Very many years ago we became convinced—Judge Methuen and I did—that there was nothing new in the world. I think it was while we were in London and while we were deep in the many fads of bibliomania that we arrived at this important conclusion.
We had been pursuing with enthusiasm the exciting delights of extra-illustration, a practice sometimes known as Grangerism; the friends of the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the latter. We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller at Gray's Inn Gate.
Unhappily we were wholly in the dark as to what the title of that book was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the identity of the volume. To be wholly frank with you, I will say that both the Judge and I had wearied of the occupation; moreover, it involved great expense, since we were content with nothing but India proofs (those before letters preferred). So we were glad of this excuse for abandoning the practice.
While we were contemplating a graceful retreat the Judge happened to discover in the "Natural History" of Pliny a passage which proved to our satisfaction that, so far from being a new or a modern thing, the extra-illustration of books was of exceptional antiquity. It seems that Atticus, the friend of Cicero, wrote a book on the subject of portraits and portrait-painting, in the course of which treatise he mentions that Marcus Varro "conceived the very liberal idea of inserting, by some means or another, in his numerous volumes, the portraits of several hundred individuals, as he could not bear the idea that all traces of their features should be lost or that the lapse of centuries should get the better of mankind."
"Thus," says Pliny, "was he the inventor of a benefit to his fellow-men that might have been envied by the gods themselves; for not only did he confer immortality upon the originals of these portraits, but he transmitted these portraits to all parts of the earth, so that everywhere it might be possible for them to be present, and for each to occupy his niche."
Now, Pliny is not the only one who has contributed to the immortalization of Marcus Varro. I have had among my papers for thirty years the verses which Judge Methuen dashed off (for poets invariably dash off their poetry), and they are such pleasant verses that I don't mind letting the world see them.
Marcus Varro went up and downThe places where old books were sold;He ransacked all the shops in townFor pictures new and pictures old.He gave the folk of earth no peace;Snooping around by day and night,He plied the trade in Rome and GreeceOf an insatiate Grangerite.
"Pictures!" was evermore his cry—"Pictures of old or recent date,"And pictures only would he buyWherewith to "extra-illustrate."Full many a tome of ancient typeAnd many a manuscript he took,For nary purpose but to swipeTheir pictures for some other book.
While Marcus Varro plied his fadThere was not in the shops of GreeceA book or pamphlet to be hadThat was not minus frontispiece.Nor did he hesitate to plyHis baleful practices at home;It was not possible to buyA perfect book in all of Rome!
What must the other folk have done—Who, glancing o'er the books they bought,Came soon and suddenly uponThe vandalism Varro wrought!How must their cheeks have flamed with red—How did their hearts with choler beat!We can imagine what they said—We can imagine, not repeat!
Where are the books that Varro made—The pride of dilettante Rome—With divers portraitures inlaidSwiped from so many another tome?The worms devoured them long ago—O wretched worms! ye should have fedNot on the books "extended" so,But on old Varro's flesh instead!
Alas, that Marcus Varro livesAnd is a potent factor yet!Alas, that still his practice givesGood men occasion for regret!To yonder bookstall, pri'thee, go,And by the "missing" prints and platesAnd frontispieces you shall knowHe lives, and "extra-illustrates"!
In justice to the Judge and to myself I should say that neither of us wholly approves the sentiment which the poem I have quoted implies. We regard Grangerism as one of the unfortunate stages in bibliomania; it is a period which seldom covers more than five years, although Dr. O'Rell has met with one case in his practice that has lasted ten years and still gives no symptom of abating in virulence.
Humanity invariably condones the pranks of youth on the broad and charitable grounds that "boys will be boys"; so we bibliomaniacs are prone to wink at the follies of the Grangerite, for we know that he will know better by and by and will heartily repent of the mischief he has done. We know the power of books so well that we know that no man can have to do with books that presently he does not love them. He may at first endure them; then he may come only to pity them; anon, as surely as the morrow's sun riseth, he shall embrace and love those precious things.
So we say that we would put no curb upon any man, it being better that many books should be destroyed, if ultimately by that destruction a penitent and loyal soul be added to the roster of bibliomaniacs. There is more joy over one Grangerite that repenteth than over ninety and nine just men that need no repentance.
And we have a similar feeling toward such of our number as for the nonce become imbued with a passion for any of the other little fads which bibliomaniac flesh is heir to. All the soldiers in an army cannot be foot, or horse, or captains, or majors, or generals, or artillery, or ensigns, or drummers, or buglers. Each one has his place to fill and his part to do, and the consequence is a concinnate whole. Bibliomania is beautiful as an entirety, as a symmetrical blending of a multitude of component parts, and he is indeed disloyal to the cause who, through envy or shortsightedness or ignorance, argues to the discredit of angling, or Napoleonana, or balladry, or Indians, or Burns, or Americana, or any other branch or phase of bibliomania; for each of these things accomplishes a noble purpose in that each contributes to the glory of the great common cause of bibliomania, which is indeed the summum bonum of human life.
