Chapter I: MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is (6)

A happy remark with reference to the best-hundred-books controversy is that credited to Herman Merivale-“those books which everybody says everybody else must read, but never reads himself.” “We praise that which is praised much more than that which is praisable,” is a pithy saying of La Bruyère. Charles Lamb included in his catalogue of “_books which are no books_ generally all those volumes which ‘no gentleman’s library should be without.’” The author of that delicious anonymity, A Club of One (A. P. Russell), the failure to read which should send the delinquent to Coventry, is more of a philosopher than many of the professed literary law-givers. It is true he presents a list of his favorite books, but the list numbers considerably over two hundred, and these are delicately suggested, and not dictated in a perfunctory way; I have no doubt he has since added two hundred more. He must have read and remembered ten times a hundred to write the volume in question, and ransacked whole libraries to compose the companion volumes, Library Notes and In a Club Corner, veritable mines of sparkling sayings, sententious precepts, and literary anecdote.

Dana and Johnson have selected Fifty Perfect Poems with excellent judgment, no doubt, though who was responsible for the insertion of numbers forty-three and fifty is not stated in the preface. The Elegy, the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Lotus Eaters, and a half-dozen other selections every one must have included in a similar collection. But beyond this dozen or so of immortal poems that by no possibility might be omitted, it is safe to say that almost any other anthologist would have gathered _Chrysanthema_ totally different—so varied are individual tastes both in poetry and prose. The fifty best poems and the hundred best books to Dobson may not be the hundred best books and the fifty best poems to Gosse or Lang. The marvel is how Johnson and Dana could agree.

The scholar and the student who live for their books, the author, the man of elegant leisure, or the bibliophile may be benefited by a very large library, and share their benefits with the world; though there is often no little truth in what Gérard de Nerval said of the latter in a perverted sense of the term: “A serious bibliophile does not share his books; he does not even read them himself for fear of fatiguing them.”

“The amateur is born,” Derome goes on to say in Le Luxe des Livres; “he holds the Muses captive. If books could speak they would pronounce him a hard jailer. The bibliophiles ruin themselves in their calling, neglecting their duties to their families. Such are not men of letters, they are _bibliotaphes_. They bury their books, they do not possess them.... The luxury of bindings is extended to profusion. It is the _fête_ of red morocco and tawny calf.” La Rousse thus defines the term bibliotaphe: “From the Greek _biblion_, book; _taphô_, I inter, I hide. 1. He who lends his books to no one, who buries them, inters them in his library. 2. A reserved portion of a library where precious works or works that one does not wish to communicate are locked up.” Nodier made still another discrimination, that of the _bibliophobe_ whom he thus describes: “The _bibliophobe_ would see nothing out of the way in burning libraries. He sells the copies that are dedicated to him, and _does not return the service_.”

Between the _bibliophile_ and the _bibliomane_ Nodier draws this distinction: “The bibliophile chooses his books, the bibliomane entombs them; the bibliophile appreciates, the other weighs; the bibliophile has a magnifying glass, the other a fathom measure.” But the close consanguinity which exists between the book-lover and the book-collector; the narrow strip dividing _terra firma_ from the dangerous marsh ever lighted by _ignes-fatui_ that lure the pursuer on and on, is well defined by Burton in the introduction to The Book Hunter, where, referring to the class for whom the volume was written, he finds it difficult to say whether he should give them a good name or a bad, whether he should characterize them by a predicate eulogistic or a predicate dyslogistic.

We all know of the man who paid a fabulous sum for a copy of a very rare work, only to consign it to the flames on receiving it, in order that his own copy might have no duplicate. This is an exceptional form of the bibliolythist, or book-burner. Among this class are included authors ashamed of their first writings, authors who have changed their political or religious views, or who have eulogized a friend who has become a bitter enemy. There exists another form of the bibliolythist which Fitzgerald has omitted from his Romance of Book-Collecting—the “burking” of a work by one who has been assailed. I know of a standing offer from a gentleman of three dollars apiece for every copy that booksellers send him of a certain volume which retails for a fifth of the price. The work contains a reflection on one of his ancestors, and as soon as the volumes are received they are burned. But the book-burner is by no means a modern institution, Nero and Caliph Omar still remaining the greatest of bibliolythists.

I would suggest as another desirable term to add to the lexicon of the bibliopholist the term _bibliodæmon_, or book-fiend—a designation expressive of something more than the ordinary significance of “book-borrower,” innocent enough, no doubt, in some of his milder forms, but exasperating to the last degree in his most depraved phases. The borrowing of a reference book or a volume, a chapter or a page of which may touch upon a subject that one desires to consult merely for the time being, is a matter apart. So also is the exchange of books between friends, or the borrowing of a work not readily procurable, the recipient on his part standing ready to return the courtesy, and forthwith restoring the volume unsullied.

Promptness in returning and scrupulous care of a volume are the tests which distinguish the comparatively harmless form of the borrower from the aggravated and exasperating one. The miserly practice of borrowing books, books from which the well-to-do borrower seeks to derive pleasure or benefit without returning a just equivalent, simply to shirk the trifling cost of the volume he covets, deserves the severest stricture. Such are library dead-heads and defaulters to publishers and authors. It is this form of the bibliodæmon who retains desumed copies for an indefinite period, trusting the loan may be forgotten; and who, deaf to all ordinary appeals and reminders, only relinquishes the volume—frequently maltreated—when virtually wrested from him at his home. The celebrated French bibliophile Pixérécourt had inserted on the frontal of his library-case these pertinent lines:

Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté:
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.

