BOOK-PLATES.
A rather modern form of book-spoliation has arisen in the collection of book-plates. These are literally derived “ex libris,” and the business cannot be indulged, as a general thing, without in some sense despoiling books. It cannot be denied that it is a fascinating pursuit. So undoubtedly is the taking of watches or rings or other “articles of bigotry or virtue,” on the highway But somehow there is something so essentially personal in a book-plate, that it is hard to understand why other persons than the owners should become possessed by a passion for it. Many years ago when Burton, the great comedian, was in his prime, he used to act in a farce called “Toodles”—at all events, that was his name in the play—and he was afflicted with a wife who had a mania for attending auctions and buying all kinds of things, useful or useless, provided that they only seemed cheap. One day she came home with a door-plate, inscribed, “Thompson”—“Thompson with a p,” as Toodles wrathfully described it; and this was more than Toodles could stand. He could not see what possible use there could ever be in that door-plate for the Toodles family. In those same days, there used to be displayed on the door of a modest house, on the east side of Broadway, in the city of New York, somewhere about Eighth Street, a silver door-plate inscribed, “Mr. Astor.” This appertained to the original John Jacob In those days I frequently remarked it, and thought what a prize it would be to Mrs. Toodles or some collector of door-plates. Now I can understand why one might acquire a taste for collecting book-plates of distinguished men or famous book-collectors, just as one collects autographs; but why collect hundreds and thousands of book-plates of undistinguished and even unknown persons, frequently consisting of nothing more than family coats-of-arms, or mere family names? I must confess that I share to a certain extent in Mr. Lang’s antipathy to this species of collecting, and am disposed to call down on these collectors Shakespeare’s curse on him who should move his bones. But I cannot go with Mr. Lang when he calls these well-meaning and by no means mischevious persons some hard names.
In some localities it is quite the vogue to take off the coffin-plate from the coffin—all the other silver “trimmings,” too, for that matter—and preserve it, and even have it framed and hung up in the home of the late lamented. There may be a sense of proprietorship in the mourners, who have bought and paid for it, and see no good reason for burying it, that will justify this practice. At all events it is a family matter. The coffin plate reminds the desolate survivors of the person designated, who is shelved forever in the dust. But what would be said of the sense or sanity of one who should go about collecting and framing coffin-plates, cataloguing them, and even exchanging them?
Book-worms penetrate to different distances in books. Some go no further than the title page; others dig into the preface or bore into the table of contents; a few begin excavations at the close, to see “how it comes out.” But that Worm is most easily satisfied who never goes beyond the inside of the front cover, and passes his time in prying off the book-plates
I think I have heard of persons who collect colophons. These go to work in the reverse direction, and are even more reprehensible than the accumulators of book-plates, because they inevitably ruin the book
A book-plate is appropriate, sometimes ornamental, even beautiful, in its intended place in the proprietor’s book. Out of that, with rare exceptions, it strikes one like the coffin-plate, framed and hanging on the wall It gives additional value and attractiveness to a book which one buys, but it ought to remain there
If one purchases books once owned by A, B and C—undistinguished persons, or even distinguished—containing their autographs, he does not cut them out to form a collection of autographs If the name is not celebrated, the autograph has no interest or value; if famous, it has still greater interest and value by remaining in the book. So it seems to me it should be in respect to book-plates Let Mr. Astor’s door-plate stay on his front door, and let the energetic Mrs. Toodles content herself in buying something less invididual and more adaptable.
A book-plate really is of no value except to the owner, as the man says of papers which he has lost. It cannot be utilized to mark the possessions of another. In this respect it is of inferior value to the door-plate, for possibly another Mr. Astor might arise, to whom the orignal door-plate might be sold. A Boston newspaper tells of a peddler of door-plates who contracted to sell a Salem widow a door-plate; and when she gave him her name to be engraved on it, gave only her surname, objecting to any first name or initials, observing: “I might get married again, and if my initials or first name were on the plate, it would be of no use. If they are left off, the plate could be used by my son.”
