserved from all damage. 'Take this book,' says he, 'and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God' (Deut. xxxi). O, befitting place, appropriate library, which was made of imperishable Shittim wood, and covered all over inside and out with gold! But our Saviour also, by his own example, precludes all unseemly negligence in the treatment of books, as may be read in Luke iv. For when he had read over the scriptural prophecy written about himself in a book debarred to him, he did not return it to the minister till he had first closed it with his most holy hands; by which act students are most clearly taught that they ought not in the smallest degree whatever to be negligent about the custody of books.—R. de Bury.Philobiblon.
Is not the leaf turned downWhere I left reading?W. Shakespeare.Julius Caesar.
Is not the leaf turned downWhere I left reading?
W. Shakespeare.Julius Caesar.
With that of the book loosened were the clasps—The margin was illumined all with golden railsAnd bees, enpictured with grasshops and wasps,With butterflies and fresh peacock tails,Engloried with flowers and slimy snails;Ennyield pictures well touched and quickly;It would have made a man whole that had be right sicklyTo behold how it was garnished and bound,Encovered over with gold of tissue fine;The clasps and bullions were worth a thousand pound;With belassis and carbuncles the borders did shine;With aurum mosaicum every other lineWas written.John Skelton.A Replycacion agaynstcertayne yong Scolers, &c.
With that of the book loosened were the clasps—The margin was illumined all with golden railsAnd bees, enpictured with grasshops and wasps,With butterflies and fresh peacock tails,Engloried with flowers and slimy snails;Ennyield pictures well touched and quickly;It would have made a man whole that had be right sicklyTo behold how it was garnished and bound,Encovered over with gold of tissue fine;The clasps and bullions were worth a thousand pound;With belassis and carbuncles the borders did shine;With aurum mosaicum every other lineWas written.
John Skelton.A Replycacion agaynstcertayne yong Scolers, &c.
Have a care of keeping your books handsome, and well bound, not casting away overmuch in their gilding or stringing for ostentation sake, like the prayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but for their outsides. Yet for your own use spare them not for noting or interlining (if they be printed), for it is not likely you mean to be a gainer by them, when you have done with them: neither suffer them through negligence to mould and be moth-eaten or want their strings and covers. King Alphonsus, about to lay the foundation of a castle at Naples, called for Vitruvius his book of architecture; the book was brought in very bad case, all dusty and without covers; which the king observing said, 'He that must cover us all, must not go uncovered himself'; then commanded the book to be fairly bound and brought unto him. So say I, suffer them not to lie neglected, who must make you regarded; and go in torn coats, who must apparel your mind with the ornaments of knowledge, above the robes and riches of the most magnificent princes.—H. Peacham.The Compleat Gentleman.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,To beautify him, only lacks a cover:The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much prideFor fair without the fair within to hide:That book in many eyes doth share the glory,That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.W. Shakespeare.Romeo and Juliet.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,To beautify him, only lacks a cover:The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much prideFor fair without the fair within to hide:That book in many eyes doth share the glory,That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
W. Shakespeare.Romeo and Juliet.
A book? O rare one!Be not, as is our fangled world, a garmentNobler than that it covers: let thy effectsSo follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,As good as promise.W. Shakespeare.Cymbeline.
A book? O rare one!Be not, as is our fangled world, a garmentNobler than that it covers: let thy effectsSo follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,As good as promise.
W. Shakespeare.Cymbeline.
As in our clothes, so likewise he who looksShall find much forcing buckram in our books.R. Herrick.
As in our clothes, so likewise he who looksShall find much forcing buckram in our books.
R. Herrick.
While the plodding votary ofmeaningis anxiously inquiring out the sense of the oracle, his fellow-worshipper, remembering that oureyeswere not given us for nothing, is entranced in admiration of the stately form or gorgeous vestment of the priest that utters it:—in plainer terms, he stands exploring, without end, the type, of jetty black and dazzling cut, that seems to float amidst a satin sea of cream—(it is impossible to be watching after one's metaphors on such inspiring occasions)—roves, in gazing ecstasy, from page to page, till here and there arrested by the choice vignette or richly tinctured plate: at length, 'lassatus, necdum satiatus' with the beauties of the interior, he reverently closes the superbly-plated leaves; and, turning to the sumptuous, silk-lined cover, marvels as he views the verdant, red, or purple pride of Russia,Turkey, or Morocco, glittering, in every part, with the mazy flourishes of golden decoration!—'Miror, immo etiam stupeo!' is the language of his heart—if it cannot be of his tongue.—J. Beresford.Bibliosophia.
Embodied thought enjoys a splendid restOn guardian shelves, in emblem costume dressed;Like gems that sparkle in the parent mine,Through crystal mediums the rich coverings shine;Morocco flames in scarlet, blue and green,Impressed with burnished gold, of dazzling sheen;Arms deep embossed the owner's state declare,Test of their worth—their age—and his kind care.Embalmed in russia stands a valued pile,That time impairs not, nor vile worms defile;Russia, exhaling from its scented poresIts saving power to these thrice-valued stores,In order fair arranged in volumes stand,Gay with the skill of many a modern hand;At the expense of sinew and of bone,The fine papyrian leaves are firm as stone:Here all is square as by masonic rule,And bright the impression of the burnished tool.On some the tawny calf a coat bestows,Where flowers and fillets beauteous forms compose:Others in pride the virgin vellum wear,Beaded with gold—as breast of Venus fair;On either end the silken head-bands twine,Wrought by some maid with skilful fingers fine—The yielding back falls loose, the hinges play,And the rich page lies open to the day.Where science traces the unerring line,In brilliant tints the forms of beauty shine;These, in our works, as in a casket laid,Increase the splendour by their powerful aid.J. Maccreery.