Each book that’s loaned the same sad fate o’ertakes—
’Tis either lost or sent back with the shakes.

There really exists no reason why books should be loaned—there are always the public libraries in which the borrower may ply his trade.

A former shepherd of the printed flocks in the library of a neighboring town relates an incident illustrating a singular form of book borrowing, the offender being a divine. Passionately fond of books, he would take them home, forgetting to return them, and when interrogated would always find a happy excuse, the store of borrowed books meanwhile accumulating. “A scholar and a man of exemplary character and fine sensibilities, I did not wish to wound his feelings by an imperative demand, being convinced from what I knew of him, that it was a slight lesion rather than a fracture of the mind which caused the delinquency. I therefore awaited his departure, and one morning, driving to his home with a buggy and a basket, I took possession of the borrowed volumes. He never referred to it. I do not think he even missed them. His passion was the joy of first readings, and he was proverbially forgetful.”

My scintillant and learned friend the Doctor, who for years graced the Greek chair at the University, and whose name is a household word among scholars, as his presence is a ray of sunlight wherever he appears, contributes this supplement to the lexicon of the book-lover. The general reader will skip this passage; the bibliophile will thank him:

_Bibliodæmon_: a book-fiend or demon.

_Bibliophage_ }
_Bibliocataphage_ } a book-eater or devourer.

_Biblioleter_ }
_Bibliopollyon_ } a book-destroyer, ravager, or waster.
_Bibliophthor_ }

_Biblioloigos_: a book-pest or plague.

_Bibliolestes_ }
_Biblioklept_ } a book-plunderer or robber.

_Bibliocharybdis_: a Charybdis of books.
_Biblioriptos_: one who throws books around.

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XII.

MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES.

II.

As wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe
understanding and many civil virtues be imported into our minds from
foreign writings.—MILTON.

It is pleasant to take down one of the magicians of the shelf, to
annihilate my neighbor and his evening parties, and to wander off
through quiet country lanes into some sleepy hollow of the
past.—CORNHILL MAGAZINE, RAMBLES AMONG BOOKS.

IT was held by Disraeli that literature is in no wise injured by the bibliophile, since though the worthless may be preserved, the good is necessarily protected, he no doubt having in mind the death of the collector and subsequent sale of his library. For though the bibliophile may stint his family and hoard his golden leaves and tooling, at least he abhors dog’s-ears and keeps his treasures clean. La Bruyère, who gave us the delightful maxim, “We only write in order to be heard, but in writing we should only let beautiful things be heard,” referred to these accumulations as “tanneries,” condemning fine bindings, one of the few false dogmas uttered by the sprightly, entertaining author of Les Caractères. Fine bindings not only preserve but beautify fine books; and to the sentiment of La Bruyère I prefer that of Jules Janin: “_Il faut à l’homme sage et studieux un tome honorable et digne de sa louange._” (“The wise and studious man should have a volume worthy of his praise.”)

In Edouard Rouveyre’s instructive and beautifully-printed manual on bibliography, the question of bindings is summed up in a sentence, fine bindings naturally referring to books that are worthy of beautiful and permanent coverings: “Binding is to typography what this is to the other arts; the one transmits to posterity the works of the scholar, the other preserves the typographical production for him.... The binding of the amateur,” he continues, “should be rich without ostentation, solid without heaviness, always in harmony with the work that it adorns, of great finish in its workmanship, of exact execution in the smallest details, with neat lines, and a strongly conceived design.”[17]

Footnote 17:

Connaissances Nécessaires à un Bibliophile, par Edouard Rouveyre,
Troisième Edition. Paris, Ed. Rouveyre et G. Blond, 1883, 2 vols.

“The binding of a book,” the Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone succinctly observes, “is the dress with which it walks out into the world. The paper, type, and ink are the body in which its soul is domiciled. And these three, soul, body, and habiliment, are a triad which ought to be adjusted to one another by the laws of harmony and good sense.” Nor should the book-lover neglect to carry out the rules relative to binding laid down by Octave Uzanne in his Caprices d’un Bibliophile: “A book should be bound according to its spirit, according to the epoch in which it was published, according to the value you attach to it and the use you expect to make of it; it should announce itself by its exterior, by the gay, striking, lively, dull, somber, or variegated tone of its accoutrement.”

With regard to the book-cases themselves, their height should depend upon that of the ceilings, and on the number of one’s volumes. For classification and reference, it is more convenient to have numerous small cases of similar or nearly similar size and the same general style of construction than a few large cases in which everything is engulfed. With small or medium-sized receptacles, each one may contain volumes relating to certain departments or different languages, as the case may be; by this means a volume and its kindred may be readily found. Thus one, or a portion of one, may be devoted to bibliography, another to the philosophers, another to poetical works, another to foreign literature, another to reference works, another to books relating to nature, art, etc.

The style and color of the bindings, also, may subserve a similar purpose; as, for instance, the poets in yellow or orange, books on nature in olive, the philosophers in blue, the French classics in red, etc. Unless methodically arranged, even with a very small library, a volume is often difficult to turn to when desired for immediate consultation, requiring tedious search, especially if the volumes are arranged upon the shelves with respect to size and outward symmetry. This may be avoided by the use of small book-cases and a defined style of binding. I refer to the general style of binding; variety in bindings is always pleasing, and very many books one procures already bound and wishes to retain in the original covers. Books, moreover, which are in constant or frequent use should not be placed in too tender colors. Volumes become virtually lost and inaccessible in the vast walnut sarcophagi in which they are frequently entombed, and lose the attractive look they possess when more compactly enshrined. Above all things, the book-case should be artistic, artistically plain, except for the richness of the carving. Black walnut I should banish, unless employed exclusively for somber old folios, to accentuate their antiquity. Neither the library nor the study should appear morose or exhale an atmosphere of gloom.