Thus much about collecting book-plates. One word may be tolerated about the character of one’s own book-plate. To my taste, mere coats-of-arms with mottoes are not the best form. They simply denote ownership. They might well answer some further purpose, as for example to typify the peculiar tastes of the proprietor in respect to his books. A portrait of the owner is not objectionable, indeed is quite welcome in connection with some device or motto pertaining to books and not to mere family descent. But why, although a collector may have a favorite author, like Hawthorne or Thackeray, for example, should he insert his portrait in his book-plate, as is often done? Mr. Howells would writhe in his grave if he knew that somebody had stuck Thackeray’s portrait or Scott’s in “Silas Lapham,” and those Calvinists who think that the “Scarlet Letter” is wicked, would pronounce damnation on the man who should put the gentle Hawthorne’s portrait in a religious book To be sure, one might have a variety of book-plates, with portraits appropriate to different kinds of books—Napoleon’s for military, Calvin for religious, Walton’s for angling and a composite portrait of Howells-James for fiction of the photographic school; but this would involve expense and destroy the intrinsic unity desirable in the book-plate. So let the portrait, if any, be either that of the proprietor or a conventional image. If I were to relax and allow a single exception it would be in favor of dear Charles Lamb’s portrait in “Fraser’s,” representing him as reading a book by candle light. (For the moment this idea pleases me so much that I feel half inclined to eat all my foregoing words on this point, and adopt it for myself. At any rate, I hereby preempt the privilege.)
I have referred to Mr. Lang’s antipathy to book-plate collectors, and while, as I have observed, he goes to extravagant lengths in condemning their pursuit, still it may be of interest to my readers to know just what he says about them, and so I reproduce below a ballad on the subject, with (the material for) which he kindly supplied me when I solicited his mild expression of opinion on the subject:
THE SNATCHERS.
The Romans snatched the Sabine wives;
The crime had some extenuation,
For they were leading lonely lives
And driven to reckless desperation.
Lord Elgin stripped the Grecian frieze
Of all its marbles celebrated,
So our art-students now with ease
Consult the figures overrated.
Napoleon stole the southern pictures
And hung them up to grace the Louvre;
And though he could not make them fixtures,
They answered as an art-improver.
Bold men ransack an Egyptian tomb,
And with the mummies there make free;
Such intermeddling with Time’s womb
May aid in archeology.
So Cruncher dug up graves in haste,
To sell the corpses to the doctors;
This trade was not against his taste,
Though Misses “flopped,” and vowed it shocked hers.
The modern snatcher sponges leaves
And boards of books to crib their labels;
Most petty, trivial of thieves,
Surpassing all we read in fables.
He pastes them in a big, blank book
To show them to some rival fool,
And I pronounce him, when I look,
An almost idiotic ghoul.
THE BOOK-AUCTIONEER.
There is one figure that stands in a very unpleasant relation to books
If anybody has any curiosity to know what I consider the most undesirable occupation of mankind, I will answer candidly—that of an auctioneer of private libraries. It does not seem to have fallen into disrepute like that of the headsman or hangman, and perhaps it is as unpleasantly essential as that of the undertaker. But it generally thrives on the unhappiness of those who are compelled to part with their books, on the rivalries of the rich, and the strifes of the trade It was urged against Mr. Cleveland, on his first canvass for the Presidency, that when he was sheriff he had hanged a murderer. For my own part, I admired him for performing that solemn office himself rather than hiring an underling to do it. But if he had been a book-auctioneer, I might have been prejudiced against him
Not so ignoble and inhuman perhaps as that of the slave-seller, still the business must breed a sort of callousness which is abhorrent to the genial Book-Worm. How I hate the glib rattle of his tongue, the mouldiness of his jests and the transparency of his puffery! I should think he would hate himself. It must be worse than acting Hamlet or Humpty Dumpty a hundred consecutive nights Dante had no punishment for the Book-Worm in hell, if I remember right, but if he deserved any pitiless reprobation, it would be found in compelling him to cry off books to all eternity Grant that the auctioneer is a person of sensibility and acquainted with good books, then his calling must give him many a pang as he observes the ignorance and carelessness of his audience. It is better and more fitting that he should know little of his wares. He ought to be well paid for his work, and he is—no man gets so much for mere talk except the lawyer, and perhaps not even he. I do not so much complain of his favoritism. When there is something especially desirable going, I frequently fail to catch his eye, and my rival gets the prize But in this he is no worse than the Speaker. On the other hand he sometimes loads me up with a thing that I do not want, and in possession of which I would be unwilling to be found dead, pretending that I winked at him—a species of imposition which it is impolitic to resent for fear of being entirely ignored. These discretionary favors are regarded as a practical joke and must not be declined But what I do complain of is his commercial stolidity, surpassing that of Charles Surface when he sold the portraits of his ancestors. The “bete noir” of the book trade is
THE STOLID AUCTIONEER.