I have heard many decried who indulged their fancy for bookplates, as if, forsooth, if a man loved his books, he should not lavish upon them testimonials of his affection! Who that loves his wife should hesitate to buy adornments for her person? I favor everything that tends to prove that the human heart is swayed by the tenderer emotions. Gratitude is surely one of the noblest emotions of which humanity is capable, and he is indeed unworthy of our respect who would forbid humanity's expressing in every dignified and reverential manner its gratitude for the benefits conferred by the companionship of books.
As for myself, I urge upon all lovers of books to provide themselves with bookplates. Whenever I see a book that bears its owner's plate I feel myself obligated to treat that book with special consideration. It carries with it a certificate of its master's love; the bookplate gives the volume a certain status it would not otherwise have. Time and again I have fished musty books out of bins in front of bookstalls, bought them and borne them home with me simply because they had upon their covers the bookplates of their former owners. I have a case filled with these aristocratic estrays, and I insist that they shall be as carefully dusted and kept as my other books, and I have provided in my will for their perpetual maintenance after my decease.
If I were a rich man I should found a hospital for homeless aristocratic books, an institution similar in all essential particulars to the institution which is now operated at our national capital under the bequest of the late Mr. Cochrane. I should name it the Home for Genteel Volumes in Decayed Circumstances.
I was a young man when I adopted the bookplate which I am still using, and which will be found in all my books. I drew the design myself and had it executed by a son of Anderson, the first of American engravers. It is by no means elaborate: a book rests upon a heart, and underneath appear the lines:
My Book and HeartMust never part.
Ah, little Puritan maid, with thy dear eyes of honest blue and thy fair hair in proper plaits adown thy back, little thought we that springtime long ago back among the New England hills that the tiny book we read together should follow me through all my life! What a part has that Primer played! And now all these other beloved companions bear witness to the love I bear that Primer and its teachings, for each wears the emblem I plucked from its homely pages.
That was in the springtime, Captivity Waite; anon came summer, with all its exuberant glory, and presently the cheery autumn stole upon me. And now it is the winter-time, and under the snows lies buried many a sweet, fair thing I cherished once. I am aweary and will rest a little while; lie thou there, my pen, for a dream—a pleasant dream—calleth me away. I shall see those distant hills again, and the homestead under the elms; the old associations and the old influences shall be round about me, and a child shall lead me and we shall go together through green pastures and by still waters. And, O my pen, it will be the springtime again!
Have you ever come out of the thick, smoky atmosphere of the town into the fragrant, gracious atmosphere of a library? If you have, you know how grateful the change is, and you will agree with me when I say that nothing else is so quieting to the nerves, so conducive to physical health, and so quick to restore a lively flow of the spirits.
Lafcadio Hearn once wrote a treatise upon perfumes, an ingenious and scholarly performance; he limited the edition to fifty copies and published it privately—so the book is rarely met with. Curiously enough, however, this author had nothing to say in the book about the smells of books, which I regard as a most unpardonable error, unless, properly estimating the subject to be worthy of a separate treatise, he has postponed its consideration and treatment to a time when he can devote the requisite study and care to it.
We have it upon the authority of William Blades that books breathe; however, the testimony of experts is not needed upon this point, for if anybody be sceptical, all he has to do to convince himself is to open a door of a bookcase at any time and his olfactories will be greeted by an outrush of odors that will prove to him beyond all doubt that books do actually consume air and exhale perfumes.
Visitors to the British Museum complain not unfrequently that they are overcome by the closeness of the atmosphere in that place, and what is known as the British Museum headache has come to be recognized by the medical profession in London as a specific ailment due to the absence of oxygen in the atmosphere, which condition is caused by the multitude of books, each one of which, by that breathing process peculiar to books, consumes several thousand cubic feet of air every twenty-four hours.
Professor Huxley wondered for a long time why the atmosphere of the British Museum should be poisonous while other libraries were free from the poison; a series of experiments convinced him that the presence of poison in the atmosphere was due to the number of profane books in the Museum. He recommended that these poison-engendering volumes be treated once every six months with a bath of cedria, which, as I understand, is a solution of the juices of the cedar tree; this, he said, would purge the mischievous volumes temporarily of their evil propensities and abilities.
I do not know whether this remedy is effective, but I remember to have read in Pliny that cedria was used by the ancients to render their manuscripts imperishable. When Cneius Terentius went digging in his estate in the Janiculum he came upon a coffer which contained not only the remains of Numa, the old Roman king, but also the manuscripts of the famous laws which Numa compiled. The king was in some such condition as you might suppose him to be after having been buried several centuries, but the manuscripts were as fresh as new, and their being so is said to have been due to the fact that before their burial they were rubbed with citrus leaves.
These so-called books of Numa would perhaps have been preserved unto this day but for the fanaticism of the people who exhumed and read them; they were promptly burned by Quintus Petilius, the praetor, because (as Cassius Hemina explains) they treated of philosophical subjects, or because, as Livy testifies, their doctrines were inimical to the religion then existing.
