NintfttMutiiMttwiwia L6 afotnell HuioerBtta ffithrarg att;ara. S7«m Inrfe FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 18S4-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY ^s volume was taken. HOME USE RULES All books subject to recall 4UJrtlJ~i96&"J4 Bl All borrowers must regis- ter in the library to borrow books tor home use M^ti^ fil MAR a^T ^nlZ coVi year for inspection and repairs. Limited books must be returned within the four week limit and not renewed.- Students must return all , books before leaving town. Officers should arrange for the return of books wanted during their absence from town. Volumes of periodicals *" and of peimphlets are held, in the library" as much as possible. For special pur- poses they are given out for a limited time. Borrowers should not use their library privileges for the benefit of other persons. Books ' of special value and gift fcooks, when the giver wishes it, are not allowe4 to circulate. Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. Do not deface books by marks and writing. .-^ Cornell University Library Z992.L26 L6 1892 Librai olin 1924 029 546 029 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029546029 THE LIBRARY THE LIBRARY BY ANDREW LANG WITH A CHAPTER ON MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY AUSTIN DOBSON SECOND EDITION Eotition MACMILLAN & CO. AND NEW YORK 1892 All rights reserved -yvTV^ L 1 1^ W k W Y First Edition jfrinted 1881. Second Edition, Thejinal chapter enlarged^ andfiirther illustrations added. 1892. TO DR. JOHN BROWN AUTHOR OF RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. PREFATORY NOTE. The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also written on early printed books (pp. 94-95). The pages on the Biblioklept (pp. 46-56) are reprinted, with the Editor's kind per- mission, from the Saturday Review ; and a few remarks on the moral lessons of bookstalls are taken from an essay in the same journal. Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs of chapters I., II., and III., and suggested some alterations. Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls College, for two plates from his " Book-bindings in All Souls Library " (printed for private circulation), wihich he has been good PRE FA TOR Y NO TE enough to lend me. The plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by Dr. J. J, Wild. Messrs. George Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., and Messrs. Chatto & Windus, must be thanked for the use of some of the woodcuts which illustrate the concluding chapter. The late M. Jules Andrieu was so kind as to edit and improve the rondeau in Old French and in black letter. A. L. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. This little volume on " The Library '' was written ten. years ago, when the author's knowledge of books, never exhaustive, was younger and scantier than it is to-day. There have been many changes of taste among collectors, as is natural. Many great libraries, as the Hamilton Library and the Beckford collection, have been dispersed. They contained, among other rarities of which little is said in the following pages, examples of old romances, usually in black letter, and old works of travel, and Americana. On the whole, these things are beyond the purse of the kind of buyer in whose ear the " Library " is intended to gossip. The serious and opulent collector can study the catalogues of Mr. Hutts, Mr. Locker Lampson, Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, and others, in which he will find plenty of information. To lighter minds one may recommend " La Biblio- xii PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION th^que d'un Bibliophile," M. Paillet's catalogue, which is full of most humorous writing, and " Mes Livres,'' by M. Quentin Bauchart, and the works of Le Toqui, commonly so called. But experience only, not study, can enlighten the collector. He must pay for his knowledge, like other mortals. One piece of advice may be given to him. It is far wiser to buy seldom, and at a high price, than to run round the stalls collect- ing twopenny treasures. This counsel was not taken by him who gives it. When I collected books (" 'tis gone, 'tis gone "), I got together a won- derful heap of volumes, hopelessly imperfect. My " Lucasta," by Richard Lovelace, Esq. ( 1 649), lacks the frontispiece. My Rochefoucauld (1665) has a couple of pages in facsimile (I know not which they are), and so forth. These things, though useful in a literary sense, are twopenny treasures. As for the short Elzevirs, the late Aldines, the incomplete Angling curiosities, their name is legion. These are examples to avoid, and to be avoided is the habit of miscellaneously buying any volume which seems uncommon, except, of course, when it has a literary use. It is an error often to buy a book from a catalogue without inspecting it. Many booksellers appear to be careless or ignorant PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION xiii in collecting their wares, and sell what is discovered, too late, to be imperfect. As to buying bargains, valuable books at a low price, a question of casuistry arises. M. Paul Lacroix once bought an original " Tartufe," with the king's arms, for a couple of francs. He gave it on the same day to a famous French collector, and on the same day the bookseller found out his mistake. The collector declined to return the volume, or to pay the usual price, and this conduct we must blame. But, on one occasion, a lady bookseller having sold me three original volumes of Alfred de Musset for a shilling a piece, she declined to accept a higher . ransom, alleging that it was well for customers to have a bargain now and then. Every buyer must consult his own conscience : I think he will usually find the bookseller content with his normal profit. In ignorance some book- sellers ask absurdly high prices, just as others ask prices absurdly low. The taste for large paper copies of new books has greatly increased since the " Library " was written. It does not become an author to complain whose own modest gains are increased by this fashion. But it seems clear enough that the fashion, and that other fashion of buying the first editions of xiv PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION contemporaries, is exaggerated. It is not every book, by any means, that is the better for being printed on large paper. Often the smaller size is much more handy and appropriate. Why Mr. Stevenson's first editions should be four or five times as valuable as Sir Walter Scott's is a mystery which, I am sure, will puzzle and divert the modern author. I cannot think that the end will justify those proceedings. Moreover, an author is vexed when his first edition is " quoted " at twenty times its original value, while his second edition languishes in obscurity. Booksellers injure a man when they charge a pound for his first edition, while there are hundreds of that very issue lying forlorn on his publishers shelves ! This is a grevious form of popularity, and arises from the ignorance of collectors. When they know a little more, it will be better for all persons, except for some booksellers. Book -collecting ought not to be a mere trade, or a mere fad. Its object is to secure the comforts of a home for examples really rare or beautiful, or interesting as relics. We are in too great a hurry to canonise contemporaries, and to make relics of their first editions, which are probably their least correct editions. Large paper is not a good absolute and in itself, but only when PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION xv it is beautiful and appropriate. For example, the large paper copies of Dr. Hill Burton's " Book- hunter" (there be twenty-five of the first edition) are not nearly so appropriate and handy as the ordinary examples. On the other hand, the comparative revival of collecting does really seem to have improved, in some cases, the art of manu- facturing books. In binding, with rare exceptions, we seem to make no progress. The modern French fantastic bindings are usually monuments of incompetence. It is technical excellence, not decoration, that we should aim at, for the present. Neatness and order should rather be aimed at by the book-buyer than a pursuit of valueless rarities, though no rarity which adds to knowledge is really valueless. These moralisings are the fruit of experi- ence in misfortune, and are probably preached in vain. Only very rich people or very lucky people can make up a cabinet of literary jewels. The rest of us must follow cheap fancies, making harmless little tastes for ourselves, if we would be collectors. To collect is a natural hobby, small boys and girls are greatly given to it : we can make it less useless by making it personal, not by following any fashion. We should try to purchase the books which will disenchant us least. A. L, b CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE An Apology for the Book-hunter . . i "Every man his own Librarian" — Bibliography and Literature — Services of the French to Bibliography — A defence of the taste of the Book-collector — Should Collectors buy for the purpose of selling again? — The sport of Book-hunting — M. de Resbecq's anecdotes — Stories of success of Book-hunters — The lessons of old Bookstalls — Booksellers' catalogues — Auctions of Books — Different forms of the taste for collecting — The taste serviceable to critical Science — Books considered as literary relics — Examples — The " Imitatio Christi " of J. J. Rousseau — A brief vision of mighty Book-hunters. CHAPTER II. The Library . . . . . • -31 The size of modem collections — The Library in English houses — Bookcases — Enemies of Books — Damp, dust, dirt — The book- worm — Careless readers — Book plates — Borrowers — Book stealers — Affecting instance of the Spanish Monk — The Book- ghoul — Women the natural foes of books — Some touching exceptions — Homage to Madame Fertiault — Modes of pre- serving books ; binding — ^Various sorts of coverings for books — Half-bindings — Books too good to bind, how to be entertained — Iniquities of Binders — Cruel case of a cropped play of Moliere — Recipes (not infallible) for cleaning books — Necessity of possessing bibliographical works, such as catalogues. CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PAGE The Books of the Collector . . . 