Chapter I: Introduction: By Coulson Kernahan

I

PART of the present volume appeared in _Great Thoughts_. Yet here am I, whose name is associated--if at all--in the memory of readers with ‘little thoughts,’ and with booklets impudent in the slenderness of their matter, presumptuously standing forth to bow the public into the writer’s presence, and essaying to introduce the one to the other.

The necessary explanation shall be brief. I must have been a young man, and Mr. E. Walter Walters a boy, when he and I last met; indeed I am not sure that I altogether remember him. But his father, who bore an honoured name, I well remember.

The Rev. W. D. Walters and my own dear and honoured father were personal friends; and when the former’s son sent me a manuscript of a book, with the request that I should write an introduction, how could I do otherwise than accede, and express myself honoured by the invitation?

That I share all Mr. Walters’s whole-hearted bookish enthusiasm, I may not pretend, for, as R. L. Stevenson says, in _An Apology for Idlers_, ‘Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.’ So long, however, as the reading of it be not allowed to deprive either man or woman of drinking deep at the wells of life, there are few greater joys, for young or old, than are to be found within the covers of a noble book; and to the enthusiastic book-lover, Mr. Walters’s volume should prove treasure trove indeed.

He drags (to use a phrase of Stevenson’s) with a wide net, but his castings are made, for the most part, in the same waters. Of the literature of the time of Elizabeth, or even of Anne, he tells us little, and it is not until we come to Goldsmith, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, and, later, to Jefferies, Thoreau, and Stevenson, that Mr. Walters may be said to let himself go. What my friend Mr. Le Gallienne calls The Lilliput of Literary London, he wisely leaves severely alone.

That Mr. Walters has a pretty sense of humour is clear from the following passage:

‘Here is a copy of Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, “hooked” in the deep waters of a “penny tub.” It is calf-bound, mark you, and in fairish condition, though much stained with the passing of years. My heart leaps; it is very old--a first edition possibly! But no, it is anything but that.... Many of the pages are entirely missing, and others partially so. Judged by the books that surround me it is dear at a penny ... _Paradise Lost_!’

The word-play is not unworthy of Mr. Zangwill; but when Mr. Walters writes, ‘I have frequently trodden snow-covered ground with my nose a few inches from an open book,’ I wish him, for the time being, ‘Good afternoon’ and seek other company, preferably that of some lover of the Emerson who wrote:

See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books,
Leave authors’ eyes, and fetch your own
To brave the landscape’s looks.

Or, better still:

Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the woodbell’s peal and cry?
Write in a book the morning’s prime?
Or match with words that tender sky?

II

‘I KNOW a pretty little edition of the _Religio Medici_,’ writes Mr. Le Gallienne in his _Retrospective Reviews_, ‘which has been quite spoiled for me by the astounding remark of its editor upon Browne’s beautiful description of his life as “a miracle of thirty years”--yet its actual incidents justify no such description!’

Mr. Walters will not thus spoil for his readers the work of the writers he loves. He strikes no jarring note. On the contrary, he is capable, when writing of books, book-making, and book-buying, of an enthusiasm which I envy as much as I admire.

‘I have confessed,’ he says in his chapter on ‘Second-hand Books,’ ‘that _I_ am of the company of book-lovers who delight in dipping into the “lucky tubs” to be found outside booksellers’ windows. I know of no pleasanter way of spending a spare half-hour. Give me a few “loose” coppers, place my feet upon a likely road, and I am content. I am now, let me say, of the happy company of _book-fishermen_. And this, mark you, is fishing in real earnest, this effort to “hook” good food for the mind, to place in one’s basket a “book that delighteth and giveth perennial satisfaction.”’

The comparison of a book-seeker to an angler is as happy as it is original, and the phrase--though phrase-making must not be confused, as Leslie Stephen points out, with thought-finding--‘a book-fisherman’ has something of Charles Lamb’s own ‘self-pleasing quaintness.’

Lamb would, indeed, appear to be Mr. Walters’s favourite author. That he knows his Elia intimately and can interpret him aright to others is clear from the chapter on ‘Books and Gardens.’

‘We are told,’ says Mr. Walters, ‘that Lamb was a lover of towns and crowded streets. Would it not be truer to say that he was a lover of the conditions in which he chanced to be placed? London claimed him--for the sanest reasons, no doubt--and, lo! under his pen, London became a garden.’

This is truly and finely said. Of such acute and illuminative comment, there is no lack in Mr. Walters’s delightful book, which should assuredly find a place in the library of book-loving women and men.

I

‘HUMBLY TO CONFESS’

HOW ruthlessly Webster strips the word ‘confession’ of the tender associations woven around it by the hand of the gentle essayist! A confession, he informs us, is the acknowledgement of a crime or fault, open declaration of guilt, &c. True, a brighter note is struck in further definitions; but I cannot find in any book at my command a definition of the word as used, for example, by Thomas De Quincey. The fact that De Quincey took opium was, I believe, known long before he wrote his _Confessions_. He personally avers that his object was to emblazon the power of opium, not over bodily disease and pain, but over the grander and more shadowy world of dreams. He desired

Humbly to confess
A penitential loneliness.

And I take that to mean that he desired to admit us into the innermost recesses of his heart, to speak to us as one speaks to a bosom friend.

I plead, therefore, for a wider definition of the word ‘confession’--a definition that embraces those ‘gentle whisperings’ which pass between bosom friends, the confidence that springs from the very roots of the human heart.

An eminent essayist of our own day has been pleading for more autobiographies of unknown persons. If I read him aright, he wishes that more persons, however humble, however obscure, would set forth their thoughts and experiences. He believes that such writings would make better reading than much that finds its way into print. There is an idea in some quarters that unless a person enjoys peculiar gifts of expression, or has achieved distinction in some walk of life, his thoughts and experiences are of no public interest. But there are, I am certain, many who would rather have the unadorned expression of a man’s innermost feelings than the thoughts that flit so lightly from the mind of the accomplished _litterateur_. How many are they--men whose names are emblazoned upon the roll of honour--who have confessed to a love for conversing with the ordinary man, ‘the man in the street’! As for your ‘men of letters,’ you are well aware of their love for conversing with unknown and frequently humble persons, ‘casual acquaintances.’ And who shall say to what extent we are indebted to those persons for the thoughts which, having been selected and refined, sparkle like jewels fresh from the cutter’s hands?

How numerous are the men who have read widely and thought deeply, and yet hesitate before expressing an opinion upon the most trivial matters! Fortunate is the person who can induce such men to talk freely, to express their views, their secret thoughts, on this, that, and the other subject--their beloved books, their likes, their dislikes, their aspirations, their fears, their hopes. Such confessions should make good reading. By dint of a little gentle persuasion I have managed to glean ‘copy’ of this description, which I shall hope to set down in these pages, carefully avoiding meanwhile any mention of names. The mere thought of publicity would bring a blush to the cheeks of the good gentlemen I have in mind. I must adopt the plan of those ‘Knights of the Pen’ of whom mention has been made. But here the process will be reversed. Here the rich thought of others will come forth in homely attire.

I would, however, first inquire in what respect the lover of books differs from the rank-and-file? What are his distinctive characteristics? Langford has declared that no matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and happiest of men. But is that entirely true? I confess that I do not find it so. The lover of books is, I fancy, grievously prone to hanker after the moon, or, to put it another way, to build wondrous fairy palaces, which he would fain inhabit and cannot. I fancy he is apt to suffer from a ‘glorious discontent.’ He is too imaginative, too sensitive, to enjoy the distinction of being the happiest of men.

Indeed, is it not a fact that we book-lovers stand in danger of falling out of sympathy with this rough-and-tumble old world? Certainly many of us resent anything that threatens to come between us and our idols. (I have friends, book-lovers, who as strongly resent an intrusion into the sacred nook that holds themselves and a book as they would resent the invasion of a foreign power.) Thus grows upon the book-lover an ever-deepening desire for solitude, for the quiet life. Others may, if they choose, jostle for the gilded things of life. He is for other prizes, treasures of the mind and spirit. He, for his part, prefers to saunter through quiet by-ways, knowing full well that prizes will rest in his path, and that these, which he need but stoop to gather, will prove abiding treasures.

Yes, certainly the lover of books is rich. Every true lover must in the nature of the case be that. Listen to Gibbon: ‘My early and invincible love of reading I would not change for the treasures of India.’ How many have spoken in like manner! ‘You, O Books,’ cried Aungervyle, ‘are the golden vessels of the temple, the arms of the clerical militia with which missiles of the most wicked are destroyed; fruitful olives, vines of Engedi, fig-trees knowing no sterility; burning lamps to be ever held in hand.’