As I have had little to do with profane literature, I know nothing of the habits of such books as Professor Huxley has prescribed an antidote against. Of such books as I have gathered about me and made my constant companions I can say truthfully that a more delectable-flavored lot it were impossible to find. As I walk amongst them, touching first this one and then that, and regarding all with glances of affectionate approval, I fancy that I am walking in a splendid garden, full of charming vistas, wherein parterre after parterre of beautiful flowers is unfolded to my enraptured vision; and surely there never were other odors so delightful as the odors which my books exhale!
My garden aboundeth in pleasant nooksAnd fragrance is over it all;For sweet is the smell of my old, old booksIn their places against the wall.
Here is a folio that's grim with ageAnd yellow and green with mould;There's the breath of the sea on every pageAnd the hint of a stanch ship's hold.
And here is a treasure from France la belleExhaleth a faint perfumeOf wedded lily and asphodelIn a garden of song abloom.
And this wee little book of Puritan mienAnd rude, conspicuous printHath the Yankee flavor of wintergreen,Or, may be, of peppermint.
In Walton the brooks a-babbling tellWhere the cheery daisy grows,And where in meadow or woodland dwellThe buttercup and the rose.
But best beloved of books, I ween,Are those which one perceivesAre hallowed by ashes dropped betweenThe yellow, well-thumbed leaves.
For it's here a laugh and it's there a tear,Till the treasured book is read;And the ashes betwixt the pages hereTell us of one long dead.
But the gracious presence reappearsAs we read the book again,And the fragrance of precious, distant yearsFilleth the hearts of men
Come, pluck with me in my garden nooksThe posies that bloom for all;Oh, sweet is the smell of my old, old booksIn their places against the wall!
Better than flowers are they, these books of mine! For what are the seasons to them? Neither can the drought of summer nor the asperity of winter wither or change them. At all times and under all circumstances they are the same—radiant, fragrant, hopeful, helpful! There is no charm which they do not possess, no beauty that is not theirs.
What wonder is it that from time immemorial humanity has craved the boon of carrying to the grave some book particularly beloved in life? Even Numa Pompilius provided that his books should share his tomb with him. Twenty-four of these precious volumes were consigned with him to the grave. When Gabriel Rossetti's wife died, the poet cast into her open grave the unfinished volume of his poems, that being the last and most precious tribute he could pay to her cherished memory.
History records instance after instance of the consolation dying men have received from the perusal of books, and many a one has made his end holding in his hands a particularly beloved volume. The reverence which even unlearned men have for books appeals in these splendid libraries which are erected now and again with funds provided by the wills of the illiterate. How dreadful must be the last moments of that person who has steadfastly refused to share the companionship and acknowledge the saving grace of books!
Such, indeed, is my regard for these friendships that it is with misery that I contemplate the probability of separation from them by and by. I have given my friends to understand that when I am done with earth certain of my books shall be buried with me. The list of these books will be found in the left-hand upper drawer of the old mahogany secretary in the front spare room.
When I am done,I'd have no sonPounce on these treasures like a vulture;Nay, give them halfMy epitaphAnd let them share in my sepulture.
Then when the crackOf doom rolls backThe marble and the earth that hide me,I'll smuggle homeEach precious tomeWithout a fear a wife shall chide me.
The dread of being separated by death from the objects of one's love has pursued humanity from the beginning. The Hindoos used to have a selfish fashion of requiring their widows to be entombed alive with their corpses. The North American Indian insists that his horse, his bow and arrows, his spear, and his other cherished trinkets shall share his grave with him.
My sister, Miss Susan, has provided that after her demise a number of her most prized curios shall be buried with her. The list, as I recall it, includes a mahogany four-post bedstead, an Empire dresser, a brass warming-pan, a pair of brass andirons, a Louis Quinze table, a Mayflower teapot, a Tomb of Washington platter, a pewter tankard, a pair of her grandmother's candlesticks, a Paul Revere lantern, a tall Dutch clock, a complete suit of armor purchased in Rome, and a collection of Japanese bric-a-brac presented to Miss Susan by a returned missionary.
I do not see what Miss Susan can possibly do with all this trumpery in the hereafter, but, if I survive her, I shall certainly insist upon a compliance with her wishes, even though it involve the erection of a tumulus as prodigious as the pyramid of Cheops.
Boswell's "Life of Johnson" and Lockhart's "Life of Scott" are accepted as the models of biography. The third remarkable performance in this line is Mrs. Gordon's memoir of her father, John Wilson, a volume so charmingly and tenderly written as to be of interest to those even who know and care little about that era in the history of English literature in which "crusty Christopher" and his associates in the making of "Blackwood's" figured.
It is a significant fact, I think, that the three greatest biographers the world has known should have been Scotch; it has long been the fashion to laugh and to sneer at what is called Scotch dulness; yet what prodigies has not Scotch genius performed in every department of literature, and would not our literature be poor indeed to-day but for the contributions which have been made to it by the very people whom we affect to deride?
John Wilson was one of the most interesting figures of a time when learning was at a premium; he was a big man amongst big men, and even in this irreverential time genius uncovers at the mention of his name. His versatility was astounding; with equal facility and felicity he could conduct a literary symposium and a cock-fight, a theological discussion and an angling expedition, a historical or a political inquiry and a fisticuffs.