Embodied thought enjoys a splendid restOn guardian shelves, in emblem costume dressed;Like gems that sparkle in the parent mine,Through crystal mediums the rich coverings shine;Morocco flames in scarlet, blue and green,Impressed with burnished gold, of dazzling sheen;Arms deep embossed the owner's state declare,Test of their worth—their age—and his kind care.Embalmed in russia stands a valued pile,That time impairs not, nor vile worms defile;Russia, exhaling from its scented poresIts saving power to these thrice-valued stores,In order fair arranged in volumes stand,Gay with the skill of many a modern hand;At the expense of sinew and of bone,The fine papyrian leaves are firm as stone:Here all is square as by masonic rule,And bright the impression of the burnished tool.On some the tawny calf a coat bestows,Where flowers and fillets beauteous forms compose:Others in pride the virgin vellum wear,Beaded with gold—as breast of Venus fair;On either end the silken head-bands twine,Wrought by some maid with skilful fingers fine—The yielding back falls loose, the hinges play,And the rich page lies open to the day.Where science traces the unerring line,In brilliant tints the forms of beauty shine;These, in our works, as in a casket laid,Increase the splendour by their powerful aid.
J. Maccreery.
Hark you, sir; I'll have them very fairly bound:All books of love, see that at any hand.W. Shakespeare.The Taming of the Shrew.
Hark you, sir; I'll have them very fairly bound:All books of love, see that at any hand.
W. Shakespeare.The Taming of the Shrew.
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) isourcostume. 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'sSeasons, 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, orVicar 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 whenthatperishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torchThat can its light relumine—
We know not where is that Promethean torchThat can its light relumine—
such a book, for instance, as theLife 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 wehavereprints, 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 withplates, 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 galleryengravings, whichdid. 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 theAnatomy 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.
Books, no less than their authors, are liable to get ragged, and to experience that neglect and contempt which generally follows the outward and visible signs of poverty. We do therefore most heartily commend the man, who bestows on a tattered and shivering volume such decent and comely apparel as may protect it from the insults of the vulgar, and the more cutting slights of the fair. But if it be a rare book, 'the lone survivor of a numerous race,' the one of its family that has escaped the trunk-makers and pastry-cooks, we would counsel a little extravagance in arranging it. Let no book perish, unless it be such an one as it is your duty to throw into the fire. There is no such thing as a worthless book, though there are some far worse than worthless; no book which is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there are some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none who should be suffered to starve.
The binding of a book should always suit its complexion. Pages, venerably yellow, should not be cased in military morocco, but in sober brown russia. Glossy hot-pressed paper looks best in vellum. We have sometimes seen a collection of old whitey-brown black-letter ballads, &c., so gorgeously tricked out, that they remind us of the pious liberality of the Catholics, who dress in silk and gold the images of saints, part of whose saintship consisted in wearing rags and hair-cloth. The costume of a volume should also be in keeping with its subject, and with the character of its author. How absurd to see the works of William Penn in flaming scarlet, and George Fox's Journal in Bishop's purple! Theology should be solemnly gorgeous. History should be ornamented after the antique or Gothic fashion. Works of science, as plain as is consistent with dignity. Poetry,simplex munditiis.—Hartley Coleridge.Biographia Borealis: William Roscoe.
Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside, is the proper relation between a man of sense and his books.—Lord Chesterfield.Letters to his Son.
As great philosophers hold that theesseof things ispercipi, so a gentleman's furniture exists to be looked at. Nevertheless, sir, there are some things more fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say, from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource againstennui, ifennuishould come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel theennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle.—T. L. Peacock.Crotchet Castle.
Johnson used to say that no man read long together with a folio on his table. 'Books,' said he, 'that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.'—J. Boswell.Life of Johnson.
Of the great passion of Henry the Seventh for fine books, even before he ascended the throne of England, there can be no doubt. I will not, however, take upon me to say that the slumbers of this monarch were disturbed in consequence of the extraordinary and frightful passages, which, accompanied with bizarre cuts, were now introduced into almost every work, both of ascetic divinity, and also of plain practical morality. His predecessor, Richard, had in all probability been alarmed by the images which the reading of these books had created; and I guess that it was from such frightful objects, rather than from the ghosts of his murdered brethren, that he was compelled to pass a sleeplessnight before the memorable battle of Bosworth Field. If one of those artists who used to design the horrible pictures which are engraved in many old didactic volumes of the period, had ventured to take a peep into Richard's tent, I question whether he would not have seen, lying upon an oaken table, an early edition of some of those fearful works of which he had himself aided in the embellishment, and of which Heinecken has given us such curious facsimiles: and this, in my humble apprehension, is quite sufficient to account for all the terrible workings in Richard which Shakespeare has so vividly described.—T. F. Dibdin.Bibliomania.
I yield to none in my love of bookstall urbanity. I have spent as happy moments over the stalls (until the woman looked out) as any literary apprentice boy who ought to be moving onwards. But I confess my weakness in liking to see some of my favourite purchases neatly bound. The books I like to have about me most are Spenser, Chaucer, the minor poems of Milton, theArabian Nights, Theocritus, Ariosto, and such old good-natured speculations as Plutarch'sMorals. For most of these I like a plain good old binding, never mind how old, provided it wears well; but myArabian Nightsmay be bound in as fine and flowery a style as possible, and I should love an engraving to every dozen pages. Book-prints of all sorts, bad and good, take with me as much as when I was a child: and I think some books, such as Prior'sPoems, ought always to have portraits of the authors. Prior's airy face with his cap on, is like having his company. From early association, no edition of Milton pleases me so much, as that in which there are pictures of the Devil with brute ears, dressed like a Roman General: nor of Bunyan, as the one containing the print of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the Devil whispering in Christian's ear, or old Pope by the wayside, and