76 Manuscripts, early and late — Early Printed Books — How to recog- nise them — Books printed on Vellum — "Uncut" copies — "Livres de Luxe," and Illustrated Books — Invective against "Christmas Books" — The " Hypnerotomachia Poliphili" — - Old woodcuts — French vignettes of the eighteenth century — Books of the Aldi — Books of the Elzevirs — " Curious " Books — Singular old English poems — First editions — Changes of fashion in Book-collecting — Examples of the variations in prices — Books valued for their bindings, and as relics — Anecdotes of Madame du Barry and Marie Antoinette. CHAPTER IV. Illustrated Books . . . , .123 Beginnings of Modern Book -Illustration in England — Stothard, Blake, Flaxman — Boydell's " Shakespeare," Macklin's "Bible," Martin's "Milton"— The "Annuals"— Rogers's "Italy" and "Poems" — Revival of Wood -Engraving — Bewick — Bewick's Pupils — The " London School " — Progress of Wood-Engraving — Illustrated "Christmas" and other Books — The Humorous Artists — Cruikshank — Doyle — ^Thackeray — Leech — Tenniel — Du Maurier — Sambourne — Keene — Minor Humorous Artists — Children's Books — Crane — Miss Greenaway — Caldecott — The "New American School" — Con- clusion. Postscript. . . . . . .179 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PLATES. PAGE Strena Galteri Delaeni Mo. 1553. (English binding of the 1 6th century ; brown calf ; each cover bearing the arms of King Edward VI., accompanied by his initials, and surmounted by a crowned Tudor Rose) . . . To face 62 By permission of Her Majesty the Queen. Holy Bible. Edinburgh, 1772. (Scotch binding of the 1 8th century ; green morocco) To face 64 By permission of Dr. W. H. Corfield. Title-page of " Le Rommant de la Rose," Paris, 1 539 . . . . . . To face 94 WOODCUTS. Frontispiece. Drawn by Walter Crane j engraved by Swain. Initial. Drawn by Walter Crane ; engraved by Swain i Group of Children. Drawn by Kate Greenaway; engraved by O. Lacotir . . . ■ .122 Initial. From Hughes's " Scouring of the White Horse, 1858." Drawn by Richard Doyle; en- graved by W.J. Linton 123 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE " Infant Joy." From Blake's " Songs of Innocence," 1789. Engraved by J. F. Jungling . . .129 "Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child, in the Tomb." From Blair's " Grave," 1808. Designed by William Blake; facsimiled on wood from the engraving by Louis Schiavonetii 131 "The Woodcock." From Jackson & Chatto's "History of Wood-Engraving," 1839. En- graved, after T. Bewick, by John Jackson . .141 Tailpiece. From the same. Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John Jackson . . . . .143 Headpiece. From Rogers's " Pleasures of Memory, vi'ith other Poems," 1810. Drawn by T. Stothard; engraved, after Luke Clennell, by 0. Lacour . 145 " Golden head by golden head." From Christina Rossetti's " Goblin Market and other Poems,'' 1862. Drawn by D. G. Rossettij engraved by W.J. Linton . . . . . . .149 "The Deaf Post- Boy." From Clarke's "Three Courses and a Dessert," 1830. Drawn by G. Cruikshank; engraved by S. Williams [?] . -153 " The Mad Tea-Party." From " Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," 1865. Drawn by John Tennielj engraved by Dahiel Brothers . . . .162 Black Kitten. From " Through the Looking-Glass," 1 87 1. Drawn by John Tennielj engraved by Dahiel Brothers . . . . . .163 ■LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE "The Music of the Past." P'rom "Punch's Almanack," 1877. Drawn by George du Maurier; engraved by Swain . . . . . .165 "Clear and Cool." From the "Water Babies," 1885. Drawn by Linley Sambourne; engraved by Swain . . . .167 Boy and Hippocampus. From Miss E. Keary's "Magic Valley," 1877. Drawn by "E. V. B." (Hon. Mrs. Boyle); engraved by T. Quartley . 171 " Love Charms." From Irving's " Bracebridge Hall," 1876. Drawn by Randolph Caldecott; engraved by J. D. Cooper 173 Tailpiece to Song. From the "Water Babies," 1885. Drawn by Linley Sambourne ; engraved by Swain ....... 178 "The Second Rescue of Sophia." From the "Vicar of Wakefield," 1890. Drawn by Hugh Thomson . . . . . .183 " Sylvie and Bruno." From " Sylvie and Bruno." Drawn by Harry Furniss j engraved by Swain 184 "The Old Guide at Waterloo." From "The Travelling Companions," 1892. Drawn by J. Bernard Partridge . . . . . .185 Tailpiece. From "Cranford," 1891. Drawn by Hugh Thomson . ■ . • .186 33ao&0, iooliB again, anu 160060 once more ! 'Ef)e0e are our t^eme, toWt) s^ome miecali ifilere maUneflB, settino little store 13g copiea eitjjer sjort or tall, 33ut sou, S) slabes of eiitU ano stall ! We tatfin tortte for sou tl)at liota Patcjeu folios Dear, anu prije " tlje email, IKare Uolume, &lac& toitli tamisi^eti oolo," SI* 3). THE LIBRARY. CHAPTER I. AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER. LL men," says Dr. Dibdin, " like to be their own librarians." A writer on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the books that even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to collect. There are books which no lover of literature can afford to be without ; classics, ancient and modern, on which the world has pronounced its verdict. These works, in whatever shape we may be able to possess them, are the necessary foundations of even the smallest collections. Homer, Dante and Milton, Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristo- phanes and Moli^re, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and Scott, — these every lover of letters will desire to possess in the original THE LIBRARY. [chap. languages or in translations. The list of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the tastes of men begin to differ very widely. An assortment of broadsheet ballads and scrap- books, bought in boyhood, was the nucleus of Scott's library, rich in the works of poets and magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists. A childish liking for coloured prints of stage char- acters, may be the germ of a theatrical collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin. People who are studying any past period of human history, or any old phase or expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little contemporary volumes which seem trash to other amateurs. For example, to a student of Moliere, Jl is a happy chance to come across " La Carte du Royaume des Pretieuses " — (The map -of the kingdom of the " Pr^cieuses ") — written the year before the comedian brought out his famous play " Les Pr^cieuses Ridicules." This geographical tract appeared in the very "Recueil des Pieces Choisies," whose authors Magdelon, in the play, was ex- pecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his appearance. There is a faculty which Horace Walpole named "serendipity," — the luck of falling oh just the literary document which one wants at the moment. All collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the exercise of I.] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 3 serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of cata- logues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one point, — the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can sympathise with Charles Lamb's attachment to " that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which he dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden." But it is another thing when Lamb says, " I do not care for a first folio of Shakespeare." A bibliophile who could say this could say anything. No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from their literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness. These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity. It is about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them. 4 THE LIBRARY. [chap. that the following pages are to treat. It is a subject more closely connected with the taste for curiosities than with art, strictly so called. We are to be occupied, not so much with literature as with books, not so much with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint duenna of literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its humours. And here an apology must be made for the fre- quent allusions and anecdotes derived from French writers. These are as unavoidable, almost, as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in fencing. In bibliography, in the care for books as books, the French are still the teachers of Europe, as they were in tennis and are in fencing. Thus, Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his " Philobiblon :" "Oh God of Gods in Zion ! what a rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as often as I have a chance of going to Paris ! There the days seem always short ; there are the goodly collections on the delicate fragrant book -shelves." Since Dante wrote of — " L'onor di quell' arte Ch' allumare h chiamata in Parisi," " the art that is called illuminating in Paris," and all the other arts of writing, printing, binding books, have been most skilfully practised by France. She improved on the lessons given by I-] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 5 Germany and Italy in these crafts. Twenty books about books are written in Paris for one that is published in England. In our country Dibdin is out of date (the second edition of his " Bibliomania " was published in 1 8 1 1 ) though Mr. Hill Burton's humorous " Book-hunter " is again in print. Meanwhile, in France, writers grave and gay, from the gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier's quaint fancy, and Janin's wit, and the always entertaining bibliophile Jacob (Paul La- croix), have written, or are writing, on books, manuscripts, engravings, editions, and bindings. In England, therefore, rare French books are eagerly sought, and may be found in all the booksellers' catalogues. On the continent there is no such care for our curious or beautiful editions, old or new. Here a hint may be given to the collector. If he " picks up " a rare French book, at a low price, he would act prudently in having it bound in France by a good craftsman. Its value, when "the wicked day of destiny" comes, and the collection is broken up, will thus be made secure. For the French do not suffer our English bindings gladly ; while we have no narrow prejudice against the works of Lortic and Cape, but the reverse. For these reasons then, and also because every writer is obliged to make the closest acquaintance with books in the direction where his THE LIBRARY. [chap. own studies lie, the writings of French authorities are frequently cited in the following pages. This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste and passion of book-collect- ing, and of the class of men known invidiously as book-worms and book-hunters. They and their simple pleasures are the butts of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who cannot endure in others a taste which is absent in themselves. Important new books have actually been con- demned of late years because they were printed on good paper, and a valuable historical treatise was attacked by reviewers quite angrily because its outward array was not mean and forbidding. Of course, critics who take this view of new books have no patience with persons who care for " margins," and " condition," and early copies of old books. We cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not necessary to be disturbed by his clamour. People are happier for the possession of a taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons of Scripture, possess them. The wise collector gets instruction and pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long run, he and his family do- not lose money. The amusement may chance to prove a very fair investment. As to this question of making money by I-] THE BOOK-HUNTER. collecting, Mr. Hill Burton speaks very distinctly in "The Book-hunter:" "Where money is the object let a man speculate or become a miser. . . . Let not the collector ever, unless in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any of his treasures. Let him not even have recourse to that practice called barter, which political philo- sophers tell us is the universal resource of man- kind preparatory to the invention of money. Let him confine all his transactions in the market to purchasing only. No good comes of gentlemen- amateurs buying and selling." There is room for difference of opinion here, but there seems to be most reason on the side of Mr. Hill Burton. It is one thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the jnoney he expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste. It is quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers. It is necessary 'also to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes. He must buy experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to dis- appoint him. He will pay dearly for the wrong "Caesar" of 1635, the one without errors in pagi- nation ; and this is only a common example of the beginner's blunders. Collecting is like other THE LIBRARY. [chap. forms of sport ; the aim is not certain at first, the amateur is nervous, and, as in angling, is apt to " strike " (a bargain) too hurriedly. I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of sport. People talk of " book-hunting," and the old Latin motto says that "one never wearies of the chase in this forest." But the analogy to angling seems even stronger. A col- lector walks in the London or Paris streets, as he does by Tweed or Spey. Many a lordly mart of books he passes, like Mr. Quaritch's, Mr. Toovey's, or M. Fontaine's or the shining store of M. Dama- scene Morgand, in the Passage des Panoramas. Here I always feel like Brassicanus in the king of Hungary's collect-ion, " non in Bibliotheca, sed in gremio Jovis ; " " not in a library, but in paradise." It is not given to every one to cast angle in these preserves. They are kept for dukes and millionaires. Surely the old Duke of Roxburghe was the happiest of mortals, for to him both the chief bookshops and auction rooms, and the famous salmon streams of Floors, were equally open, and he revelled in the prime of book -collecting and of anghng. But there are little tributary streets, with lowlier stalls, shy pools, as it were, where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an Elzevir, or an old French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a !•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 9 Restoration comedy. It is usually a case of hope unfulfilled ; but the merest nibble of a rare book, say Marston's poems in the original edition, or Beddoes's " Love's Arrow Poisoned," or Bankes's " Bay Horse in a Trance," or the " Mel Helicon- icum " of Alexander Ross, or " Les Oeuvres de Clement Marot, de Cahors, Vallet de Chambre du Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre Gaultier, 1551;" even a chance at something of this sort will kindle the waning excitement, and add a pleasure to a man's walk in muddy London. Then, sup- pose you purchase for a couple of shillings the " Histoire des Amours de Henry IV, et autres pieces curieuses, A Leyde, Chez Jean Sambyx (Elzevir), 1664," it is certainly not unpleasant, on consulting M. Fontaine's catalogue, to find that he offers the same work at the ransom of ;^io. The beginner thinks himself in singular luck, even though he has no idea of vending his collection, and he never reflects that condition — spotless white leaves and broad margins, make the market value of a book. Setting aside such bare considerations of profit, the sport given by bookstalls is full of variety and charm. In London it may be pursued in most of the cross streets that stretch a dirty net between the British Museum and the Strand. There are other more shy and less freqiaently THE LIBRARY. [chap. poached resorts which the amateur may be al- lowed to find out for himself. In Paris there is the long sweep of the Quais, where some eighty bouquinistes set their boxes on the walls of the embankment of the Seine. There are few country towns so small but that books, occasionally rare and valuable, may be found lurking in second- hand furniture warehouses. This is one of the advantages of living in an old country. The Colonies are not the home for a collector. I have seen an Australian bibliophile enraptured by the rare chance of buying, in Melbourne, an early work on — the history of Port Jackson ! This seems but poor game. But in Europe an amateur has always occupation for his odd moments in town, and is for ever lured on by the radiant appari- tion of Hope. All collectors tell their anecdotes of wonderful luck, and magnificent discoveries.