Nature had provided him with a mighty brain in a powerful body; he had a physique equal to the performance of what suggestion soever his splendid intellectuals made. To him the incredible feat of walking seventy miles within the compass of a day was mere child's play; then, when the printer became clamorous, he would immure himself in his wonderful den and reel off copy until that printer cried "Hold; enough!" It was no unusual thing for him to write for thirteen hours at a stretch; when he worked he worked, and when he played he played—that is perhaps the reason why he was never a dull boy.
Wilson seems to have been a procrastinator. He would put off his task to the very last moment; this is a practice that is common with literary men—in fact, it was encouraged by those who were regarded as authorities in such matters anciently. Ringelbergius gave this advice to an author under his tuition:
"Tell the printers," said he, "to make preparations for a work you intend writing, and never alarm yourself about it because it is not even begun, for, after having announced it you may without difficulty trace out in your own head the whole plan of your work and its divisions, after which compose the arguments of the chapters, and I can assure you that in this manner you may furnish the printers daily with more copy than they want. But, remember, when you have once begun there must be no flagging till the work is finished."
The loyalty of human admiration was never better illustrated than in Shelton Mackenzie's devotion to Wilson's genius. To Mackenzie we are indebted for a compilation of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," edited with such discrimination, such ability, such learning, and such enthusiasm that, it seems to me, the work must endure as a monument not only to Wilson's but also to Mackenzie's genius.
I have noticed one peculiarity that distinguishes many admirers of the Noctes: they seldom care to read anything else; in the Noctes they find a response to the demand of every mood. It is much the same way with lovers of Father Prout. Dr. O'Rell divides his adoration between old Kit North and the sage of Watergrass Hill. To be bitten of either mania is bad enough; when one is possessed at the same time of a passion both for the Noctes and for the Reliques hopeless indeed is his malady! Dr. O'Rell is so deep under the spell of crusty Christopher and the Corkonian pere that he not only buys every copy of the Noctes and of the Reliques he comes across, but insists upon giving copies of these books to everybody in his acquaintance. I have even known him to prescribe one or the other of these works to patients of his.
I recall that upon one occasion, having lost an Elzevir at a book auction, I was afflicted with melancholia to such a degree that I had to take to my bed. Upon my physician's arrival he made, as is his custom, a careful inquiry into my condition and into the causes inducing it. Finally, "You are afflicted," said Dr. O'Rell, "with the megrims, which, fortunately, is at present confined to the region of the Pacchionian depressions of the sinister parietal. I shall administer Father Prout's 'Rogueries of Tom Moore' (pronounced More) and Kit North's debate with the Ettrick Shepherd upon the subject of sawmon. No other remedy will prove effective."
The treatment did, in fact, avail me, for within forty-eight hours I was out of bed, and out of the house; and, what is better yet, I picked up at a bookstall, for a mere song, a first edition of "Special Providences in New England"!
Never, however, have I wholly ceased to regret the loss of the Elzevir, for an Elzevir is to me one of the most gladdening sights human eye can rest upon. In his life of the elder Aldus, Renouard says: "How few are there of those who esteem and pay so dearly for these pretty editions who know that the type that so much please them are the work of Francis Garamond, who cast them one hundred years before at Paris."
In his bibliographical notes (a volume seldom met with now) the learned William Davis records that Louis Elzevir was the first who observed the distinction between the v consonant and the u vowel, which distinction, however, had been recommended long before by Ramus and other writers, but had never been regarded. There were five of these Elzevirs, viz.: Louis, Bonaventure, Abraham, Louis, Jr., and Daniel.
A hundred years ago a famous bibliophile remarked: "The diminutiveness of a large portion, and the beauty of the whole, of the classics printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden and Amsterdam have long rendered them justly celebrated, and the prices they bear in public sales sufficiently demonstrate the estimation in which they are at present held."
The regard for these precious books still obtains, and we meet with it in curiously out-of-the-way places, as well as in those libraries where one would naturally expect to find it. My young friend Irving Way (himself a collector of rare enthusiasm) tells me that recently during a pilgrimage through the state of Texas he came upon a gentleman who showed him in his modest home the most superb collection of Elzevirs he had ever set eyes upon!
How far-reaching is thy grace, O bibliomania! How good and sweet it is that no distance, no environment, no poverty, no distress can appall or stay thee. Like that grim spectre we call death, thou knockest impartially at the palace portal and at the cottage door. And it seemeth thy especial delight to bring unto the lonely in desert places the companionship that exalteth humanity!
It makes me groan to think of the number of Elzevirs that are lost in the libraries of rich parvenus who know nothing of and care no thing for the treasures about them further than a certain vulgar vanity which is involved. When Catherine of Russia wearied of Koritz she took to her affection one Kimsky Kossakof, a sergeant in the guards. Kimsky was elated by this sudden acquisition of favor and riches. One of his first orders was to his bookseller. Said he to that worthy: "Fit me up a handsome library; little books above and great ones below."
It is narrated of a certain British warrior that upon his retirement from service he bought a library en bloc, and, not knowing any more about books than a peccary knows of the harmonies of the heavenly choir, he gave orders for the arrangement of the volumes in this wise: "Range me," he quoth, "the grenadiers (folios) at the bottom, the battalion (octavos) in the middle, and the light-bobs (duodecimos) at the top!"
Samuel Johnson, dancing attendance upon Lord Chesterfield, could hardly have felt his humiliation more keenly than did the historian Gibbon when his grace the Duke of Cumberland met him bringing the third volume of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to the ducal mansion. This history was originally printed in quarto; Gibbon was carrying the volume and anticipating the joy of the duke upon its arrival. What did the duke say? "What?" he cried. "Ah, another —— big square book, eh?"
It is the fashion nowadays to harp upon the degeneracy of humanity; to insist that taste is corrupted, and that the faculty of appreciation is dead. We seem incapable of realizing that this is the golden age of authors, if not the golden age of authorship.
In the good old days authors were in fact a despised and neglected class. The Greeks put them to death, as the humor seized them. For a hundred years after his death Shakespeare was practically unknown to his countrymen, except Suckling and his coterie: during his life he was roundly assailed by his contemporaries, one of the latter going to the extreme of denouncing him as a daw that strutted in borrowed plumage. Milton was accused of plagiarism, and one of his critics devoted many years to compiling from every quarter passages in ancient works which bore a similarity to the blind poet's verses. Even Samuel Johnson's satire of "London" was pronounced a plagiarism.
The good old days were the days, seemingly, when the critics had their way and ran things with a high hand; they made or unmade books and authors. They killed Chatterton, just as, some years later, they hastened the death of Keats. For a time they were all-powerful. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that these professional tyrants began to lose their grip, and when Byron took up the lance against them their doom was practically sealed.
Who would care a picayune in these degenerate days what Dr. Warburton said pro or con a book? It was Warburton (then Bishop of Gloucester) who remarked of Granger's "Biographical History of England" that it was "an odd one." This was as high a compliment as he ever paid a book; those which he did not like he called sad books, and those which he fancied he called odd ones.
The truth seems to be that through the diffusion of knowledge and the multiplicity and cheapness of books people generally have reached the point in intelligence where they feel warranted in asserting their ability to judge for themselves. So the occupation of the critic, as interpreted and practised of old, is gone.
Reverting to the practice of lamenting the degeneracy of humanity, I should say that the fashion is by no means a new one. Search the records of the ancients and you will find the same harping upon the one string of present decay and former virtue. Herodotus, Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, and Pliny take up and repeat the lugubrious tale in turn.
Upon earth there are three distinct classes of men: Those who contemplate the past, those who contemplate the present, those who contemplate the future. I am of those who believe that humanity progresses, and it is my theory that the best works of the past have survived and come down to us in these books which are our dearest legacies, our proudest possessions, and our best-beloved companions.
One of my friends had a mania for Bunyan once upon a time, and, although he has now abandoned that fad for the more fashionable passion of Napoleonana, he still exhibits with evident pride the many editions of the "Pilgrim's Progress" he gathered together years ago. I have frequently besought him to give me one of his copies, which has a curious frontispiece illustrating the dangers besetting the traveller from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. This frontispiece, which is prettily illuminated, occurs in Virtue's edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress"; the book itself is not rare, but it is hardly procurable in perfect condition, for the reason that the colored plate is so pleasing to the eye that few have been able to resist the temptation to make away with it.
For similar reasons it is seldom that we meet with a perfect edition of Quarles' "Emblems"; indeed, an "Emblems" of early publication that does not lack the title-page is a great rarity. In the "good old days," when juvenile books were few, the works of Bunyan and of Quarles were vastly popular with the little folk, and little fingers wrought sad havoc with the title-pages and the pictures that with their extravagant and vivid suggestions appealed so directly and powerfully to the youthful fancy.
Coleridge says of the "Pilgrim's Progress" that it is the best summary of evangelical Christianity ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired. Froude declares that it has for two centuries affected the spiritual opinions of the English race in every part of the world more powerfully than any other book, except the Bible. "It is," says Macaulay, "perhaps the only book about which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common people."
Whether or not Bunyan is, as D'Israeli has called him, the Spenser of the people, and whether or not his work is the poetry of Puritanism, the best evidence of the merit of the "Pilgrim's Progress" appears, as Dr. Johnson has shrewdly pointed out, in the general and continued approbation of mankind. Southey has critically observed that to his natural style Bunyan is in some degree beholden for his general popularity, his language being everywhere level to the most ignorant reader and to the meanest capacity; "there is a homely reality about it—a nursery tale is not more intelligible, in its manner of narration, to a child."
Another cause of his popularity, says Southey, is that he taxes the imagination as little as the understanding. "The vividness of his own, which, as history shows, sometimes could not distinguish ideal impressions from actual ones, occasioned this. He saw the things of which he was writing as distinctly with his mind's eye as if they were, indeed, passing before him in a dream."
It is clear to me that in his youth Bunyan would have endeared himself to me had I lived at that time, for his fancy was of that kind and of such intensity as I delight to find in youth. "My sins," he tells us, "did so offend the Lord that even in my childhood He did scare and affright me with fearful dreams and did terrify me with dreadful visions. I have been in my bed greatly afflicted, while asleep, with apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, labored to draw me away with them, of which I could never be rid."