In a room ten and a half to eleven feet high, five feet is a desirable height for the book-cases. Besides the drawers at the base, this will afford space for four rows of books, to include octavos, duodecimos, and smaller volumes. In some of the cases three shelves may be placed—the shelves, of course, should be shifting—to include folios, large quartos, and octavos. Where the ceilings are twelve feet high, six feet is a better proportion, this height affording five or four shelves, according to the size of the volumes. By leaving the top of the book-case twelve to thirteen inches wide, ample space will be allowed for additional small books, porcelains, and _bric-à-brac_. It must be borne in mind that tall book-cases, in addition to the inaccessibility of the volumes on the upper shelves, leave little if any space for pictures on the walls above them; and that, though books assuredly furnish and lend an air of refinement to an apartment, they still require the relief and complement of other decorative objects.

The cultured business man who may have the taste but lacks the time for extensive reading, the average man or woman who reads for recreation, may derive more benefit from a small library comprised of the best books carefully chosen than from the average large library. “_Quid prosunt innumerabiles libri quorum dominus vix totâ vitâ suâ indices perlegit?_” (“Of what use is an innumerable quantity of volumes whose owner may scarcely read the titles during his lifetime?”) Seneca justly reasoned. It is not so much the dinner of innumerable courses as a few dishes well prepared. Except to those who read quickly and assimilate readily, the large library is apt to consist for the most part of “uncut edges” in the layman’s sense of the term.

A good library is rarely suddenly formed. Moreover, if it could be, it were not half as satisfactory as a library added to by degrees, the growth and gradual increase of years. Again, some of the works that were considered a rare treat half a century since are no longer a treat to-day. They have become old-fashioned in the same sense as a garment. The critical eighteenth-century essay in its entirety, the old style metaphysical airing of some pet hobby, or didactic wool-drawing now seem rather ponderous productions. At present one does not even care to read all of the joint productions of Addison and Steele (particularly the latter’s essays), an averment that would have placed one under a ban twenty years ago. Yet even in Johnson’s day the Rambler was more extolled than perused, the publisher complaining that the encouragement as to sale was not in proportion to the raptures expressed by those who read it.

With the increasing pyramids of books, selection must become proportionately more and more restricted. Equally is this the case with poetry. Many of the ancient bards still figure in the editions of the English poets—only to sun their gilded backs on the library shelves and seldom have their pages turned. It were absurd to assert that the Spectator and numerous other productions of a former day will ever become closed volumes. Curiosity, and their fame also, would always cause them to be read by futurity did not their merit preclude the possibility of their ever sinking into oblivion. It is very probable, however, that at no distant day many of the immortals will exist in abridged editions. Some authors, like Montaigne, on the other hand, can never be cut down; their redundancies and embroideries are their charm.

To our forefathers time was more lenient than it is to us. Somehow the days and the nights were longer, and the old-time reader appeared to find more leisure and a brighter oil with which to pursue his literary browsings and point his antitheses. “There is a certain want of ease about the old writers,” Alexander Smith remarks (and I recall no one who has expressed it so musically before), “which has an irresistible charm. The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring and dimple to the surface and breaking the whole into babbling music.”

“When I looked into one of these old volumes,” Thoreau characteristically says, “it affected me like looking into an inaccessible swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat. Those old books suggested a certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a _humus_ for new literatures to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bull-frogs and the hum of mosquitoes reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I had closed the book. Decayed literature makes the richest of all soils.”

In this age of hurry and concentration who has the time to wade through the hundred volumes of Voltaire? It is even a task to go through his anthology, Élite de Poésies Fugitives, in the pretty little two-volume Cazin edition, there are so many more shells than pearls. But one’s time is well repaid after all, if only for the sake of finding and holding one such exquisite bit of airy verse as M. Bernard’s Le Hameau. Is it original, or a translation? The German poet Gottfried Bürger’s Das Doerfchen and this are one and the same, except that the latter is somewhat condensed, though equally beautiful. Following M. Bernard’s idyl is a panegyric in verse by Voltaire addressed to M. Berger, “who sent him the preceding stanzas,” Voltaire’s tribute beginning:

De ton Bernard
J’aime l’esprit.
C’est la peinture
De la nature.

Bernard, Berger, and Bürger; or Bürger, Berger, and Bernard would at first sight seem to be in a tangle. But in rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,

I praise my dear
Sweet village here,

undoubtedly should be returned to the German poet.

In the case of nearly every prolific author some few volumes represent his finest thought. I grant every one has or should have a favorite author, one who stands to him on a higher pedestal than all others,—an author whom he reveres and loves, and who must be read in every line that was the emanation of his brain. But for one to read every page of Thackeray, Bulwer, Goethe, Dumas, and the host of celebrated romancists, poets, essayists, and philosophers, delightful and instructive though they be, is a simple impossibility.

To return to the change in literary taste, and to instance a marked example, consider Wilson, or Christopher North. “Fusty Christopher,” Tennyson termed this pompous _arbiter elegantiarum_. The tables have been turned since the editor of Blackwood reviled the poet-laureate, and the animus of the criticism on Tennyson might now be applied to its stultified author. What magazine of the present could be induced to publish North’s rhapsodies? An installment would seriously damage The Atlantic, Scribner’s, or even Maga itself. How tiresome his ceaseless alliteration, his deluge of adjectives, his stream of similes, his invective, his bathos!