- There is a volume " Voyages Litt^raires sur les Quais de Paris " (Paris, Durand, 1857), by M. de Fontaine de Resbecq, which might convert the dullest soul to book -hunting. M. de Resbecq and his friends had the most amazing good fortune. A M. N found six original plays of Moli^re (worth perhaps as many hundreds of pounds), bound up with Garth's " Dispensary," an English poem which has long lost its vogue. It is worth while, indeed, to examine all volumes marked ^•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. " Miscellanea," " Essays," and the like, and trea- sures may possibly lurk, as Snuffy Davy knew, within the battered sheepskin of school books. Books lie in out of the way places. Poggio rescued " Quintilian " from the counter of a wood merchant. The best time for book -hunting in Paris is the early morning. " The take," as anglers say, is " on " from half-past seven to half- past nine A.M. At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares, and the agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up everything worth having. These agents quite spoil the sport of the amateur. They keep a strict watch on every country dealer's catalogue, snap up all he has worth selling, and sell it over again, charging pounds in place of shillings. But M. de Resbecq vows that he once picked up a copy of the first edition of La Rochefoucauld's " Maxims " out of a box which two booksellers had just searched. The same collector got together very promptly all the original editions of La Bruy^re, and he even found a copy of the Elzevir " Pastissier Frangais," at the humble price of six sous. Now the " Pastissier Frangais,'' an ill-printed little cookery-book of the Elzevirs, has lately fetched £600 at a sale. The Anti- quary's story of Snuffy Davy and the " Game of Chess," is dwarfed by the luck of M. de Resbecq. THE LIBRARY. [chap. Not one amateur in a thousand can expect such good fortune. There is, however, a recent instance of a Rugby boy, who picked up, on a stall, a few fluttering leaves hanging together on a flimsy thread. The old woman who kept the stall could hardly be induced to .accept the large sum of a shilling for an original quarto of Shakespeare's "King John." These stories are told that none may despair. That none may be over confi- dent, an author may recount his own experi- ence. The only odd trouvaille that ever fell to me was a clean copy of " La Journee Chr^tienne," with the name of L^on Gambetta, 1 844, on its catholic fly-leaf Rare books grow rarer every day, and often 'tis only Hope that remains at the bottom of the fourpenny boxes. Yet the Paris book-hunters cleave to the game. August is their favourite season ; for in August there is least competition. Very few people are, as a rule, in Paris, and these are not tempted to loiter. The bookseller is drowsy, and glad not to have the trouble of chaffering. The English go past, and do not tarry beside a row of dusty boxes of books. The heat threatens the amateur with sunstroke. Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a prose ballade of book-hunters-*-then, calm, glad, heroic, the bouquineurs prowl forth, refreshed with hope. The brown old calf- skin wrinkles in the I.] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 13 sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover of a quarto. The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is walking the streets. Under his vast umbrella the book-hunter is secure and content ; he enjoys the pleasures of the sport unvexed by poachers, and thinks less of the heat than does the deer- stalker on the bare hill-side. There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in the stalls. The decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of am- bition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections. The presentation volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who was his " Master," to the critic whom he feared, to the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration. The critic has not even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely torn three or four apart with his finger and thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let the poems slip into some corner of his library, whence they were removed on some day of doom and of general clearing out. The sale of the library of a late learned prelate who had Boileau's hatred of a dull book was a scene to be avoided by his literary friends. The Bishop always gave the works which were offered to him a fair chance. 14 THE LIBRARY. [chap. He read till he could read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress could be traced like that of a backwoodsman who " blazes '' his way through a primeval forest. The paper- knife generally ceased to do duty before the thirtieth page. The melancholy of the book- hunter is aroused by two questions, " Whence } " and " Whither .? " The bibliophile asks about his books the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul. Whence came they ? Their value depends a good deal on the answer. If they are stamped with arms, then there is a book ("Armorial du Bibliophile," by M. Guigard) which tells you who was their original owner. Any one of twenty coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of the volume which it covers. If there is no such mark, the fancy is left to devise a romance about the first owner, and all the hands through which the book has passed. That Vanini came from a Jesuit college, where it was kept under lock and key. That copy of Agrippa " De Vanitate Scientiarum " is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded ink, with cynical Latin notes. What pessimist two hundred years ago made his grumbling so per- manent ? One can only guess, but part of the imaginative joys of the book-hunter lies in the fruitless conjecture. That other question I-] THE BOOK-HUNTER. TS " Whither ? " is graver. Whither are our treasures to be scattered ? Will they find kind masters ? or, worst fate of books, fall into the hands of women who will sell them to the trunk -maker? Are the leaves to line a box or to curl a maiden's locks ? Are the rarities to become more and more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices ? Some unlucky men are able partly to solve these problems in their own lifetime. They are con- strained to sell their libraries — an experience full of bitterness, wrath, and disappointment. Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which life has no worse sorrow. A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an ill- ness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself As a man's tastes and opinions are developed his books put on a different aspect. He hardly knows the " Poems and Ballads" he used to declaim, and cannot recover the enigmatic charm of " Sordello." Books change like friends, like ourselves, like everything ; but they are most piquant in the contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them is a success, though we laughed at him ; a failure, though we believed in him ; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days. The vanished past returns when we look at the pages. 1 6 THE LIBRARY. [chap. The vicissitudes of years are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts of desire and hope return to their forbidden home in the heart and fancy. It is as well to have the power of recalling them always at hand, and to be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions which were so powerful and full of life, and now are more faded and of less account than the memory of the dreams of childhood. It is because our books are friends that do change, and remind us of change, that we should keep them with us, even at a little inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the world to find a dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls. We are a part of all that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson's Ulysses, and we owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and the weakness of human purpose. Old school and college books even have a reproachful and salutary power of whispering how much a man knew, and at the cost of how much trouble, that he has absolutely forgotten, and is neither the better nor the worse for it. It will be the same in the case of the books he is eager about now ; though, to be sure, he will read with less care, and forget with an ease and readiness only to be acquired by practice. '•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 17 But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches moral lessons, as " dauncyng " also does, according to Sir Thomas Elyot, in the "Boke called the Gouvernour," but because it affords a kind of sportive excitement. Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase. Book catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him all the pleasures of the sport at home. He reads the booksellers' catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with pencil, he writes by return of post, or he telegraphs to the vendor. Unfortu- nately he almost always finds that he has been forestalled, probably by some bookseller's agent. When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious that Parisians have the pick of the market before our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M. Labitte. Still the catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in bibliography. You see from them how prices are ruling, and you can gloat, in fancy, over De Luyne's edition of Moli^re, 1673, two volumes in red morocco, doubU (" Trautz Bauzonnet "), or some other vanity hopelessly out of reach. In his catalogues, M. Damascene Morgand prints a facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition. The bust of Moli^re occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the " Precieuses Ridicules "), stand on either side. In the second volume are c i8 THE LIBRARY chap. Moli^re, and, perhaps, his wife, crowned by the muse Thalia. A catalogue which contains such exact reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a work of art, and serviceable to the student. When the shop of a bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant, bibliophiles have been known to rush to the spot in the grey morning, before the doors open. There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers' Row. There is a length to which enthusiasm cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at rising early in the morning. But, when we think of the sport of book-hunting, it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally turns. Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was in an auction-room that Guibert de Pix^rdcourt, being outbid, said, in tones of mortal hatred, " I will have the book when your collection is sold after your death." And he kept his word. The fever of gambling is not absent from the auction-room, and people " bid jealous " as they sometimes "ride jealous" in the hunting- field. Yet, the neophyte, if he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle. The chamber has the look of a dingy gambling room. The '•] THE BOOK-HUNTER 19 crowd round the auctioneer's box contains many persons so duslcy and Semitic, that at Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance ; while, in Russia, they would be persecuted by Muscovites with Christian ardour. Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked down for trifling sums. Let the neophyte try his luck, however, and prices will rise wonderfully. The fact is that the sale is a " knock out." The bidders are professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to distribute them afterwards among themselves. Thus an amateur can have a good deal of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper value, and by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to " run him up.'' The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the owner of the books. A bidder must be able to command his temper, both that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to bid recklessly, and that he may disregard the not very carefully con- cealed sneers of the professionals. In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the collector. One man is for bibles, another for ballads. Some pursue plays, others look for play bills. " He was not," says Mr. Hill Burton, speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, THE LIBRARY. [chap. " he was not a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early- English dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old brown calf man, or a Grangerite,^ or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt topper, or a marbled insider, or an editio princeps man." These nicknames briefly dispose into categories a good many species of collectors. But there are plenty of others. You may be a historical-bindings man, and hunt for books that were bound by the great artists of the past and belonged to illustrious collectors. Or you may be a Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical " Marginalia." Or you may covet the earliest editions of modern poets — Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson, or even Ebenezer Jones. Or the object of your desires may be the books of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830. Or, being a person of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country histories. Again, your heart may be set on the books illus- trated by Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century. Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and ' This is the technical name for people who "illustrate" books with engravings from other works. The practice became popular when Granger published his "Biographical History of England." I.] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 21 for the books of the Giunta press. In fact, as many as are the species of rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of collectors. There is one sort of men, modest but not un- wise in their generations, who buy up the pretty books published in very limited editions by French booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and Jouaust. Already their reprints of Rochefoucauld's first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the lyrics attributed to Moli^re, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch high prices in the market. By a singular caprice, the little volumes of Mr. Thackeray's miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their old modest price is increased twenty fold. It is not always easy to account for these freaks of fashion ; but even in book -collecting there are certain definite laws. "Why do you pay a large price for a dingy, old book," outsiders ask, "when a clean modern reprint can be procured for two or three shillings ? " To this question the collector has several replies, which he, at least, finds satis- factory. In the first place, early editions, published during a great author's lifetime, and under his supervision, have authentic texts. The changes in them are the changes that Prior or La Bruy^re themselves made and approved. You can study, 22 THE LIBRARY. [chap. in these old editions, the alterations in their taste, the history of their minds. The case is the same even with contemporary authors. One likes to have Mr. Tennyson's " Poems, chiefly Lyrical " (London : Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830). It is fifty years old, this little book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a stately tree. In half a century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his " Mariana " is a masterpiece. " Mariana " is in all the collections, but pieces of which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the old volume of 1830. In the same way "The Strayed Reveller, and other poems, by A." (London : B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1 849) contains much that Mr. Matthew Arnold has altered, and this volume, like the suppressed " Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A." (1852), appeals more to the collector than do the new editions which all the world may possess. There are verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough's " Ambarvalia " (i 849), which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which " repay perusal." These minutiae of literary history be- come infinitely more important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of !•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 23 critical science. The preservation of rare books, and the collection of materials for criticism, are the useful functions, then, of book-collecting. But it is not to be denied that the sentimental side of the pursuit gives it most of its charm. Old books are often literary relics, and as dear and sacred to the lover of literature as are relics of another sort to the religious devotee. The amateur likes to see the book in its form as the author knew it. He takes a pious pleasure in the first edition of " Les Prdcieuses Ridicules," (M.DC.LX.) just as Moli^re saw it, when he was fresh in the business of authorship, and wrote " Mon Dieu, qu'un Autheur est neuf, la premiere fois qu'on I'imprime." All editions published during a great man's life have this attraction, and seem to bring us closer to his spirit. Other volumes are relics, as we shall see later, of some famed collector, and there is a certain piety in the care we give to books once dear to Longepierre, or Harley, or d'Hoym, or Buckle, to Madame de Maintenon, or Walpole, to Grolier, or Askew, or De Thou, or Heber. Such copies should be handed down from worthy owners to owners not unworthy ; such servants of literature should never have careless masters. A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good clear reprint. M. Charpentier's " Montaigne " serves the turn, but it is natural to treasure more 24 THE LIBRARY. [chap. " Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne," that were printed by Francoise le Febre, of Lyon, in 1 5 9 S . It is not a beautiful book ; the type is small, and rather blunt, but William Drummond of Hawthornden has written on the title-page his name and his device, Cipresso e Palma. There are a dozen modern editions of Moli^re more easily read than the four little volumes of Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698), but these contain reduced copies of the original illustrations, and here you see Arnolphe and Agnes in their habits as they lived, Moli^re and Mdlle. de Brie as the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred years ago. Suckling's " Fragmenta Aurea " contain a good deal of dross, and most of the gold has been gathered into Miscellanies, but the original edition of 1646, "after his own copies," with the portrait of the jolly cavalier who died (Btatis suae 2 8, has its own allurement. Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth's edition, or Ziegler's ; but that which Zacharias Calliergi printed in Rome (15 1 6), with an excommunication from Leo X. against infringement of copyright, will always be a beautiful and desirable book, especially when bound by Derome. The gist of the pious Prince Conti's strictures on the wickedness of comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is natural to like his " Traits de la Comedie selon la I.] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 25 tradition de I'Eglise, Tirde des Conciles et des saints P^res," published by Lovys Billaine in 1660, especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous black morocco. These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little library, a " twopenny treasure- house," but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the nature of the collector's passion, — the character of his innocent pleasures. He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more personal character than mere first editions. A lucky collector lately bought Shelley's copy of Ossian, with the poet's signature on the title-page, in Booksellers' Row. Another possesses a copy of Foppens's rare edition of Petrarch's " Le Sage Resolu contre I'une et I'autre Fortune," which once belonged to Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon, and may have fortiiied, by its stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew the extremes of either fortune, the captive of St. Helena. But the best example of a book, which is also a relic, is the "Imitatio Christi," which belonged to J. J. Rousseau. Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the happy owner of this posses- sion, tell his own story of his treasure : It was in 1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre. Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the "Imitatio Christi." M. de Latour, like other 26 THE LIBRARY. [chap. bibliophiles, was not in the habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of the " Imitatio," a book which brings considerable prices. However, by some lucky chance, some Socratic daemon whispering, may be, in his ear, he picked up the little dingy volume of the last century. It was of a Paris edition, 1/5 1, but what was the name on the fly- leaf M. de Latour read d. J. J. Rousseau. There was no mistake about it, the good bibliophile knew Rousseau's handwriting perfectly well ; to make still more sure he paid his seventy- five centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont des Arts, to his bookbinder's, where he had a copy of Rousseau's works, with a facsimile of his hand- writing. As he walked, M. de Latour read in his book, and found notes of Rousseau's on the margin. The facsimile proved that the inscription was genuine. The happy de Latour now made for the public office in which he was a functionary, and rushed into the bureau of his friend the Marquis de V. The Marquis, a man of great strength of character, recognised the signature of Rousseau, with but little display of emotion. M. de Latour now noticed some withered flowers among the sacred pages ; but it was reserved for a friend to discover in the faded petals Rousseau's favourite '•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 27 flower, the periwinkle. Like a true Frenchman, like Rousseau himself in his younger days, M. de Latour had not recognised the periwinkle when he saw it. That night, so excited was M. de Latour, he never closed an eye ! What puzzled him was that he could not remember, in all Rousseau's works, a single allusion to the " Imitatio Christi." Time went on, the old book was not rebound, but kept piously in a case of Russia leather. M. de Latour did not suppose that " dans ce bas monde it fut permis aux joies du bibliophile d'aller encore plus loin." He imagined that the delights of the amateur could only go further, in heaven. It chanced, however, one day that he was turning over the " Oeuvres In^dites " of Rousseau, when he found a letter, in which Jean Jacques, writing in 1763, asked a correspondent to send him the " Imitatio Christi." Now the date 1764 is memor- able, in Rousseau's " Confessions," for a burst of sentiment over a periwinkle, the first he had noticed particularly since his residence at Les Charmettes, where the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens. Thus M. Tenant de Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle, which caused the tear of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of Jean Jacques Rousseau. We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau. But M. de Latour was an enthusiast, and this little 28 THE LIBRARY. [chap. anecdote of his explains the sentimental side of the bibliophile's pursuit. Yes, it is sentiment that makes us feel a lively affection for the books that seem to connect us with, great poets and students long ago dead. Their hands grasp ours across the ages. I never see the first edition of Homer, that monument of typography and of enthusiasm for letters, printed at Florence (1488) at the expense of young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli, and of their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli, but I feel moved to cry with Heyne, " salvete juvenes, nobiles et generosi ; '^aiperk jmol /cal iiv 'AtSao oofJiOicri. Such is our apology for book-collecting. But the best defence of the taste would be a list of the names of great collectors, a " vision of mighty book-hunters." Let us say nothing of Seth and Noah, for their reputation as amateurs is only based on the authority of the tract Be Biblio- thecis Antediluvianis. The library of Assurbani- pal I pass over, for its volumes were made, as Pliny says, of coctiles laterculi, of baked tiles, which have been deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith. Philosophers as well as immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on our side. It was objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap scribblers of to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred minae {£160) for three treatises '•] THE BOOK-HUNTER. 29 of Philolaus, while Aristotle paid nearly thrice the sum for a few books that had been in the library of Speusippus. Did not a Latin philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety to purchase an Odyssey " as old as Homer," and what would not Cicero, that great collector, have given for the Ascraean editio princeps of Hesiod, scratched on mouldy old plates of lead? Perhaps research may find an original edition of the " Iliad " at Delphi ; but of all early copies none seems so attractive as that engraved on the leaden plates which Pausanias saw at Ascra. Then, in modern times, what " great allies " has the collector, what brethren in book-hunting ? The names are like the catalogue with which Villon fills his " Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps Jadis." A collector was " le preux Charlemaigne " and our English Alfred. The Kings of Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus ; the Kings of France, and their queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all amateurs. So was our Henry VI H., and James I., who " wished he could be chained to a shelf in the Bodleian." The middle age gives us Richard de Bury, among ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts Sir Thomas More, with that " pretty fardle of books, in the small type of Aldus," which he carried for a freight to the people of Utopia. Men of the world, like Bussy Rabutin, queens like 30 THE LIBRARY. [chap. r. our Elizabeth ; popes like Innocent X. ; financiers like Colbert (who made the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for bindings) ; men of letters like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and Paul Lacroix ; warriors like Junot and Prince Eugene ; these are only leaders of companies in the great army of lovers of books, in which it is honourable enough to be a private soldier. CHAPTER II. THE LIBRARY. HE Library which is to be spoken of in these pages, is all unlike the halls which a Spencer or a Huth fills with treasure beyond price. The age of great libraries has gone by, and where a collector of the old school survives, he is usually a man of enormous wealth, who might, if he pleased, be distinguished in parliament, in society, on the turf itself, or in any of the pursuits where unlimited supplies of money are strictly necessary. The old amateurs, whom La Bruy^re was wont to sneer at, were not satisfied unless they possessed many thousands of books. For a collector like Cardinal Mazarin, Naud^ bought up the whole stock of many a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper as if a tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away. 32 THE LIBRARY. [chap. In our modern times, as the industrious Biblio- phile Jacob, says, the fashion of book-collecting has changed ; " from the vast hall that it was, the library of the amateur has shrunk to a closet, to a mere book-case. Nothing but a neat article of furniture is needed now, where a great gallery or a long suite of rooms was once required. The book has become, as it were, a jewel, and is kept in a kind of jewel-case." It is not quantity of pages, nor lofty piles of ordinary binding, nor theological folios and classic quartos, that the modern amateur desires. He is content with but a i&w books of distinction and elegance, masterpieces of print- ing and binding, or relics of famous old collectors, of statesmen, philosophers, beautiful dead ladies ; or, again, he buys illustrated books, or first edi- tions of the modern classics. No one, not the Due d'Aumale, or M. James Rothschild himself, with his loo books worth ;^40,ooo, can possess very many copi^ of books which are inevitably rare. Thus the adviser who would offer suggestions to the amateur, need scarcely write, like Naud6 and the old authorities, about the size and due position of the library. He need hardly warn the builder to make the salle face the east, " because the eastern winds, being warm and dry of their nature, greatly temper the air, fortify the senses, make subtle the humours, purify the spirits, preserve a healthy "•] THE LIBRARY. 