Let not a sad ghost
From the scribbling host
Revisit this workaday sphere;
He’ll find in the sequel
All talents are equal
When they come to the auctioneer.
Not a whit cares he
What the book may be,
Whether missal with glorious show,
A folio Shakespeare,
Or an Elzevir,
Or a Tupper, or E. P. Roe.
Without any qualms
He knocks down the Psalms,
Or the chaste Imitatio,
And takes the same pains
To enhance his gains
With a ribald Boccaccio.
He rattles them off,
Not stopping to cough,
He shows no distinction of person;
One minute’s enough
For similar stuff
Like Shelley and Ossian Macpherson.
A Paradise Lost
Is had for less cost
Than a bulky “fifteener” in Greek,
And Addison’s prose
Quite frequently goes
For a tenth of a worthless “unique.”
This formula stale
Of his will avail
For an epitaph meet for his rank,
When dropping his gavel
He falls in the gravel,
“Do I hear nothing more?—gone—to—?
I speak feelingly, but I think it is pardonable. I once went through an auction sale of my own books, and while I lost money on volumes on which I had bestowed much thought, labor and expense, I made a profit on Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall” in tree-calf. I do not complain of the loss; what I was mortified by was the profit. But the auctioneer was not at all abashed; in fact he seemed rather pleased, and apparently regarded it as a feather in his cap. I have always suspected that the shameless purchaser was Silas Wegg.
THE BOOKSELLER.
Considering his importance in modern civilization, it is singular that so little has been recorded of the Bookseller in literature. Shakespeare has a great deal to say of books of various kinds, but not a word, I believe, of the Bookseller. It is true that Ursa Major gave a mitigated growl of applause to the booksellers, if I recollect my Boswell right, and he condescended to write a life of Cave, but bookseller in his view meant publisher. It is true that Charles Knight wrote a book entitled “Shadows of the Old Booksellers,” but here too the characters were mainly publishers, and his account of them is indeed shadowy. The chief thing that I recall about any of the booksellers thus celebrated is that Tom Davies had “a pretty wife,” which is probably the reason why Doctor Johnson thought Tom would better have stuck to the stage. So far as I know, the most vivid pen-pictures of booksellers are those depicting the humble members of the craft, the curb-stone venders They are much more picturesque than their more affluent brethren who are used to the luxury of a roof.
Rummaging over the contents of an old stall, at a half book, half old iron shop in Ninety-four alley, leading from Wardour street to Soho, yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duodecimo, which has been the strange delight of my infancy; the price demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the assurance that his own mother should not have it for a farthing less. On my demurring to this extraordinary assertion, the dirty little vender reinforced his assertion with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the occasion demanded. “And now,” said he, “I have put my soul to it.” Pressed by so solemn an asseveration, I could no longer resist a demand which seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a level with his nearest relations; and depositing a tester, I bore away the battered prize in triumph.
—Essays of Elia.