Many portions of the Noctes, it is true, are marvels of imagination and erudition, and some of his angling conceits are worthy of Norman MacLeod. Others, especially his selections as collected and published by himself under the title of The Recreations, are crusted over with algæ of self-conceit. It is the peacock who consciously struts. Pepys’s reiterated “I” and quaint egotism are never tiresome; Wilson’s pompous first person plural becomes a weariness. They used to give us Baxter’s Saints’ Rest to parse, in the olden school days, and I could not help but think that if the saints had such a horrible time, how fortunate it was we lived in a more advanced period. No doubt the schoolmaster might have given us worse books to parse; and, unquestionably, we should be duly grateful that The Recreations were not included. From the _a priori_ to the _a posteriori_ would have been so much harder sailing! Has not even the long-spun panorama of The Seasons lost something of its charm? Or, rather, should it not be read in an old edition?

Good editions of good books, though they may often be expensive, can not be too highly commended. One can turn to a page in inviting letterpress so much easier than to a page of an unattractive volume. The fine shades of meaning stand out more clearly, and the thought is revealed more intelligibly when clothed in fitting typographical garb. Often it becomes a positive labor to follow many a pleasing author in the small or worn types and poor paper with which the publisher mercilessly thrusts him into the world. The reader has virtually to work his passage through the pages and take frequent rests by the way.

Poor illustrating is even worse. Who may appreciate the beauties of The Talking Oak in the edition where Olivia is portrayed in the act of kissing a giant bole whose girth scarcely equals her own? One must ever afterward associate an oak with a fat Olivia. Apparently the artist never read Sir Thomas Wyatt:

A face that should content me wondrous well
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold,

or William Browne:

What best I lov’de was beauty of the mind,
And that lodgd in a Temple truely faire.

How dreadful, too, are many of the works illustrated by Cruikshank and Crowquill, which some profess to set such store by because they are held at such a premium by the book dealers!

Nearly as reprehensible as poor illustrating is pilloring the unfortunate author in the stocks of some atrocious color that must develop a cataract if gazed at long and fixedly. “I have been well-nigh ruined by the binder!” exclaimed one of the bright writers and literarians of the day; and before attempting to read one of his most entertaining volumes I stripped it of its frightful garb and clothed it in becoming attire. Otherwise one might not follow the ideas, the glaring blue and hideous figure of the original cover asserted themselves so strongly.

One should always endeavor to procure a good edition to start with; it is inconvenient to change editions. You come to associate certain favorite passages of a well-conned author with their place upon certain pages, so that you may instantly turn to them. The passages look strange to you in strange types, and you almost require to be introduced anew. With a change of page the mere thought itself remains the same, only it seems to have altered its expression. Let those who will, prate about a thought being a thought wherever it may exist. Some thoughts there are so airy and delicate they require to be read by one’s self—they lose a portion of their fragrance if repeated or obtained second hand. They should be savored by the eye and heard only by the inner ear. “The dark line” of the sun-dial “stealing imperceptibly on—for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by”—is more sharply defined upon the page of The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, the page where I first saw it, than it can ever appear to me upon any other page. Again, many flowers one enjoys most upon the uncut stalk. They may not be plucked and retain the full aroma they distill amid their natural surroundings. So that a quoted sentence from want of connection often loses much of the charm it presents upon the author’s page. And yet, on the other hand, quotation, when judiciously employed, not unfrequently places the author quoted in his most favorable light, while forming equally a pleasing complement to the page of the writer himself. Montaigne’s _fleurons_ of citation, woven from his scholastic and inexhaustible loom, what were the Essays without them?—limpid brooks and springs ever pouring their sparkling waters into the meandering, smooth-flowing river of the text. Merely by the change of type, quotation relieves the monotony of the page, while, with great writers, apt citation lends added emphasis and beauty to the thought, just as the art of damascening enriches a fine blade.

Good editions are everything in reading. Even the fragrant mint of Lamb possesses a heightened pungency to me when gathered along the cool, broad margins of a London imprint. Not only the mind through the personality or charm of the thought expressed, and the ear through the harmony and lucidness of the style with which it is uttered; but equally the eye, in the outward garb with which the thought is clothed, should be gratified in reading a beautiful book. The printer it is who contributes the finishing touches and heightens the reflective surface. Elia’s buoyant, playful graces have, perhaps, received their most exquisite and appropriate setting in the two little volumes of the Temple Library, printed by the Chiswick press, the smaller being preferable to the large-paper edition.

It is pleasant to have some authors both in an early and a late edition. If I desire the notes, the full-page illustrations, and an amplified text, I choose the edition of The Complete Angler illustrated by Stothard and Inskipp and annotated by Sir Harris Nicholas. If I wish to get still nearer Walton—to hear more plainly his birds contending with the echo, to pluck his culverkees and ladysmocks, to smell his primroses, and admire the very “shape and enameled color of the trout it joyed him so to look upon,” I read him in the old spelling and old font of the fac-simile reprint of the first edition. Moreover, for the sake of making comparisons, it is often desirable to have an early as well as a late edition of a favorite author. So subtle, indeed, are the niceties of reading they may scarcely be defined. How delightful the mere cutting of the edges of the book one longs to read, and the occasional dip into the pages as you turn the leaves!

Of a few favorite authors it is desirable to possess two copies, one in an inexpensive form to take when traveling. A trunk-maker is yet to appear who will contrive an apartment that will enable one to pack books so they may receive no possible injury—the one thing Addison’s Trunk-maker of the Upper Gallery neglected. Besides, apart from the friction in its receptacle, a valuable book is liable to other injuries, or loss while traveling. The traveling volume should be small, securely bound, light in the hand, and not too bulky for the pocket.