33 disposition of the whole body, and, to say all in one word, are most wholesome and salubrious." The east wind, like the fashion of book-collecting, has altered in character a good deal since the days when Naud6 was librarian to Cardinal Mazarin. One might as well repeat the learned Isidorus his counsels about the panels of green marble (that refreshes the eye), and Boethius his censures on library walls of ivory and glass, as fall back on the ancient ideas of librarians dead and gone. The amateur, then, is the person we have in our eye, and especially the bibliophile who has but lately been bitten with this pleasant mania of collecting. We would teach him how to arrange and keep his books orderly and in good case, and would tell him what to buy and what to avoid. By the library we do not understand a study where no one goes, and where the master of the house keeps his boots, an assortment of walking- sticks, the " Waverley Novels," " Pearson on the Creed," " Hume's Essays,"- and a collection of sermons, in, alas ! too many English homes, the Library is no more than this, and each generation passes without adding a book, except now and then a Bradshaw or a railway novel, to the collec- tion on the shelves. The success, perhaps, of cir- culating libraries, or, it may be, the Aryan tend- encies of our race, ' which does not read, and lives D 34 THE LIBRARY. [chap. in the open air," have made books the rarest of possessions in many houses. There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are frag- ments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather, and . these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and manuals, some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an English household. But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be satisfied with these commonplace supplies. He has a taste for books more or less rare, and for books neatly bound ; in short, for books, in the fabrication of which art has not been absent. He loves to have his study, like Montaigne's, remote from the interruption of servants, wife, and children ; a kind of shrine, where he may be at home with himself, with the illustrious dead, and with the genius of literature. The room may look east, west, or south, provided that it be dry, warm, light, and airy. Among the many enemies of books the -first great foe is damp, and we must describe the necessary precautions to be taken against this peril. We will suppose that the amateur keeps his ordinary working books, modern tomes, and all that serve him as literary tools, on open shelves. These may reach the roof, if he has books to fill them,' and it is only necessary to see that the back of the bookcases n.] THE LIBRARY. 35 are slightly removed from contact with the walls. The more precious and beautifully bound treasures will naturally be stored in a case with closely- fitting glass-doors.^ The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well -seasoned oak ; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is fancied that book -worms dislike the aromatic scents of cedar, sandal wood, and Russia leather. There was once a bibliophile who said that a man could only love one book at a time, and the darling of the moment he used to carry about in a charming leather case. Others, men of few books, preserve them in long boxes with glass fronts, which may be removed 1 Mr. William Blades, in his "Enemies of Books" (Triibner, 1880), decries glass-doors, — "the absence of ventilation will assist the formation of mould." But M. Rouveyre bids us open the doors on sunny days, that the air may be renewed, and, close them in the evening hours, lest moths should enter and lay their eggs among the treasures. And, with all deference to Mr. Blades, glass-doors do seem to be useful in excluding dust. 35 THE LIBRARY. [chap. from place to place as readily as the household gods of Laban. But the amateur who not only worships but reads books, needs larger receptacles ; and in the open oak cases for modern authors, and for books with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed armoire for books of rarity and price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of arranging his treasures. His shelves will decline in height from the lowest, where huge folios stand at ease, to the top ranges, while Elzevirs repose on a level with the eye. It is well that each upper shelf should have a leather fringe to keep the dust away. As to the shape of the bookcases, and the fur- niture, and ornaments of the library, every amateur will please himself. Perhaps the satin-wood or mahogany tabernacles of rare books are best made after the model of what furniture -dealers indif- ferently call the " Queen Anne " or the " Chippen- dale" style. There is a pleasant quaintness in the carved architectural ornaments of the top, and the inlaid flowers of marquetry go well with the pretty florid editions of the last century, the books that were illustrated by Stothard and Gravelot. Ebony suits theological tomes very well, especially when they are bound in white vellum. As to furniture, people who can afford it will imitate the arrangements of LucuUus, in Mr. Hill Burton's "•] THE LIBRARY. 37 charming volume "The Book-hunter" (Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1862). — "Everything is of perfect finish, — the mahogany -railed gallery, the tiny ladders, the broad winged lecterns, with leathern cushions on the edges to keep the wood from graz- ing the rich bindings, the books themselves, each shelf uniform with its facings, or rather backings, like well-dressed lines at a review." The late Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, a famous bibliophile, invented a very nice library chair. It is most comfortable to sit on ; and, as the top of the back is broad and flat, it can be used as a ladder of two high steps, when one wants to reach a book on a lofty shelf. A kind of square revolv- ing bookcase, an American invention, manufactured by Messrs. Triibner, is useful to the working man of letters. Made in oak, stained green, it is not un- sightly. As to ornaments, every man to his taste. You may have a "pallid bust of Pallas" above your classical collection, or fill the niches in a shrine of old French light literature, pastoral and comedy, with delicate shepherdesses in Chelsea china. On such matters a modest writer, like Mr. Jingle when Mr. Pickwick ordered dinner, "will not presume to dictate." Next to damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of books. At short intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur him- 38 THE LIBRARY. [chap. self. Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of volumes lent to him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own books. Boswell found him one day with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his library, as was his custom. There is nothing so hideous as a dirty thumb-mark on a white page. These marks are commonly made, not because the reader has unwashed hands, but because the dust which settles on the top edge of books falls in, and is smudged when they are opened. Gilt-top edges should be smoothed with a handkerchief, and a small brush should be kept for brushing the tops of books with rough' edges, before they are opened. But it were well that all books had the top edge gilt. There is no better preservative against dust. Dust not only dirties books, it seems to supply what Mr. Spencer would call a fitting environment for book-worms. The works of book -worms speak for themselves, and are manifest to all. How many a rare and valuable volume is spoiled by neat round holes drilled through cover and leaves ! But as to the nature of your worm, authorities differ greatly. The ancients knew this plague, of which Lucian speaks. Mr. Blades mentions a white book-worm, slain by the librarian of the Bodleian. In Byzantium the black sort prevailed. Evenus, the grammarian. "•] THE LIBRARY. 