It is quite likely that Bunyan overestimated his viciousness. One of his ardent, intense temperament having once been touched of the saving grace could hardly help recognizing in himself the most miserable of sinners. It is related that upon one occasion he was going somewhere disguised as a wagoner, when he was overtaken by a constable who had a warrant for his arrest.
"Do you know that devil of a fellow Bunyan?" asked the constable.
"Know him?" cried Bunyan. "You might call him a devil indeed, if you knew him as well as I once did!"
This was not the only time his wit served him to good purpose. On another occasion a certain Cambridge student, who was filled with a sense of his own importance, undertook to prove to him what a divine thing reason was, and he capped his argument with the declaration that reason was the chief glory of man which distinguished him from a beast. To this Bunyan calmly made answer: "Sin distinguishes man from beast; is sin divine?"
Frederick Saunders observes that, like Milton in his blindness, Bunyan in his imprisonment had his spiritual perception made all the brighter by his exclusion from the glare of the outside world. And of the great debt of gratitude we all owe to "the wicked tinker of Elstow" Dean Stanley has spoken so truly that I am fain to quote his words: "We all need to be cheered by the help of Greatheart and Standfast and Valiant-for-the-Truth, and good old Honesty! Some of us have been in Doubting Castle, some in the Slough of Despond. Some have experienced the temptations of Vanity Fair; all of us have to climb the Hill of Difficulty; all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in the House Beautiful; all of us bear the same burden; all of us need the same armor in our fight with Apollyon; all of us have to pass through the Wicket Gate—to pass through the dark river, and for all of us (if God so will) there wait the shining ones at the gates of the Celestial City! Who does not love to linger over the life story of the 'immortal dreamer' as one of those characters for whom man has done so little and God so much?"
About my favorite copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress" many a pleasant reminiscence lingers, for it was one of the books my grandmother gave my father when he left home to engage in the great battle of life; when my father died this thick, dumpy little volume, with its rude cuts and poorly printed pages, came into my possession. I do not know what part this book played in my father's life, but I can say for myself that it has brought me solace and cheer a many times.
The only occasion upon which I felt bitterly toward Dr. O'Rell was when that personage observed in my hearing one day that Bunyan was a dyspeptic, and that had he not been one he would doubtless never have written the "Pilgrim's Progress."
I took issue with the doctor on this point; whereupon he cited those visions and dreams, which, according to the light of science as it now shines, demonstrate that Bunyan's digestion must have been morbid. And, forthwith, he overwhelmed me with learned instances from Galen and Hippocrates, from Spurzheim and Binns, from Locke and Beattie, from Malebranche and Bertholini, from Darwin and Descartes, from Charlevoix and Berkeley, from Heraclitus and Blumenbach, from Priestley and Abercrombie; in fact, forsooth, he quoted me so many authorities that it verily seemed to me as though the whole world were against me!
I did not know until then that Dr. O'Rell had made a special study of dreams, of their causes and of their signification. I had always supposed that astrology was his particular hobby, in which science I will concede him to be deeply learned, even though he has never yet proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, because the binding was renewed at the wane of the moon and when Sirius was in the ascendant, and, secondly, because (as Dr. O'Rell has discovered) my binder was born at a moment fifty-six years ago when Mercury was in the fourth house and Herschel and Saturn were aspected in conjunction, with Sol at his northern declination.
Dr. O'Rell has frequently expressed surprise that I have never wearied of and drifted away from the book-friendships of my earlier years. Other people, he says, find, as time elapses, that they no longer discover those charms in certain books which attracted them so powerfully in youth. "We have in our earlier days," argues the doctor, "friendships so dear to us that we would repel with horror the suggestion that we could ever become heedless or forgetful of them; yet, alas, as we grow older we gradually become indifferent to these first friends, and we are weaned from them by other friendships; there even comes a time when we actually wonder how it were possible for us to be on terms of intimacy with such or such a person. We grow away from people, and in like manner and for similar reasons we grow away from books."
Is it indeed possible for one to become indifferent to an object he has once loved? I can hardly believe so. At least it is not so with me, and, even though the time may come when I shall no longer be able to enjoy the uses of these dear old friends with the old-time enthusiasm, I should still regard them with that tender reverence which in his age the poet Longfellow expressed when looking round upon his beloved books:
Sadly as some old mediaeval knightGazed at the arms he could no longer wield—The sword two-handed and the shining shieldSuspended in the hall and full in sight,While secret longings for the lost delightOf tourney or adventure in the fieldCame over him, and tears but half concealedTrembled and fell upon his beard of white;So I behold these books upon their shelfMy ornaments and arms of other days;Not wholly useless, though no longer used,For they remind me of my other selfYounger and stronger, and the pleasant waysIn which I walked, now clouded and confused.
If my friend O'Rell's theory be true, how barren would be Age! Lord Bacon tells us in his "Apothegms" that Alonzo of Aragon was wont to say, in commendation of Age, that Age appeared to be best in four things: Old wood best to burn; old wine to drink; old friends to trust; and old authors to read. Sir John Davys recalls that "a French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of companions: Men, women and books," and my revered and beloved poet-friend, Richard Henry Stoddard, has wrought out this sentiment in a poem of exceeding beauty, of which the concluding stanza runs in this wise:
Better than men and women, friend,That are dust, though dear in our joy and pain,Are the books their cunning hands have penned,For they depart, but the books remain;Through these they speak to us what was bestIn the loving heart and the noble mind;All their royal souls possessedBelongs forever to all mankind!When others fail him, the wise man looksTo the sure companionship of books.
If ever, O honest friends of mine, I should forget you or weary of your companionship, whither would depart the memories and the associations with which each of you is hallowed! Would ever the modest flowers of spring-time, budding in pathways where I no longer wander, recall to my failing sight the vernal beauty of the Puritan maid, Captivity? In what reverie of summer-time should I feel again the graciousness of thy presence, Yseult?
And Fanchonette—sweet, timid little Fanchonette! would ever thy ghost come back from out those years away off yonder? Be hushed, my Beranger, for a moment; another song hath awakened softly responsive echoes in my heart! It is a song of Fanchonette:
In vain, in vain; we meet no more,Nor dream what fates befall;And long upon the stranger's shoreMy voice on thee may call,When years have clothed the line in mossThat tells thy name and days,And withered, on thy simple cross,The wreaths of Pere la Chaise!
Judge Methuen tells me that one of the most pleasing delusions he has experienced in his long and active career as a bibliomaniac is that which is born of the catalogue habit. Presuming that there are among my readers many laymen,—for I preach salvation to the heathen,—I will explain for their information that the catalogue habit, so called, is a practice to which the confirmed lover of books is likely to become addicted. It is a custom of many publishers and dealers to publish and to disseminate at certain periods lists of their wares, in the hope of thereby enticing readers to buy those wares.
By what means these crafty tradesmen secure the names of their prospective victims I cannot say, but this I know full well—that there seems not to be a book-lover on the face of the earth, I care not how remote or how secret his habitation may be, that these dealers do not presently find him out and overwhelm him with their delightful temptations.
I have been told that among booksellers there exists a secret league which provides for the interchange of confidences; so that when a new customer enters a shop in the Fulham road or in Oxford street or along the quays of Paris, or it matters not where (so long as the object of his inquiry be a book), within the space of a month that man's name and place of residence are reported to and entered in the address list of every other bookseller in Christendom, and forthwith and forever after the catalogues and price-lists and bulletins of publishers and dealers in every part of the world are pelted at him through the unerring processes of the mails.
Judge Methuen has been a victim (a pleasant victim) to the catalogue habit for the last forty years, and he has declared that if all the catalogues sent to and read by him in that space of time were gathered together in a heap they would make a pile bigger than Pike's Peak, and a thousandfold more interesting. I myself have been a famous reader of catalogues, and I can testify that the habit has possessed me of remarkable delusions, the most conspicuous of which is that which produces within me the conviction that a book is as good as mine as soon as I have met with its title in a catalogue, and set an X over against it in pencil.
I recall that on one occasion I was discussing with Judge Methuen and Dr. O'Rell the attempted escapes of Charles I. from Carisbrooke Castle; a point of difference having arisen, I said: "Gentlemen, I will refer to Hillier's 'Narrative,' and I doubt not that my argument will be sustained by that authority."
It was vastly easier, however, to cite Hillier than it was to find him. For three days I searched in my library, and tumbled my books about in that confusion which results from undue eagerness; 't was all in vain; neither hide nor hair of the desired volume could I discover. It finally occurred to me that I must have lent the book to somebody, and then again I felt sure that it had been stolen.
No tidings of the missing volume came to me, and I had almost forgotten the incident when one evening (it was fully two years after my discussion with my cronies) I came upon, in one of the drawers of my oak chest, a Sotheran catalogue of May, 1871. By the merest chance I opened it, and as luck would have it, I opened it at the very page upon which appeared this item:
"Hillier (G.) 'Narrative of the Attempted Escapes of Charles the First from Carisbrooke Castle'; cr. 8vo, 1852, cloth, 3/6."
Against this item appeared a cross in my chirography, and I saw at a glance that this was my long-lost Hillier! I had meant to buy it, and had marked it for purchase; but with the determination and that pencilled cross the transaction had ended. Yet, having resolved to buy it had served me almost as effectively as though I had actually bought it; I thought—aye, I could have sworn—I HAD bought it, simply because I MEANT to buy it.
"The experience is not unique," said Judge Methuen, when I narrated it to him at our next meeting. "Speaking for myself, I can say that it is a confirmed habit with me to mark certain items in catalogues which I read, and then to go my way in the pleasing conviction that they are actually mine."
"I meet with cases of this character continually," said Dr. O'Rell. "The hallucination is one that is recognized as a specific one by pathologists; its cure is quickest effected by means of hypnotism. Within the last year a lady of beauty and refinement came to me in serious distress. She confided to me amid a copious effusion of tears that her husband was upon the verge of insanity. Her testimony was to the effect that the unfortunate man believed himself to be possessed of a large library, the fact being that the number of his books was limited to three hundred or thereabouts.