But an old book of all books for true delight! The pleasure of reading Chaucer or Spenser is doubled by the types and the associations of the past. The foxed and faded pages are like the rust on antique bronzes, the lichens on an old wall.

In the preface to Wheatley’s The Dedication of Books reference is made to this fascination which is conferred by an ancient font upon an ancient page. “There is,” remarks the author, “a delicate flavor of antiquity and a certain quaint charm in the old print of the books from which many of the dedications have been drawn that seems to depart when the same sentences are printed in modern type, and we are apt sometimes to wonder what it was that we originally admired. The bouquet has fled while we were in the act of removing the cork from the bottle.” Present, too, with the charm of the olden page itself is the thought of who may have first turned the pages when the book you are reading was in its fresh and spotless leaf, and whose hand it was that traced the annotations which embroider its margins.

To revert in parentheses to the sun-dial, Mrs. Gatty’s monograph, recently republished and extended,[18] contains thousands of mottoes and references to the clock of nature taken from numerous languages, but none equal to Lamb’s apostrophe. So far as references to the passage of time are concerned, there can be none more expressive than Ronsard’s lines:

Footnote 18:

The Book of Sun-Dials. Collected by Mrs. Alfred Gatty. New and
enlarged edition. London: George Bell and Sons, 1889. Pp. viii, 502.

Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, madame!
Las! le temps non: mais _nous_ nous en allons.[19]

Footnote 19:

Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, _we_ go!
(Austin Dobson’s translation.)

Singularly, the beautiful sonnet in which these lines occur was one which had been cast aside by Ronsard from the later editions of his works, and was only reprinted in Buon’s edition of 1609. Still more singular it seems that the “Prince of Poets” should have remained comparatively unappreciated for two centuries until reintroduced by St. Beuve. Am I mistaken in thinking there is a pronounced resemblance between this sonnet and Shakespeare’s “When I do count the clock that tells the time”?

Chaucer’s—

For tho’ we sleep, or wake, or rome, or ride,
Ay fleeth the time, it will no man abide,

and Spenser’s—

Make hast, therefore, sweet Love, whilst it is prime,
For none can call again the passèd time,

are as fine as any of the allusions by the classic poets who have festooned and intertwined the passing hour with rosebuds and asphodels.

I find the Book of Sun-Dials a delightful volume to take up when in a meditative mood. It needs, withal, a still room and a still hour to be read in, an environing quietness like the whisper of the gnomon itself. Then rambling through the pages, the present becomes absorbed by the past as you muse over the icons of the dials and moralize upon the quaint inscriptions. Transcribed in large Italic type, the mottoes stand out with the vividness of an epitaph graven upon a tomb, voices from posterity preaching from the perennial text:

As Time And Houres Passeth Awaye
So Doeth The Life Of Man Decaye.

Often as you contemplate the time-posts and their _intaglios_ do they absorb the attention afresh, casting new shades of meaning from the sentient styles. They transport you into gardens where old-fashioned flowers and historic yew-trees grow, they conduct you through old churchyards among neglected graves, they deliver their homilies from weather-beaten walls, and their pathos appeals from many an ancient sanctuary and moss-grown lintel. How noiselessly, how serenely they mark the flight of time! It is Time itself inaudibly counting the hours; the day suavely balancing its silent periods. They mirror primitive time, removed from the present turmoil, when the sun was the pendulum and the shadow the index-hand. Associated with Nature by ties the most endearing, by the golden sunshine, the murmuring breeze, and the songs of birds, the dial becomes, as it were, a reflective facet of external Nature in her gracious moods, its very shadow representing sunlight, the sunlight absent where the shadow is not. The sun-dial has molded itself to grace, and with rare exceptions its mottoes are happily chosen, attesting hours of meditation in forming an epigram or shaping a poetic fancy to blend with the shifting shadow. Certainly many of the sentiments collated in the monograph referred to are of more than passing interest. Their pathos and their quaintness set one dreaming.

Among the many inscriptions which arrested me while first turning the leaves, a few may be appended without, I trust, fatiguing the reader. Let her or him moralize a moment, and consider life from the standpoint of the dial, now grave, now gay; now lively, now severe. Though Time hurries mankind it has apparently not hurried the dials in choosing their inscriptions. It is rather a case of _festina lente_ than _hora fugit_. Some are as terse as an epigram of Martial or a proverb from Job; others sweet as a hymn of Watts or a stanza from The Temple. Thus, light and shadow are felicitously blended in the tale a dial tells on a house at Wadsley, near Sheffield, the moralist preaching from a niche in the wall:

Of Shade And Sunshine For Each Hour
See Here A Measure Made:
Then Wonder Not If Life Consist
Of Sunshine And Of Shade.

I Mark The Moments Trod For
Good Or Ill

has been the burden of the vertical dial at the priory, Warwick, since 1556.

Lifes But A Shadow
Mans But Dust
This Dyall Sayes
Dy All We Must

says the dial on the Church of All Saints, Winkleigh, Devon.

I Am A Shadow, So Art Thou
I Mark Time, Dost Thou?

is inscribed on an old horologium in the Grey Friars’ churchyard, Sterling.