Monsieur Uzanne, who has treated of the elegancies of the Fan, the Muff, and the Umbrella, has more recently given the world a quite unique series of studies among the bookstalls and the quays of Paris—“The Book Hunter in Paris”—and this too one finds more entertaining than any account of Quaritch’s or Putnam’s shop would be
I must bear witness to the honesty and liberality of booksellers. When one considers the hundreds of catalogues from which he has ordered books at a venture, even from across the ocean, and how seldom he has been misled or disappointed in the result, one cannot subscribe to a belief in the dogma of total depravity. I remember some of my booksellers with positive affection. They were such self-denying men to consent to part with their treasures at any price And as a rule they are far more careless than ordinary merchants about getting or securing their pay To be sure it is rather ignoble for the painter of a picture, or the chiseller of a statue, or the vender of a fine book, to affect the acuteness of tradesmen in the matter of compensation. The excellent bookseller takes it for granted, if he stoops to think about it, that if a man orders a Caxton or a Grolier he will pay for it, at his convenience. It was this unthinking liberality which led a New York bookseller to give credit to a distinguished person—afterwards a candidate for the Presidency—to a considerable amount, and to let the account stand until it was outlawed, and his sensibilities were greviously shocked, when being compelled to sue for his due, his debtor pleaded the statute of limitations! His faith was not restored even when the acute buyer left a great sum of money by his will to found a public library, and the legacy failed through informality.
I have only one complaint to make against booksellers. They should teach their clerks to recognize The Book-Worm at a glance It is very annoying, when I go browsing around a book-shop, to have an attendant come up and ask me, who have bought books for thirty years, if he can “show me anything”—just as if I wanted to see anything in particular—or if “anybody is waiting on me”—when all I desire is to be let alone. Some booksellers, I am convinced, have this art of recognition, for they let me alone, and I make it a rule always to buy something of them, but never when their employees are so annoyingly attentive. I do not object to being watched; it is only the implication that I need any assistance that offends me. It is easy to recognize the Book-Worm at a glance by the care with which he handles the rare books and the indifference with which he passes the standard authors in holiday bindings.
Once I had a bookseller who had a talent for drawing, which he used to exercise occasionally on the exterior of an express package of books. One of these wrappings I have preserved, exhibiting a pen-and-ink drawing of a war-ship firing a big gun at a few small birds. Perhaps this was satirically intended to denote the pains and time he had expended on so small a sale. But I will now immortalize him
The most striking picture of a bookseller that I recall in all literature is one drawn by M. Uzanne, in the charming book mentioned above, which I will endeavor to transmute and transmit under the title of
THE PROPHETIC BOOK.
La Croix,” said the Emperor, “cease to beguile;
These bookstalls must go from my bridges and quays;
No longer shall tradesmen my city defile
With mouldering hideous scarecrows like these.”
While walking that night with the bibliophile,
On the Quai Malaquais by the Rue de Saints Peres,
The Emperor saw, with satirical smile,
Enkindling his stove, in the chill evening air,
With leaves which he tore from a tome by his side,
A bookseller ancient, with tremulous hands;
And laying aside his imperial pride,
“What book are you burning?” the Emperor demands.
For answer Pere Foy handed over the book,
And there as the headlines saluted his glance,
Napoleon read, with a stupefied look,
“Account of the Conquests and Victories of France.”
The dreamer imperial swallowed his ire;
Pere Foy still remained at his musty old stand,
Till France was environed by sword and by fire,
And Germans like locusts devoured the land.
Doubtless the occupation of bookseller is generally regarded as a very pleasant as well as a refined one. But there is another side, in the estimation of a true Book-Worm, and it is not agreeable to him to contemplate the life of
THE BOOK-SELLER.
He stands surrounded by rare tomes
Which find with him their transient homes,
He knows their fragrant covers;
He keeps them but a week or two,
Surrenders then their charming view
To bibliomaniac lovers.
An enviable man, you say,
To own such wares if but a day,
And handle, see and smell;
But all the time his spirit shrinks,
As wandering through his shop he thinks
He only keeps to sell.
The man who buys from him retains
His purchase long as life remains,
And then he doesn’t mind
If his unbookish eager heirs,
Administering his affairs,
Shall throw them to the wind.
Or if in life he sells, in sooth,
’Tis parting with a single tooth,
A momentary pain;
Booksellers, like Sir Walter’s Jew,
Must this keen suffering renew,
Again and yet again.
And so we need not envy him
Who sells us books, for stark and grim
Remains this torture deep.
This Universalistic hell—
Throughout this life he’s bound to sell;
He has, but cannot keep.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN.
There is one species of the Book-Worm which is more pitiable than the Bookseller, and that is the Public Librarian, especially of a circulating library. He is condemned to live among great collections of books and exhibit them to the curious public, and to be debarred from any proprietorship in them, even temporary. But the greater part this does not grieve a true Book-Worm, for he would scorn ownership of a vast majority of the books which he shows, but on the comparatively rare occasions when he is called on to produce a real book (in the sense of Bibliomania), he must be saddened by the reflection that it is not his own, and that the inspection of it is demanded of him as a matter of right I have often observed the ill concealed reluctance with which the librarian complies with such a request; how he looks at the demandant with a degree of surprise, and then produces the key of the repository where the treasure is kept under guard, and heaving a sigh delivers the volume with a grudging hand. It was this characteristic which led me in my youth, before I had been inducted into the delights of Bibliomania and had learned to appreciate the feelings of a librarian, to define him as one who conceives it to be his duty to prevent the public from seeing the books. I owe a good old librarian an apology for having said this of him, and hereby offer my excuses to one whose honorable name is recorded in the Book of Life Much is to be forgiven to the man who loves books, and yet is doomed to deal out books that perish in the using, which no human being would ever read a second time nor “be found dead with.” These are the true tests of a good book, especially the last. Shelley died with a little Æschylus on his person, which the cruel waves spared, and when Tennyson fell asleep it was with a Shakespeare, open at “Cymbeline.” One may be excused for reading a good deal that he never would re-read, but not for owning it, nor for owning a good deal which he would feel ashamed to have for his last earthly companion. But now for my tribute to
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN.
His books extend on every side,
And up and down the vistas wide
His eye can take them in;
He does not love these books at all,
Their usefulness in big and small
He counts as but a sin.
And all day long he stands to serve
The public with an aching nerve;
He views them with disdain—
The student with his huge round glasses,
The maiden fresh from high school classes,
With apathetic brain;
The sentimental woman lorn,
The farmer recent from his corn,
The boy who thirsts for fun,
The graybeard with a patent-right,
The pedagogue of school at night,
The fiction-gulping one.
They ask for histories, reports,
Accounts of turf and prize-ring sports,
The census of the nation;
Philosophy and science too,
The fresh romances not a few,
Also “Degeneration.”
“They call these books!” he said, and throws
Them down in careless heaps and rows
Before the ticket-holder;
He’d like to cast them at his head,
He wishes they might strike him dead,
And with the reader moulder.
But now as for the shrine of saint
He seeks a spot whence sweet and faint
A leathery smell exudes,
And there behind the gilded wires
For some loved rarity inquires
Which common gaze eludes.
He wishes Omar would return
That vulgar mob of books to burn,
While he, like Virgil’s hero,
Would shoulder off this precious case
To some secluded private place
With temperature at zero.
And there in that Seraglio
Of books not kept for public show,
He’d feast his glowing eyes,
Forgetting that these beauties rare,
Morocco-clad and passing fair,
Are but the Sultan’s prize.
But then a tantalizing sense
Invades expectancy intense,
And with extorted moan,
“Unhappy man!” he sighs, “condemned
To show such treasure and to lend—
I keep, but cannot own!”
DOES BOOK COLLECTING PAY.
We now come to the sordid but serious consideration whether books are a “good investment” in the financial sense The mind of every true Book-Worm should revolt from this question, for none except a bookseller is pardonable for buying books with the design of selling them. Booksellers are a necessary evil, as purveyors for the Book-Worm I regard them as the old woman regarded the thirty-nine articles of faith; when inquired of by her bishop what she thought of them, she said, “I don’t know as I’ve anything against them.” So I don’t know that I have anything against booksellers, although I must concede that they generally have something against me. As no well regulated man ever grudges expense on the house that forms his home, or on its adornment, and rarely cares or even reflects whether he can get his money back, so it is with the true bibliomaniac He never intends to part with his books any more than with his homestead. Then again the use and enjoyment of books ought to count for something like interest on the capital invested. Many times, directly or indirectly, the use of a library is worth even more than the interest on the outlay. It is singular how expenditure in books is regarded as an extravagance by the business world. One may spend the price of a fine library in fast or showy horses, or in travel, or in gluttony, or in stock speculations eventuating on the wrong side of his ledger, and the money-grubbing community think none the worse of him But let him expend annually a few thousands in books, and these sons of Mammon pull long faces, wag their shallow heads, and sneeringly observe, “screw loose somewhere,” “never get half what he has paid for them,” “too much of a Book-Worm to be a sharp business man.” A man who boldly bets on stocks in Wall Street is a gallant fellow, forsooth, and excites the admiration of the business community (especially of those who thrive on his losses) even when he “comes out at the little end of the horn.” As Ruskin observes, we frequently hear of a bibliomaniac, never of a horse-maniac It is said there is a private stable in Syracuse, New York, which has cost several hundred thousand dollars. The owner is regarded as perfectly sane and the building is viewed with great pride by the public, but if the owner had expended as much on a private library his neighbors would have thought him a lunatic. If a man in business wants to excite the suspicion of the sleek gentlemen who sit around the discount board with him, or yell like lunatics at the stock exchange with him, or talk with him about the tariff or free silver, or any other subject on which no two men ever agree unless it is for their interest, let it leak out that he has put a few thousand dollars into a Mazarine Bible, or a Caxton, or a first folio Shakespeare or some other rare book No matter if he can afford it, most of his associates regard him as they do a Bedlamite who goes about collecting straws. Fortunate is he if his wife does not privately call on the family attorney and advise with him about putting a committee over the poor man.
But if we must regard book-buying in a money sense, and were to admit that books never sell for as much as they cost, it is no worse in respect to books than in respect to any other species of personal property. What chattel is there for which the buyer can get as much as he paid, even the next day? When it is proposed to transform the seller himself into the buyer of the same article, we find that the bull of yesterday is converted into the bear of to-day. Circumstances alter cases. I have bought a good many books and “objects of bigotry and virtue,” and have sold some, and the nearest I ever came to getting as much as I paid was in the case of a rare print, the seller of which, after the lapse of several years, solicited me to let him have it again, at exactly what I paid for it, in order that he might sell it to some one else at an advance. I declined his offer with profuse thanks, and keep the picture as a curiosity
So I should say, as a rule, that books are not a good financial investment in the business sense, and speaking of most books and most buyers Give a man the same experience in buying books that renders him expert in buying other personal property, the mere gross objects of trade, and let him set out with the purpose of accumulating a library that shall be a remunerative financial investment, and he may succeed, indeed, has often succeeded, certainly to the extent of getting back his outlay with interest, and sometimes making a handsome profit. But this needs experience Just as one must build at least two houses before he can exactly suit himself, so he must collect two libraries before he can get one that will prove a fair investment in the vulgar sense of trade.
I dare say that one will frequently pay more for a fine microscope or telescope than he can ever obtain for it if he desires or is pressed to sell it, but who would or should stop to think of that? The power of prying into the mysteries of the earth and the wonders of the heavens should raise one’s thoughts above such petty considerations. So it should be in buying that which enables one to converse with Shakespeare or Milton or scan the works of Raphael or Durer. When the pioneer on the western plains purchases an expensive rifle he does not inquire whether he can sell it for what it costs; his purpose is to defend his house against Indians and other wild beasts. So the true book-buyer buys books to fight weariness, disgust, sorrow and despair; to loose himself from the world and forget time and all its limitations and besetments. In this view they never cost too much. And so when asked if book-collecting pays, I retort by asking, does piety pay? “Honesty is the best policy” is the meanest of maxims. Honesty ought to be a principle and not a policy; and book-collecting ought to be a means of education, refinement and enjoyment, and not a mode of financial investment.
THE BOOK-WORM’S FAULTS.