I have a friend, a book-lover, who confesses that he acquired this love of his after having passed through the most painful experiences. Often he stumbled, often he fell, seemingly never to rise again. But, happily, he has reached safe ground at last. He is now the contented owner of a rich storehouse of books. But he confesses that he is not boisterously happy. He doubts not that others laugh more heartily than he; that many have lighter hearts. But he, be it remembered, has passed through deep sorrow, has lost friends, home, wealth--all that men hold most dear. Without his books and all they have taught him his lot would be that of a wanderer in a wilderness. ‘My books,’ he says, ‘are my inseparable comforters--my friends, companions, teachers, consolers, creators, amusers.’ But he makes no claim to being a student, or an authority on books. He does not burn the proverbial midnight oil. There is nothing of the book-worm about him. He is simply a book-lover, and being such, enjoys the very best that books can give.

I confess that I envy the pleasure derived by this friend of mine from the little ‘crackling’ sound caused by the opening of a new book. It is the sweetest music in his ears--an overture composed of the most pleasing notes. And with what relish he enters into the entertainment that follows! With what zest he reads aloud the choice passages! The four walls of his library must, I fancy, have peculiar knowledge of ‘the dainties that are bred in books.’ They are his only audience. When friends are with him, it is they who must do the reading, whilst he plays the better part.

How many a tale such as this might be told! How full of eccentricities is the lover of books, aye, and how full, too, of whims and fads and fancies! Each one is for a particular type of binding. In no two cases can you find tastes exactly alike. One is for plain cloth, plainly lettered, another is for calf or russia, another for parchment. And each one has his own views as regards size. Some cry out for books that can be handled with ease; others maintain that the size of a book should suit the nature of its contents. And thus the battle wages, quite a long and wordy affair, before any question arises as regards the actual contents of a book. But are not these views concerning the make-up of a book healthy and desirable? I seem to remember having read of men held in high repute who had marked preferences as regards the get-up of a book. Did not Charles Lamb maintain that to be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume? ‘Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of magazines, for instance, in full suit. The deshabille or half-binding (with russia backs) is _our_ costume. A Shakespeare or a Milton (unless the first editions) it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel.’

And what of the ‘inside’ of books? What of their contents? For my own part, I confess that, when pressed for a list of my favourite authors, I am at a loss for an answer, or, at least, for a satisfactory answer. The question is so pointed, the answer resting quietly in my mind so wide, so shadowy, so needful of explanation. So much depends upon one’s mood and environment. I require the opportunity to say why certain books appeal to me in certain moods and leave me untouched at other times. I desire to show that certain books, in order to be enjoyed to the full, must be read in certain seasons and under certain conditions. I wish to hold forth upon, say, ‘Books and Gardens,’ ‘Unknown Books,’ and so forth, and on the peculiarities of certain authors, giving reasons why I like or dislike their works. I wish to confess, to bare my heart. And that is too lengthy a process to cram in a direct answer to a direct question. Only this much can I confess ‘off-hand’: The books that please me most are _the books that speak to the heart_. Such volumes are my most highly treasured possessions.

II

BOOKS AND GARDENS

The mind relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler sort,
Whose wit well-managed, and whose classic style
Give truth a lustre and make wisdom smile.
COWPER.

I have confessed that the books which please me most are the books that speak to the heart--books that greet one with the ease and familiarity of a friend. I desire to feel the humanity, the heart of an author. I desire to know that he is genial, kindly, well-disposed. I have no inclination for angry, fretful men of letters. I no more desire to meet such through the medium of a book, than I desire to make the acquaintance of quarrelsome individuals in the flesh. I, too, ‘find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of doubts, difficulties, and disappointments, quite a hard enough life without dark countenances at my elbow.’ Give me pleasant company. Give me _gentlemen of letters_. Still, I have no taste for the company of the maudlin or weak-kneed. Robert Louis Stevenson says that ‘we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man amongst us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums!’ Note with what grace he makes the observation! It is more in the nature of a good-tempered laugh than a growl. How gracefully he wears the title--a Gentleman of Letters! How pleasantly he addresses us! Little wonder if, in his presence, our failings are as open wounds. He has no need to probe. His gentlest touch is sufficient, more effective by far than the rough treatment of the irascible author.

Yes, for friends give me gracious authors. Give me the gentle Elia. Give me Jefferies, Goldsmith, Leigh Hunt, and De Quincey. These are the writers I would take into a garden on a summer’s afternoon. I need have no fear, whilst in such company, of the flowers being robbed of their fragrance. The song of the birds will not be silenced. The gentle whisperings of the trees will still be audible. The writers in mind are of the company who claim kinship with Nature. Whilst with them I may read and yet meditate. I may learn and yet hear and feel.

Where is the nature-lover who will not readily confess that when in a flowering-garden he is frequently torn between his devotion to the book in his hand and the beauties that surround him? I confess that I, for one, like to mix ‘the dainties that are bred in books’ with the wondrous attractions of Nature. I am ready enough to take my favourite authors into a garden, but not so ready to give them my undivided attention. Another book--which must for ever remain unrivalled--claims my eyes, my attention. Richard Jefferies is pleasing, but not so pleasing as the beauties to be found in a garden. Goldsmith brings a warm glow, but see! the sun shines in the heavens. Lamb puts me in playful vein, but his tune is not so gay as the song of the birds in yonder bushes. The light touch of Leigh Hunt is delightful, but not so pleasing as the quickly shifting lights upon the tree-tops.

But it is good to have old friends at one’s elbow. And if I am able to enjoy myself without them on a summer’s afternoon, it is because they, on some winter’s evening, have opened my eyes and quickened my senses. It is they, I say, who have taught me to love the beauties of Nature. I am familiar with their golden passages, and whilst seated beneath the trees can recall them at my pleasure, or, should the mood arise, read them again, and yet again. How good, for example, to read such a passage as this: ‘There is something beyond the philosophers in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. In that is hope, the whole sky is full of abounding hope.’

Still, one does not always experience a sense of loss when reading in the open. Far from it! The heavens are not always blue. And prate as we will about the subtle beauty of grey skies and leafless trees, we are at times willing enough to escape from them. I, for one, am glad under such conditions to warm myself by the light of a printed page. Happily, I am of the company of men who can walk and read, and have frequently trodden snow-covered ground with my nose a few inches from an open book. Believe me, he who can read whilst walking has a long pull over the book-lover who must needs have quietude and a bended knee upon which to nurse his beloved books.

There is a worthy and distinguished company of book-lovers to whom reading whilst afoot is not only uncongenial but impossible. I seem to remember a passage in which that great book-lover Charles Lamb speaks of his inability to enjoy a book whilst out of doors. These, I find, are the words in mind: ‘I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner’s Street was not) between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter’s knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put to flight all the philosophy I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.’

Thus the gentle Elia playfully dismissed the person who is pleased to boast of his ability to read whilst walking. Was there ever a writer so fastidious, yet so tolerant, so playful as he? Speaking of the conditions under which certain books should be read, he says: ‘Much depends upon _when_ and _where_ you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the _Faerie Queene_ for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes’ sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music before you enter upon him. Winter evenings--and the world shut out--with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such seasons _The Tempest_, or his own _Winter’s Tale_. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only.’

I wish it was possible to add a few words from the same whimsical pen upon reading in a garden on a summer’s afternoon. I have a friend who is disposed to think that such writing would contain little about books and _much_ about Nature. We are told that Lamb was a lover of towns and crowded streets. Would it not be truer to say that he was a lover of the conditions in which he chanced to be placed? London claimed him--for the sanest reasons, no doubt--and lo! under his pen London became a garden.

It is well that some brave souls can make-believe that the noise of the traffic of a London thoroughfare makes good music!

It is well that some have the spirit to sound the ‘heady drums.’ But for my own part, give me a garden removed from the turmoil of a big town. I shall not then be over-particular as regards my reading. Let me drop in my breast-pocket a volume by one of the authors named, and I shall be content. I too shall then be able to say, ‘It matters nothing to me that the earth and the solar system are whirling through space at a rate of sixty miles a second, from no one knows where to no one knows whither, if I may sit in my garden (with a book for company) on a summer’s afternoon.’

III

BOOKS THAT TEMPT

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.--BACON.

WHAT are the books that tempt? Are they the old, familiar volumes, old friends in old clothes--well-worn editions of the classics? Or are they those same old friends decked in rich and fanciful bindings? I am acquainted with a book-lover who confesses that he has no taste for the fanciful modern reprint. You may show him Lamb, or Hazlitt, or Hunt, or Jefferies, or Stevenson in the richest of binding, and tempt him not. He is not, he declares, to be caught that way. As well might the reader go arrayed in frills and furbelows to a masculine friend and expect to be received with decorum. This friend of mine, I say, is as contemptuous of the modern, richly-bound classic as of any other form of foppery. He insists on meeting his friends, whether it be in print or in the flesh, in unaffected, homely attire.

He will tell you that the ‘gentle Elia’ was of the same way of thinking, and that he wrote in effect: ‘How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia) if we would not forget the kind feeling in fastidiousness, of old circulating library volumes! How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight! of the lone seamstress, whom they cheered (milliner or hard-working mantua-maker) after her long day’s needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could you desire to see them in?’

Fastidious readers who insist upon having new books, or books ‘good as new,’ must, I fancy, feel a ‘twinge of guilt’ in the face of such humane sentiments. I confess, to my shame, that I am of the guilty company; that I am fastidious as regards the condition of a book; that torn, well-thumbed books do not tempt me, whatever their contents. And not only am I guilty, but would seek to defend my guilt. I protest that it is the pleasurable duty of the book-lover to keep his treasured volumes in goodly condition; that a cover is but a new home, and that when the old one has served its purpose it should be replaced as readily as one would find a worthy dwelling-place for a beloved relative. I like to see my friends in the best possible circumstances. I like to see them bearing a well-cared-for, well-favoured appearance.

I do not forget the ‘lone sempstress’ spoken of so tenderly by Lamb. I would have torn volumes repaired and shabby ones replaced in all circulating libraries. In no circumstances would I permit a treasured classic to go forth in a shabby condition. I would place new volumes, or volumes good as new, within the reach of all.

But it cannot be denied that many tender associations are woven around numerous aged, _well-preserved_ volumes. Where is the true book-lover who could not give a list of such? ‘Their very odour,’ he will tell you, ‘is beyond Russia.’ How sacred their well-preserved pages! Your up-to-date reprints, with their fanciful covers, are no company for such. Their gaiety is shamed by stately calf-bound volumes.

Yes, there is a grave and sober dignity about old well-preserved books. It matters not whether they be bound in morocco, calf, or russia. The sacred associations of old age are theirs. If we do not love them, at least we reverence them. ‘What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of the Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory or middle state.... I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of the old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grow amid the happy orchard.’

Yes, to many the old ‘moth-scented’ volumes are the books that tempt. I have a friend who has placed a standing order with a bookseller to supply him with all old calf-bound volumes to be procured at a certain sum. Dare I state the sum fixed? It is counted in pence--pence only, mark you! But as my friend has made no stipulations as regards the contents of the desired volumes, he has a goodly array of books, each one ‘moth-scented,’ each one a model of dignity.

My friend, however, is not a great reader. He is not, I venture to assert, a book-lover. I fancy he should be called an antiquarian. Certainly his liking for antiquities is greater than his love for the contents of books. Books to him are rather furniture for rooms than for minds. Show him an example of skilfully ‘tooled’ calf, and you will please him better than if you had voiced an inspiring thought. But wait! I must hold my pen. Who can say to what depths of thought and feeling my friend is moved by the sight of his well-filled shelves? Has it not been said that there is inspiration in a mere glance at old volumes; that they seem to exhale learning?

Still, I, for one, am ready enough to confess that old calf-bound volumes as such leave me unmoved. Too often have I, together with other lovers of books, found them dry, as well as dusty. I respect their age. I consider the mellowed calf in which they are bound admirable material. I admire their durability. But such features do not greatly tempt me. I am for volumes of homely appearance. My own coat being of simple homespun, I am more at home with volumes bound in cloth. Give me for my daily companions unpretentious books. Many in my possession cost no more than from two to three pence. For I, too, am of the company of book-lovers who dip at times into the ‘lucky-tubs’ to be found outside booksellers’ shops. I confess, moreover, that I belong to the class ‘of street reader who, not having the wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls.’ Often and often have I been tempted by the well-worn volumes--so unpretentious without, so rich within--that await the attention of the leisurely passer-by. Two humble pence, and a mine of wisdom becomes one’s own.

So much, then, for old volumes. Now, what of the new? What of the many dainty volumes sent out daily by modern makers of books? I am thinking at the moment of the men whose business it is to bind and print, who with amazing ingenuity send forth volumes having the appearance of jewel caskets--wondrous designs of every tint to be found on a painter’s palette. I confess that I find such productions exceedingly attractive. I confess that I am frequently tempted by them. It would be good, I feel, to be the possessor of a volume of Selected English Essays bound in ‘leather soft as velvet.’ I am more fanciful in my tastes than that friend of mine who insists upon seeing his old comrades in well-worn attire. I like to see Charles Lamb strutting forth in purple and gold. I am touched when I behold the great men who reign in the ‘world of the classics’ standing shoulder to shoulder, arrayed in ‘gorgeous confections’ upon a shelf in a bookseller’s window.

But I have no desire to possess the large and weighty volume that falls under the title _Edition de Luxe_. I am not tempted by bulky volumes, however elaborately they may be adorned. I have no desire to undergo the painful experience of a certain gentleman pictured in _Punch_, who, after making valiant efforts to handle one such volume, was finally reduced to an abject state of exhaustion. Give me volumes of convenient size. Give me, I pray, volumes I can master.

IV

‘OUTSIDE THEIR BOOKS’

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend.--GOLDSMITH.