Sweetly fragrant are the lines incised on the four sides of a stone dial in a flower-garden at South Windleham:

I Stand Amid Ye Summere Flowers
To Tell Ye Passage Of Ye Houres.
When Winter Steals Ye Flowers Awaye
I Tell Ye Passinge Of Their Daye.
O Man Whose Flesh Is But As Grasse
Like Summere Floweres Thy Life Shall Passe.
Whiles Tyme Is Thine Laye Up In Store
And Thou Shalt Live For Ever More.

Pretty, also, are the lines by James Montgomery beneath a vertical dial in Burneston, Yorkshire:

Time From The Church Tower Cries To You And Me,
Upon This Moment Hangs Eternity:
The Dial’s Index And The Belfry’s Chime
To Eye And Ear Confirm This Truth Of Time.
Prepare To Meet It; Death Will Not Delay;
Take Then Thy Saviour’s Warning—Watch And Pray!

One of the mottoes has an echo of Sidney:

Time As He Passes Us Has A Dove’s Wing
Unsoiled And Swift, And Of A Silken Sound.

“The Night Cometh” is neatly amplified upon a plate that supports a cross sun-dial on a stone pedestal upon the terrace of the hospital of St. Cross, Rugby:

The Passing Shadows Which The Sunbeams Throw
Athwart This Cross, Time’s Hastening Foot-Steps Show;
Warned By Their Teaching Work Ere Day Be O’er,
Soon Comes The Night When Man Can Work No More.

One motto reads Unam Time (Fear one hour); another, Unam Timeo (One hour I fear). Two others read, Heu Quærimus Umbram, Heu Patimus Umbram (Alas! we pursue a shadow), (Alas! we endure the shadow). Eheu Fugaces is marked upon a Yorkshire plate, and Labuntur Anni on Burnham Church, Somerset. The shortest mottoes are Redeme, J’avance, Remember, Irrevocabile. A beautiful stone sun-dial still casts its shadow in the old garden of Gilbert White, and is figured in Macmillan’s edition of the Natural History of Selborne. This is not mentioned in Mrs. Gatty’s comprehensive work, and I can not determine from the illustration whether it bears a motto. Each To His Task, taken from White’s Invitation would be an appropriate inscription.

One of the quaintest inscriptions mentioned in the Book of Sun-Dials is that which looks from the wall of a church at Argentière, near Vallouse. It was scarcely composed in an hour, and loses much in the translation:

Cette Montre Par Son Ombre Montre
Que Comme L’Ombre Passent Nos Jours.

(This marker marks by its shadow that our days pass away like a shadow).

There is much of moral coloring in these two lines:

Haste Traveller, The Sun Is Sinking Low
He Shall Return Again, But Never Thou.

And is this not altogether lovely?

Give God Thy Heart, Thy Hopes, Thy Gifts, Thy Gold,
The Day Wears On, The Times Are Waxing Old.

And so one might go on quoting the old moral, shadowed by different texts. Perhaps Sterne expresses it as pithily as any epigrammatist, “life” being but another term for time: “What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? from sorrow to sorrow? to button up one cause of vexation, and unbutton another?” But Sterne deals with the shadow only, while the gnomon of the dial presents its side of sunshine equally with its side of shade, however somber the tone of the inscription. Doubtless Nature preaches more truly than man. Life is not all composed of shadow, nor all of sunshine; and if we but cultivate the spirit of contentment, possibly we have solved its sternest problem.

But may contentment, after all, be had for the striving? “Whatever it be that falleth into our knowledge and jouissance,” reasons Montaigne in the fifty-third chapter of the First Book, “we finde it doth not satisfie us, and we still follow and gape after future, uncertaine, and unknowne things, because the present and knowne please us not, and doe not satisfie us. Not (as I thinke) because they have not sufficiently wherewith to satiate and please us, but the reason is, that we apprehend and seize on them with an unruly, disordered, and a diseased taste and hold-fast.” And, again, in the twelfth chapter of the Second Book: “All of the Philosophers of all the sects that ever were doe generally agree on this point, that the chiefest felicitie, or _summum bonum_, consisteth in the peace and tranquillitie of the soul and bodie:—but where shall we find it?”

Somewhere, slumbering upon the shelves, there exists a golden book of a former century, written by a learned French philosopher-pantologist, entitled L’Art de se rendre heureux par les Songes (The Art of rendering one’s self happy by Dreams). A unique volume and the labor of a lifetime, its present owner and the fortunate possessor of the secret has never been discovered; and, alas! a reprint does not exist. Contentment—is this but another name for Illusion?—is a bird of passage who, soaring high in the empyrean, must be secured on the wing. Numberless those who would ensnare him, and innumerable the lures set to turn his evasive pinion. But he flies not in flocks; and, dimly outlined against the distant sky, he is ever flitting onward, far out of range. Some one, farther on, who seeks him not, perchance looks serenely upward, and unconsciously charms him down....

My fair and gracious reader, is it you?

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XIII.

AUTHORS AND READERS.

There must be both a judgment and a fervor; a discrimination and a
boyish eagerness; and (with all due humility) something of a point
of contact between authors worth reading and the reader.—LEIGH HUNT,
MY BOOKS.

A truly good book is something as natural and as unexpectedly and
unaccountably fair and perfect as a wild flower discovered on the
prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.—THOREAU.

A CERTAIN selfish satisfaction I enjoy in reading a fine limited edition of a classic, or a choice work that is difficult to procure. It is like possessing a gem of an uncommon color, a piece of old Chinese glaze, or any rare art object. If the work itself possess intrinsic value I am sure of my investment, while I rejoice in its attractive guise. Reading thus becomes more than a pleasure; it is an exquisite luxury. I marvel who secures all the “number 1’s” of the large-paper editions. Some bibliotaphe must have a monumental collection, for nobody ever sees one.