This is not a case of “Snakes in Iceland,” for the Book-Worm has faults. One of his faults is his proneness to regard books as mere merchandise and not as vehicles of intellectual profit, that is to say, to be read. Too many collectors buy books simply for their rarity and with too little regard to the value of their contents The Circassian slave-dealer does not care whether his girls can talk sense or not, and too many men buy books with a similar disregard to their capacity for instructing or entertaining. It seems to me that a man who buys books which he does not read, and especially such as he cannot read, merely on account of their value as merchandise, degrades the noble passion of bibliomania to the level of a trade When I go through such a library I think of what Christ said to the traders in the Temple. Another fault is his lack of independence and his tendency to imitate the recognized leaders. He is too prone to buy certain books simply because another has them, and thus even rare collections are apt to fall into a tiresome routine The collector who has a hobby and independence to ride it is admirable. Let him addict himself to some particular subject or era or “ana,” and try to exhaust it, and before he is conscious he will have accumulated a collection precious for its very singularity. It strikes me that the best example of this idea that I have ever heard of is the attempt, in which two collectors in this country are engaged, to acquire the first or at least one specimen of every one of the five hundred fifteenth century printers. If this should ever succeed, the great libraries of all the world would be eager for it, and the undertaking is sufficiently arduous to last a lifetime.
Sometimes out of this fault, sometimes independently of it, arises the fault by which book collecting degenerates into mere rivalry—the vulgar desire of display and ambition for a larger or rarer or costlier accumulation than one’s neighbor has The determination not to be outdone does not lend dignity or worth to the pursuit which would otherwise be commendable. During the late civil war in this country the chaplain of a regiment informed his colonel, who was not a godly person, that there was a hopeful revival of religion going on in a neighboring and rival regiment, and that forty men had been converted and baptized. “Dashed if I will submit to that,” said the swearing colonel: “Adjutant, detail fifty men for baptism instantly!” So Mr. Roe, hearing that Mr. Doe has acquired a Caxton or other rarity of a certain height, and absolutely flawless except that the corners of the last leaf have been skillfully mended and that six leaves are slightly foxed, cannot rest night or day for envy, but is like the troubled sea until he can find a copy a sixteenth of an inch taller, the corners of whose leaves are in their pristine integrity, and over whose brilliant surface the smudge of the fox has not been cast, and then how high is his exaltation! Not that he cares anything for the book intrinsically, but he glories in having beaten Doe Now if any speaks to him of Doe’s remarkable copy, he can draw out his own and create a surprise in the bosom of Doe’s adherent. The laurels of Miltiades no longer deprive him of rest. He has overcome in this trivial and childish strife concerning size and condition, and he holds the champion’s belt for the present. He not only feels big himself but he has succeeded in making Doe feel small, which is still better. I don’t know whether there will be any book-collecting in Mr. Bellamy’s Utopia, but if there is, it will not be disfigured by such meanness, but collectors will go about striving to induce others to accept their superior copies and everything will be as lovely as in Heine’s heaven, where geese fly around ready cooked, and if one treads on your corn it conveys a sensation of exquisite delight.
It has been several times remarked by moralists that human nature is selfish. One of course does not expect another to relinquish to him his place in a “queue” at a box-office or his turn at a barber’s shop, but in the noble and elegant pursuit of book-collecting it would be well to emulate the politeness of the French at Fontenoy, and hat in hand offer our antagonist the first shot But I believe the only place where the Book-Worm ever does that is the auction room.
I no sooner come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness.
—Heinsius.
The modern Book-Worm is not the simple and absent-minded creature who went by this name a century ago or more. He is no mere antiquarian, Dryasdust or Dominie Sampson, but he is a sharp merchant, or a relentless broker, or a professional railroad wrecker, or a keen lawyer, or a busy physician, or a great manufacturer—a wide awake man of affairs, quite devoid of the conventional innocency and credulity which formerly made the name of Book-Worm suggestive of a necessity for a guardian or a committee in lunacy No longer does he inquire, as Becatello inquired of Alphonso, King of Naples, which had done the better—Poggius, who sold a Livy, fairly writ in his own hand, to buy a country home near Florence, or he, who to buy a Livy had sold a piece of land? No longer is the scale turned in the negotiation of a treaty between princes by the weight of a rare book, as when Cosimo dei Medici persuaded King Alphonso of Naples to a peace by sending him a codex of Livy. No longer does the Book-Worm sit in his modest book-room, absorbed in his adored volumes, heedless of the waning lamp and the setting star, of hunger and thirst, unmindful of the scent of the clover wafted in at the window, deaf to the hum of the bees and the low of the kine, blind to the glow of sunsets and the soft contour of the blue hills, and the billowy swaying of the wheat field before the gentle breath of the south No longer can it be said that