"Upon inquiry I learned that N. M. (for so I will call the victim of this delusion) made a practice of reading and of marking booksellers' catalogues; further investigation developed that N. M.'s great-uncle on his mother's side had invented a flying-machine that would not fly, and that a half-brother of his was the author of a pamphlet entitled '16 to 1; or the Poor Man's Vade-Mecum.'
"'Madam,' said I, 'it is clear to me that your husband is afflicted with catalogitis.'
"At this the poor woman went into hysterics, bewailing that she should have lived to see the object of her affection the victim of a malady so grievous as to require a Greek name. When she became calmer I explained to her that the malady was by no means fatal, and that it yielded readily to treatment."
"What, in plain terms," asked Judge Methuen, "is catalogitis?"
"I will explain briefly," answered the doctor. "You must know first that every perfect human being is provided with two sets of bowels; he has physical bowels and intellectual bowels, the brain being the latter. Hippocrates (since whose time the science of medicine has not advanced even the two stadia, five parasangs of Xenophon)—Hippocrates, I say, discovered that the brain is subject to those very same diseases to which the other and inferior bowels are liable.
"Galen confirmed this discovery and he records a case (Lib. xi., p. 318) wherein there were exhibited in the intellectual bowels symptoms similar to those we find in appendicitis. The brain is wrought into certain convolutions, just as the alimentary canal is; the fourth layer, so called, contains elongated groups of small cells or nuclei, radiating at right angles to its plane, which groups present a distinctly fanlike structure. Catalogitis is a stoppage of this fourth layer, whereby the functions of the fanlike structure are suffered no longer to cool the brain, and whereby also continuity of thought is interrupted, just as continuity of digestion is prevented by stoppage of the vermiform appendix.
"The learned Professor Biersteintrinken," continued Dr. O'Rell, "has advanced in his scholarly work on 'Raderinderkopf' the interesting theory that catalogitis is produced by the presence in the brain of a germ which has its origin in the cheap paper used by booksellers for catalogue purposes, and this theory seems to have the approval of M. Marie-Tonsard, the most famous of authorities on inebriety, in his celebrated classic entitled 'Un Trait sur Jacques-Jacques.'"
"Did you effect a cure in the case of N. M.?" I asked.
"With the greatest of ease," answered the doctor. "By means of hypnotism I purged his intellectuals of their hallucination, relieving them of their perception of objects which have no reality and ridding them of sensations which have no corresponding external cause. The patient made a rapid recovery, and, although three months have elapsed since his discharge, he has had no return of the disease."
As a class booksellers do not encourage the reading of other booksellers' catalogues; this is, presumably, because they do not care to encourage buyers to buy of other sellers. My bookseller, who in all virtues of head and heart excels all other booksellers I ever met with, makes a scrupulous practice of destroying the catalogues that come to his shop, lest some stray copy may fall into the hands of a mousing book-lover and divert his attention to other hunting-grounds. It is indeed remarkable to what excess the catalogue habit will carry its victim; the author of "Will Shakespeare, a Comedy," has frequently confessed to me that it mattered not to him whether a catalogue was twenty years old—so long as it was a catalogue of books he found the keenest delight in its perusal; I have often heard Mr. Hamlin, the theatre manager, say that he preferred old catalogues to new, for the reason that the bargains to be met with in old catalogues expired long ago under the statute of limitations.
Judge Methuen, who is a married man and has therefore had an excellent opportunity to study the sex, tells me that the wives of bibliomaniacs regard catalogues as the most mischievous temptations that can be thrown in the way of their husbands. I once committed the imprudence of mentioning the subject in Mrs. Methuen's presence: that estimable lady gave it as her opinion that there were plenty of ways of spending money foolishly without having recourse to a book-catalogue for suggestion. I wonder whether Captivity would have had this opinion, had Providence ordained that we should walk together the quiet pathway of New England life; would Yseult always have retained the exuberance and sweetness of her youth, had she and I realized what might have been? Would Fanchonette always have sympathized with the whims and vagaries of the restless yet loyal soul that hung enraptured on her singing in the Quartier Latin so long ago that the memory of that song is like the memory of a ghostly echo now?
Away with such reflections! Bring in the candles, good servitor, and range them at my bed's head; sweet avocation awaits me, for here I have a goodly parcel of catalogues with which to commune. They are messages from Methuen, Sotheran, Libbie, Irvine, Hutt, Davey, Baer, Crawford, Bangs, McClurg, Matthews, Francis, Bouton, Scribner, Benjamin, and a score of other friends in every part of Christendom; they deserve and they shall have my respectful—nay, my enthusiastic attention. Once more I shall seem to be in the old familiar shops where treasures abound and where patient delving bringeth rich rewards. Egad, what a spendthrift I shall be this night; pence, shillings, thalers, marks, francs, dollars, sovereigns—they are the same to me!
Then, after I have comprehended all the treasures within reach, how sweet shall be my dreams of shelves overflowing with the wealth of which my fancy has possessed me!