“The passion for first editions, the purest of all passions,” some one remarks. I confess I do not share this passion in its intensity, in all cases, unless the first edition be superior in letterpress or form, or a later edition has been altered, condensed, or enlarged to its disadvantage. The classics in first editions, and the “old melodious lays” in first folios by all means, if you can afford and procure them; Gibbon, Macaulay, Scott, Dickens, and the rest of the historians and novelists in the easiest, most attractive page to read and hold in the hand, whatever the edition. This with reference to literature proper, and not to scientific works, of which latter the latest edition is naturally to be preferred.

I sometimes find myself picturing the author behind the page. Lang and Dobson, are they as merry as the songs they sing? Phil Robinson, is he half so pleasant a companion in the flesh as on the printed page? Bullen, who edits the old poets with such consummate taste, is he as jolly as the Elizabethan lyrics ever swarming on the tip of his tongue? Higginson, so tender and musical in his polished prose, I wonder does he lose his temper when the _sauce piquante_ proves a failure? The brilliant, entertaining philosopher of A Club of One, is he philosophical enough to eschew colchicum for his gout; and, I marvel, is he enrolled among the Brotherhood of the Merry Eye?

Perhaps the author is most charming, for the most part, between the covers. On paper he is always on his good behavior, his personal facets shaped so as to catch the most favorable light. Knowing him and meeting him in every-day life you might find him cold, arrogant, opinionated—an altogether disagreeable companion. Forgetful of the flight of time, he might be prone to argument or backbiting. He might be deaf or color-blind, and always late at his engagements. He might be constantly straddling a hobby-horse. He might be an incorrigible whistler, or possess an ungovernable temper. All his petty weaknesses and foibles he conceals, or tries to conceal, on the printed page.

Thus, Joseph Boulmier:

Oui, les hommes sont laids, mais leurs œuvres sont belles;
Les hommes sont méchants, mais leurs livres sont bons.

Men are unlovely, but their works are fair—
Ay, men are evil, but their books are good.

If, as has been asserted, he is the best author who gives the reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time, surely the olive crown should be awarded the composers of the compilations, the digests, and the anthologies, often the fruit of decades spent in poring over manuscripts and print. Little do we consider the pains they have cost. What an amount of rummaging through faded manuscripts, what ransacking of musty folios and plodding through by-ways of the past has it not required to produce Bullen’s smiling volumes from the song-books, masques, and pageants of the Elizabethan Age, and his other rarer anthologies, Speculum Amantis and Musa Proterva. The works themselves of very many of the authors quoted would be a veritable labor to wade through, with few fragrant flowers of poesy to perfume the way. All this the compiler spares us, and with catholic taste gathers a blossom here and a blossom there from the vast fields of little-known song. Equally does Mr. Bullen deserve the thanks of every lover of lyric poetry for his collection of Campion’s works, and the Chiswick press the tribute of all admirers of beautiful printing for the frame in which Campion’s “golden cadence” has been set.

By reading Hazlitt’s Gleanings in Old Garden Literature I am saved the fatigue of perusing countless uninteresting tomes on the subject. He has extracted the honey for me from innumerable flowers. Yet my Parkinson, my Gerarde, my Evelyn, my Bacon I must read between the lines myself; it is to the dull books he has been the bee for me. To gather the sweets is often a difficult and always a laborious task. Not these plodding compilers, the class who are referred to in the wise old precept, the source of which I have never been able to trace: “Those who do not practice what they preach resemble those sign-posts in the country which point out the weary way to the traveler without taking the trouble of traversing it themselves.”

Without doubt, among the most beloved of books are those written for pure love of the beautiful, distinct from literary ambition or posthumous fame, especially when to this is added a sympathetic, lucid, and unconscious style, such as we love to linger over in The Complete Angler or White’s Selborne. Walton himself has epitomized this charm in a line introductory to his angling idyl: “I wish the reader also to take notice that in the writing of it I have made myself a recreation of a recreation.”

Johnson has said books that you may carry to the fire and hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all. Before Johnson, and long before printing was dreamed of, an old Greek proverb held that a great book was a great evil, and Martial wrote:

Buy books that but one hand engage,
In parchment bound, with tiny page.

Assuredly, the little book is a delight. It is a joy in the hand when well bound, and may serve to take the place of fire-arms in a public conveyance where one otherwise might find himself at the mercy of an uncongenial or too loquacious passenger. But the life of the library were dull were it confined to the 18 and 24 mos. Let each book and each subject have its appropriate setting, and let there be variety of sizes. The majesty of the shelves were fled without the thick quarto and tall old folio.

Apart from De Bury, Dibdin, Disraeli, Burton, Didot, Janin, the bibliophile Jacob, and other universally known bibliographical writers, there are innumerable pleasant books on books. Of such, in addition to those previously alluded to, may be specified Lang’s Books and Bookmen and The Library; The Pleasures of a Bookworm and The Diversions of a Bookworm, by J. Rogers Rees, delightfully written volumes attractively printed by Elliott Stock; Alexander Ireland’s Book-Lover’s Enchiridion; Saunder’s The Story of Some Famous Books; Wheatley’s The Dedication of Books, and How to form a Library, the latter three volumes likewise daintily printed by Elliott Stock in the series of The Book-Lovers’ Library.

In A Club Corner, by A. P. Russell, a volume previously mentioned, is largely devoted to books and authors. A store-house of literary and bibliographical information exists between the covers of Library Notes, and Characteristics, by the same author. Books and how to use Them is the title of an instructive and entertaining small duodecimo by J. C. Van Dyke, librarian of the Sage Library, New Brunswick, N. J., a writer deep versed in books, but not shallow in himself. Brander Mathews’s Ballads of Books, or Lang’s recast of this volume, is a most excellently chosen collection of poems relating to books. Every one will read with pleasure Percy Fitzgerald’s The Book Fancier, or the Romance of Book-Collecting, a work replete with curious information. The French scholar has a host of kindred works to choose from, all written _de cœur_; for in France the passion for books, book-collecting, fine letterpress, and fine bindings exists to a greater degree than anywhere else. It was a Frenchman, the famed _bouquineur_ Nodier, who worried through life without a copy of Virgil “because he could not succeed in finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams.”

What instructive, sparkling volumes are these: L’Enfer du Bibliophile, Mes Livres, Connaissances Nécessaires à un Bibliophile, Derome’s Le Luxe des Livres and the two beautifully-printed and entertaining volumes, Causeries d’un Ami des Livres, Le Petit’s L’Art d’Aimer les Livres, Peignot’s Manuel du Bibliophile, Octave Uzanne’s Caprices d’un Bibliophile, Mouravit’s Petite Bibliothèque d’Amateur, Jacob’s Les Amateurs de Vieux Livres, and how many more!

I know of no more fascinating volume of its class, however, than De Resbecq’s Voyages Littéraires sur les Quais de Paris, Paris, A. Durand, 1857. The contents are in the form of letters from an indefatigable hunter of the book-stalls along the Seine to a fellow-bibliophile in the provinces. Daily, through summer’s sun and winter’s cold, he continues the chase, scenting the spoils of the stalls like a harrier beating the ground for game, chatting with the book dealers, and philosophizing as he scans the volumes. Among the many prizes which persistent foragings secured was a copy of that rarest of the Elzevirs, the Pastissier François. The volume had been denuded of its covers, but had the engraved title-page, the celebrated _scène de cuisine_ with the range, the tables, the cooks, and the fowls entirely intact. “The box in which this jewel reposed, its interior in perfect preservation, contained no price-mark.

“‘How much?’ said I to the merchant.

“‘Well, for you, six sous; is it too dear?’”

I recall few more delightful books for the bibliophile than Jules Richard’s beautifully-printed small volume L’Art de Former une Bibliothèque, published by Edouard Rouveyre, Paris, 1883. His advice to the collector, which terminates the preface, is well worth transcribing:

“Always distrust your enthusiasm.

“Distrust the enormous prices at which certain original editions of secondary authors are quoted. For acknowledged genius one can afford to pay generously, but for the others, how many disappointments the future has in store!

“Never pay a high price for a book you do not know.

“Verify the titles, the pagination, the tables, and count the plates, if it is an illustrated book.

“The same observation holds good for editions on extraordinary paper of books absolutely ordinary. Whatman and vellum require to be well placed in order to sustain their value.

“One knows when he begins to collect, one never knows when he will cease; therein consists the pleasure.”

A work of much interest is that of Philomeste Junior (Gustave Brunet), published in four small _brochure_ volumes severally entitled La Bibliomanie en 1878, 1880, 1881, 1883, ou Bibliographie Rétrospective des Adjudications les Plus Remarquables faites cette Année, et de la Valeur primitive de ces Ouvrages. It is in France that bibliomania seems to have reached its apotheosis. La Bibliomanie furnishes some interesting facts with regard to the steady advance in the prices of certain classes of French books. “Fashion dictates her laws for the choice of books as for the toilet of fashionable ladies; they are without appeal.” To be the happy possessor of a cabinet in which are enshrined a dozen tomes of unexceptional condition, illustrated by celebrated eighteenth-century artists like Eisen, Gravelot, Moreau, Marillier, and bound by Du Seuil, Padeloup, Derome, or Trautz, calls for an elastic portemonnaie.

To cite a few examples of the advance in French books, paralleled also in English books, a copy of Manon Lescaut (1753) sold in 1839 for 109 frs., in 1870 for 355 frs., in 1875 for 1,335 frs. The edition of Montaigne’s Essays: Bourdens, S. Millanges, 1580, two parts in one octavo vol., sold for 24 frs., in 1784. The same copy recently sold for 2,060 frs. Another edition of the Essays, 1725, 3 vols. 4to, with the arms of the Maréchal de Luxembourg, brought 2,900 frs. for the “arms.” Still another edition, Paris, 1669, 3 vols., 12mo, a poor edition, brought 1,960 frs. at the Cormon sale, Paris, 1883. It had the stamp of the golden fleece, the insignia of Longpierre, a mediocre poet, and the purchaser paid for the fleece. The edition of 1595, Paris, chez A. l’Angelier, 1 vol., infol. veau, brought 1,100 frs., in 1881. A “clean and sound copy” of this edition in the original calf was quoted in a recent London catalogue at £12 12_s._, another London dealer pricing a copy of the same edition soon afterward at £60.

The edition of 1588, Paris, Abel l’Angelier, in 4, mar., Du Seuil, was recently quoted by Morgand who is termed _la bourse des livres_, at 4,000 frs. This was the last edition published during the author’s lifetime, and the first to contain the third book. It was marked on the frontispiece “fifth edition,” though only three are known to have preceded it. The library of Bordeaux possesses an example of this edition filled with annotations and corrections by the hand of Montaigne. Up to the present time, no editor of the Essais has availed himself of these resources, of inestimable value from the point of view of the study of the text of Montaigne. It would be of more than passing interest to know whether in these corrections the author mitigated his observation with regard to authors correcting their work.