39 wrote an epigram against the black book-worm ("Anthol. Pal," ix. 251):— Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies that lurkest, Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil ; Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm ! wert thou born for the evil thou workest ? Wherefore thine own foul form shap'st thou with envious toil? The learned Mentzelius says he hath heard the book-worm crow like a cock unto his mate, and " I knew not," says he, " whether some local fowl was clamouring or whether there was but a beating in mine ears. Even at that moment, all uncertain as I was, I perceived, in the paper whereon I was writing, a little insect that ceased not to carol like very chanticleer, until, taking a mag- nifying glass, I assiduously observed him. He is about the bigness of a mite, and carries a grey crest, and the head low, bowed over the bosom ; as to his crowing noise, it comes of his clashing his wings against each other with aln incessant din." Thus far Mentzelius, and more to the same purpose, as may be read in the " Memoirs of famous Foreign Academies" (Dijon, I7S5-S9) 1 3 vol. in quarto). But, in our times, the learned Mr. Blades having a desire to exhibit book-worms in the body to the Caxtonians at the Caxton 40 THE LIBRARY. [chap. celebration, could find few men that had so much as seen a book-worm, much less heard him utter his native wood-notes wild. Yet, in his " Enemies of Books," he describes some rare encounters with the worm. Dirty books, damp books, dusty books, and books that the owner never opens, are most exposed to the enemy ; and " the worm, the proud worm, is the conqueror still," as a didactic poet sings, in an ode on man's mortality. As we have quoted Mentzelius, it may not be amiss to give D'AIembert's theory of book -worms : " I believe," he says, " that a little beetle lays her eggs in books in August, thence is hatched a mite, like the cheese-mite, which devours books merely because it is compelled to gnaw its way out into the air.'' Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but D'Alembert adds that they cannot endure absinthe. Mr. Blades iinds too that they disdain to devour our adulterate modern paper. " Say, shall I sing of rats," asked Grainger, when reading to Johnson his epic, the " Sugar-cane." " No," said the Doctor ; and though rats are the foe of the bibliophile, at least as much as of the sugar-planter, we do not propose to sing of them. M. Fertiault has done so already in " Les Sonnets d'un Bibliophile," where the reader must be pleased with the beautiful etchings of rats devouring an illuminated MS., and battening on n.] THE LIBRARY. 41 morocco bindings stamped witii the bees of De Thou. It is unnecessary and it would be un- dignified, to give hints on rat- catching, but the amateur must not forget that these animals have a passion for bindings. The book-collector must avoid gas, which de- posits a filthy coat of oil that catches dust. Mr. Blades found that three jets of gas in a small room soon reduced the leather on his book -shelves to a powder of the consistency of snuff, and made the backs of books come away in his hand. Shaded lamps give the best and most suitable light for the library. As to the risks which books run at the hands of the owner himself, we surely need not repeat the advice of Richard de Bury. Living in an age when tubs (if not unknown as M. Michelet declares) were far from being common, the old collector inveighed against the dirty hands of readers, and against their habit of marking their place in a book with filthy straws, or setting down a beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages open. But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the latter, and light their pipes with the former. After seeing the wreck of a book which these persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine Greek hyperbole. The Greeks did not 42 THE LIBRARY. [chap. speak of " thumbing " but of " walking up and down " on a volume (Trareiv). To such fellows it matters not that they make a book dirty and greasy, cutting the pages with their fingers, and holding the boards over the fire till they crack. All these slatternly practices, though they destroy a book as surely as the flames of Caesar's soldiers at Alexandria, seem fine manly acts to the grobians who use them. What says Jules Janin, who has written " Contre I'indifference des Philistins," " il faut a I'homme sage et studieux un tome honorable et digne de sa louange." The amateur, and all decent men, will beware of lending books to such rude workers ; and this consideration brings us to these great foes of books, the borrowers and robbers. The lending of books, and of other property, has been defended by some great authorities ; thus Panurge himself says, " it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained in the air, and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support- or toler- ate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend." Pirckheimer, too, for whom Albert Durer designed a book-plate, was a lender, and took for his device Sibi et Amicis ; and Jo. Grolierii et amicorum, was the motto of the renowned Grolier, whom mis- taken writers vainly but frequently report to have been a bookbinder. But as Mr. Leicester Warren "•] THE LIBRARY. 43 says, in his "Study of Book-plates" (Pearson, 1880), "Christian Charles de Savigny leaves all the rest behind, exclaiming non mihi sed aliis." But the majority of amateurs have chosen wiser, though more churlish devices, as "the ungodly borroweth and payeth not again," or " go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." David Garrick engraved on his book-plate, beside a bust of Shakspeare, these words of Manage, " La premiere chose qu'on doit faire, quand on a emprunt^ un livre, c'est de le lire, afin de pouvoir le rendre plutdt." But the borrower is so minded that the last thing he thinks of is to read a borrowed book, and the penultimate subject of his reflections is its restoration. Manage (Menagiana, Paris, 1729, vol. i. p. 265), mentions, as if it were a notable misdeed, this of Angelo Politian's, " he borrowed a ' Lucretius ' from Pomponius Laetus, and kept it for four years." Four years ! in the sight of the borrower it is but a moment. Manage reports that a friend kept his " Pausanias " for three years, whereas four months was long enough. "At quarto saltern mense redire decet." There is no satisfaction in lending a book ; for it is rarely that borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for new stores, as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr. Johnson, 44 TH£ LIBRARY. [chap. who "greased and dogs -eared such volumes as were confided to his tender mercies, with the same indifference wherewith he singed his own wigs." But there is a race of mortals more annoying to a conscientious man than borrowers. These are the spontaneous lenders, who insist that you shall borrow their tomes. For my own part, when I am oppressed with the charity of such, I lock their books up in a drawer, and behold them not again till the day of their return. There is no security against borrowers, unless a man like Guibert de Pixdr^court steadfastly refuses to lend. The device of Pix^r^court was un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais. But he knew that our books change when they have been borrowed, like our friends when they have been married ; when " a lady borrows them," as the fairy queen says in the ballad of " Tamlane." " But had I kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, " A lady wad borrowed thee, I wad ta'en out thy twa gray een, Put in twa een o' tree ! " Had I but kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, " Before ye came frae hame, I wad ta'en out your heart o' flesh, Put in a heart o' stane ! " Above the lintel of his library door, Pix^r^court had this couplet carved — ".] THE LIBRARY. 45 " Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prSt^, Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gS,td." M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own daughter. Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little value. Pix^r6court frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto. " Yes," said M. Lacroix, " but I thought that verse applied to every one but me." So Pix6r6court made him a present of the volume. We cannot all imitate this " immense " but un- amiable amateur. Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book- plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore not again. The process is futile, but may comfort -the heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of Demeter. Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the design of a book-plate ; and for such as love and collect rare ' editions of " Homer," I venture to suggest this motto, which may move the heart of 46 THE LIBRARY. [chap. the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic —