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THE DIVERSIONS
OF A
BOOKWORM.
T H E D I V E R S I O N S
OF A
B O O K - W O R M .
*ocº
J. OGERS REES,
Author of T
“THE PLEASURES OF A Book-worM,” ETC.
SECOND EDITION.
“My choicest entertainment I find in a corner with a book.”
I ON OON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1887.
‘ūſo
ALEXANDER IRELAND,
WHOSE KNOWLEDGE OF BOOKS
IS SURPASSED ON LY
BY HIS
KINDLINESS OF HEART,
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
£g £ngcribeb.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
The Author has taken the opportunity
afforded him by the call for a second
edition of this little book to make it the
more complete by the addition of an index
which has been carefully compiled by Mr.
F. Grahame Aylward (one of Mr. Ellis'
indefatigable colleagues in the work of
“The Shelley Concordance”), to whom he
desires to record his hearty thanks.
. J. R. R.
CARDIFF,
May, 1887.

GS$º:
C O N T ENTS.
PAGE
THE BOOKWORM’s STUDY - - - I
SOME OTHER FOLKs’ STUDIES - - 25
AN IDEAL STUDY - - - - 83
THE COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH - - - Ioë
OTHER COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
DREAMS AND BOOKS - - - I56
THE LOVED BOOKS OF SOME OTHER FOLKS 214
APPENDIX - - - - - 245
INDEX tº- - - - - 259

THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
I.
THE Fates have forbidden me to look
to literature as a life-work, and I am
content ; for if the truth will out, I
have always considered this matter as
did Washington Irving, cordially agree-
ing with him that “literature and the
elegant arts must grow up side by side
with the coarser plants of daily neces-
sity; and must depend for their cul-
ture, not on the exclusive devotion of
time and wealth, nor the quickening
rays of titled patronage, but on hours
and seasons snatched from the pur-
suit of worldly interests by intelligent
and public-spirited individuals.” My
life continues a duality—now crammed
I
-- *

2 THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
with the plain practicality of pounds,
shillings, and pence; anon “full of
sweet dreams” and “quiet breathings.”
During the broad glare of sunlight
my attention is wholly given to the
affairs of the commercial world ; but
when the softened light of evening
Creeps on apace, the press of busy
shoulders is unfelt in the sweet com-
panionship of books—loved friends,
who being dead yet speak with words
that charm, and lead, and help one to
forget.
From this it may be gathered that
my dreams are, at least, not morbid ;
that my life is qualified sufficiently by
the actual to preserve it from rust ;
and that if occasionally the memory
of a broad expanse of sunlit sea does
intrude, its harm is not very serious if
it only leads one to declare that, at
least, he will be buried where nature
rests under the kiss of the westerly
sea-breeze.
THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY. 3
|But of my day-dreams, what exists
and what should exist are strangely
mingled in them ay be gleaned
from what is wri
Even in building
book-lover's
not fail Öremember, nor should I like
to forget, the little corners that have
been sacred to the men who yet live
with us in our best hours of rest and
seclusion. Wrapped in the cosiness
of our inner life, our quiet pleasure is
enhanced by remembering what simi-
lar cosiness has been enjoyed in the
past, or is being enjoyed in the present,
by those whose expressed thoughts
and revealed dreams are to us so many
assurances that our deepest seclusion
is but a withdrawal from mere acquaint-
ances that truest friendships may be
reached and understood and enjoyed.
If a man spends his days in the world
of business, the hours of the morning
and evening are too sacred to be




I—2
4. THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
wasted on trivialities, either of com-
panionship or occupation. 'Tis the
season given hiº.ºe All-wise Gºver
of Good in z % /ive his life and
dreamz /.2s dº In the multitude
of conflictin which just
now whirl a man along ºthis daily
struggle for existence, it is surely some-
thing gained to practically appre-
ciate the truth of Matthew Arnold's
lines:
“Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery !”
Ah! to find ourselves and to be
ourselves, if only for a brief season, is
no mean luxury. And where can this
finding and being occur but in a true
man's home, the Sweetest, the fairest,
the most romantic place in life, whereall
that is best and brightest shines with
steady and purest lustre, and where
all that is strong and great in a man
finds encouragement and growth
In busy days, followed by pleasant




THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY. 5.
evenings in the study, I am content to
live. As sometimes no uncommon plea-
sure is culled from the most ordinary
surroundings, so the mere fact that the
house in which I live in the heart of
this busy town is an old one and has
a history, helps me to look upon
existence as not altogether glaring or
divorced from romance. A man may
surround himself with an atmosphere
of fiction spun out of his own brain,
and existing only for himself, if he
cannot find it already manufactured
and at hand.
Only consider for a moment the
charms which linger round an old
house. The very uncertainty in which
its past is enveloped is favourable to
the dreamer, especially if the building
has stood, as this one has, untouched
by modern improvements, conscious
of its own old-fashioned comfort,
while the busy march of commercial
progress has reared all round it showy
6 THE BOOKWORIM'S STUDY.
structures of questionable stability.
Here, as I sit of an evening, I often
summon its past occupants from out
their shadowy hiding-places. Some
of their names are on record; now
and then an old inhabitant recollects
who they were, what they looked like,
how they lived, and where they wor-
shipped. The roughness of the rub-in
of these figure-pictures favours their
reconstruction through imagination.
The little known about their outer
life interferes in no way with the daily
inner life which here, in my seclusion,
I now live over again with these folk.
And after all, they were but fragments
of humanity; and Sorrow and pleasure,
mingled with uncertainty and disap-
pointment, were in their days what
they are in ours. The merry ring of
wedding-bells brought joy then as
now ; and the finger of death was cold
in the past as it is in the present.
Were those who sat and moved in
THE BOOK WORM’S STUDY. 7
these rooms Puritans in their thoughts
and lives P. If so, what pictures did
they have upon these walls P. Were
they fond of the merry round of social
life 2 If so, what were the prayers
they breathed at eventide with knees
pressed upon these floors P Did they
thank God for the prattle of children's
voices about them in the Sunny days
of Summer; or did they, in gloomy
Composure, live on year after year in a
self-absorbed existence P The answers
I frame to fit these questions must
remain mine. They are part of the
life I live in this old house; and,
moreover, they could by no possibility
interest my readers.
Then the old garden in which the
house stands has existed as such for a
century and a half, and is a Sweet spot
to linger in. It is no modern grass-
plot closely shaven, and dignified with
the title of lawn. Old trees, which
laugh at the measurement of your
3 THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
arms round their trunks, are numerous
here; the walls are high, forbidding
the impertinent intrusion of neigh-
bours' prying, and are covered with a
plentiful growth of ivy. Here the
birds build and make the air melodi-
ous with their song. *
As I pretend to no great skill as a
gardener, portions of the garden are
allowed to run wild ; but the very
wilderness they shape for themselves
makes the trimness of other gardens
appear paltry and forbidding. The
flowers are mostly old-fashioned peren-
nials & which live through storm and
fair weather, bending and lifting their
heads alternately as the blast or the
sunshine visits them.
This, then, is what my study-window
immediately looks out upon, while
away in the distance one just catches
* Hawthorne's favourites were sunflowers and
hollyhocks; and his son remembers how he used
to stand, with his hands behind his back, contem-
plating the great dignified plants. .
THE BOOK WORM’S STUDY. 9
a glimpse of one of the Welsh hills.
And that very hill has become a
friend, and necessary to the comfort-
able feeling of life. It, however, answers
another purpose for the younger por-
tions of our family, who come in the .
morning to consult me regarding the
weather. The statement I get placed
before me with its accompanying in-
terrogation generally runs:
“The hill looks quite near this
morning, papa; do you think we
shall have rain * -
The room in which no inconsider-
able portion of my life is spent, opens
out, as I have said, upon this old
garden. And, although I am chary
of admitting to it strangers in the
flesh, you, my gentle reader, may now
peep in upon it through the open
door ; for if you are to follow me
through the pages of this little volume,
now busy with me and my books; now
sharing my dreams; now taking part
IO THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
in the conversation of near friends,
you should, I think, be able to “place
yourself.” You see there is nothing
very particular about it or in it.
“But it is comfortable,” you say.
“True.”
You peep again, and substitute the
word “cosy” for your previous “com-
fortable;” and I admit that yoursecond
description is the more just of the
tWO.
“Your chairs are comfortable, your
rug looks warm, and your slippers
appear as friendly as the pipe I see
by the side of your pen on the table.”
Continue, my friend, satisfy your-
self now, for, remember, visits into
this odd corner of the house are rarely
indulged in by acquaintances, and
only sometimes by friends.
“You have plenty of books, a few
busts, Ah ! one of Carlyle there, in
a niche above the piano, Surrounded
by the seven etchings of the Chelsea
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. 11
Sage. Permit me to look more closely
at it, especially as I have failed to
procure one myself.”
“Certainly.”
And as you look at it, remarking
its beauty as a work of art, and its
truthfulness as a likeness, I stand at
the door and gaze wistfully at the
broad line of purple in the west,
thinking sorrowfully of the young
artist-friend whose last work on earth
had been that “labour of love.”
The pictures which strike you as
being in harmony with my nook are,
I see, copies of Sir Walter Scott in his
library at Abbotsford, and Burns at
his desk. But you must not omit
to notice the engraving of Dickens's
vacant chair, that etching of Lord
Tennyson, and those portraits of
Emerson and Longfellow.
But you speak of departing, kindly
visitor; and I accompany you to
the door, glad to be alone again
I 2 THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
with my thoughts, for you have driven
me once more in upon myself by that
unintentional allusion to the friend I
have lost, and ill can spare.
II.
STROLLING about the old garden, I
sometimes think of the remarkable
men who used to wander about an-
other old garden—that of Dante Ros-
setti in Chelsea; for at one time the
poet-painter had living with him his
brother William, Swinburne, and
George Meredith. I am happily,
however, without the “birds and fowls
of all kinds, and beasts of nearly all
kinds too—dogs, cats, wombats, kanga-
roos, armadilloes, all manner of crea-
tures,” which used to tenant Rossetti's
demesne. I am content to have only
the Swallows skimming about, and the
bees passing from flower to flower,
while the song-birds stretch their little
throats in the trees.
THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY. I3
And with those men what discourses
on art and letters there must have
been in the evenings, in the studio
which opened out into the Chelsea
garden from the ground-floor I
wonder what Carlyle, living within a
stone’s-throw of the house,” thought
of the talented group who made it
their habitation 1 Busy as he was at
this time with his voluminous Frede-
zick the Great, he had not many
moments to spare on such (to him)
paltry dalliers with the earnestness of
life. The man who could indicate the
narrowness of his artistic sympathies
by declaring that “Tennyson wrote in
verse because the Schoolmasters had
* Carlyle did not like “birds and fowls of all
kinds.” In his reminiscences of his wife we find
him writing : “House was hardly finished, when
there arose that of the ‘demon fowls,’ as she ap-
propriately named them ; macaws, cochin-chinas,
endless concert of crowing, cackling, shrieking
roosters (from a bad or misled neighbour, next door)
which cut us off from sleep or peace, at times alto-
gether, and were like to drive me mad, and her
through me, through sympathy with me.”
I4. THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
taught him that it was great to do so,
and had thus been turned from the
true path for a man ;” that “Burns had
in like manner been turned from his
vocation,” and that “Shakespeare had
not had the good sense to see that it
would have been better to write
straight on in prose,” would certainly
have been scornful of the aims and
dreams of his near neighbours, or, to
say the least of it, would have been
sorely tempted to put to them the
question he laid before William Black,
“But when are ye goin’ to do some
zwark 2° And yet the heroism, the
forgetfulness of self, that prompted
|Rossetti in the seclusion of his Chelsea
home to paint and poetize without
caring a straw what outsiders thought
of his life or his productions, seems
to us in some measure akin to the
temper in which Carlyle himself ac-
complished his best work. Alas, how
circumscribed is human sympathy
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. I5
how little one great man is really
acquainted with the spirit of another
Hawthorne knew where to touch his
canvas with effect when he drew the
portrait for which he himself probably
sat : “Like all other men around
whom an engrossing purpose wreathes
itself, he was insulated from the mass
of humankind. He had no aim, no
pleasure, no sympathies, but what
were intimately connected with his
art.”
Sitting here in my study of an
evening, I often find pleasure in re-
calling to memory the descriptions
of the favourite nooks of great men
—authors in particular. It is, cer-
tainly, no mean pleasure to be able
at times to enter with the realism of
a fervent imagination into the lives
of worthy men who have made their
mark and passed on—thus sharing
with them their strength and their
triumphs, and the seasons of peaceful
I6 THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
rest which have sometimes come to
them, as they should come to every
struggler, in the evening of life, sweet
as the sunshine which follows the
storm. It has been said that of all
the men distinguished in this or any
other age, Dr. Johnson has left upon
posterity the strongest and most vivid
impression, so far as person, manners,
disposition, and conversation are con-
cerned. We do but name him, or
open a book which he has written,
and the sound and action recall to the
imagination at once his form, his
merit, his peculiarities, nay, the very
uncouthness of his gestures and the
deep impressive tones of his voice.
We learn not only what he said, but
how he said it. And all this is cer-
tainly by reason of the minute parti-
culars of the man under the various
conditions of life which we find in
Boswell's gossip. It is through Bos-
well's tattle that Johnson thus looms
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. 17
strong and vivid, rather than through
any writings of his own.
But this prying into particulars can
be carried to a ridiculous extent, as,
for instance, when one descends to
inquire :
“How oft, in Homer, Paris curl’d his hair;
If Aristotle's cap were round or square;
If in the cave where Dido first was sped,
To Tyre she turn’d her heels, to Troy her head?”
I would, however, at this point,
repeat the indication I have given of
the way the wind of my fancy blows,
by candidly avowing that, notwith-
standing the glamour and witchery
De Quincey has thrown round the
room, “seventeen feet by twelve, and
not more than seven and a half feet
high,” in which he spent so many
happy hours, to me the fact that his
cottage stood in a valley eighteen
miles from any town, rather militates
against its being considered an ideal
nest. I pretend not to be a man of
learning ; I am but a lover of books.
o
*
I8 THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
|
I am not self-contained as great men
are, who, with burdens of wisdom
which others must have acquaintance
with before their happiness or higher
welfare is secure, are content to dwell
anywhere so that they may, undis-
turbed, spin out their wisdom-web. I
rather like to think of Tennyson's
picture in the Gardener's Daughter:
“Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad
Stream,
That stirred with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crown'd with the minster-towers.
The fields between
Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-uddered kine,
And all about the large lime feathers low,
The lime a summer home of murmurous wings.”
The occasional rub against men
and women of the world is certainly
worth something if it but creates an
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. 19
intenser longing for the quiet of the
study and the companionship of
books. After the hurry and scurry of
life in the glaring light and the dusty
day, 'tis something to find the cool
retreat where “are the tombs of such
as cannot die.” To stroll with Izaak
Walton, or to sit with Charles Lamb
in the silent evening of a day that has
been spent “on 'Change,” is to find
again the soul which for a season had
been lost. There is a story told of an
old sergeant who took to himself a
wife, and when asked one day by a
superior officer what made him think
of marrying at his time of life, re-
plied : “Why, an' please your honour,
they tease and put me out of humour
when abroad, so I go home and beat
my wife.” The lover of good books,
when he gets out of humour with the
world, goes home, and, picking up a
favourite author, finds entertainment
of a kind more soothing to the ruffled
2—2
2O THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY.
spirit than even the amusement of the
Old Sergeant.
The very naming of a man's study.
should carry with it the idea of free-
dom from interruption and noise of
every kind. Scott, however, penned
his Rokeby in the midst of a very
Babel, created by masons and carpen-
ters busy building. At this time he
had no room of his own, but worked
with his wife and children, his ser-
vants and all the building fraternity
round him. If he wanted at any
particular time to indulge in a little
quiet, this was only to be secured in
a rough home-made fashion by set-
ting his desk in the recess of his
window, and shielding his retreat
by hanging up curtains at his back.
Later on, he used to sit of a morning
at his work with his study always
open to his children and dogs. He
never considered the tattle of his
children as any disturbance. “They
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. 21
went and came as pleased their
fancy. He was always ready to
answer their questions ; and when
they, unconscious how he was en-
gaged, entreated him to lay down his
pen and tell them a story, he would
take them on his knee, repeat a
ballad or a legend, kiss them, and set
them down again to their marbles or
ninepins, and resume his labour as if
refreshed by the interruption.” The
position of Burns I can understand a
little better. He composed his songs in
the open air, and the music of nature is
no interruption. Their mere transfer
to paper could easily be done by him
of an evening at his window, while his
wife went on with her spinning and
the children with their play.”
Scott's example in one other matter
has failed to infect many. Who could
turn out of bed at five o'clock in the
* Like many other writers, Hawthorne had
always to be alone at his work. No one ever saw
him in the act of writing—not even his wife.
22 THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
morning all the year round, and be
at his desk by six P The sight of
an unlit fire is enough to freeze the
warmest idea. It would be different
could one depend upon the sunshine
being always in waiting. But how
many days in the year do we really
get sunshine? And Thomas Love
Peacock was not above getting up
morning after morning with the sum.
But he had to light his own fire. I
fail to see why he should thus tamper
with the rights of the night, when
under the friendliness of full sunshine
he could seat himself on his garden
lawn, “with the door of his library
open behind him, showing delicious
vistas of shady shelves.” The sun
should be allowed to dally over his
toilet, uninterrupted by mortal gaze,
for certainly a couple of hours after
his rising. To push acquaintance
with a friend thus early in the morn-
ing is an outrage on all feelings of
THE BOOKWORM'S STUDY. 23
delicacy, a tearing in shreds of every
consideration of true etiquette. Rather
let us think of the author of Waverley
“clothed and in his right mind” in
his quiet little study in Edinburgh,
busy with his manuscript when the
candles were brought in, “and God
knows how long after that.”
Lamb pretended to take a positive
delight in the smell of the taper,
which he declared lingered about the
richest descriptions of sunrise. Un-
like old Dr. Johnson, it used to
take something more powerful than
Burton's Anatomy of Melanchody to
get him out of bed two hours before
rising-time. And indeed, upon due
consideration of the matter, such
morning haste would deprive one
altogether of the previous evening's
pleasure of reading one’s self to sleep.
Wycherley used to woo the Goddess
of Dreams in a truly bookish manner,
closing his eyes at nights fresh from
24 THE BOOK WORM'S STUDY.
the pages of either Montaigne, Roche-
foucauld, Seneca, or Gracian; for these
were his favourite authors. His prac-
tice seems to have been to write in
the morning on subjects similar to
those which had attracted his atten-
tion in the evening's reading, so
using the thoughts he had gleaned,
or rather, thus finding them again in
his own language after having lived
in their company through the hours
of the night. Pope records this as
one of the strangest phenomena he
had ever observed in the human
mind; and what he relates has every
appearance of truth, for, during one
whole winter, he visited Wycherley
almost every evening and morning.
sº


Bºğ
SOME OTHER FOLKS'
STUDIES.
I.
THE library of Southey at Keswick
must have been little short of a special
dispensation of Providence to the re-
markable men who gathered at one
time in the Lake district. Coleridge
called it his wife, and Wordsworth
borrowed from its riches; yet not
always, I apprehend, with that wel-
come which he could desire, for he
was Slovenly and barbarous in his
treatment of such printed treasures.
“You might as well turn a bear into
a tulip garden as let Wordsworth loose
in your library.” De Quincey has
given us in his Confessions an admir-
26 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
able picture of his own study, which
he describes as being contrived “a
double debt to pay,” a drawing-room
Crammed with a plain scholar's daily
food. In his Recollections of the Lakes
he paints for us another interior.
“Southey's collection” (so goes the
word-picture) “occupied a separate
room, the largest, and every way the
most agreeable, in the house; and
this room was styled, and not osten-
tatiously (for it really merited that
name), the Library. The house it-
self—Greta Hall–stood upon a little
eminence, overhanging the river Greta.
There was nothing remarkable in its
internal arrangements; in all respects
it was a very plain, unadorned family
dwelling.” . . . Interesting this room
(the library) was, indeed, and in a
degree not often rivalled. The col-
* Coleridge lived at one time with Southey, and
had a separate study, which was distinguished by
nothing except by an organ amongst its furniture
and by a magnificent view from its window.
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 27
lection of books, which formed the
most conspicuous part of its furniture,
was in all senses a good one. The
books were chiefly English, Spanish,
and Portuguese; well selected, being
the great cardinal classics of the three
literatures, fine copies, and decorated
externally with a reasonable elegance,
so as to make them in harmony with
the other embellishments of the room.
This effect was aided by the horizontal
arrangement upon brackets of many
rare manuscripts, Spanish or Portu-
guese. Made thus gay within, the
room stood in little need of attractions
from without. Yet, even upon the
gloomiest day of winter, the landscape
from the different windows was too
permanently commanding in its gran-
deur, too essentially independent of
the seasons, to fail in fascinating the
gaze of the coldest and dullest spec-
tator. The lake of Derwentwater in
one direction, with its lovely islands,
28 SOME oth ER FOLKS STUDIES.
a lake about nine miles in circuit, and
shaped pretty much like a boy's kite;
the lake of Bassenthwaite in another ;
the mountains of Newlands shaping
themselves as pavilions; the gorgeous
confusion of Borrowdale just revealing
its sublime chaos through the narrow
vista of its gorge; all these objects
lay in different angles to the front;
whilst the sullen rear, not visible on
this side of the house, was closed
by the vast and towering masses of
Skiddaw and Blencathara, mountains
which are rather to be considered as
frontier barriers, and chains of hilly
ground, cutting the county of Cum-
berland into great chambers and differ-
ent climates, than as insulated emi-
nences, so vast is the area which they
occupy. This grand panorama of
mountain scenery, so varied, so exten-
sive, and yet having the delightful
feeling about it of a deep seclusion
and dell-like sequestration from the
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 29
world—a feeling which, in the midst
of so expansive an area spread out
below his windows, could not have
been sustained by any barriers less
elevated than Skiddaw or Blanca-
thara; this congregation of hill and
lake, so wide, and yet so prison-like
in its separation from all beyond it, lay
for ever under the eyes of Southey.”
Here, within the four corners of his
library with its magnificent outlook,
Southey was content to live and work.
“Imagine me,” he writes, “in this
great study of mine, from breakfast
till dinner, from dinner till tea, and
from tea till supper, in my old black
coat, my corduroys alternately with
the long worsted pantaloons and
gaiters in one, and the green shade,
and sitting at my desk, and you have
my picture and my history.” His
daily plan of work he describes in one
place as “Three pages of history
after breakfast (equivalent to five in
30 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
small quarto printing); then to tran-
scribe and copy for the press, or to
make my selections and biographies,
or what else suits my humour, till
dinner-time ; from dinner till tea I
read, write letters, see the newspaper,
and very often indulge in a siesta, for
sleep agrees with me, and I have a
good substantial theory to prove that
it must, for as a man who walks much
requires to sit down and rest himself,
so does the brain, if it be the part
most worked, require its repose.
After tea I go to poetry, and correct
and re-write and copy till I am tired,
and then turn to anything else till
supper; and this is my life, which, if
it be not a very merry one, is yet as
happy as heart could wish.”
We all know the story Wordsworth
was so fond of relating, of how a visitor
once called at Rydal Mount, and asked
permission of the servant to see the
poet’s study. The girl took him into
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 31
a little room containing some odd
volumes Scattered about, and said :
“This is the master's library, where
he keeps his books; but,” nodding in
the direction of the window, “his study
is out of doors.”.” Most of Words-
worth's poetry was composed “out of
doors,” as he walked about in the
woods, or on the terraces cut in the
rock near the house, or by the side of
* “The two or three hundred volumes of
Wordsworth occupied a little homely-painted
bookcase, fixed into one of two shallow recesses
formed on each side of the fireplace by the pro-
jection of the chimney in the little sitting-room
upstairs. They were ill bound, or not bound at
all—in boards, sometimes in tatters; many were
imperfect as to the number of volumes, mutilated
as to the number of pages: Sometimes, where it
seemed worth while, the defects being supplied by
manuscript ; sometimes not. In short, everything
showed that the books were for use, and not for
show ; and their limited amount showed that their
possessor must have independent sources of enjoy-
ment to fill up the major part of his time. In
reality, when the weather was tolerable, I believe
that Wordsworth rarely resorted to his books
(unless, perhaps, to some little pocket edition of
a poet which accompanied him in his rambles),
except in the evenings, or after he had tired him-
self by walking.”—DE QUINCEY.
32 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
“the brook that runs through Ease-
dale,” and was generally associated in
his mind with some rural sight or
sound. The poet tells of the compo-
sition of the White Doe of Ry/stone,
which was begun at Stockton-on-Tees.
“The country,” he says, “was flat, and
the weather was rough. I was accus-
tomed every day to walk to and fro
under the shelter of a row of stacks
in a field at a small distance from the
town, and there poured out my verses
aloud, as freely as they would come.’
But this was while on a visit to his
brother-in-law. The study he loved
was the picturesque country surround-
ing his own home at the lakes. Lamb,
on the contrary, could live and work
only in London, and declared that his
“love for natural scenery would be
abundantly satisfied by the patches of
long waving grass and the stunted
trees that blacken in the old church-
yard nooks, which you may yet find
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 33
bordering on Thames Street.” Al-
though once lured to Keswick by
Coleridge, Lamb’s raptures about the
scenery did not rise very high, and
after admitting that Skiddaw was
grand and fine enough in its way,
and that probably he should enjoy
life in Coleridge's country for a year
or So, he was compelled to confess
that he should “mope and pine away
if he had no prospect of again seeing
Fleet Street.” Writing to Wordsworth
in I 801, he said : “I don’t much care
if I never see a mountain in my life.
I have passed all my days in London,
until I have formed as many and in-
tense local attachments as any of you
mountaineers can have done with dead
nature. The lighted shops of the
Strand and Fleet Street, the innumer-
able trades, tradesmen, and customers,
coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the
bustle and wickedness round about
Covent Garden ; the very women of
3
34 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
the Town ; the watchmen, drunken
scenes, rattles; life awake, if you
awake, at all hours of the night; the
impossibility of being dull in Fleet
Street ; the crowds, the very dirt and
mud, the sun shining upon houses and
pavements, the print-shops, the old
book-stalls, parsons cheapening books,
coffee-houses, Steams of Soups from
kitchens, the pantomimes—London
itself a pantomime and a masquerade
—all these things work themselves
into my mind, and feed me, without
a power of Satiating me. . . .
“My attachments are all local,
purely local. . . . The room where I
was born, the furniture which has been
before my eyes all my life, a book-
case which has followed me about like
a faithful dog (only exceeding him
in knowledge) wherever I have moved,
old chairs, old tables, streets, squares,
where I have Sunned myself, my old
school, - these are my mistresses.
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 35
Have I not enough, without your
mountains 2 I do not envy you. I
should pity you, did I not know that
the mind will make friends of any-
thing.”
Let us place by the side of Lamb's
confession of faith what Southey wrote
of London : “To dwell in that foul
city—to endure the common, hollow,
cold, lip-intercourse of life—to walk
abroad and never see green field, or
running brook, or setting Sun—will it
not,” he asks, “wither up my faculties
like some poor myrtle that in
‘Town air
Pines in the parlour window 2’’’
It is interesting to glean what par-
ticulars we can of the rooms Lamb
used successively as Studies. In 1806,
under the impression that he could
write his farce better away from home,
he hired anapartment at three shillings
a week, to which he betook himself of
an evening, to be alone with his work.
3–2
36 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
Within a month, however, we find
Mary Lamb writing : “The lodging
is given up, and here he is again—
Charles, I mean. When he went to
the poor lodging, after the holidays
I told you he had taken, he could not
endure the solitariness of them, and I
had no rest till I promised to believe
his solemn protestations that he could
and would write as well at home as
there.” In 1809 Lamb writes to
Coleridge: “I have been turned out
of my chambers in the Temple by a
landlord who wanted them for himself,
but I have got other at No. 4, Inner
Temple Lane, far more commodious
and roomy. I have two rooms on the
third floor, and five rooms above, with
an inner staircase to myself. . . . . But
alas ! the household gods are slow to
come in a new mansion. They are in
their infancy to me; I do not feel them
yet; no hearth has blazed to them
yet. How I hate and dread new
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 37
places! . . . . I have put up my shelves.
You never saw a bookcase in more
true harmony with the contents than
what I’ve nailed up in a room, which
though new, has more aptitudes for
growing old than you shall often see;
as one sometimes gets a friend in the
middle of life, who becomes an old
friend in a short time.” In November
1814, Mary Lamb writes to a corre-
spondent: “We still live in Temple
Lane, but I am now sitting in a room
you never saw. Soon after you left
us we were distressed by the cries of
a cat, which seemed to proceed from
the garrets adjoining to ours, and only
separated from ours by the locked door
on the farther side of my brother’s
bedroom, which you know was the
little room at the top of the kitchen
stairs. We had the lock forced and
let poor puss out from behind a panel
of the wainscot, and she lived with us
from that time, for we were in grati-
38 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
tude bound to keep her, as she had
introduced us to four untenanted,
unowned rooms, and by degrees
we have taken possession of these
unclaimed apartments. . . . Last
winter, my brother being unable to
pursue a work he had begun, owing
to the kind interruptions of friends
who were more at leisure than himself,
I persuaded him that he might write
at his ease in one of these rooms, as
he could not then hear the door-knock,
or hear himself denied to be at home,
which was sure to make him call out
and convict the poor maid in a fib.
Here, I said, he might be almost really
not at home. So I put in an old grate
and made him a fire in the largest of
these garrets, and carried in one table
and one chair, and bid him write away,
and consider himself as much alone
as if he were in some lodging in the
midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other
wide unfrequented place, where he
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 39
could expect few visitors to break in
upon his solitude. I left him quite
delighted with his new acquisition,
but in a few hours he came down
again with a sadly dismal face. He
could do nothing, he said, with those
bare, white-washed walls before his
eyes. He could not write in that dull
unfurnished prison. The next day,
before he came home from his office,
I had gathered up various bits of old
carpeting to cover the floor ; and to a
little break the blank look of the bare
walls, I hung up a few old prints that
used to ornament the kitchen, and
after dinner, with great boast of what
an improvement I had made, I took
Charles once more into his new
study. . . . To conclude this long
story about nothing, the poor de-
spised garret is now called the print-
room, and is become our most favourite
sitting-room.”
From the Temple Lamb moved, in
40 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
I817, to Covent Garden, and ten
years afterwards to Enfield, where
several of the later Essays of E/ia.
were written. The house “was divided
by a narrow passage, and the two
sitting-rooms on the left hand in
entering, were those inhabited by
the Lambs. Their usual snuggery
was the one looking out on the garden.
Therein was the old library ; the old
engravings covered the walls; and in
that quiet nook Lamb wrote those
immortal pages.”
At Enfield, according to George
Daniel, Lamb took to the culture of
plants. “He watched the growth of
his tulips with the gusto of a veteran
florist, and became learned in all their
gaudy varieties. He grew enamoured
of anemones. He planted, pruned,
and grafted ; and seldom walked
abroad without a bouquet in his
button-hole. The rose was his
favourite flower. . . . I helped him
SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES. 41
to arrange his darling folios (Beau-
mont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and
Company) in his pleasant dining-
room ; to hang in the best light
his portraits of the poets, and his
* Hogarths ' (the latter in old-
fashioned ebony frames) in his newly
finished drawing-room ; and to adorn
the mantelpieces with his Chelsea
china.”
That Lamb had an eye for what
was truly comfortable in the way of a
study, and knew, moreover, how to
cheer a friend’s heart with a few bright
words, might be gathered from his de-
claring, on visiting Leigh Hunt's room
in prison, that there certainly was no
other such apartment except in a
fairy tale. Hunt had carried his re-
fined taste with him even to his place
of confinement : he had the walls
papered with a trellis of roses, the
ceiling coloured with clouds and sky,
and the barred windows screened with
42 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
Venetian blinds, “When my book-
cases were set up,” he himself wrote,
“with their busts, and flowers and a
pianoforte made their appearance,
perhaps there was not a handsomer
room on that side the water. . . .
When I sat amidst my books, and
saw the imaginary sky overhead, and
my paper roses about me, I drank in
the quiet at my ears, as if they were
thirsty.”
This was in 1813. In 1817 “Barry
Cornwall” (another friend of Lamb's)
visited Hunt for the first time. Hunt
was then living at York Buildings, in
a house “small, and scantily fur-
nished.” “In it,” writes the visitor,
“was a tiny room, built out at the
back of the drawing-room or first-
floor, which he appropriated as a study,
and over the door of this was a line
from the Faëry Queen of Spenser,
painted in gold letters. On a small
table in this study, covered with
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 43
humble green baize, Leigh Hunt sat
and wrote his articles for the Etaminer
and Indicator, and his verses. He
had very few books; an edition of
the Italian Poets, in many volumes,
Spenser’s works, and the minor
poems of Milton (edited by Warton),
being, however, amongst them. I
don't think that there was a Shake-
speare. There were always a few cut
flowers, in a glass of water, on the
table.” +
Forty years afterwards, with the
weariness and some of the despon-
dency of age, Procter writes to a
friend : “I shall never see Italy ; I
shall never see Paris. My future is
before me—a very limited landscape,
* In the autumn of 1856 before going abroad,
Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke went to take
leave of Leigh Hunt at “his pretty little cottage
in Cornwall Road, Hammersmith.” “We found
him,” they say, “as of old, with simple, but taste-
ful environments, his books and papers about him,
engravings and plaster-casts around his room,
while he himself was full of his wonted cordiality
and cheerful warmth of reception for old friends.” .
44 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
with scarcely one old friend left in it.”
But the spirit of the book-lover creeps
in anon, and he continues: “I see a
smallish room, with a bow-window
looking South, a bookcase full of
books, three or four drawings, and a
library chair and table (once the pro-
perty of my old friend Kenyon—I
am writing on the table now)—you
have the greater part of the vision
before you.”
II.
IN Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in the
fair New England village of Concord,
rest the mortal remains of Emerson,
Hawthorne, and Thoreau, three great
men whose names alone conspire to
make the little spot a very place
of pilgrimage to the world of letters.
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 45
.*
In this literary Mecca these men
whilst living crossed each other's path
often, and always with kindly smiles
of greeting. The trees loved by
one were loved by the others; the
solitude of the woods was equally
sweet to each ; the Concord river and
the Walden pond knew their most
cherished thoughts ; and in one
house at least—the Old Manse—
two of the three who now rest in
Sleepy Hollow lived and thought in
turns.
“There in the old grey house, whose end we see
Half peeping through the golden willow’s veil,
Whose graceful twigs make foliage through the
year
My Hawthorne dwelt, a scholar of rare worth,
The gentlest man that kindly nature drew.”
But before Hawthorne took up his
residence in the Old Manse, Emerson
had lived there, and in a room “in the
rear of the house, the most delightful
little nook of a study that ever afforded
its Snug seclusion to a scholar,” God
46 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
and Ralph Waldo Emerson had written
AWature.* In this same nook Haw-
thorne afterwards wrote his Mosses,
from the opening chapter of which we
cull the following:
“When I first saw the room its
walls were blackened with the smoke
of unnumbered years, and made still
blacker by the grim prints of Puritan
ministers that hung around. These
worthies looked strangely like bad
angels, or at least like men who had
wrestled so continually with the devil
that somewhat of his sooty fierceness
had been imparted to their own vis-
ages. They had all vanished now ;
a cheerful coat of paint and golden-
tinted paper-hangings lighted up the
small apartment, while the shadow of
a willow tree that swept against the
* Published in 1836 without the author's name.
On the title-page were these words from Plotinus :
“Nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom,
the last thing of the Soul; nature being a thing
which doth only do, but not know.”
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 47
overhanging eaves attempered the
cheery western Sunshine. In place of
the grim prints there was the sweet
and lovely head of one of Raphael's
Madonnas, and two pleasant little
pictures of the Lake of Como. The
only other decorations were a purple
vase of flowers, always fresh, and a
bronze one containing graceful ferns.
My books (few, and by no means
choice, for they were chiefly such
waifs as chance had thrown in my
way) stood in Order about the room,
seldom to be disturbed.
“The study had three windows, set
with little, old-fashioned panes of
glass, each with a crack across it.
The two on the western side looked,
or rather peeped, between the willow
branches, down into the Orchard, with
glimpses of the river through the
trees. The third, facing northward,
commanded a broader view of the
river, at a spot where its hitherto
48 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES,
obscure waters gleam forth into the
light of history.”
But we must refer our readers to
our own source for further information
as to the river, the battle-field, the
orchard, the garden, and the huge
garret, concerning all of which Haw-
thorne wrote with such loving attach-
ment. In the meanwhile the old
books in the upper chamber may be
noticed. “A part of my predecessor's
library,” writes Hawthorne (not Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s library, be it noted),
“was stored in the garret—no unfit
receptacle, indeed, for such dreary
trash as comprised the greater number
of volumes. The old books would
have been worth nothing at an auc-
tion. In this venerable garret, how-
ever, they possessed an interest quite
apart from their literary value, as heir-
looms, many of which had been trans-
mitted down through a series of con-
secrated hands from the days of the
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 49
mighty Puritan divines. Autographs
of famous names were to be seen in
faded ink on some of their fly-leaves;
and there were marginal observations
or interpolated pages closely covered
with manuscript in illegible short-
hand, perhaps concealing matter of
profound truth and wisdom. The
world will never be the better for it.
A few of the books were Latin folios,
written by Catholic authors; others
demolished Papistry, as with a sledge-
hammer, in plain English. A disser-
tation on the Book of Job—which only
Job himself could have had patience
to read—filled at least a score of
small, thick-set quartos, at the rate of
two or three volumes to a chapter.
Then there was a vast folio body of
divinity—too corpulent a body, it
might be feared, to comprehend the
spiritual element of religion. Volumes
of this form dated back two hundred
years or more, and were generally
4
5o SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
bound in black leather, exhibiting pre-
cisely such an appearance as we should
attribute to books of enchantment.
Others, equally antique, were of a size
proper to be carried in the large waist-
coat pockets of old times—diminu-
tive, but as black as their bulkier
brethren, and abundantly interspersed
with Greek and Latin quotations.
These little old volumes impressed
me as if they had been intended for
very large ones, but had been unfor-
tunately blighted at an early stage of
their growth.”
All this causes one involuntarily to
remember the treasures secured by
an eager collector at a fishmonger's
shop in Old Hungerford Market some
fifty years since—autograph signa-
tures of Godolphin, Sunderland, Ash-
ley, Lauderdale, ministers of James II.;
accounts, of the Exchequer Office,
signed by Henry VII. and Henry
VIII; wardrobe accounts of Queen
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 51
Anne, and dividend receipts signed
by Pope, Newton, Dryden, and Wren;
secret service accounts marked with
the “E. G.” of Nell Gwynne; a trea-
tise on the Eucharist, in the boyish
hand of Edward VI. ; and a disquisi-
tion on the Order of the Garter, in
the scholarly writing of Elizabeth—
all of which had been included in
waste-paper cleared out of Somerset
House at £7 a ton.
Then, again, the discovery of
Evelyn's Diary affords one of the
most amusing anecdotes of literary
history, a full account of which is
to be found in Goodhugh’s Library
Mazzala/:
“In the beginning of April, 1813,
Mr. William Upcott (author of the
most valuable bibliographical work
extant on British topography) went to
Wootton, in Surrey, the residence of
the Evelyn family, for the first time,
accompanied by Mr. Bray, the highly
4–2
52 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
respected author of the History of
Surrey, and acknowledged editor of
John Evelyn's Memoirs, for the pur-
pose of arranging and making a
catalogue of the library, which had
been thrown into much confusion by
its removal for safety, in consequence
of accidental fire in an outbuilding.
“Early in the following year (1814)
the task was completed. Sitting
one evening, after dinner, with Lady
Evelyn and her intimate friend Mrs.
Molineaux, Mr. Upcott’s attention
was attracted to a tippet being made
of feathers, on which Lady Evelyn
was employed.
“‘We have all of us our hobbies, I
perceive, my lady, said Mr. Upcott.
“Very true,' rejoined her ladyship;
‘and pray what may yours be?'
“Mine, madam, from a very early age,
began by Collecting provincial copper
tokens, and, latterly, the handwriting
(or autographs) of men who have dis-
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 53
tinguished themselves in every walk
of life.’ ‘Handwritings P answered
Lady Evelyn, with much surprise,
‘what do you mean by handwritings 2
Surely you don't mean old letters ?
at the same time opening the drawer
Of her work-table, and taking out a
small parcel of papers, Some of which
had been just used by Mrs. Molineaux,
as patterns for articles of dress. The
sight of this packet, though of no
literary importance, yet containing
letters written by eminent characters
of the seventeenth century, more
particularly one from the celebrated
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,
afforded the greatest pleasure to Mr.
Upcott, who took occasion to express
his exceeding delight in looking them
over. “Oh I' added Lady Evelyn, “if
you care for papers like those, you
shall have plenty ; for Sylva Evelyn
(the familiar appellation applied to
John Evelyn by his descendants), and
54 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
those who succeeded him, preserved
all their letters.’ Then, ringing for
her confidential attendant, ‘Here,’
said her ladyship, ‘Mr. Upcott tells
me that he is fond of collecting old
letters; take the key of the ebony
cabinet, in the billiard-room, procure
a basket, and bring down some of the
bundles.” Mr. Upcott accompanied
the attendant, and, having brought a
quantity of these letters into the
dining-room, passed one of the most
agreeable evenings imaginable in ex-
amining the contents of each packet;
with the assurance from Lady Evelyn
that he was welcome to lay aside any
that might add to his own collection.
“The following evening the deli-
cious ebony cabinet was visited a
second time, when Evelyn's Kalenda-
rium, as he entitled it, or Diary, a
small quarto volume, without covers,
very closely written with his own
hand, presented itself.”
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 55
But we must curb this gossipy
memory of ours, which, started in this
manner, goes on in recollection heaped
on recollection, revelling in the trea-
sures bibliophiles rave about, which
have been found at odd times cleared
out of old libraries as rubbish, and
return to Emerson, Hawthorne, and
Thoreau, in whose company we
started.
In 1835, Emerson took possession
of the plain, square, wooden house,
on the Lexington Road, east of the
Concord village, and not far from
Walden Pond and the river ; and in
this house the rest of his life was
passed. “It stands among trees, with
a pine-grove across the street in front,
and a small orchard and garden
reaching to a brook in the rear. On
the south-east side it looks toward
another orchard, on the edge of which
formerly stood the picturesque sum-
mer-house built for Mr. Emerson in
56 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
1847-48 by his friend Mr. Bronson
Alcott.” In Scribner’s Monthly for
February, I879, among the woodcuts
illustrative of an interesting article
on “The Homes and Haunts of
Emerson,” is to be found one of the
library. Looking upon it, we see at
once how truthful is the word-picture
we have in Poets' Homes of the “plain,
square room, lined on two sides with
simple wooden shelves filled with
choice books.” “A large mahogany
table stands in the middle, covered
with books, and by the morocco
writing-pad lies the pen which has
had so great an influence for twenty-
five years on the thoughts of two
continents. A large fireplace with
high brass and irons occupies the
lower end, over which hangs a fine
copy of Michael Angelo's Fates, the
faces of the strong-minded women
frowning upon all who would disturb
with idle tongues this haunt of Solemn
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 57
thought. On the mantel-shelf are
busts and statuettes of men promi-
nent in the great reforms of the age,
and a quaint rough idol brought from
the Nile. A few choice engravings
hang upon the walls, and the pine-
trees brush against the windows.”
In the engraving mentioned we get
just a peep into another room beyond,
the “parlour” in which the celebrated
“conversations” were held. Here
have sat at various times men and
women whose names are known and
honoured wherever the English lan-
guage is spoken. “Here Margaret
Fuller, and the other bright figures of
the Dial met for conversation and
consultation.” Thoreau was a daily
visitor, and his wood-notes might
have been unuttered but for the kind
encouragement he ſound here.” But
it would require pages to make but a
brief list of these notable visitors—
Whittier, Longfellow, the Channings,
58 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
the Lowells, the Stanleys, Theodore
Parker, and Bret Harte among the
number. Here, in company with
Emerson, Hawthorne, “the handsome,
moody, despairing genius,” would
sometimes wake up from his “morbid
reveries.”
We have already referred to the
interesting fact that in the Old Manse,
in the room in which Emerson wrote
AWature, Hawthorne also wrote his
Mosses. Previously, in a little “upper
story or attic,” in Herbert Street,
Salem, his Twice-Told Tales had
been written. For those who care to
follow Hawthorne in his subsequent
flittings, marking the spots in which
his books were penned, there are the
two admirable volumes of his /'life by
his son. There is also a charming
woodcut in the Century for July, 1884,
of Hawthorne's nook at The Way-
side, in which he wrote Our Old
A ſome, “a pleasant little room, lofty
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 59
and with vaulted ceiling.” Of this
little study Hawthorne was very fond,
and in it his last work was accom-
plished.
“When I wrote the following pages,
or rather the bulk of them,” Thoreau
tells us, when speaking of his book
Walden, “I lived alone in the woods,
a mile from any neighbour, in a house
which I had built myself, on the shore
of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massa-
chusetts, and earned my living by the
labour of my hands only. My house
was on the side of a hill, immediately
on the edge of the larger wood, in the
midst of a young forest of pitch-pines
and hickories, and half a dozen rods
from the pond, to which a narrow
foot-path led down the hill.” This
was the “writing-case”—the “wooden
inkstand” in which Thoreau “wrote
a good part of his famous Walden,
and this solitary woodland pool was
more to his Muse than all oceans
6o SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
of the planet, by the force of imagi-
nation.” Thoreau is getting to be
better understood just now, thanks
to his careful biographers; and it is
a generally accepted fact that he
“went to the woods because he wished
to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if he
could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when he came to die, dis-
cover that he had not lived.” His
own words are well known : “My
purpose in going to Walden was not
to live cheaply nor to live dearly
there, but to transact some private
business with the fewest obstacles.”
This “private business” was trans-
acted, and remains with us now, and
will be handed down to posterity in
the shape of a book.
III.
THE peculiar conditions which qualify
literary work of all kinds are varied,
SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES. 61
and not to be codified or gauged
according to any known laws. One
author can work anywhere and
everywhere, by his fireside or in the
railway-carriage, always with equal
certainty of copious thought and
loosened speech ; another, only in
the quiet of his study in the early
morning ; a third, never but in the
stillness of the midnight hours: one
needs stimulants; another, the smell
of rose-leaves or dried apples: one
dreads the crowing of his neighbour's
roosters; another considers all this
very insignificant, and beneath his
notice—he waits in painful expect-
ancy for the horrid shriek of the
locomotive which will pass just when
it is not wanted, and always with,
what he thinks, unnecessary noise:
One gets into an unnatural perspira-
tion at the eternal grind of the barrel-
organ ; another accustoms himself
to look upon the Italian with his
62 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
wretched music as no mean relief to
the monotony of a quiet life, and, at
his approach, conjures up all the plea-
sures of life beneath a southern sun
and in the face of the blue Medi-
terranean.*
To some men of genius unfavour-
able circumstances exist only to be
ignored, or else to be conquered with
an iron hand, prompted by an inflexi-
ble will. Set down one of these in a
* Most of Miss Louisa Allcott's stories have
been written in Boston, where she finds more in-
spiration than at Concord. “She never had a
study,” says Mrs. Moulton, “any corner will
answer to write in. She is not particular as to
pens and paper, and an old atlas on her knee is
all the desk she cares for. She has the wonderful
power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time,
thinking them over whenever she is in the mood.
Often, in the middle of the night, she lies awake
and plans whole chapters. In her hardest work-
ing days she used to write fourteen hours in the
twenty-four, scarcely tasting food till her daily
task was done. When she has a story to write
she goes to Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts
herself up in it. In a month or so the book will
be done, and its author comes out ‘tired, hungry,
and cross,’ and ready to go back to Concord and
vegetate for a time,” in the house where Thoreau
died.
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 63
garret through which the wind whistles
or upon which the Sun pours intoler-
able heat, and if he has no inclination
to devote his time to moulding his
chaos of circumstances into more
desirable shape, he will take his pen
or pencil and write or paint such
revelations of the realms of Hope,
Memory, or Imagination, as will
startle the world from indifference
into recognition. By unrolling his
panorama of a Paradise Lost or Re-
gained, a Jerusalem Delivered, or a
Purgatory Explored, he will proclaim
definitely, and with somewhat of defi-
ance, that greatness borrows little or
nought from actual surroundings, but
is its own world to itself. This God-
given gift of genius is, however, rare,
and its recipients form a unique galaxy
to be contemplated wonderingly, but
without knowledge of any laws which
govern it. The condition of its clay-
covering is sometimes pitiable enough.
64 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
Now we see it in a prison, in the
dungeon of a monastery, in captivity
in strange lands, poor and blind,
perishing with hunger, with a blanket
for an only covering held together
by a skewer, hunted down by re-
ligious bigotry, kicked, starved, spat
upon. How mysterious are the ways
of an ever - living Compensation
Often money and luxury wed them-
selves to a dead soul, whilst a living
soul has only its life for its portion
—worldly goods none. The works of
genius in poverty laugh by their very
gorgeousness at the mean environ-
ments of their creators. Lower, how-
ever, in the scale we find genius quali-
fied by talent or mere artistic taste;
and in work resulting from this alloy
the effects of surroundings and cir-
cumstances are plainly to be seen. A
man of mere talent suffers to be burnt
in upon his individuality what a man
of genius casts lightly aside. And to
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 65
ordinary mortals these imprints are
pleasing; they indicate the kinship
existing between themselves and the
author or artist who caters for their
instruction or amusement. They are
on an equal footing ; each is affected
alike by pleasure and pain, comfort
and misery, riches and poverty. In
the case of an author, the world is
affectionate towards him, amicably
disposed, in some cases even lavish
of love, if he will but show that he is
human in his delights, appreciating
the comforts of home, and disposed
to enjoy a good story. As the result
of all this, we find a great deal of an
author’s personality exhibited in the
internal arrangements of his house,
especially of the room in which he
works; this in turn reveals itself in
a somewhat idealized manner in his
books, thus completing the bond
existing between writer and readers.
He has shown himself to us, and we
5
66 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
are content; his life is henceforth ours,
to be pondered over, to rejoice in, or
to cast mud upon.
Take, for instance, this little volume
of poems, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney,
which lies before me. Its whole spirit
and particular workmanship are of a
part with the cheery glimpse given us
of the author and her surroundings.
“Mrs. Whitney sometimes takes her
writing,” says a biographer, “into one
of the barns, and makes a nest for
herself in the soft, fragrant hay-heap.
She used to keep a dictionary and
some books of reference on a little
shelf, which one of the boys fixed up
for her in the mow, and come out
here regularly. We are specially fond
of the place on Sunday, when we
spend the greater part of the morning
here, since there is no church-going
until afternoon. We fling the great
doors wide, and pile the Sweet, fresh
hay on the floor, and sit where we can
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 67
look out upon the picture of waving
trees and distant slopes, which the
lintels enframe; and where
“‘Far off, leaning on each other,
Shining hills on hills arise,
Close as brother leans to brother,
When they press beneath the eyes
Of some father praying blessing,
From the gifts of Paradise.’
“And we have our best talks here, in
the quiet and restfulness which seem
peculiarly the atmosphere of this day
even in this peaceful land, whither the
cares and turmoil of life do not often
penetrate as in the busy places of
the world.”
Here is another volume at hand
which illustrates this subtle inter-
weaving of soul with surroundings.
This also is by an American song-
stress, Celia Thaxter. “Her sprayey
stanzas give us the dip of the sea-
bird's wing, the foam and tangle of
ocean, varied interpretations of clam-
bering Sunrise, mists, and evening's
5–2
68 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
fiery cloud above the main.” And all
this is but perfectly natural ; her talent
has been qualified and fed by that
life of hers at Appledore, one of the
Isles of Shoals, without which it would
have been wanting in the most notice-
able points of its attractiveness. But
examples of this kind flood in upon
Our memory from many lands, where
men and women, thirsting for expres-
sion, have found the materials they
wanted ready collected for them, and
have been happy in their expressed
love of what they wrought in.
Sometimes by means of a strong
love and a fervent imagination, envi-
ronments not altogether pleasing in
themselves may be brought into quiet
subjection, and be made actually to
minister to great faculties. In a paper
on “George Eliot's Country” in The
Century for July, 1885, the writer (Rose
G. Kingsley) grasps this fact firmly.
“From the study " (George Eliot's at
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 69
Foleshill), she writes, “you look on
the exquisite spires of Coventry, or
through the tree-stems on gently
swelling fields with their hedge-
row elms against the sky. It is not a
locality to kindle much enthusiasm
for nature or anything else. But,
depend upon it, that penetrating eye
and mind saw more in these uninter-
esting surroundings than many of the
vulgar herd could see in the Alps
or the “Eternal City’ itself.” George
Eliot's study is sketched briefly by the
same writer: “Upstairs I was taken
into a tiny room over the front door,
with a plain square window. This
was George Eliot's study. Here to
the left on entering was her desk; and
upon a bracket, in a corner between it
and the window, stood an exquisite
statuette of Christ looking towards
her. Here she lived among her books,
which covered the walls.”
Some men's studies do not indicate
7o SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
the tastes and habits of their real
owners so much as they do those
of the mistress of the house. Only
let a woman with assistants in the
shape of dusters and brushes step into
an author’s den, and the transforma-
tion begins. Papers are sorted and
“put tidy,” books arranged and re-
arranged; and then when the rightful
king of the realm returns, lo! nothing is
to be found; the new arrangement has
destroyed his arrangement; the new
tidiness has made chaos of his order.
Woe be to the man who, in a mo-
ment of weakness, gives his consent
to the use of his study as a breakfast-
room. Let but the most shadowy
ghost of a domestic arrangement into
your Sanctum, and it is no longer
yours. The genius of Order and
arrangement has been unbottled, and
will henceforth proceed to grow until
it attains such mighty proportions that
not a corner shall be free from its
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 71
presence and influence. And what
man, with anything less than a heart
of stone, could resist such soft insinu-
ations as these ?
“My dear, don't you think you
could let me put those odd papers on
the lowest shelf of your cupboard P”
(Pray note the covert bait, “ your cup-
board,” as well as the knowledge of
human nature evidenced by its use.)
“Don’t you think, dear, that you
could put those volumes up on the
shelves somewhere P”
It is, however, when a student
hears the near approach of the
long-handled brush, accompanied
by the simple words “spring-clean-
ing,” that he begins involuntarily
to review the old days of his “ love’s
young dream,” and to lament sadly
that so much dreaming should have
blinded his eyes to the necessity of pro-
viding against these inroads into his
peace—before marriage. Such mat-
72 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
ters should, to a book-lover, form a far
more important subject for marriage-
settlement than aught so trivial as
money or land.
O for an inspired ten command-
ments for the wives of literary men
Had I my will I would crucify
in print every author-pestering wife
that ever lived ; and yet even to
this there are objections. Readers
may, instead of pouring scorn on the
pests, devote their energy to finding
hard names for the men who were
Soft enough to endure the nonsense.
For my own part, when I read that
Albert Dürer’s wife was a shrew, and
compelled her husband to drudge at
his profession during every possible
hour, merely to gratify her own sordid
passion ; that Berghem’s wife, when-
ever she thought her husband weary
at his work, and taking a little of the
rest of indolence, would rouse him up
by thumping a stick against the ceil-
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 73
ing, to which the obedient artist had
to answer by stamping his foot to
indicate that he was not napping ;
when I consider these two instances,
instead of blaming the women, I rather
cry “Fools” at the men.
To a literary man’s heart and lips
the simple prayer, “Give me neither
poverty nor riches, but feed me with
food convenient for me,” is admirably
suited. To this another may be added,
also on account of its suitability: “Let
my study be neither gorgeous nor
mean, but quiet and comfortable.”
Although men of genius have written
immortal works in garrets, they have
not lived there from choice, but rather
from necessity; and notwithstanding
that in many cases these garrets have
become holy spots through virtue of
their past occupants, and men have
visited them, and lingered in their
near neighbourhood with all the hero-
worship of Pope, who one day in his
74 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
rambles took his friend Harte up three
pairs of stairs into a small room and
exclaimed: “In this garret Addison
wrote his Campaign /*—notwithstand-
ing this love of a garret because its
floor has been pressed by the feet of
genius, we must confess to a liking
rather to glean our “pleasures of
imagination " from pictures of workers
in situations a trifle more comfortable.
To my mind there never was a truer
harmony existing between a man and
his home, than in the case of Charles
Kingsley and Eversley Rectory. Aptly
has it been said that the love of home
was the lever of his life, the very soul
of all his joy, the very key-note of his
being.
What a gentle and reverent hand
is that of the Rev. William Harrison,
(sharer of Kingsley's parish cares),
and how lovingly it paints for us this
picture! “Surely if room could be
haunted by happy ghosts, it would be
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 75
his (Kingsley’s) study at Eversley,
peopled as it must ever be with the
bright creations of his brain. There
every book on the many crowded
shelves looked at him with almost
human friendly eyes. And of books
what were there not From huge
folios of St. Augustine * to the last
treatise on fly-fishing. And of what
would he not talk? Classic myth and
mediaeval romance, magic and modern
science, metaphysics and poetry, West
Indian scenery and parish schools,
politics and fairyland, etc., etc., and
of all with vivid sympathy, keen
flashes of humour, and oftentimes
with much pathos and profound know-
ledge. As he spoke he would con-
stantly verify his words. The book
wanted — he always knew exactly
where, as he said, it ‘lived '-was
pulled down with eager hands, and
* Once the property of John Sterling, and given
to Mr. Kingsley by Thomas Carlyle.
76 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
he, flinging himself back with lighted
pipe into his hammock, would read,
with almost boy-like zest, the passage
he sought for and quickly found. It
was very impressive to observe how
intensely he realized the words he
read. I have seen him overcome with
emotion as he turned the well-thumbed
pages of his Homer, or perused the
tragic story of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
in his beloved Hakluyt. Nor did the
work of the study even at such mo-
ments shut him in entirely, or make
him forgetful of what was going on
outside. “It’s very pleasant,’ he would
say opening the door which led on
to the lawn,” and making a rush into
the darkness, “to see what is going on
out here.” On one such occasion, a
wild autumnal night, after the thrilling
recital of a Cornish shipwreck he had
* A charming little woodcut of this study win-
dow is to be found in the second volume of
Ringsley's Zife.
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 77
once witnessed, and the memory of
which the turbulence of the night had
conjured up, he suddenly cried, ‘Come
out ! come out !” We followed him
into the garden, to be met by a rush
of warm driving rain before a south-
westerly gale, which roared through
the branches of the neighbouring
poplars. There he stood, unconscious
of personal discomfort, for a moment
silent and absorbed in thought, and
then exclaimed in tones of intense
enjoyment, ‘What a night! Drench-
ing ! This is a night on which you
young men can’t think or talk too
much poetry.’” ”
I do not think there ever was a
study which answered to, and, as it
were, duplicated its owner in a greater
degree than did the room of “Christo-
pher North,” in Edinburgh, which he
himself called “a sort of library.” It
Charles Kingsley: His Zetters, and Memoirs
of his Life.
78 SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES.
was “a strange mixture of what may
be called order and untidiness, for
there was not a scrap of paper or a
book that his hand could not light
upon in a moment, while to the casual
eye, in search of discovery, it would
appear chaos, without a chance of being
cleared away.
“To anyone whose delight lay in
beauty of furniture, or quaint and
delicate ornament, well - appointed
arrangements, and all that indescrib-
able fascination caught from 7zick-
macks and articles of vertu, that apart-
ment must have appeared a mere
lumber-room. The book-shelves were
of unpainted wood, knocked up in
the rudest fashion, and their volumes,
though not wanting in number or
excellence, wore but shabby habili-
ments, many of them being tattered
and without backs. The chief pieces
of furniture in this room were two
cases; one containing specimens of
SOME OTHER FOLKS STUDIES. 79
foreign birds, a gift from an admirer
of his genius across the Atlantic,
which was used incongruously enough
sometimes as a wardrobe ; the other
was a book-case, but not entirely
devoted to books: its glass-doors
permitted a motley assortment of
articles to be seen. The spirit, the
tastes, and habits of the possessor
were all to be found there, side by
side, like a little community of
domesticities.
“For example, resting upon the
Wealth of Nations lay shining coils of
gut, set off by pretty pink twinings.
Peeping out from Boriana, in juxta-
position with the Faëry Queen, were
no end of delicately dressed flies ;
and pocket-books well filled with
gear for the ‘gentle craft’ found
company with Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson; while fishing-rods, in pieces,
stretched their elegant length along
the shelves, embracing a whole set of
3O SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
poets. Nor was the gravest philo-
sophy without its contrast ; and
Jeremy Taylor, too, found innocent
repose in the neighbourhood of a tin-
box of barley-Sugar, excellent as
when bought “at my old man's.
Here and there, in the interstices
between books, were stuffed what
appeared to be dingy, crumpled bits
of paper—these were bank-notes, his
class-fees—not unfrequently, for want
of a purse, thrust to the bottom of
an old worsted stocking, when not
honoured by a place in the book-
case. I am certain he very rarely
counted over the fees taken from his
students. He never looked at nor
touched money in the usual way ; he
very often forgot where he put it;
saving when these stocking banks
were his humour, no one, for his own
sake, or for his own purposes, ever
regarded riches with such perfect
indifference. He was like the old
SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES. 81
/
patriarch whose simple desires were
comprehended in these words, “If
God will be with me, and keep me in
the way I am to go, and give me
bread to eat, and raiment to put
Oſ] ” other thought of wealth he
had not. And so there he sat, in the
majesty of unaffected dignity, Sur-
rounded by a homeliness that still
left him a type of the finest gentle-
man ; courteous to all, easy and
unembarrassed in address, wearing
his néglige with as much grace as a
Courtier his lace and plumes, nor
leaving other impression than that
which goodness makes on minds
ready to acknowledge superiority;
seeing there ‘the elements so mixed
in him, that Nature might stand up
and say to all the world, this was a
man.’”*
“Crusty Christopher,” in such a
room, writing for Blackwood's, pre-
* Memoir of Wohn Wilson, by his Daughter.
6
82 SOME OTHER FOLKS’ STUDIES.
sents altogether a more agreeable pic-
ture than does Haydn in the throes of
composition, in full dress and with a
diamond ring on his finger; for it is
recorded that without these acces-
sories he could accomplish no work
with satisfaction to himself.

AN IDEAL STUDY.
AS a man should find in the wife of
his bosom a resting-place from the
world, so in his study should he find
a safe retreat from harassing care, a
very arbour of choice delights, where
he can enjoy, if but for an odd hour
at a time, the sweets of lettered ease,
and where he may be sure to find
great men who are not in a hurry.
Here he may suffer even Coleridge to
take him by the button and discourse
as was his wont ; for his delightful
stand-still is refreshing, if only to think
of, in the bustling nowaday.”
* Lamb used to tell a good story of Coleridge.
“I was,” he said, “going from my house at En-
field to the India House one morning, and was
hurrying, for I was rather late, when I met
Coleridge, on his way to pay me a visit. He was

6–2
84 A N IDEAL STUDY.
I would fain write of an ideal study,
paint a picture which to look upon
would impart a feeling of rest to all
who love the quiet of home-life in
connection with books. But even in
the formation of such an ideal, one is
compelled to remember at the very
outset, that whatever there is of ideal
has its foundation in the actual, and
that such a picture, however attrac-
tive, would be nothing but a recon-
brimful of some new idea, and in spite of my
assuring him that time was precious, he drew me
within the door of an unoccupied garden by the
roadside, and there, sheltered from observation by
a hedge of evergreens, he took me by the button
of my coat, and closing his eyes, commenced an
eloquent discourse, waving his right hand gently,
as the musical words flowed in an unbroken
stream from his lips. I listened entranced ; but
the striking of a church-clock recalled me to a
sense of duty. I saw it was of no use to attempt
to break away, so taking advantage of his absorp-
tion in his subject, I, with my penknife, quietly
severed the button from my coat and decamped.
Five hours afterwards, in passing the same garden,
on my way home, I heard Coleridge's voice, and
on looking in, there he was, with closed eyes—
the button in his fingers—and his right hand
gracefully waving, just as when I left him. He
had never missed me !”
A N IDEAL STUDY. 85
struction out of already existing
materials, with its worth or interest
dependent on the breadth or intensity
of the so-called creative faculty.
However, this laying bare through
analysis, this stripping of results SO
that the origin may be seen, militates
in no way against the power and
charm of synthesis. A builder does
not build the less securely or attrac-
tively on account of his intimate
knowledge of the qualities and pecu-
liarities of his building-materials; and
why should a dreamer ? for, after all,
a man's dreams are verily of the
earth earthy, based upon experience
and fact. The airiest gossamer has its
thread of substance.
To begin with the room itself. It
should be of moderate size, not too
large, for I have always considered
that an extensive apartment of this
kind encourages the mind to wander ;
in smallerspace it is more concentrated,
86 AN IDEAL STUDY.
bound down, as it were, to the work it
sets itself to accomplish.
The objects around should be in
keeping with the frame of mind a man
desires to encourage when alone in his
study, and should not be numerous.
They should be household gods, loved
for their beauty or associations; should
have their fixed positions allotted them,
and be kept there, so that no seeking
with the eye should disturb a course
of thought. The pictures and busts,
the very furniture and its distribution,
must be made subservient to the
dreams or work of the occupier of
the nook.
Concerning the arrangement of the
books naught can be said with any-
thing like satisfaction, for nothing has
a greater tendency to grow than the
library of a book-lover. When Theo-
dore Parker went to Boston, he fitted
up the fourth story of his house for a
study, by lining the walls with shelves
AN IDEAL STUDY. 87
of the plainest kind without mould-
ings or ornaments, so as to have
every inch of space for books. But
the growth commenced. Soon the
shelves crept over the door, the
windows, and the chimney-pieces,
thence into little adjoining rooms,
and finally stepped boldly down the
stairs, one flight at a time, for three
flights, colonizing every room by the
way, including the large parlour in the
Second story, and finally paused only
at the dining-room close to the front
door. The bathing-room, the closets,
the attic apartments were inundated
with books. Unbound magazines and
pamphlets lay in chests of drawers
above stairs; miscellaneous matter
was sorted in properly labelled boxes;
cupboards and recesses were stuffed
full. In the centre of the study floor
rose two or three edifices of shelves to
receive the surplus which could find
no other bestowment. This, it need
88 AN IDEAL STUDY.
not be stated, was an exceptional case ;
the magnificent extent of the work
planned out by Parker excused, in
Some measure, this rapid and exten-
sive accumulation.
To one man this would be an ideal
habitation ; another would prefer the
Bohemianism of the study of the
late Richard Hengist Horne. “The
room in which the old poet received
us,” writes E. C. Stedman, “was his
library, parlour, workshop, all com-
bined like a student's room in college,
Here he lived alone amidst a bewilder-
ing collection of household treasures,
the relics of years of pilgrimage and
song ; old books, old portraits and
sketches, some by famous hands and
of famous folk; old MSS. and letters;
musical instruments, Swords, pistols,
and what not. I remember a por-
trait of Lucien Bonaparte, and one
of Shelley by Mrs. Leigh Hunt. . . .
He has a varied assortment of guitars,
AN IDEAL STUDY, 89
each of which has a separate place in
his affections, and these, one after the
other, he brought out and tested ;
guitars of Mexico, of Spain, and one
enriched with pearl and ivory, ‘fit for
an empress,' we said ; and we were
right. It had belonged to Eugénie
de Montigo, daughter of Spain, and
through a romantic series of chances
had fallen into old Orion's hands.”
Better perhaps than any verbal
description, and more favourable to
the formation of the ideal nook, would
be the careful examination of the pic-
tures of book-corners which are strewn
along the pages of Harper's Monthly
and The Century for the last few years,
as well as those which illustrate the
pleasant papers of Pen and Pencil
Sketches of American Poets and their
Homes. With these delightful scraps
before our eyes, we may form our ideal
by gathering from each what best
suits our individual tastes. Here we
90 A N IDEAL STUDY.
see the spots in which the choicest
parts of the quiet home-life of such
men as Whittier, Aldrich, Howells,
Fields, S. F. Smith, O’Reilly, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, R. H. Stoddard,
and James Russell Lowell have been
spent. ſº
There must be no lack of warmth
in the study. In this matter as in
others, there is undoubtedly annple
roorn for whims. But an ideal study
is a conglomeration of whims. George
Sand said, “I have no enthusiasm
for Nature which the slightest chill
will not instantly destroy.” The
picture of Shelley asleep, with his
head as close to the blazing fire as
possible, is familiar to us. Chris-
topher North, however, “never, even
in very cold weather, had a fire in his
room ; nor did it at night, as most
apartments do, get heat from gas,
which he particularly disliked, re-
maining faithful to the primitive
AN IDEAL STUDY. 9I
candle—a large vulgar tallow, set in
a suitable candlestick, composed of
ordinary tin, and made after the
fashion of what is called a kitchen-
candlestick.”
Of a winter's evening the acme of
cheer is to have the principal light
come to the room from a bright coal-
fire—a log of wood, is, however, never
out of place; its smouldering harmo-
nizes with the dreams of the odd
moments between work and bed.
But be it winter or summer, every
hour spent in his quiet corner should
be full of happiness to a man. In
summer-time, with sun-blinds partly
drawn, and the subdued hum of life
somewhere without, he should hug
himself in his comfort and say, “There
is no time after all like the summer.”
And in winter he should still be him-
self, living his full life during every
moment of it; and leaving behind the
things of the past summer, he should
92 AN IDEAL STUDY.
repeat fully and without hypocrisy as
he feels, “The winter is my season.”
The outlook from the study window
should be upon water of some kind.
The sky must minister to our plea-
Sure by coming from the far distance,
with all its moving shapes and colours,
into the foreground of our picture,
thus giving us a nearer kinship to its
glories and mysteries. And this can
be effected only by means of water.
The story of the sea can only be
told by those who have lived near it
or on it, and only to those whose
knowledge has been secured in a
similar manner. To but look upon the
sea secures the idea of companionship
in solitude. Its glassy stillness, its in-
coming ripple, the wild laughter of its
waves as they chase each other up the
beach, all find their echoes in the life
of the man who has not suffered his
soul to be led into captivity. It would
be the very fulfilment of the dearest
AN IDEAL STUDY. 93
dreams of a literary man, thus loving
the sea, to rise in the morning and to
retire to a little room with an out-
look over miles of broad ocean. Add
to this picture his paper and pens
before him on his writing-desk, and a
congenial theme filling his wide-awake
mind and waiting to be delivered in
manuscript, and it is complete.
In default of the ocean, a study-
outlook over a tolerably extensive
lake is not to be despised. A sheet
of water nestling in a hollow between
hills does not live with all the throb-
bing and changeful life of the sea;
and for this very reason suits better
the mood of the evening, and is more
conducive to that quietude of spirit
with which the evening is poetically
associated. Church-bells ringing on
the opposite side, and heard across
the water; a bevy of bright-eyed
girls, from the old manor-house or
the rectory, rowing across the broad
94. AN IDEAL STUDY.
path made by the setting sun on
the water ; the solemn and silent de-
scent of the sun behind the hills a
little later on—what food for restful
solitary thought, or rather, what in-
citement to that sheer drifting of mind
which is very sweet, following in the
wake of hours of earnest satisfying
work, but which, however, should
never steal from work its proper hour
and place! It is labour that must
be the cause of delight; dreamy hap-
piness should be indulged in only as
a recreation, earned by, and following
after, hard work.
One scarcely likes to think of the
other alternative, in the way of having
water in sight. A babbling stream
is only to be contemplated in case
of need, and where occasion dis-
tinctly forbids a residence by the sea
or lake. We are in so many instances
children of circumstances, following
whither they lead, that it almost
AN IDEAL STUDY. 95
seems like dissatisfaction to enter a
protest, however mild, against what
many have got to love. But the love
of a stream is, after all, a mere narrow
affection compared with the throb-
bing passion for the living sea. It is
an attachment altogether too trivial,
allied as it is to an open-faced revela-
tion of the very pebbles over which
the waters hurry in their haste to get
away to the boundless ocean. Yet,
after all, the song of a stream and the
swish of the angler's rod make sweet
music sometimes; and the settling of
their troubles by the rooks in the
elms, before making themselves com-
fortable for the night, is restful, heard
in the still air.
A river deep enough to carry a
boat answers its purpose sometimes.
“I go with my friend,” writes
Emerson, “to the shore of our little
river, and, with one stroke of the
paddle, I leave the village politics
96 AN IDEAL STUDY.
and personalities behind, and pass
into a delicate realm of sunset and
moonlight — too bright almost for
spotted man to enter without novi-
tiate and probation. We penetrate
bodily this incredible beauty; we dip
our hands in this painted element;
our eyes are bathed in these lights
and forms. A holiday, a villeggia-
tura, a royal revel, the proudest, the
most heart - rejoicing festival that
valour and beauty, power and taste,
ever decked and enjoyed, establishes
itself on the instant. These sunset
clouds, these delicately emerging stars,
with their private and ineffable glances,
signify it and proffer it. I am taught
the poorness of our invention, the
ugliness of towns and palaces. Art
and luxury have early learned that
they must work as enchantment and
sequel to this original beauty. I am
over-instructed for my return. Hence-
forth I shall be hard to please.”
AN IDEAL STUDY. 97
In an ideal study I would have
each volume in its fitting place, and
surrounded by friends of a like cha-
racter. A book on political economy
has no place alongside of, say, the
poems of Drummond of Hawthorn-
den. I must know where my friends
are to be found ; and amongst them
I would tolerate none of the disorder
of a political mob. Shy gentle spirits
must not be pushed aside or leaned
upon by burly and boisterous self-
assertors. If, like Napoleon, I should
ever come to need a travelling library,
or, like Landor, have to take a journey
accompanied by “one servant and
one chest of books,” my book-friends
I should endeavour to secure in dupli-
cate. The scholarly rest of my loved
volumes at home must not be dis-
turbed. I would not soil even their
clothing by the dust and stain of
travel. Their brother volumes, how-
ever, if encased in good old leather,
7
98 AN IDEAL STUDY.
I would gladly permit to accompany
II].C.
And travel I would all the long
sunshiny summer, were I but blest
with an independent income, small yet
sufficient. I would wander as carelessly
as did Goldsmith on the continent with
his flute. But I am not over-anxious
for continental travel, firmly convinced
as I am that in this delightful old
Britain of ours there are still left cor-
ners charming enough to please, and
sufficiently numerous to Occupy many
summers of a contented man’s life.
My mode of wandering and indiffer-
ence as to trains should be so arranged
as to become additional pleasures,
grafts on the original stem. I would
perambulate the greenest of English
lanes, visit her old-world villages, pass
with loving leisure from home to haunt
of her famous sons and daughters;
and this should be done in nothing
more startling than a wooden house on
AN IDEAL STUDY. 99
wheels, lightly constructed, and drawn
by a couple of horses. And I would
of my own wish meet nothing in the
shape of steam beyond the comfortable
singing of my kettle. However, upon
consideration, the occasional whistle
of a distant locomotive—the more
distant the better—would not be such
a great objection, as by contrast it
could be used to enhance the sleepy
comfort of my own careless mode of
life. But on this subject another idea
is given me just now, by the news that
Mr. Black the novelist has had built
for himself a house-boat capable of
being used on the canals of the West
of England, and in which he purposes
visiting the beautiful scenery and char-
acteristic places through which these
run. I must confess that this new
idea is worthy as much attention as
the other, and promises to prove an
equally enjoyable means of spending
a summer. But before I fairly embark
7–2
IOO AN IDEAL STUDY.
in this manner, the whole scheme must
be assured against the fate which befell
Stockton’s “Rudder Grange” number
OI) e.
In the meanwhile these things are
not for me ; but I am content, having
long hugged to my heart the truth
hidden in the words of Locke: “Let
your will lead whither necessity would
drive, and you will always preserve
your liberty.” And yet who, knowing
the world's ways, and acquainted with
the charms of rural seclusion, can fail
to wish sometimes to sing for himself
the “Good-Bye" of Emerson 2–
“Good-bye, proud world ! I’m going home :
Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam ;
A river bark on the ocean brine,
Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam ;
But now, proud world ! I’m going home.
“Good-bye to Flattery's ſawning face;
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high ;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
AN IDEAL STUDY. IOI
To those who go, and those who come ;
Good-bye, proud world ! I’m going home.
“I’m going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,—
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird’s roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod,
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.
“O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome,
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learnéd clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?”
There is no one, I verily believe,
however happy his position, or assured
his comfort in life, who does not look
sometimes outside his actual surround-
ings with longing eyes. Personally,
the alternation of literature with busi-
ness makes existence on the whole
a tolerably endurable one ; and it
helps me to understand, though in a
lesser degree, the truth of the feeling
which prompted Alison in advanced
IO2 A N IDEAL STUDY.
age to declare: “Either the law or
literature singly would, I am per-
suaded, have ruined my health or
terminated my life, but the two to-
gether saved both.” And yet in my
dreams I sometimes find myself far
removed from business, and engaged
in congenial literary work, in a spot
where the wild thyme grows and is
visited by the bees, where swallows
are skimming about, and the waves
plashing below. When one gets to
consider the matter rightly, a paradise
can be created out of very trifling
materials and occasions—employment
with the heart in it; long twilight
walks; reads in bed ; books and
flowers; a few friends of kindred
spirit to stroll with in the woods or
on the seashore; children gamboling
in the garden ; the songs of birds
pouring in through an open window.
N. P. Willis has gathered up a
deal of the sentiment which lingers
A N IDEAL STUDY. IO J
3
in these dreams of mine in a little
poem of his called “Idleness,” from
which I am tempted to quote:
& 4
The rain is playing its soft pleasant tune
Fitfully on the skylight, and the shade
Of the fast-flying clouds across my book
Passes with gliding change. My merry fire
Sings cheerfully to itself; my musing cat
Purrs as she wakes from her unquiet sleep,
And looks into my face as if she felt,
Like me, the gentle influence of the rain.
Here have I sat since morn, reading sometimes
And sometimes listening to the faster fall
Of the large drops, or, rising with the stir
Of an unbidden thought, have walked awhile,
With the slow steps of indolence, my room,
And then sat down composedly again
To my quaint book of olden poetry.
It is a kind of idleness, I know ;
And I am said to be an idle man,
And it is very true. I love to go
Out in the pleasant sun, and let my eye
Rest on the human faces that go onward
Each with its gay or busy interest :
And then I muse upon their lot, and read
Full many a lesson in their changeful cast,
And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight
Of human beings bred humanity.
And I am better after it, and go
More grateful to my rest, and feel a love
Stirring my heart to every living thing ;
And my low prayer has more humility,
And I sink lightlier to my dreams, and this,
'Tis very true, is only idleness :
+ 3: + * *
IO4 AN IDEAL STUDY.
“And when the clouds pass suddenly away,
And the blue sky is like a newer world,
And the Sweet growing things—forest and
flower, -
Humble and beautiful alike—are all
Breathing up odours to the very heaven—
Or, when the frost has yielded to the sun
In the rich autumn, and the filmy mist
Lies like a silver lining on the sky,
And the clear air exhilarates, and life
Simply is luxury—and when the hush
Of twilight, like a gentle sleep, steals on,
And the birds settle to their nests, and stars
Spring in the upper sky, and there is not
A sound that is not low and musical—
At all these pleasant seasons I go out
With my first impulse guiding me, and take
Wood-path or stream, or slope by hill or vale,
And, in my recklessness of heart, stray on,
Glad with the birds, and silent with the leaves,
And happy with the fair and blessed world—
And this, ’tis true, is only idleness I’’
In the midst of all this the thought
of the Reaper with his Sickie comes
sometimes, but in no morbid fashion,
for what is good to live in is also good
enough to die in. That little picture
of George du Maurier's, Der Tod als
Freund, with its accompanying lines
of translation from Madame Necker,
almost leads one to look upon death
AN IDEAL STUDY. IO5
as a friend. Certainly there, his com-
ing throws nothing out of harmony;
the Sunlit sea without and the sweet
strains of music within make the quiet
room a fitting earthly paradise from
which to issue forth to the paradise of
dreams. It recalls too, in an unmis-
takable way, Lockhart's description
of the death of Sir Walter Scott : “It
was a beautiful day—so warm that
every window was wide open—and so
perfectly still that the sound of all
others most delicious to the ear, the
gentle ripple of the Tweed over its
pebbles, was distinctly audible as we
knelt around the bed, and his eldest
son kissed and closed his eyes.”


Gºś
THE COMPANIONS OF THE
BOOKWORM : FRIENDS IN
THE FLESH.
I.
THE living companions I would have
in my solitude are not many. They
must be attracted to me, and I to
them, by some bond of sympathy, fine,
and delicate, and unworldly. I pen
this word “unworldly ’’ after due con-
sideration, for, when harassed by cares
of business, as most men are occasion-
ally, my friends should come to me
not in my solitude, but during the
hours of the day allotted to the struggle
of life. After all that can be said,
business is but a means to an end; on
no account is it to be considered the
end. An inordinate grasping for gold
COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM. Io'ſ
is the pitiable result when some obli-
quity of vision causes the true idea of
life to be seen in any condition other
than this, Y *
I am priggish enough to desire that
the “Not at home” of the domestic
be taken even by friends as the defi-
nite word passed from my own lips that
I wish not to be disturbed ; for how
varied are the humours of a man,
coming and going as they please,
without restraint or governance of any
kind And though at some seasons
the heart leaps forth lightly and joy-
ously, dancing for very delight of its
own full life, at others it is moody like
a sick savage, and will not be com-
forted, and furthermore does not wish
to be comforted. What living friend
is wanted at such a time 2
I am reckoning just now on my
fingers the friends whose faces gener-
ally bring peace and sunshine with
them.
IOS COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
There is Durant, young and enthusi-
astic, in life and dreams a poet, by
profession a landscape-painter. The
sweetest combinations I know of
cattle, water, and trees under the
varied lights of afternoon and even-
ing are from his pencil; and yet his
father persists in avowing that the
education given to his son has “all
been thrown away.” But the son's
most intimate friends know the size of
the pinch of salt the old gentleman's
statement is to be taken with, and are
hopefully looking forward to a trans-
fer to canvas of the dreams they some-
times see in the artist's eyes. His
devotion to his art deprives Ine occa-
sionally of the pleasure of an evening’s
chat; but then he generally offers com-
pensation in the shape of a hasty Scrawl
with some fresh fact or fancy in it.
Here is one received not long ago :
“If I fail to turn up to-night, ‘old
fellow, you will know that I am over
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. IO9
the hills sketching; and you will also
know that I shall creep in on the
earliest possible evening to make my
apologies in person, and to take out
the ‘owing time.” Those two fellows
from the Academy were down with
me yesterday, and we passed together
your domicile after you had lit up for
the night. As we came along we
were busy speculating—at least they
were—as to what one drawn curtain
after the other hid from our view.
Coming to the corner where your light
showed out between the trees, one of
them, pointing to it, hit on Words-
worth's lines:
“‘Round the body of that joyless thing
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay Society with faces bright,
Conversing, reading, laughing;-or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.’
“You are out in your speculations
this time,' I said ; “the light yonder is
from the nook of a book-lover.’
11o companions of THE BOOKWORM :
“‘Then I will venture on a descrip-
tion of it,” said the other. ‘I will give
you the lines of Richard Le Gallienne,
which suggested to me the picture I
am busy on, of an old bookworm
in the midst of his surroundings of
» j.
“learned dust ''':—
“‘The light of the lamp as softly falls
As music on weary souls, and around,
Above and below, not an inch is found
Uncovered by books, for of course the walls,
From ceiling to floor, from window to door,
Are packed with the trophies of many old stalls,
And vainly you’ll search for table or chair
Unblessed with its burden of learning to
bear.
But one little spot there is that is not
Thus weighted with tomes—that corner, I mean,
Defended with folios huge for a screen,
Not too large a bit that armchair to admit,
The cosiest armchair that ever was seen.’
“I laughed at him, and said that
your nook did not altogether answer
to his lines; but I will tell you more
about it when we meet. Good-bye.”
I would not, if I could, exclude
from my narrow list Charles Whid-
bourne, whose presence enriches our
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I I I
half of the globe to the impoverish-
ment of the other. His facts are as
round, full, and diversified as are the
pranks of another man's imagination.
When you get blest with his friend-
ship, gentle readers, and hear his true
story of the barn-door and the leaky
boat, you will not fail to appreciate
what I write. Until then you must
rest satisfied to know, through me,
that he is fraught with the literary
spirit of Boston and the adjacent
New England villages ; can tell you
of Walden Pond, the sluggish Con-
cord River, and the Old Manse; and,
if necessary, correct a faulty descrip-
tion of Emerson's study. What more
can be desired of a human being !
Then there is Walter Vincent the
novelist, a tall, bearded bachelor,
with delicate tastes, yet endowed
with a fulness of animal life which
occasionally finds vent in a teasy
“chaff,” in which, however, the
II 2 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
gentleman is never lost sight of
He commenced his literary life with
poetry, as most writers do. But
his development has been sure.
As a change from novel-writing, he
pens occasional reviews ; and what
man is more fitted than he for the
work | Rigid as Minos he can be ;
but he is also “a universal scholar, as
clear-conscienced as a Saint, and as
tenderly impressible as a woman.”
All my friends must bear about
them a literary flavour, however faint;
if they have a delicate appreciation
of poetry, so much the better shall I
be pleased. They should be bookish
to some degree, for otherwise our
Conversation would be wanting in its
finest points, our sympathy slight,
and the rush of soul to soul altogether
absent. They must know more than
the outsides of the volumes they
claim acquaintance with, and infinitely
more than their catalogue-prices. If
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. II 3
a friend exhibits with reasonable
pride, say, a clean uncut copy of
“The Lives and Characters of the
English Dramatic Poets. First begun,
by Mr. Langūain, improv'd and con-
Zimated dozwn to this Time ày a carefu/
Aſand, and given to the public in
1698,” I share his pride with him ;
but to please me, as I wish to be
pleased, he should have knowledge of
the curiosities to be found within its
covers. Let him know that Sir
William D'avenant was “the son of
John D'avenant, Vintner of Oxford,
in that very House that has now the
Sign of the Crown near Carfax; a
House much frequented by Shake-
spear in his frequent journeys to
Warwick-shire ; ” concerning which
frequenting, our author says, “whither
for the Beautiful Mistress of the
House, or the good Wine, I shall not
determine”—and that he, the said
Sir William D'avenant, wrote several
8
114 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM
plays, one of which, The Law again /
Lovers, a Tragi-Comedy, was “take ſº
from two Plays of Shakespear, via
Measure for Measure and Much Atº
about Mothing ; the language mucº
amended and polish'd by our Author’
**
w
—let my would-be friend but know
these facts concerning D'avenant,
especially that he “amended arº
polish'd" poor Shakespear's laſ,
guage, and he establishes my interest
x
in himself, and shall, if only for an
evening, share with me the comfor
of my study and the companionship
of my books.
My friends must pay for their rigº
g
r
+
of admittance to my quiet corner tº:
lending themselves now and then
being bored ; and, furthermore, ºf
they humour me in the matter by a
e |
pretence of extreme interest, the
whole affair has (for me at least) a
pleasant issue. When the moon is
a certain quarter, any intruding frierº
|
|
;
º
s
i
|
}
;
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. II 5
is set down in a cosy spot, my
favourite authors are brought out,
one after another, and I tell my
listener stories about them and
about the men who most loved
them. At such a time a dainty
extract does not shrink from being
read for the ninety-ninth time, pro-
vided it has point or pith in it, or
both.
And yet, after all, I am not arro-
gant and unduly assertive. For
instance, I never scold a friend for
not reading and admiring what I
like, as Swift did Pope in the matter
of Rabelais. But Swift mistook his
path in life. With his fondness for
prescriptions of every kind, he
should have been a physician. As
it was, he would prescribe ; for One,
'mental diet; for another (if he held
“open-house” on the Doctor’s ac-
§ count), the hours for meals, sleep,
#
º !
*
#, exercise, and the other nameless
W
l
t
t
§
§
's
“.
y
8—2
116 conſPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM
|, . ,
etceteras of life. And, furthermore
he would insist on the minutest atten.
tion to his every whim and fancy.
As I have in this corner of the
house my best-loved books only,
permit no borrowers to visit me here
If they are intent on filching know.
ledge from books not their own, let
them roam through the other apart-
ments, in most of which they will
find volumes which, “under circum-
stances,” I may lend. Here, I can
suffer no “foul gap in the bottom-shelf
facing you, like a great eye-tooth
knocked out;” no “slight vacuum jº
the left-hand case—two shelves froſ.
the ceiling—scarcely distinguishab
but by the quick eye of a loser.” Tº
pass, with the apparently unconsciois
ease of a youthful poet, to a frei:
figure of speech, the preserves he s
are rigorously watched, and eve: ;
head of game carries its number,
round its neck. And, moreover."


FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 117
my friends, every time I lend a
volume, even if it be not particularly
loved, I feel a culprit ; for am I not
by that very act behaving dishonestly
towards the bookseller, whose right it
is to sell you what you borrow from
me P “If a book is worth reading, it
is worth buying.”
In the distant past the case was
altogether different. Then, a book
written and illuminated in a monastery
was to be bought only at the price of a
royal ransom ; but, in Some instances,
it could be borrowed from the Script-
orium or of the Lord Abbot. “On Such
occasions, a meritorious and gentle-
man-like monk (perhaps more than
one), one who had travelled, and had
done so to happy purpose, was de-
spatched on horseback, or on a mule,
or in a litter, in charge of the coveted
volume, to the castle of the noble who
had borrowed it for the delight of
himself and his visitors. When we
118 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
say ‘borrowed, we must add that
the highly prized volume never went
out of its guardian's sight. He exhi-
bited it to the illustrious company,
explained the illustrations, and had
no end of pleasant details upon text
and pictures. If he were a monk who
had seen the world, had undergone
many experiences, was acute of ob-
servation, and could tell good stories
of what he had seen, heard, endured
and enjoyed, he was made much
more of than if his host was enter-
taining an angel, and was aware of
the fact. The monk was made far
more comfortable. Story was given
him in exchange for story; the ladies
put questions to him which awoke
his laughter, and there was a chorus
to what was thus aroused. The day
of his departure was deferred as much
as possible, but the stirrup-cup would
come at last ; and finally, the monk
rode away with his book, and with
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. II9
countless blessings, and with hospit-
able assurances of hearty welcome
whenever he should come that way
again.” In those days the lending
defrauded no one; and the borrowing
was not the only part of the trans-
action attended with pleasure.
Again, I want no man for a friend
whose heart is callous enough to
suffer him to sell, for any considera-
tion or under any circumstance, a
book which has been a companion to
him, and from which he has received
aught of pleasure or profit. Every-
one cannot depend upon replacing
the thus-disposed-of volume in the
manner of Professor Dowden. The
Professor, while writing an essay on
Shelley, some years ago, came across
a copy of an early edition of the
poet’s works, on a second-hand book-
stall in Dublin. After gleaning from
it what information he needed for his
work, he succumbed to the offer of a
I2O COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
tempting price for his treasure, and
parted with it. Afterwards, he re-
gretted it sorely. But the Fates
favoured him in a way not to be
depended on, and one day, in a
similar fashion, he secured another
copy for a small sum ; and on one of
its pages was written in Shelley's
autograph, “To Mary.” It is need-
less to add that Mary was the poet’s
wife.
A new acquisition which displaces
an old friend, except in cases similar
to the preceding, cannot always be
looked upon favourably. The re-
membrance of happy hours spent
with the lost volume does not linger
with the new. The old landmark has
been torn up, and part of our life's
pleasure gone. And the disposing of
a cherished book is the thrusting of
a friend out into the world, for no
one knows how it may be bandied
about in the uncertain weather of
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I2 I
fortune. True, the Sun may shine
upon it—but even the Sunshine might
hurt—but then there are the storms
of winter and the east winds. A
lesson might Surely be learnt from
the hesitating conduct of the old
maiden-lady whose happiness is
locked up in her “tabby,” but upon
whom is dawning gradually, but
surely, the fact that her favourite's
conduct is well, not above suspi-
cion. Over her tea she confidingly
tells her pastor that if she but knew
that poor Tom (or Mary) would have
a comfortable home where he went,
she would not mind so very much
parting with him. And books are
of more value than many Toms or
Marys.
II.
THAT book-hunters are not always
sinless is a sad fact; and this may be
gathered from a friendly conversation
I22 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
which occurred last winter, in my
study, between Vincent, Whidbourne,
and myself. The three of us sat late
into the night before the cheery fire.
We had common tastes in more than
One respect; each of us loved books
—and tobacco.
We began by talking of the “shod-
diness” of the age, and looked back
with longing eyes on the good old
days of the past, forgetting that
we were only doing what others
had done before us ever since the
time of Lucretius, down through the
days of Dante, and Shakespeare, and
Milton, and Shelley. Vincent waxed
warm on the subject, becoming for
the nonce a veritable pessimist. Be-
tween his quick nervous puffs at his
pipe, he repeated over and over again
Hamlet’s declaration :
“The time is out of joint.”
I suggested quietly that he should
finish the couplet, and add :
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 123
“O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right !”
For answer, he laid his pipe aside,
and quoted from William Morris's
Earthly Paradise:
“Of heaven and hell I have no power to sing ;
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.”
At this, Whidbourne expostulated
mildly, but with firmness, suggesting
that such a view of the times was by
no means helpful to young men
just looking out into the world pre-
vious to entering on the battle of life.
“How,” asked he, “are young men
to be encouraged and built up in
manliness by contemplating life as
void of worthy purpose, and the age
as feminine, timorous, and narrow 2"
Anon we talked of book-buyers
and booksellers ; but finding that
Vincent's pessimism would have vent,
124 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
turn it to what channel we might, we
let him continue his monologue, after
first roundly charging him with hav-
ing, of late, devoured Schopenhauer
wholesale.*
“Why,” he began, “what greater
sinners on earth can you find than
book-collectors P”
But we understood each other ; and
Whidbourne and I only laughed and
bade him continue.
And he did continue, addressing his
remarks chiefly to me: “They break
almost every commandment ; to Say
the least of it, the Decalogue would
be but a poor disjointed arrangement
were all the commandments broken
by these sinners wiped out of it.
They are by virtue of their very call-
ing jealous, envious, and filled with
excessive longing. To begin with,
they covet, inordinately, their neigh-
* This was, of course, before Weill's revelations
of the joviality of the pessimistic philosopher.
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I25
bour's goods ; and if it be possible to
commit fraud in the heart (and no
one seems to doubt it), they are by
this token, thieves black and ungrate-
ful.* Why, there is Whidbourne
himself, who is not above confessing
that his heart is set upon that copy
of Pellico’s Francesca da Rimini, in
which is written in Shelley's hand-
writing the two simple words, “Lady
Shelley,” and which rests on that shelf
yonder. I know well enough that he
is bothering his brains within an inch
of distraction in trying to find out
whether the sea-stained pamphlet
was a present from the poet in Italy
to his mother at home, or a gift to
his wife, for whom he had romantically
written the title he hoped she would
one day possess. And yet, if the
* “Prince, hear a hopeless bard's appeal;
Reverse the rules of mine and thine ;
Make it legitimate to steal
The books that never can be mine !”
Andrew Zang.
126 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
truth be known, Whidbourne’s wish
to rob you of that thin volume is
simply that he may put it up care-
fully with his Shelley possessions at
home. But I have no doubt he
would permit you to visit him and to
look at it * Don't interrupt me,
Whidbourne; I must have my say.
“They also commit positive acts
of theft. Look at them, morning
after morning, at the little corner-
stalls, with their noses down upon
the print, appropriating by the page
the possessions of others. And
* “As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now
with God, told me most sentimentally, that having
purchased a picture of fish at a dead man's sale,
his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to
part with it, it being her dear husband's favourite ;
and he almost apologized for his generosity, by
saying he could not help telling the widow she
was “welcome to come and look at it’—e.g., at
Åis house—“as often as she pleased.’”—Charles
Alamed to Barrozz Field.
† This is not the only mode of benefiting one's
self by means of the book-property of others. The
following “Lay of the Wily Villain,” which ap-
peared in Book-Zore for July, 1886, will tell its
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I27
then, if in any way disturbed in their
angling without a license, they get
own tale—a tale which, by the way, we believe has
its foundation in fact :
“The furtive sneak who filches from
The bookstall's dingy rows,
Should by the ears be nailed aloft,
Along with kites and crows.
“Now, listen, ye who covet books,
But don’t know how to buy 'em,
Of one who played much deeper tricks—
But pray don’t go and try 'em.
“In London's dingiest bookiest street,
Not far off from the Strand,
There dwelt a man who dealt in books,
Short-sighted, wise, and bland.
“He had a partner for his help,
Far-seeing, pompous, bluff:
A man whom e'en his enemy
Would never call a muſf.
“These twain, for want of better names,
Sluther we’ll call, and Slyum—
Now, gentle reader, pray don’t try :
You can’t identify 'em.
“This worthy pair a client had,
Who, in his earlier days,
Had honest been, but losing tone,
Fell into wicked ways;
“And straying far, and stunnbling oft
O'er moral hill and hummock,
He came at last to filch a book
To fill an empty stomach.
I28 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
*.
themselves home and write tirades
against the flint-heartedness of stall-
“And this is how he did the deed :
(Now, ‘gentle,” don’t you try it,
For though he took the book by guile,
He certainly did buy it;)
“He wandered into Sluther's shop,
As in the days gone by,
Where many a goodly tome he'd bought,
At prices fairly high.
“And after peering round the shelves,
As was his wont of yore,
He chose a volume, small but rare,
Worth shillings p’r'aps a score ;
“Then, turning with abstracted air
To where poor Sluther stood,
He said, ‘You’ll put it down to me;’
And Sluther said he would.
“Their shop was long, and low, and dim,
The front was ruled by Sluther;
While Slyum ‘kept the books,’ and dwelt
In darkness at the other.
“Our villain pushed his wicked way,
Past connoisseur and gull,
To where old Slyum kept accounts ;
For Sluther's shop was full.
“And there with conversation bland,
And specious balderdash,
He showed the book to Slyum, and—
He sold it him for cash .
“If furtive sneaks, who help themselves
To books from stalls and boxes,
Are treated like the kites and crows,
What should be done with foxes P”
E, S.
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I29
“…
|
/
keepers, who drive away ragged boys
who stop for a moment before their
wares to momentarily quench their
thirst for knowledge. It is a shame
and an outrage; and such vile effu-
sions ought not to be tolerated. You
recollect how, in the little poem at
the end of Lamb’s “Detached Thoughts
on Books and Reading,” the bookseller
is set down as driving the studious
lad away with the words:
“You, sir! you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look.”
“If the truth were but known, I
have no doubt the penniless little boy
here would turn out to be one of
Lamb's grown-up friends, Talfourd
or Procter or Wordsworth, who could
well afford to buy what he thus with *
impunity stole. Of course Lamb con-
nects the affair with Martin Burney's
younger days; but Lamb was full of
fun. If I kept a book-shop of any
& 9
130 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
description, I would have displayed in
Some prominent position the words,
‘You may dip, friend, but before you
read you must pay.”
“And in what innumerable ways
book-buyers pervert the truth !
They bear false witness against the
very books they wish to buy. Their
memories suit them in a marvellous
manner as to the prices of these vol-
umes in catalogues received a week
or so ago. With drawn face this is
their language: ‘Oh, I couldn’t give
you anything like a Sovereign for this
book ; I have seen it several times
lately in odd catalogues for a third
of the price.’ Shame on such liars
* It is told of one old bookseller of Little
Britain that he would never suffer any person
whatever to look into a book in his shop ; and
when asked a reason for it would say: “I suppose
you may be a physician or an author, and want
some receipt or quotations: if you buy the book
I will engage it to be perfect before you leave me,
but not after, as I have suffered by leaves being
torn out and the books returned, to my very great
loss and prejudice.”
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I31
Shamel Or do they ever give a needy
book-vendor an extra shilling for the
rare autograph on the title-page of the
trifle they “pick up,” and which has
either escaped the notice of the seller,
or is as Greek to his ignorance P Do
they ever say: “My good Mr. Book-
seller, this volume is worth double the
price you ask for it : here is an extra
crown-piece?' Their very solemnity of
manner and fixedness of countenance,
while securing a bargain, is a lie; for all
the while the heart is going pit-a-pat,
and visions are thronging the brain.
“Then, if a buyer meets his equal
in a seller, and he has to pay out, right
and square, for his treasure, the trouble
comes out at home. He is conscious
—no elasticity of conscience can help
him here—that he has paid a good
round sum for what his heart was set
upon, and yet to his wife he declares
that it was “picked up for a mere
trifle.' He calmly furnishes the com-
9–2
132 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
panion of his life with a whole cluster
of lies in half-a-dozen words; and no
one knows better than he that it was
not ‘picked up,” that it was not secured
for a ‘mere trifle.’
“Yes, and publishers and book-
sellers are sinners as well as book-
buyers,” continued Vincent ; and
though I laughed heartily at him,
and called him a Philistine, he went
ahead with his monologue. “Only
consider how they vary the bait they
offer the public in the shape of their
book-lists, so that no fish, however
tiny, shall escape. I bought not long
ago the History, Opinions, etc., of Isaac
Bickerstaff, and I found ‘Mr. Meri-
vale's work on Colonization at one
end, and ‘Maunder's Popular Trea-
suries’ at the other. Open Sir James
Stephen's Lectures on the History of
France, and you find an advertisement
of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia. Open
Bacon's Philosophical Works, and the
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 133
most conspicuous page you see is in-
scribed Modern Cookery for Private
Families. Try his ſliterary and Pro-
fessional Works, and you find in letters
not less pre-eminently conspicuous,
Moore's AWational Airs, and Moore's
Irish Melodies. Nor are these merely
bound up with the volume, so as to
admit of being torn Out, but pasted on
the inside of the cover and made part
of it, quite as much as the lettering on
the back.”*
“But,” I said, interrupting him,
“you must admit, Vincent, that a
great deal of the incongruity of ad-
vertisement is a thing of the past.
Where now-a-days do you find any-
thing similar to this 2" and moving
to my books I handed him a battered
list of the publications once sold by
old Edward Midwinter, who kept shop
at the Lookinge Glasse on London
* I found a few days afterwards that my friend
had, with his excellent memory, been quoting from
Spedding's Publishers and Authors.
134 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
Bridge. He admitted it was a queer
dish, and read aloud the titles for the
benefit of Whidbourne :
“‘The Lives of Jonathan Wyld, Blueskin, and
Shepherd.’
“‘The Duty of Women.”
‘‘ ‘The London Bawd.”
“‘Ladies’ Religion.’
“Bunyan’s ‘Vision of the World to Come.’
“‘Academy of Compliments.’
“‘Accomplished Ladies’ Rich Cabinet.’
“Aristotle's ‘Masterpiece.”
“‘Artemidorus of Dreams.”
“‘Art of Money Catching.’
“‘Garden of Love.’
*** Hearts’ Ease.”
“‘Hocuspocus.”
“Hooker's “Poor Doubting Christian.”
“‘Ladies' Delight.”
“‘History of Madam St. Phaile.”
“‘Oxford Poets—Posie of Godly Prayers.”
“‘The Compleate Servant Maid.’
“‘Crumbs of Comfort.’
“‘ Grapes for Saints.’
*** Sinners’ Tears.’”
My friends seemed loth to part ;
even in the hall, over their hats and
coats, they were busy at it. Here
Whidbourne had his turn.
“Ah,” said he, “that is all very well
in its way, that pretty raving of yours
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I35
against book-&layers and book-sellers;
but you seem to have forgotten alto-
gether the sins of book-makers. There
is no such thieving to be found any-
where as in authorship. Just consider
the case of your friend Sterne.”
Vincent had been listened to with
such forbearance during the evening
that he could not now but suffer the
turning of the tables upon him in this
fashion. But with it all he appeared
very greatly concerned about his over-
coat, the sleeves of which would get
on the wrong arms.
“Sterne was one of the greatest and
most audacious plunderers that ever
existed,” declared Whidbourne. “He
emptied whole pages of musty old
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy into
his Tristrama Shandy, and his blank
chapters were a trick taken from Fludd.
His sermons are crammed with mate-
rial from Bishop Hall's Cozzfemplations.
And yet who can blame him 2 We
136 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
should never have gone delving into
Burton for the fun so deliciously served
up to us in Tristram. The stolen
jewelry would never have been seen
by many, but for the theft ; and where
should we have found anyone who so
thoroughly understood the setting of
the stones as did Laurence Sterne P
But good-night, good-night ; the cata-
logue of literary thefts is too long to
go on with just now.”
The next time my gossipy friends
called, they were highly amused at
having their attention drawn to a
change which had been effected in
the arrangement of Some of my books.
The works of the prigging author of
Tristram were flanked on one side by
Fludd and Bishop Hall, and on the
other by a stately old copy of Burton.
They termed it, if I remember rightly,
“An arrangement in brown and tar-
nished gold ; subject—the thief de-
tected and secured.” They went away,
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 137
however, without noticing how flatly
pressed against the wall my Chatter-
ton looked, on the same shelf with
Sterne, having for his guardian Ker-
sey's Dictionary of Old Words, out of
which it is maintained Chatterton
built up his Rowley.
That same evening Whidbourne
had with him a little volume which
he showed us, treating it the while
tenderly and with great care. After
we had looked at it without finding
it either beautiful or rare, he said:
“This pocket volume of Pope's Homer,
dog-eared and pencil-marked, is sa-
cred to me in a degree that perhaps
not many of your books are to you,
Rees. Just a simple story clings to it,
the like of which, I doubt not, occurs
oftener than many fancy. It belonged
to a quiet country lad, who slaved for
fourteen hours a day in a provincial
drapery shop. His parents were poor,
and his life of toil consequently com-
138 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
menced early. I think he was but
twelve years of age when apprenticed
to this business, of which his heart
soon grew sick. A silent self-con-
tained boy, he began early to grope
about for what scraps of knowledge
he could get. This little Homer was
bought with the Savings of a long
twelve-month, and was read in the early
light of the morning sun and the late
light of the midnight candle. About
the time of this purchase there occurred
a religious awakening at the little Dis-
senting place of worship he attended;
and this threw in upon his hopes for
the future a bright gleam of Sunshine.
Ah! he would become a minister. His
thirst for knowledge increased ten-
fold. But I must end my story.
When he was but nineteen years of
age, I, who had been his friend for
some six months—I needn't explain
how it all came about—was the last
to press his hand on earth. His hopes
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I39
had been blasted, and his heart broken.
He could not think of God as his
chapel-friends would have him; but,
“Ah, he said to me, ‘I know it is all
right.' If there ever was a bright and
fearless, yet quiet and hopeful outlook
into the other world, he possessed it.
This little book I found beneath his
pillow, when all was over.”
And I felt that Whidbourne had
spoken truthfully when he said that
the little volume was probably more
sacred to him than many of my trea-
sures were to me. It had been hal-
lowed by the touch of struggling,
suffering humanity. -
III.
WE three friends were together one
other evening looking over my col-
lection of Lamb literature. As was
natural under such circumstances our
conversation was directed to matters
pertaining to Elia.
14o COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
VINCENT. “I have been reading
to-day, Rees, of a copy of Talfourd’s
Letters of Charles Lamzó, which I
should wish to have even in prefer-
ence to yours here.”
MYSELF. “Whose copy was that,
pray 2”
VINCENT. “Walter Savage Lan-
dor's. Now it is in the possession of
the writer of the article I have been
reading, and which you will find in
Temple Bar for April, 1872. It is
entitled, ‘About Charles Lamb,' and
is well worth perusal by everybody
interested in Elia ; and, moreover,
it contains ample particulars of
Landor's pencil-notes in the said
volume, which are curiously charac-
teristic, and, of course, greatly enhance
the value of the book.”
WHIDBOURNE. “And I have in
mind a copy of Procter's Memoir of
Charles Lamb, which I also would
prefer to the one on that shelf.”
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I4 I
MySELF. “Ah, I find there is a
conspiracy afoot this evening to make
light of my treasures.”
WHIDBOURNE. “Not at all ; you
must admit that even you would lay
violent hands, if possible, on the book I
refer to—the copy of the Memoir sent
by Procter to Carlyle, and which was
duly acknowledged with expressions
of keen interest and satisfaction.”
MYSELF. “The association of the
names of Carlyle and Lamb is, I
must confess, painful to me, after
what has been given to the world in
the Reminiscences by the former. The
expressions ‘Insufferable proclivity to
gin in poor old Lamb,' and “talk con-
temptibly small, indicating wonderful
ignorance and shallowness, even when
* “DEAR PROCTER,--I have been reading your
book on Charles Lamb, in the solitary silent
regions whither I had fled for a few days of dia-
logue with Mother Earth and her elements; and
I have found in your work something so touching,
brave, serene, and pious that I cannot but write
you one brief word of recognition, which I know
you will receive with welcome.”
142 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
it was serious and good-mannered,
which it seldom was, usually ill-
mannered (to a degree), screwed
into frosty artificialities, ghastly
make-believe of wit, in fact more
like “diluted insanity " (as I defined
it) than anything of real jocosity,
humour, or geniality,'—these expres-
sions are altogether too much for
me, coming even from a maga of Such
greatness as Carlyle. To think of
his defining Charles Lamb as an
‘emblem of imbecility, bodily and
spiritual.' I cannot——”
WHIDBOURNE. “I must candidly
say that I myself thought and felt as
you do, until I had put in my hands,
a little while, ago, an account of a
paper read by Mr. Alexander Ireland
before the Manchester Literary Club,
in which he contended that, while
writing all this, Carlyle knew only the
grotesque side of Lamb's character,
and perhaps nothing of the precise
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I43
•'. facts of the sad domestic tragedy of
+. !}.e Lamb household, and the brother's
;. 6 ºbsequent self-sacrifice and noble life-
Cºnsecration to the sister's well-being.
And the remarks you have referred
tº were written by Carlyle six weeks
; §eſore Procter's book was published.
§ Włoreover, as is now known, Carlyle
did not intend that his writings of
tº 3 kind should be published. But
the heaping of abuse on the head of
Mr. Froude for giving the Keminis-
‘cºuces to the world in the shape he
iás, is a poor thankless job, and has
* .. 4 ºeen carried to a far too great extent
º iſ ady. I will send you across the
º ºrt I have of Mr. Ireland's view of
: the matter, which is admirable and
s"st nious, and, I am sure, will not
ºf to please you.”
º ºf ºncent had taken down from a
sº an old illustrated copy of Robin-
º, º i rusoe, and this proved sufficient
tº change the direction of our talk.
|
º
º
\'s
K. :
*
t
f




144 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
VINCENT (striking a ludicrous atti-
tude, and remembering Rousseau's
words). “Since we must have books,
this is one which in my opinion is a
most excellent treatise on natural
education. This is the first my
Emilius shall read ; his whole library
shall long consist of this work.”
WHIDBOURNE. “And I hope your
Emilius will profit by his study as
did Talleyrand's wife.”
VINCENT. “I fail to recollect that
she profited greatly by any reading.
Why, her stupidity was so pronounced
and noticeable, that Talleyrand him-
self had to offer as excuse for his
marriage the statement that “A clever
wife often compromises her husband,
whilst a stupid one only compromises
herself.’”
WHIDBOURNE. “And, in the case
I refer to, she did compromise herself,
and all through Robinson Crusoe. It
came about in this manner: Talley-
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I45
rand had invited Sir George Robinson
to dinner, and telling Madame that
their guest was a great traveller, and
liked to be spoken to concerning his
travels, requested her to pay him
much attention. This she did by
informing him how concerned she
had felt when reading of the priva-
tions he had undergone, and the shifts
he had been put to during his sojourn
on the uninhabited island. Her visitor
was greatly puzzled ; said nothing,
but bowed his acknowledgments and
thought the more. Presently she
asked, with much apparent interest,
for news of cher Vendred, that dear
faithful man Friday, who had been
such a comfort to him. The truth
then dawned upon him, and madame
was duly informed that a less cele-
brated personage than Defoe's hero
had the honour of being her guest.”
VINCENT. “A very good story
indeed. Burckhardt used to find
IO
146 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
that the surest way of securing the
goodwill of the wild Arabs was to
translate to them a chapter of Defoe's
masterpiece. Surely if Talleyrand
had rightly understood his position
he would have made this admiration
of his wife for Crusoe the means of
/her civilization. By the way, the
recollection that the manuscript of
Aobinson Crusoe ran through the
whole trade and could find no one
to print it (though Defoe was at that
time in good repute as an author),
until at last one bookseller, more
remarkable for his speculative turn
than for his discernment, took the
matter in hand, and gained a thousand
guineas by it—the recollection of
this makes me think of publishers as
so many anglers; they catch good fish
very often, but what escape are some-
times of far finer condition and size.”
MYSELF. “But this inability on the
part of publishers to judge of the in-
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I47
trinsic worth and ultimate success of
literary material is by no means rare.
Sterne offered his Tristram Shamay
to a bookseller for fifty pounds, and
the offer was refused. Subsequently
he went to Robert Dodsley with his
manuscript, and neither publisher nor
author repented the agreement then
entered into. And Dr. Buchan could
get no bookseller in Edinburgh or
London to give him a hundred pounds
for the copyright of his Domestic
Medicine, although, after the work had
passed through twenty-five editions,
it was disposed of for sixteen hundred
pounds.”
And thus our conversation pro-
ceeded. We spoke of the publishing
arrangements of our more modern
authors : of Scott, Byron, George
Eliot, Longfellow (who retained his
copyrights), and a host of others; for
gossip of this kind is always interest-
ing, dealing, as it does, with two im-
I O—2
148 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
portant sides of life—day-dreams, and
the pounds, shillings, and pence they
find in the market. Gradually we got
to scanning the cash columns of the
account-books of living writers (as if
writers ever kept cash-books); for be it
remembered, this is by no means a diffi-
cult matter. Over our morning coffee,
we read in the newspaper that Mr. So-
and-so, the author of /o/izz and Mary
Jones, had been interviewed on the pre-
vious day. With an enviable modesty,
the popular writer had shown the cheque
just received from his publishers; and,
furthermore, with his accustomed wish
to help the world on to a definite
1<nowledge of truth, he had explained
in detail how the sum represented by
the said cheque was to be invested.
We wondered together whether a
“special reporter” ever found out what
investment Dr. Beattie made with the
fifty guineas he got for his Essay on
Truth, the result of four years’ labour;
-
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 149
l
i .
K
or Dr. Johnson with the two guineas a
week he got for writing the Ramóler,
by which the booksellers cleared above
five thousand pounds; or Gibbon with
the six thousand pounds he received
for the Roman Empire, the labour of a
whole life, in which a considerable sum
had been expended in the purchase of
the extensive library necessary to him
in his Occupation.
In these bustling days of speculation,
it is next to impossible not to think
that Dr. Johnson had some tender
morsel in the way of an investment in
view, when he proposed to a number
of booksellers, convened for the pur-
pose, that he should write a Dictionary
of Trade and Commerce. And what
a blow on the head that investment
idea of his must have suffered, when
one, more remarkable for abruptness
of manner than refinement of speech,
asked : “Why, Doctor, what the devil
do you know of trade and com-
4,
º
n
f :
\
150 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
merce?” The reply was, however,
worthy a compiler : “Not much, I
confess, in the practical line; but I
believe I could glean, from different
authors of authority on the subject,
such materials as would answer the
purpose very well.” The Doctor’s
investment, if indeed he ever thought
of it, was not carried into effect, for
* Johnson’s mode of work, as well as his ideas
on such matters, may be gathered from the follow-
ing conversation between Dr. Adams and himself
during the compilation of the Dictionary (not of
Trade and Commerce):
“ADAMS. This is a great work, sir; how are
you to get all the etymologies?”
“Johnson. Why, sir, here is a shelf with Junius,
and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh
gentleman, who has published a collection of
Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.”
“ADAMs. But, sir, how can you do this in three
years?”
“JoHNSON. Sir, I have no doubt that I can do
it in three years.”
“ADAMS. But the French Academy, which con-
sists of forty members, took forty years to compile
their dictionary.”
“Johnson. Sir, thus it is. This is the propor-
tion. Let me see ; forty times forty is sixteen
hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the
proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. I 5I
his Trade and Commerce scheme fell
to the ground.
On the evening following this conver-
sation, being alone, I began to consider
the matter of publication; having as a
basis for my considerations the propo-
sition that authors are as necessary to
publishers as publishers are to authors.
The story of the publisher, who
visited the residence of a success-
ful author, and, on Seeing comfort
and elegance on every side, gave
vent to a deep-drawn sigh, and Ob-
served : “Ah, this is where my money
goes,” has its parallel in another. An
author went to dine with his publisher
“once upon a time,” but could neither
eat nor drink, so filled was he with the
idea that all the sumptuous surround-
ings had been secured by means of
the ill-paid work of his brother authors
and himself. “The old Roman Em-
peror with his dish of peacocks' brains
was a Christian compared to that
152 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
man,” he declared afterwards to a
friend ; “Why, he feeds on men's
brains; and, more's the pity, there is
no fear of his succumbing to any evil
effects therefrom.” See-saw, Mar-
jorie Daw ; and so the world wags—
Grumble, grumble on every hand.
Horace Walpole tells a droll story
of Gibbon, the historian : “One of
those booksellers in Paternoster Row,
who published things in numbers, went
to Gibbon’s lodgings in St. James’s
Street, sent up his name, and was ad-
mitted. “Sir,’ said he, ‘ I am now
publishing a history of England, done
by several good hands. I understand
you have a knack at them there things,
and should be glad to give you every
reasonable encouragement.” As soon
as Gibbon recovered the use of his legs
and tongue, which were petrified with
surprise, he ran to the bell, and de-
sired his servant to show this en-
courager of learning downstairs.”
FRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 153
And yet another story of a famous
author and his publisher: “At the
time when Balzac was living in the
Rue de Chaillot, three young men, two
of whom subsequently became famous
in the literary world, went to see him
one evening. Balzac sometimes had
caprices like a femamze de frenze ans.
That day he had had his room fur-
nished with white satin. An immense
chandelier in the Pompadier style
hung from the ceiling. The great
writer made his visitors admire this
coquettish, and Somewhat extravagant
boudoir, begging them not to sit down
too much on the armchairs and sofas.
“But,” said one of the three friends, ‘it
is difficult for us to judge of the splen-
dour of your salon if you show it us by
the light of a single wax candle ; let
us light the chandelier, and see the
effect of your satin then l’ ‘Be it so,’
replied Balzac, and the forty wax-
lights were lighted. At this moment
154 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
some one knocked at the door. ‘ It is
M. X—, the publisher, who wishes
to speak to monsieur, said the servant.
• A publisher l’exclaimed Balzac, ‘and
forty wax-lights burning. Show him
in. And you,' said he, turning to the
three young men, “lie down on the
sofas, stretch yourselves out in the
chairs, and do not be afraid of scratch-
ing my satin with the leather of your
boots.”
“The door opened, and the publisher
stood still, dazzled by the light. Bal-
zac, calm and indifferent, asked him
what he wanted. The publisher came
to solicit the favour of publishing a
work of the celebrated novelist. Balzac
replied that he was very busy and very
tired ; but that . . . . In short, he
requested the publisher to return next
day to conclude the affair, and the
latter retired.
“I owe Providence a pound of
candles, at least, said Balzac, as soon
PRIENDS IN THE FLESH. 155
as X was gone. “You understand
that this man will think I light forty
wax-lights every evening; and you
cannot, for decency's sake, pay a man
who burns forty wax-lights a night, as
you would a writer who works by the
light of a single lamp. Now put out
the chandelier: the trick is played.’”

OTHER COMPANIONS OF THE
BOOKWORM : DREAMS AND
BOOKS.
I.
EACH book finding a resting-place in
my “holiest of holies” must be a dear
friend. I am a book-lover, but not a
dry-as-dust. My volumes should be
valuable in themselves as rarities and
treasures, as well as for what they
contain of wisdom or imagination.
I must feel in this affection of mine,
the throb of warm human life, the
Bohemianism of true book-love. My
happiness is to know that the volumes
I love have been loved before—have
had their baptism of tears before mine
fell upon their pages; have been
|
|
;
|

DREAMS AND BOOKS. I 57
fondled and made companions of
before they shared such treatment at
my hand, and made for themselves a
place near my heart.
By simply rising from where I now
sit, I can lay my hand, gentle readers,
on some dozens of volumes, which in
themselves as books are mere dry
bones; but the knowledge I possess
of their existence, since first put up in
their boards, leads me to look upon
them no longer as dry information-
keletons : the breath of love, of
riendship, of genius, has been poured
out upon them, and henceforth they
live. Dainty morsels, forsooth, are
they for daintiest bookworms to feed
upon. The hands and minds through
which they have passed have ripened
them ; their previous owners, by
the marks of love they have left .
upon them, have consecrated them
for all future time; have made them
worthy of welcome to the inner circle

158 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
of friends at our heart's fireside.
The books enumerated on subsequent
pages as forming ideal Stuff for a
book-collection, I would prize above
all merely extra-illustrated works,
such as readers will find named in the
appendix; as I would prefer the cosy
study—nooks I have already spoken of,
to the magnificent libraries of wealthy
collectors, which repel by the regu-
larity of bind and the cold, unused,
stand-off appearance of their shelf-
contents. Give me a quiet corner
and a loved book, rather than the
stateliness of apartments crammed
with volumes “no gentleman's
library should be without.”
I have nothing very serious to
advance against the numerous lists
of “The Hundred Best Books '' which
meet one just now at every corner,
except that in some cases they are
compiled with such ignorance or one-
sidedness as to make them veritable












DREAMS AND BOOKS, I 59
|
|
}
}
.
|
, tions; they pretend not to infallibility;
“false saints, usurpers of true shrines,
intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting
# out the legitimate occupants.” But
we need not be scared ; they are but
the outcome of individual predilec-
*and they serve in some respects their
purpose as catalogues of the armour
k
#
;
§
;
g
*
*
S.
*
*
;
s
} :
%
|
3.
A.
*
i
from which a young man may choose
;
what he needs to assist him in hewing
out his way in the world. The books
I would have in the corner where I
linger and dream, “the world forget-
ting, by the world forgot,” are those
to which a man may settle down with
feelings of affection, when his way
has been carved out, and his hours
of leisure come to him Sweet as
: angels' visits—but oftener. There is
just a trifle too much thought ex-
pended nowadays on the struggle for
position in life, and just a trifle too
little of restful thankfulness en-
couraged for what has been attained,
I6o COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM
*
i
!
and may reasonably be enjoyed. I
is possible, after all, to hear too muci :
of Longfellow’s “Excelsior.” - |
Notwithstanding the wholesome
sympathy and warm humanity one
occasionally finds in a friend in the
- |
flesh, I for my own part must confess
i
that on the whole I prefer living with \\
is
books to living with men. “One
not always happy with the lattel,
while books are intelligent com .
panions, without vanity, ill-humouſ
or caprice, whom one can summo
and dismiss just as one pleases.”
And for one of varied humours lik - ... -
myself, this summoning and dismiss
ing at will is to be considered al
important item. Moreover, through a
*
* Chesterfield thus describes his companionship
of this kind : “I read a great deal, and vary of
casionally my dead company. I converse wit. . . .
great folios in the morning, while my head
clearest and my attention strongest : I take u
less severe quartos after dinner, and at night
choose the mixed company and amusing chit-chá,
of octavos and duodecimos. Je fire parti de toa,
ce gueſe £uis: that is my philosophy.”

DREAMS AND BOOKS. I6 I
book truly meriting the name, one
may steal in upon its author in his
most secret and unguarded moments,
when God has lifted the veil from off
the man's soul, and the attitude of
defence, which characterizes the most
open-hearted and simple at times, is
discarded in toto as being an un-
necessary exercise—a sheer waste of
energy.
And what human friend can ever
share the spirit of worship which
sometimes descends upon a man as a
breath of inspiration ? It is only in
the silence of solitude that God lays
His restraining hand over the mouth
of utterance, so that the soul shall sing
the sweeter the inner song which de-
lights only the singer and the Author
of the song. This mood, which is
rare, is assisted occasionally by asso-
ciations clustering round volumes
which at some time or other have
helped at the devotions of pious souls.
I I
I62 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
Is it nothing, think you, my readers,
that I should have by my side this
little collection of French Catholic
books of devotion which I have just
taken down from that shelf yonder P
The volumes were all printed in the
seventeenth century, and, doubtless,
since then have been loved and
cherished under varied circumstances
and by many owners. Look at this
little Lettres Spirituelles du R. P.
Barre, printed at Rome in 1697, with
the name and date across the title-
page in a delicate handwriting,
“Madelene de Berulle, 1730;” or
upon this De Petit Office du S. Enfant
Jésus, of 1668, with the stains upon
its pages, as of tears shed in hours
of penitence and prayer. Do these
volumes indicate to you nothing of
the power of mental association ? do
they serve no purpose in quickening
your imagination? Then is our friend-
ship one of words, and more shallow
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 163
than a farce; for the regions of my
dreams are peopled by many creations
having birth in (to you) such trivial
stuff.
In some instances the past owners
of such works come out from the land
of dreams and stand before us as
historical verities. In May, 1886, the
little Prayer Book used by the unfor-
tunate Mary Queen of Scots at the
time of her death upon the scaffold,
was sold at the rooms of Messrs.
Sotheby. The prayers are described
as the handiwork of some rare fifteenth-
century scribe, and are written in Latin
on vellum. The pages of the missal
are exquisitely illuminated with ele-
gant borders of fruit, flowers, and
birds; they are also decorated with
thirty-five miniatures by a Flemish
artist, pieces of elaborate workman-
ship. The little book still rests in
the oak boards, covered with silk now
much worn, in which it was originally
II —2
164 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
bound. The possession of this volume
is a true holding of one of the land-
marks of history.
In the Mill on the Floss we all recol-
lect how strongly Maggie Tulliver was
influenced by the little book, De Imi-
fatione Christi, attributed to Thomas à
Rempis;* but not until recently were
* “At last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the
books that lay on the window-shelf, and she half
forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves
of the Portrait Gallery, but she soon pushed this
aside to examine the littlerow of books tied together
with string. Beauties of the Spectator, Rasselas, Eco-
nomy of Human Life, Gregory's Letters—she knew
the sort of matter that was inside all these ; the
Christian Year—that seemed to be a hymn-book,
and she laid it down again ; but Zhomas à Kempis
—the name had come across her in her reading,
and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows,
of getting some ideas to attach to a name that
strays solitary in the memory. She took up the
little old clumsy book with some curiosity : it had
the corners turned down in many places, and some
hand, now for ever quiet, had made at certain
passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since
browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to
leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed. . . .
* Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee
more than anything in the world,' etc. . . .
“A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie
while she read, as if she had been wakened in the
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I65
we permitted to know what a part that
same remarkable work had played in
the inner history of George Eliot's own
life. After her death her copy of it
was found by a friend lying opened on
her table by an empty chair.
There are, however, other copies of
De ſimitatione which one would desire
to possess. Charles Lamb, writing of
the aunt who lived with him in the
Temple and afterwards in Little Queen
Street, describes her as continually,
from morning to night, poring over
good books and devotional exercises.
“Her favourite volumes were Thomas
d Kempis, in Stanhope's translation,
and a Roman Catholic Prayer-book
with the Matins and Complines
night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings
whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor.
She went on from one brown mark to another,
where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly con-
scious that she was reading—seeming rather to
listen while a low voice said, ‘Why dost thou here
gaze about, since this is not the place of thy rest?'
etc.
I66 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM .
regularly set down—terms which I
was at that time too young to under-
stand. She persisted in reading them,
although admonished daily concern-
ing their papistical tendency, and
went to church every Sabbath, as a
good Protestant should do. These
were the only books she studied,
though I think at one period of her
life, she told me, she had read with
great satisfaction the Adventures of an
Unfortunate Young Nobleman.”
Carlyle, it will be remembered, sent
his mother a copy of the Zmitation of
Christ in February, 1833.
Who would not add to these the
copy of this little book which minis-
tered to Gordon in those last dark
days of his in Khartoum ? as well as
the copy which Wolseley carried with
him as he pushed forward towards
this same imprisoned friend ?
A sympathetic associative memory,
well stocked, is a source of great plea-
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 167
sure to a book-lover ; in his rummag-
ing excursions among book-shops and
catalogues he carries, by virtue of this
very memory, his ideal library with
him. Who would not find an added
pleasure in throwing his inkstand at
the devil, from the recollection that
Luther had tried his “’prentice hand ”
with a similar projectile on the iden-
tical personage? and what man is
sufficiently matter-of-fact to laugh
with Scorn at the innocent pleasure
one gets out of the discovery that
some famous character, under circum-
stances similar to our own, once found
comfort and consolation in the very
book which has ministered to us 2
II.
THIS little copy (24mo., 1663) of the
first edition of the Marquis of Worces-
ter’s Century of the Names and Scant-
Zings of such Inventions as at present /
can call to Mind, appears to me, when-
I68 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORIM -
Ş
ever I look at it, to be crying for its
fellow ; and so far, I have been unable
to supply its want in this direction.
It calls for its elder brother in the
shape of the little volume which Solo-
mon de Caus gave to an unappreci-
ating world in 1615, under the title of
Ales Raisons des Forces Mouvantes avec
diverses Machines fant utiles gue pºlis-
sanies, considerable portions of which
the Marquis embodied in his Century.
Poor Caus, fired with the enthusiasm
of his ideas, SO annoyed Cardinal
Richelieu by his constant applications
to him in the matter of his book, that
the Cardinal had him confined as a
madman. When the Marquis of
Worcester (then Edward Somerset)
visited him in the asylum, his keeper
described him as a man from whom,
were you to “listen to him, you would
imagine that with Steam you could
navigate ships, move carriages; in
fact, there is no end to the miracles
}
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I69
which, he insists upon it, could be per-
formed.” Another instance, verily, of
the truth declared by the man con-
fined in a lunatic asylum, who said, if
they found one in the world more
clever than themselves, the people, to
get rid of him, shut him up and called
him mad.
I can never look upon Smollett's
Płistory of England, Stowed away in
that odd corner by the fireplace, with-
out remembering the ingenuity of the
publisher by which he disposed of
twenty thousand copies directly on its
publication. He must have been a
right shrewd business man to have
struck upon his idea of advertisement;
and altogether removed from a Puri-
tan in his ideas of the Sabbath to have
carried it out. I would that I had a
list of the parish clerks to whom his
circulars were sent with the accom-
panying half-crown, with a red cross
marked against every one (were there
17o COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
any ) who refused the bribe, and re-
frained from slipping the advertise-
ment into the pews for old men and
country maidens to spell over when
they should be devoutly engaged in
following the words of the clergyman.
Anyhow the result justified the ven-
ture; and probably on the following
Sabbath those who had read with
greatest interest the smuggled an-
nouncement, then worshipped with
increased zeal to atone for the wasted
past.
That stout old folio there, Sir
Thomas's North’s translation of Plu-
tarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romaines (1603), which Shakespeare
used so extensively in some of his
plays, I have often shaken my finger
at in mock solemnity whilst thinking
of that other translation (Dacier's),
the reading of which gave life and
strength to the republican tendencies
of most of the leaders of the French
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 171
Revolution. I often think of Madame
Roland, who became the heroine of re-
publicanism, whilst yet a girl of tender
age, in her father's gloomy old house
in the Quai des Orfèvres with the
A/užarch she had discovered in an odd
corner of the workshop. Day after
day and night after night she ban-
queted with the heroes of old. On
Sundays she took her Plutarch as well
as her missal to church, and whilst her
mother was deeply absorbed in pious
exercises and reflections, little Manon
Jeanne eagerly devoured the pages
she loved so much better than her
prayers. And this was the commence-
ment of the education of her, whose
salon became the rendezvous of the
leaders of the Revolution—Mira-
beau, Vergniaud, Danton, Buzot,
Pétion, Barnave, Brissot, and Robes-
pierre. Ah, Robespierre by what
strange freak of Destiny wert thou
doomed to be the means of the destruc-
172 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
tion of this remarkable woman, whose
portrait has been drawn in these
words, “A philosopher at eight, at
eleven a religious devotee, at eighteen
a sceptic, and at thirty-seven the leader
of the greatest political movement of
the modern world. A grand woman,
a brilliant woman, a woman of fine
genius, one of the noblest heroines of
history or romance, but far from fault-
less; for there was much of prejudice,
of envy and uncharitableness in her
composition ; her republicanism, how-
ever pure, was strongly influenced by
hatred of the rich. During the early
months of the Revolution none was
more implacable, or more rejoiced at
the sufferings of the aristocracy. When
she was told of the agonies endured
by Marie Antoinette, when the crowd
broke into the Tuileries, she exclaimed,
“Oh that I had seen her protracted
sufferings How deeply her pride
must have suffered l’”
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I73
When Napoleon, shortly before he
left France for Egypt, drew up a list
of the books he would have go with
him, Plutarch had a prominent place
in it. And among the few volumes
that serve as companions for Lord
Wolseley during any distant expe-
dition, a copy of the Lives is always
to be found. In Melanchthon's collec-
tion, which consisted of four books
only, we find Plutarch in company
with Plato, Pliny, and Ptolemy; and it
was from this author, in company with
Montaigne and Locke, that Rousseau
drew the basis of his ideas in his Em2/e.
In the drawer there beneath where
Plutarch rests is a small collection of
Ballads and Chap-books; but I would
willingly exchange the lot for two
little volumes which one may read
of and hunger after, but never possess.
One is the book of old songs and
ballads which George Daniel kept
specially for Charles Lamb to finger
174 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
and dog-ear when he came to visit
him, in the same way that a parent
gives a child some worthless toy to
play with, so that the juvenile but
mischievous fingers may be kept off
articles of value; for Daniel was a
rare book-lover, and delighted in
unique copies and good bindings,
whilst Lamb liked a volume to have
the used and friendly appearance of
an old “circulating library” Tom
Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield, loving,
the while, to dream of “the thousand
thumbs that have turned over their
pages with delight; of the lone semp-
stress, whom they may have cheered
(milliner, or harder-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.” As a fit
and personal reply to his own query:
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I75
“Who would have them a whit less
spoiled P” Lamb writes elsewhere : “If
you find the Milton in certain parts
dirtied and soiled with a crumb of
right Gloucester blacked in the candle
(my usual Supper), or, peradventure, a
stray ash of tobacco wafted into the
crevices, look to that passage more
particularly ; depend upon it, it con-
tains good matter.”
The other volume I would have as
the result of my proposed but impos-
sible exchange, is the collection of
Ballads and Chap-books which still
rests in the library at Abbotsford, and
in which was written by Scott in 1810:
“This little collection of stall tracts
and ballads was formed by me, when
a boy, from the baskets of the travel-
ling pedlars. Until put into its present
decent binding, it had such charms
for the servants, that it was repeat-
edly, and with difficulty, recovered
from their clutches. It contains most
176 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
of the pieces that were popular about
thirty years since, and I dare say
many that could not now be procured
for any price.” -
There are copies of Scott’s own
works especially worthy possession.
(1) The handsomely bound copy of
the Complete Edition, published in
America by Ticknor and Fields, and
sent by the publishers to Nathaniel
Hawthorne, concerning which Julian
Hawthorne writes: “Beginning at the
beginning, he read all those admirable
romances to his children and wife.
There was no conceivable entertain-
ment which they would not have post-
poned in favour of this presentation of
Scott through the medium of Haw-
thorne. I have never since ventured
to open the Waverley Wozels.”
(2) The volumes to hire which
Douglas Jerrold and his father saved
their money while living together in
poverty just after Douglas had quitted
the sea.
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 177
(3) The small duodecimo volumes
of the American Edition of the Poe/2s
sent by Washington Irving to Miss
Sophia Scott, and which Scott himself
acknowledged : “In my hurry,” he
wrote, “I have not thanked you in
Sophia’s name for the kind attention
which furnished her with the Ameri-
can volumes. I am not quite sure I
can add my own, since you have made
her acquainted with much more of
papa’s folly than she would ever other-
wise have learned ; for I have taken
special care they (the children) should
never see any of those things during
their earlier years.”
(4) The Wovels which Goethe used
to read to a group of friends at
Weimar. It will be remembered that
Goethe had the highest admiration
for Scott's artistic truth and skill, and
at one of these readings burst forth
with the exclamations: “What infi-
nite diligence in the preparatory
I 2
178 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
studies | What truth of detail in the
execution "
III.
MAY 3 IST-Resting in the evening
twilight, after a busy and bothering
day, I have been wondering whether
dead authors ever quarrel in the
manner of dead sectarians. I once
heard a man declare, during a stormy
season of Church-Disestablishment
meetings, that he liked immensely to
live where he did—close to a cemetery
—it was so amusing to watch, on
moonlight nights, the pitched-battles
between the Church-folk and Dis-
senters, who piously stepped from
their graves regularly as the clock
struck the midnight hour.
I must remove my Mosses from an
Old Manse. At present it rests sur-
rounded by odd volumes of Byron
and Shelley; and who can say that
these authors may not wake up some
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I79
night to “take it out” of Hawthorne
on account of that long letter of
“P.'s Correspondence” Just think
of Byron showing himself to Haw-
thorne here in my quiet study, as
proof that he did not look older as a
result of his “former irregularities of
life;” that he did not “wear a brown
wig, very luxuriantly curled, and ex-
tending down over his forehead ;”
that he was not “enormously fat " '
Think of him vehemently declaring
that he has not been reconciled with
Lady Byron for the last ten years,
nor become concerned about his Soul
with a piety in which “the rigid tenets
of Methodism * combine with “the
ultra-doctrines of the Puseyites;” that
he is not on the most intimate terms
with Southey, and does not wish to
“be canonized as a Saint in many
pulpits of the metropolis and else-
where.”
Shelley is equally anxious that
I 2–2
18o COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM .
/
Hawthorne should understand, once
for all, that he is not “reconciled to
the Church of England ;” never has
superintended the “publication of a
volume of discourses treating of the
poetico-philosophical proofs of Chris-
tianity on the basis of the Thirty-nine
Articles;” has not “taken orders, and
been inducted to a small country
living in the gift of the Lord Chan-
cellor;” nor, with the view of produc-
ing a poem, entered into a literary
partnership with Dr. Reginald Heber,
heretofore Bishop of Calcutta, but
recently translated to a see in
England.
Really all this is alarming, and may
not end in words. I must remove the
Mosses.
JULY 7TH.—I have been sitting to-
night with a friend in the shape of a
volume of poems by Thomas Bailey
Aldrich, sent me from beyond the
Atlantic. As regards its get-up, it is
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I81
a treasure for the lover of choice
books, with its limp parchment cover,
and its title-page in red. As to the
delicacy of the literary flavour of its
matter I hesitate to speak at length
just now, for fear of being unable to
stop at the point where loving fancy,
having revelled its fill, hands over its
subject to the cold fingers of criticism.
And there is no room for criticism,
chill and icy, in this little work of
mine. I wish it to be full of human
sympathy, and dreams, and quiet rest.
In the volume I have been reading,
Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book, etc.,
the book-lover will find, as I have
found, an attractive picture in the
bookish Friar in his quiet old convent
almost seven centuries ago, whose
dearest wish was to wipe away the
memory of a youthful sin by doing
SO II) e
“Deed of daring, high and pure,
That shall, when I am dead, endure,
A well-spring of perpetual good.
182 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
“And straight he thought of those great tomes
With clamps of gold—the convent's boast—
How they endured, while kings and realms
Past into darkness and were lost ;
How they had stood from age to age,
Clad in their yellow vellum-mail,
'Gainst which the Paynim's godless rage,
The Vandal's fire, could naught avail:
Though heathen sword-blows fell like hail,
Though cities ran with Christian blood,
Imperishable they had stood |
They did not seem like books to him,
But Heroes, Martyrs, Saints—themselves
The things they told of—not mere books
Ranged grimly on the oaken shelves.
“To those dim alcoves, far withdrawn,
He turned with measured steps and slow,
Trimming his lantern as he went ;
And there, among the shadows, bent
Above one ponderous folio,
With whose miraculous text were blent
Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned
With rings of melting amethyst ;
Mute patient Martyrs, cruelly bound
To blazing fagots; here and there
Some bold, serene Evangelist,
Or Mary in her sunny hair;
And here and there from out the words
A brilliant tropic bird took flight;
And through the margins many a vine
Went wandering—roses, red and white,
Tulip, wind-flower, and columbine
Blossomed. To his believing mind
These things were real, and the wind,
Blown through the mullioned window, took
Scent from the lilies in the book.
“‘Santa Maria P cried Friar Jerome,
‘Whatever man illumined this,
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 183
Though he were steeped heart-deep in sin,
Was worthy of unending bliss,
And no doubt hath it ! Ah dear Lord,
Might I so beautify Thy Word
What sacristan, the convents through,
Transcribes with such precision P who
Does such initials as I do P
LO ! I will gird me to this work,
And save me, ere the one chance slips.
On smooth clean parchment I’ll engross
The Prophet's ſell Apocalypse;
And as I write from day to day,
Perchance my sins will pass away?'
“So Friar Jerome began his Book.
From break of dawn till curfew-chime
He bent above the lengthening page,
Like some rapt poet o'er his rhyme.
He scarcely paused to tell his beads,
Except at night; and then he lay
And tost, unrestful, on the straw,
Impatient for the coming day—
Wonking like one who feels, perchance,
That, ere the longed-for goal be won,
Ere Beauty bare her perfect breast,
Black Death may pluck him from the sun.
At intervals the busy brook
Turning the mill-wheel, caught his ear;
And through the grating of the cell
He saw the honeysuckles peer,
And knew 'twas summer, that the sheep
In fragrant pastures lay asleep,
And felt that, somehow, God was near.
In his green pulpit on the elm,
The robin, abbot of that wood,
Held forth by times; and Friar Jerome
Listened, and Smiled, and understood.
184 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
“While summer wrapt the blissful land
What joy it was to labour so,
To see the long-tressed angels grow
Beneath the cunning of his hand,
Vignette and tail-piece subtly wrought !”
Then came the spotted fever to the
town, and
“From the convent, two and two,
The Prior chanting at their head,
The monks went forth to shrive the sick
And give the hungry grave its dead—
Only Jerome, he went not forth,
But hiding in his dusty nook,
* Let come what will, I must illume
The last ten pages of my Book I’
He drew his stool before the desk,
And sat him down, distraught and wan,
To paint his daring masterpiece,
The stately figure of Saint John.
He sketched the head with pious care,
Laid in the tint, when, powers of Grace
He found a grinning Death's-head there,
And not the grand Apostle's face
“Then up he rose with one long cry :
‘’Tis Satan’s self does this,’ cried he,
“Because I shut and barred my heart
When Thou didst loudest call to me !
O Lord, Thou know'st the thoughts of men,
Thou know'st that I did yearn to make
Thy Word more lovely to the eyes
Of sinful souls, for Christ His sake I
Nathless I leave the task undone :
I give up all to follow thee—
Even like him who gave his nets
To waves and winds by Galilee l’
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I85
“Which said, he closed the precious Book
In silence, with a reverent hand ;
And drawing his cowl about his face,
Went forth into the stricken land.
+ * 3% + + k
“The weeks crept on, when, one still day,
God’s awſul presence filled the sky,
And that black vapor floated by,
And lo! the sickness past away.”
y
And “Friar Jerome, a wasted shape,
returned to the convent :
“Counting his rosary step by step,
With a forlorn and vacant air,
Like some unshriven churchyard thing,
The Friar crawled up the mouldy stair
To his damp cell, that he might look
Once more on his belovèd Book.
“And there it lay upon the stand,
Open —he had not left it so.
He grasped it, with a cry; for, lo 1
He saw that some angelic hand,
While he was gone, had finished it !
There 'twas complete, as he had planned ;
There at the end, stood ºffinis writ
And gilded as no man could do—
Not even that pious anchoret,
Bilfrid, the wonderful, nor yet
The miniatore Ethelwold,
Nor Durham's Bishop, who of old
(England still hoards the priceless leaves)
Did the four gospels all in gold.
And Friar Jerome nor spoke nor stirred,
But with his eyes fixed on that word,
He passed from sin and want and scorn ;
I86 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORIM -
And suddenly the chapel-bells \
Rang in the holy Christmas-morn 1”
AUG. 24TH.—No prospect of a
holiday this year. The sunny days
are following each other in rapid
succession, but, for me, there has
been as yet no waking up of a
morning with a look-out upon an ab-
sence of three weeks—away anywhere
from business, and from books, too—
for I am epicurean enough to appre-
ciate the true flavour of my loved
authors after a separation of this
kind. And so, to-day I have been
doing what I could towards getting
from a book what I Ought to be
taking direct from Dame Nature her-
self—the pleasure of companionship
with hill and dale. I have wandered
about the old garden, resting here and
there from the heat in the shadow of
a sycamore, or under the old ivied-
wall, and my chosen friend has been
Prime's I go a Fishing, a book which,
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 187
by the way, is to me no mean substi-
tute for an actual tramp through
green lanes. After tea I laid aside
this friend, to find another in an old
number of Temple Bar, in a certain
E. Y. (The World knows him now),
who discourses there of “Summer
Days.” With pleasant surprise I dis-
covered that the satisfaction I was in
the very act of getting from recollec-
tions of pleasant holidays was there
set down in definite black and white.
But my author, I found, had these
advantages over me : his happy days
had been more varied than mine, had
been spent in spots to which I am a
stranger, and under circumstances
which have never influenced my
existence. And so the paper on
which I should have penned my
dreams of summer days of the past
shall contain his recollections :
“Summer days of artist and student
life in Germany grand days these,
18S COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
full of glorious indolence and insouci-
ance, redolent of youth and health and
high spirits, and carelessness of the
world’s opinion. Not very particular
about dress then, about the cut of
the velvet lounging-coat or the plaid
trousers; utterly ignorant of Piver's
gloves, or, indeed, of gloves of any
kind ; very loose about the throat,
and not very starched about the be-
haviour. Mornings passed in loung-
ing from studio to studio; in watching
the glorious ‘Lenore” grow beneath
Lessing’s magic pencil; in listening to
old Hildebrandt’s lectures on art and
recollections of bygone maestri, in
sitting for an atrocious caricature of
an “Englander’ (plaid trousers, tele-
Scope, Murray's handbook, bouledogue,
and all complete), sketched by Karl
in black and white crayon on the wall
of his atelier, in unintermittent pipe-
smoking everywhere and with all.
Afternoons in the blue vine-clad
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 189
mountains, or in the thick pine-forests,
with two or three chosen companions
talking, not the metaphysical stuff
which English novelists would fain
make pass current as the stock con-
versation of all German youth, but
pleasant quips and cranks, and Scandal
about our friends, or romance—
romance in which, O mihi praeteritos 1
we then firmly believed. Then to
coffee in some pleasant public garden,
where the simple German matrons
and fråuleims, by no means unattrac-
tive, with their deep blue eyes, their
hands which, instead of ‘offering
early flowers, bore knitting-needles
and stocking-wool, and their masses
of light hair, moved pleasantly among
us. Then for a swim with the stream
in the rapid Rhine, and then the
affends essen. The supper at the
students’ Kneipe—the steaming por-
tion of reh-bok, the hārāng-salad, the
Bairisch &ier–the mighty pipes, the
190 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM
madcap frolics of the Bürschen, and
the walk homeward in the mellow
moonlight, a mob of fantastically-
dressed lads, with their arms round
each other's necks, with sweetly-
attuned voices, .
“‘Marching along, fifty score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.’
“Even now come crowding thick
and fast upon me memories of pleasant
holidays, which must be massed to-
gether, not dilated upon in detail.
Summer days at races on breezy
downs or sunburnt heaths—at Epsom
or at Ascot—where one cared little
enough for the names, the weights, or
the colours of the riders; the ‘odds,
and bets, and handicaps, and general
1<navery; but, oh! how much for the
pleasant smell of the trodden turf,
the fresh air, the brilliant sunshine !
Summer days in broad - bottomed
punts, with a pretence of fishing ill-
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 191
sustained ; a decided leaning to
thorough indolence, and an unremit-
ting attention to the cold fowl and
Salt in the paper packet, and the iced
Something in the narrow-mouthed
stone jar. Summer days on the
beach, passed in alternate dips into
the old, well-thumbed green Tenny-
son, and vacant Stares at the blue
vault of sky and the blue expanse of
sea. Summer days on the river, with
the boat pulled under the over-hanging
trees, while we lay lazily in the stern,
now looking at a jumping fish, now
listening to the rustic Sounds borne
upon the balmy air from the shore; lay
“‘With indolent fingers fretting the tide,
And an indolent arm round a darling waist;’
as one of our Sweet Songsters has
expressed it. Summer days on blind-
ing Swiss mountains, on verdant-bor-
dered English lakes, on Mediterranean
steamers, where one lies under the
wetted awning in that happy state
192 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
of #ief and forgetfulness so grateful
to the slave of the pen ; under the
shadow of the Pyramids, among
nestling Rhine villages and amid
ruined abbeys.”
NOVEMBER IITH.—I am not ex-
pecting any friend to visit me to-night.
The wind is making a wild world of
it outside; within, the fire is cheery,
the lamp lit, and I am alone, quietly
happy in a sense of safety, knowing
that this evening will not be laid
waste by interruption of any kind. I
have taken down from its nook a
volume of a hundred years ago, and
termed a catalogue, Catalogue of Five
Hundred Celebrated Authors of Great
Britain now Living, and its title-page
bears date 1788. A wonder it seems
to me that such a stock of quiet, un-
conscious humour should have been
exhausted on such a publication. The
whole thing tickles me amazingly:
and as it is the custom with a certain
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I93
class of individuals to walk ever with
their eyes turned backwards, and to
talk unceasingly of the good old days
which, they tell you with many a
sigh, are gone for ever, it just occurs
to me that I might pander a little to
this taste and let those of my readers
who like, share with me this Mark
Twainishness of a century ago. The
names of the authors are given in the
catalogue in due alphabetical order,
and in our extracts we will follow the
same rule:
“ANDREWS, Miles Peter, Author of
Kānāvervankoffdal ſpraßengotc/iderms, a
farce imitated from Lady Craven;
Dissipation, a comedy, and Repara-
Zion, a comedy; each of which have
taken their station in the regions of
mediocrity.
“BLACKLOCK, -—, LL.D. This
gentleman, who has been blind from
his infancy, first attracted notice by
the publication of a volume of poems.
I 3
194 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
. . . . He lives at Edinburgh in habits
of intimacy with the most respectable
literati of that country (sic).
“BROCQ, Philip le. A clerical visi-
onary who has published a project for
the payment of the National Debt, and
for the better cultivation of fir-trees.
“BRUCE, —. A traveller par-
ticularly celebrated for his researches
in the kingdom of Abyssinia. He
was long restrained from publishing
his Observations by the laughter he ex-
cited in consequence of his account of
the Abyssinian Oxen. It is, it seems,
a custom with the inhabitants to cut
a steak from the flank of the animals
and devour it raw. The oxen are
then turned out to graze, and do very
well after the operation. Mr. Bruce's
travels are in the press, and may
speedily be expected.
“BUNBURY, Henry. It is always
pleasing to the compiler of a cata-
logue like this to have an opportunity
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I95
of inserting in it the names of persons
of merit who do not seem imme-
diately to fall within his design. Mr.
Bunbury, brother to Sir Thomas
Charles Bunbury, Baronet, late Mem-
ber of Parliament for the county of
Suffolk, is a painter of some merit
in the serious line, and of Superior
eminence in the humorous and the
ludicrous . . . . . . Mrs. Bunbury is
much admired for her personal charms
and her mental accomplishments.
COTTON, Charles, M.D. The pro-
prietor of a private madhouse near St.
Albans, and author of Visions in Verse
for the Instruction of Younger Minds.
“EON, – d'. This very extra-
ordinary woman lived more than
twenty years in a public station in
the disguise and under the character
of a man. She was secretary to the
French Embassy at London, of the
Count de Guerchy, and was instru-
mental in negociating the peace of
I 3–2
196 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
Paris in 1763. Her Letters, Memoirs,
and Negociations were published in
quarto in the year 1764. She also
wrote Mémoire des Finances, in two
volumes duodecimo; Ses Loisirs enz
Angleterre, in fourteen volumes octavo;
a /Life of Czarina Eudoxia Foe-
derozyſza, Consort to Peter the Great ;
and a ſletter to the Count de Guerchy.
Her sex at length became a topic for
public suspicion, and the speculation
of gamesters, and was authentically
ascertained in a trial before Lord
Mansfield founded upon one of these
speculations . . . . She is much cele-
brated for her skill in fencing, tennis,
and other manly exercises.
“HORSLEY, Samuel, D.D., F.R.S.,
Lord Bishop of St. David's. Dr.
Horsley married his maidservant, and
is the editor of the late edition of Sir
Isaac Newton's Principia.
“HURD, Richard, D.D. Bishop of
Worcester, and Clerk of the Closet to
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I97
the King. . . . The distinguishing
feature of the mind of Bishop Hurd
seems to be intellectual cowardice.
“INGLEFIELD, John, a captain in
the navy. He published a shilling
pamphlet intitled AWarrative of the
Moss of the Centaur ; and there have
been about half-a-dozen pieces of the
same dimensions published in a con-
troversy of some notoriety between
him and his wife.
“LOFFT, Capel. A gentleman of
the county of Suffolk, an amiable and
vigorous champion of the principles
of liberty. He has published . . . . an
Essay on the Law of Libels; the
Praises of Poetry, a poem. . . .
“MAINWARING, -, a clergy-
man. He published a volume of
sermons, and had a controversy with
Dr. Samuel Halifax, Bishop of Glou-
Cester, upon the proper way of quoting
passages of Scripture.
“MORE, Hannah, a schoolmistress
198 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
at Bristol. She published in 1773
The Search. After Happiness, a pastoral
drama in rhyme, written to be per-
formed by her pupils. . . . . She
has lately been celebrated for her
animated patronage, and still more
animated quarrel with Mrs. Anne
Yearsley, a poetical milkwoman.
“NEWMAN, Henry Charles Chris-
tian Theodore, a German by birth,
and a clergyman of the Church of
England. He published a Sermon
Preached before the Humane Society,
remarkable for rotundity of period
and neatness of construction ; and a
poem on the Love of our Country,
containing a very animated parallel
between the character of Jesus Christ
and the Duchess of Devonshire.
“O’KEEFE, John, a native of Ireland,
and late a performer upon the Dublin
Theatre. He owes his genius as a
poet to the accident of having de-
molished his wife’s nose in a fit of
DREAMS AND BOOKS. I99
jealousy. . . . His style is chiefly that
of pun, and the happy production of
voluble nonsense. . . . Mr. O'Keefe
has the misfortune of being deprived
of the use of the organs of sight.
“SCOTT, , a poetess. Author
of a performance entitled The Female
Advocate, which has had between two
and three admirers.
“SHERIDAN, Thomas, the son of
Dr. Thomas Sheridan, a schoolmaster
of Dublin, and the particular friend of
Dr. Jonathan Swift. His publica-
tions are . . . A Discourse on Oratory,
I759; Lectures on Elocution, in one
volume quarto; . . . Lectures on the Art
of Reading Prose and Verse, in two
volumes octavo, 1775. . . . in these
publications, though they are not
destitute of good sense, there is a
moderate portion of pedantry and
self-conceit. In his preface to the
Art of Reading Prose, in particular,
Mr. Sheridan observes that the irre-
2OO COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM .
ligion and scepticism of the present
age are owing to the Slovenly manner
in which our clergy read prayers :
that they might hitherto justify their
negligence and ignorance by the want
of instruction ; but that now that his
book had been published, if irreligion
and scepticism be not banished out of
the island, the clergy will remain with-
Out excuse.
“SMITH, Charlotte, a lady of the
county of Sussex. She produced, in
I784, Sonneſs and other Poems, which
are characterized by great elegance of
feeling and beauty of expression. Mrs.
Smith is the mother of ten children.
“TASKER, William, a clergyman,
and a writer of poetry. He com-
menced his career about the year
1779; and produced an Ode to the
War/7%e Genius of Great Britain; an
Ode to the Memory of the Bishop of
Sodor and Man . . . Mr. Tasker's
writings are not good prose, because
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2O I
they are tagged with rhymes; and they
are not good poetry, because they are
cold, insipid, pleonastic, and prosaical.
“TRIMMER, , a devout lady
who has dedicated her slender talents
to the instructing from the press the
rising generation. Her works are,
Sacred History in four volumes
duodecimo ; and a little Spelling
Book, price sixpence.
“TYTLER, Alexander, a professor
of universal history in the University
of Edinburgh. This gentleman dis-
tinguished himself with reputation in
the controversy in favour of the inno-
cence of Mary Queen of Scots. He
also published in I783 a Syllabus of
/lis Lectures on Universal History in
one volume octavo ; and in 1784 was
the first person in these islands who
adventured in an air balloon, though
for want of being able to afford the
expense, he only sailed over two
barns and a stable.”
202 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
DECEMBER 13TH.—The rain is
coming down to-night as if it were
making the most of a last opportu-
tunity; and it is evident that no
one will call to disturb this even-
ing’s quiet. I have just laid aside
old Izaak Walton's Lives to pursue
a train of thought originated by the
volume. Ah I will pick my com-
panions and go wandering with them
in search of stray volumes, which per-
chance might be secured in spots
delightful to linger in. Unseen, I will
rub shoulders with my friends in their
strolls; and, prevented by no infirmi-
ties of the flesh, I will find my way to
their very hearts, and share the secret.
satisfaction they enjoy from the
volumes they handle or purchase;
for next in pleasure to the securing
a prize ourselves, is the knowledge
that it has been secured by a friend,
Here comes along Bishop Sander-
son, than whom no prelate ever better
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2O3
loved books; and in him, notwithstand-
ing his sad-coloured clothes, I find
a fit companion for the commence-
ment of my mental stroll. Away we
go together to Little Britain, the haunt
of the learned, and the spot where one
seldom fails to find agreeable conver-
sation ; for the booksellers here are
“knowing and conversable men, with
whom, for the sake of bookish know-
ledge, the greatest wits are ever
pleased to converse.” But we find
no particular call for enticing words,
just now, at which I am glad, for
the Bishop's powers of conversa-
tion are well known,” and he has come
to purchase some works of Doctor
Richard Sibbes, and not to talk ; and
moreover the sky is darkening, and
the rain not far distant. So the
parcel is made up, and we depart
together. But it is an afternoon to
* From the double testimony of Izaak Walton
and King Charles.
204 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKWORM :
remember. Denied friendly words
of seasonable conversation in one
direction, the Bishop soon finds them
in another. Not many steps away he
meets his friend Izaak Walton, with
whose company and speech he is
evidently gratified, as I gather from
the manner they stand together in
the street talking on Sundry pleasing
themes. The Bishop unties his parcel
on his knee in a stooping position, and
with the pride of a genuine booklover
shows “ honest Izaak" his latest pur-
chase. But the rain and the wind
have come, and, loth to part, the friends
find shelter in a “cleanly house,”
where with plain fare of bread and
cheese and ale, and before a good
fire, they continue their conversation,
and the angler grows eloquent in
praise of Doctor Richard Sibbes.*
* “To my son Izaak I give Doctor Sibbes his
Soul’s Conflict, and to my daughter the Bruised
Jºeed—desiring them to read them so as to be well
acquainted with them.”—Zzaak Walton's Will.
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2O5
There, at their ease, and with kindly
smiles on their faces, I leave them to
the ale and the books.
Again I am in Little Britain in
Search of books, and my companion
this time is the Earl of Dorset. He
has given his order to the bookseller,
who is rummaging about with many
expressions of hope of finding. In
the meanwhile the Earl takes up a
little volume which lies close to his
hand, and opens it to find many pas-
sages which strike him pleasantly, and
fix his attention. Peering over his
shoulder I see that the volume is
entitled Paradise Zost, and its author
one John Milton. The bookseller
has been successful in his search, and
returning to his titled customer is met
with inquiries concerning the said
Paradise Lost, and a request that the
volume be included in the parcel of
purchases.
With reiterated thanks the book-
206 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
seller adds –“If your lordship can
say anything in favour of the book,
after reading it, I shall be glad, for the
copies lie on hand, like waste-paper.”
The Earl of Dorset is again the
companion I choose for my third
visit to Little Britain; and this time
the bookseller's tale about this certain
work of one John Milton has a
different turn. “The book is inquired
about,” he says, “and in many
instances eagerly bought.”
At this the Earl Smiles, and con-
fesses that after reading the mar-
vellous poem he had sent it on to
Dryden, whose verdict had been :
“This man cuts us all out, and the
ancients too.”
And the worthy bookseller is pleased,
and bustles about the shop with in-
creased energy to find what his lord-
ship needs to-day.
And thus the evening glides into
night, and night into the young morn-
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2O7
ing, as I continue my mental search
for treasures with the booklovers. I
wander about innumerable corners
with old Isaac D'Israeli, whose only
amusement in London was his ramble
among booksellers, and who never
entered a club without immediately
seeking out its library. I hunt about
dusty stalls in the bye-courts and out-
of-the-way corners of the Metropolis
with Macaulay ; I stroll in his com-
pany through the Seven Dials, and
listen with him in Whitechapel to the
street-singer chanting the English
ballad from which he conceived the idea
of writing his Lays of Ancient Rome. I
mount with him ricketyladders to Scour
top shelves for old quartos and other
“rubbish” of bygone days; and am
content to share with him the dust and
cobwebs which invariably attend such
excursions. And I find that in many
queer spots his knowledge of books is
known and appreciated, and the book-
2O8 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOKIVORM .
seller has but to hold up to his view a
volume to receive, in many cases with-
out examination, a “No” or “Put it
aside.” And then, having secured his
prize, he is impatient to get it home ;
and pooh-poohing the offer of the
seller to send it for him, tucks it
under his arm in all its unconcealed
shabbiness and walks away.
I find that in these mental excur-
sions I may choose my companions as
I will, for has not Gladstone (to come
to our own days) often been seen with
a huge tome under his arm (a vellum
Homer, perchance), threading his way
from a bookstall P And Beaconsfield
occasionally disfigured his well-fitting
coat by straining its pockets with a
too great bulk of books. And Lord
Lytton, if my memory serves me
rightly, was not above looking over
old book - collections with a view
to picking up Some volume for a
trifle. In one of his novels he speaks
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 209
of a certain precious Horace secured
for a few shillings. Southey would
lay aside many other pleasures just to
run his eye over an old bookstall. A
friend who visited Paris with him
refers to his conduct of this kind while
there : “During our stay in Paris I
believe Southey did not once go to the
Louvre; he cared for nothing but the
old book-shops;” and he adds: “This
is a singular feature in his character.”
Southey himself, referring to his ten-
dencies of this kind, pleaded guilty to
“a sort of miser-like love of accumula-
tion.” “Like those persons who fre-
quent sales, and fill their own houses
with useless purchases because they
may want them some time or other,
so am I,” he confessed, “for ever
making collections and storing up
materials which may not come into
use till the Greek kalends. And this
I have been doing for five-and-twenty
* Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary,
I4.
2IO COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
years! It is true that I draw daily
upon my hoards, and should be poor
without them ; but, in prudence, I
ought now to be working up these
materials rather than adding to SO
much dead stock.”
IV.
IT has been flippantly said that a
special Providence protects fools and
children. Without flippancy, but re-
verently, we desire that this same
Power may ever preserve all book-
lovers from those reverses of fortune
which snatch from their hands and
hearts the treasures collected sedu-
lously and with care for many
years. No story of love and loss is
more affecting than that of a man
separated from the books which
during early manhood had been his
companions, and later on his chiefest
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2 II
consolations. It is veritable sacrilege
to drag from a snug library these
heart-strings of a book-lover to expose
them in their quivering condition on
book-stalls or in auction-rooms. Even
their transfer to a public collection is
a heartless proceeding. Look, for in-
stance, if you can, upon publicly cata-
logued items similar to the following,
without arriving at these conclusions:
Dating
“Baxter's Sainz’s Rest, 28 editions, º early
‘‘ Baxter’s Cal/. I4 editions.) in the I7th
century.
* - Bible.
& 6 * }* the editions issued.
“Prayer-book.
“George Herbert.--Poems. All the
“ Lord Herbert of ãº- editions issued.
Poems.”
However unfortunate or wanting in
worldly wisdom a book-lover may
be, permit him, O creditors, to keep
his library. It is blue sky and green
fields and fresh air to him ; and
you would not take these from the
I4–2
212 COMPANIONS OF THE BOOK WORM :
meanest of God's creatures. So long
as Waverley shall live will it be recol-
lected that when trouble swooped
down upon its author his creditors de-
clared, “We will not touch his library;”
and only when the name of William
Roscoe shall be forgotten will it cease
to be remembered that in his day of
need this great man found no friends
friendly enough to say, “You shall
keep your books.” His volumes passed
under the hammer of the auctioneer,
and were dispersed about the country.*
It was on this occasion that Roscoe
* “The good people of the vicinity thronged
like wreckers to get some part of the noble vessel
that had been driven on shore. Did such a scene
admit of ludicrous associations, we might imagine
something whimsical in this strange irruption into
the regions of learning. Pigmies rummaging the
armoury of a giant, and contending for the posses-
sion of weapons which they could not wield. We
might picture to ourselves some knot of specula-
tors, debating with calculating brow over the
quaint binding and illuminated margin of an
obsolete author; of the air of intense but baffled
sagacity with which some successful purchaser
attempted to dive into the black-letter bargain he
had secured.”—Irving's Sketch Book.
DREAMS AND BOOKS. 2I3
penned his farewell sonnet, To my
Books :
“As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers as he may affliction's dart;
“Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art,
Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile,
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you ; nor with fainting heart :
“For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold;
And all your sacred fellowship restore,
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.”

THE LOVED BOOKS OF SOME
OTHER FOLKS.
THE following volumes could well be
added to my library; and yet I would
not permit them to displace the copies
that rest there at present; they should
find comfortable quarters by the side
of their brothers already secure in my
affections; nay, more than this, they
should have full share of my love of
this kind.
The copy of Wycherley's Plain
Dealer purchased by the Countess
of Drogheda at Tunbridge Wells.
[One day, while Wycherley and a
friend, a Mr. Fairbeard, were in a
bookseller's shop at Tunbridge Wells,

LOVED BOOKS OF OTHER FOLKS. 215
the Countess of Drogheda, a young,
rich, handsome widow, came into the
shop and inquired for The Plain
Dealer.
“Madam,” said Wycherley's friend,
pushing the author forward, “since
you are for the Plain Dealer, there he
is for you.”.
“Yes,” added Wycherley, “this lady
can bear plain dealing, for she appears
to be so accomplished that what would
be compliments addressed to others
would be plain dealing addressed to
her.”
“No, truly, sir,” replied the countess,
not behind in repartee, “I am not
without my faults any more than the
rest of my sex; and yet I love plain
dealing, and am never more fond of it
than when it tells me of my faults.”
“Then, madam,” again interposed
the friend, “you and the Plain Dealer
seem designed by heaven for each
other.”
216 THE LOVED Books of \
\
This was the commencement of an
acquaintance which ended in matri-
mony. On the death of his wife,
Wycherley was left all her fortune:
this, however, proved a curse to him
instead of a blessing, for her family
disputed the will and gained the
day, while the Plain Dealer got con-
signed to prison for the law expenses,
and there remained for seven long
years..]
The Tom Jones now in the possession
of James Russell Lowell, and which
was mentioned in the following manner
by its happy owner in his address at
the unveiling of a memorial bust to
the memory of Henry Fielding : “I
possess a copy of Zºom /ones, the
margins of which are crowded with
the admiring comments of Leigh
Hunt, one of the purest-minded men
that ever lived, and a critic whose
subtlety of discrimination and whose
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 217
soundness of judgment, Supported as
it was on a broad basis of truly liberal
scholarship, have hardly yet met with
fitting appreciation.”
The few books which fed the
romance of Lamartine's younger days.
[Being ardent, dreamy, poetical, of
course he fell in love. The object of
his passion was a very pretty girl
of his own age, with whom he read
Ossian, and to whom he wrote
Ossianic verses — replied to in the
same strain. Under her chamber-
window he used to wander in cold
winter nights to catch a glimpse of a
white hand waved responsive from
the casement. One bitter snowy night
they met in her father's garden, she
descending from her window by
means of a ladder which he had
brought with him ; they seated them-
selves upon a snow-covered bench,
very shy, very embarrassed, when, lo!
218 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
before they could utter the tender
thoughts that trembled upon their
lips, their tete-à-tête was suddenly in-
terrupted by the barking of Alphonse's
dog, who, unknown to him, had fol-
lowed his master. This put the lovers
to flight. The escapade was dis-
covered, and it was thought desirable
that the young man should break
the association by a journey to
Italy.
Of course he falls in love on his
travels : the enchantress this time is
a certain fair Graziella. In all his
writings there is no more beautiful
episode than that (in his Conſidences)
which describes his life upon a
lovely Grecian Island, where, amidst
the primitive inhabitants, lapped
in the soft luxury of the delicious
climate, he forgets home, friends,
and the artificial world to which he
belongs. His days are passed idly
floating upon the sunlit waters of the
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 2I9
Mediterranean, or beneath the sha-
dows of the trellised vines—a few
books and Graziella for his com-
panions; the nights are spent wander-
ing upon the sea-beat shore, beneath
the burning constellations of the
southern heavens, his whole soul
steeped in the soft love-breathing
languor of the perfumed air.
Lamartine is the guest of Graziella's
parents, who live in a cottage; and
sometimes after dark he reads to
them. One night he selects Paul and
Virginia. They listen to the sweet
pathetic story with tear-streaming
eyes. Graziella holds the lamp, ab-
sorbed, spell-bound, drawing closer
and closer to the reader as the interest
rises, until her breath fans his cheek.
He breaks off in the middle, reserving
the catastrophe for the next evening.
They entreat, implore him to pro-
ceed, but he is inexorable. The fol-
lowing night they gather round him
22O THE LOVED BOOKS OF
in eager expectancy. When he comes
to the catastrophe, their deep, con-
vulsive sobs fill the hut. The next
day they move about solemnly,
mournfully, as under the shadow of
death.
But Lamartine's mother puts an
end to all this. At her instigation a
friend comes and almost drags the
youth away, leaving Graziella heart-
broken and senseless in her mother's
arms.]
The copies of the Iliad which be-
longed respectively to Paul Louis
Courier, Thoreau, and Southey ; also
Walt Whitman's.
(1) During his campaign in Cala-
bria a pocket Iliad was, says Courier,
“my society, my sole companion, in
the bivouac and the watch.”
(2) Thoreau says that during his
residence at Walden, nothing was
taken from his hut except one small
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 22 I
book, “a volume of Homer, which,
perhaps, was improperly gilded.”
(3) When Southey took his seat on
the top of the Bristol coach for Lon-
don in the spring of 1795, “with hardly
a guinea in his pocket, intending to
make a livelihood as best he could by
writing criticism for the Courier, like
Hazlitt, at five shillings a column, or
by concocting spicy paragraphs for the
Morning Post, like Charles Lamb, at
sixpence apiece, till, with the co-oper-
ation of Coleridge, he could scrape to-
gether £2OO or £300 by the publica-
tion of Madoc, to marry a pretty little
milliner at Bath,” he had, stowed
away in his travelling trunk with his
other treasures, his well - thumbed
Homer.
(4) The books known and loved
best by Whitman are the Bible,
Homer, and Shakespeare. These, we
are told, he used to carry about with
him on his loafing expeditions.
222 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
The Greek Pindar which Leigh
Hunt had with him in prison, and
which so greatly impressed his gaoler.
[He (the gaoler) looked upon nobody
as his superior, speaking even of mem-
bers of the royal family as persons
whom he knew very well, and whom
he estimated at no higher rate than
became him. One royal duke had
lunched in his parlour, and another
he had laid under Some polite obliga-
tion. “They knows me,” said he,
“very well, Mister;-and, Mister, I
knows them.” This concluding sen-
tence he uttered with great parti-
cularity and precision. He was not
proof, however, against a Greek
Pindar, which he happened to light
upon one day among my books.
Its unintelligible character gave him
a notion that he had got somebody
to deal with who might really know
something which he did not. Per-
haps the gilt leaves and red mo-
SOME OTHER FOLKs. 223
º, rocco binding had their share in the
magic. The upshot was, that he al-
... ways showed himself anxious to appear
tº well with me, as a clever fellow, treat-
ng me with great civility on all occa-
sions but one, when I made him very
angry by disappointing him in a money
amount. The Pindar was a mystery
that staggered him. I remember very
well, that giving me a long account
one day of something connected with
his business, he happened to catch
with his eye the shelf that contained
it, and, whether he saw it or not,
abruptly finished by observing, “But,
Mister, you knows all these things as
well as I do.”-—Leigh Hunt’s Auto-
biography.]
The single odd volume of Cotton's
translation of Montaigne's Essays
which remained to Emerson from
his father's library. [It lay long
neglected, until, after many years,

224 THE LOVED BOOKS OF s
when I was newly escaped from col- ºf
lege, I read the book, and procured
the remaining volumes. I remember 3
the delight and wonder in which I
lived with it. It seemed to me as if I
had myself written the book in some
former life, so sincerely it spoke to my
thought and experience. It happened,
when in Paris, in 1833, that, in the
cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, I came to
a tomb of Auguste Collignon, who
died in 1830, aged sixty-eight years,
and who, said the monument, “lived
to do right, and had formed himself to
virtue on the Essays of Montaigne.”
Some years later I became acquainted
with an accomplished English poet,
John Sterling ; and, in prosecuting
my correspondence, I found that, from
a love of Montaigne, he had made a
pilgrimage to his château, still stand-
ing near Castellan, in Perigord, and,
after two hundred and fifty years, had
< gopied from the walls of his library

SOME OTHER FOLKS. 225
the inscriptions which Montaigne had
written there. That journal of Mr.
Sterling's, published in the Westminster
Review, Mr. Hazlitt has reprinted in
the Prolegomena to his edition of the
Fssays. I heard with pleasure that
one of the newly-discovered autographs
of William Shakespeare was in a copy
of Florio's translation of Montaigne.
It is the only book which we certainly
know to have been in the poet's library.
And, oddly enough, the duplicate copy
of Florio, which the British Museum
purchased with a view of protecting
the Shakespeare autograph (as I was
informed in the Museum), turned out
to have the autograph of Ben Jonson
on the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of
Lord Byron that Montaigne was the
only great writer of past times whom
he read with avowed satisfaction.
Other coincidences, not needful to be
mentioned here, concurred to make
this old Gascon still new and immortal
I 5
226 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
for me.”—Emerson in Representative
Men.]
Any of Carlyle's Works sent by the
author to Emerson, especially the
“stitched ”Sartor referred to in the fol-
lowing extract from a letter of Emer-
son’s to James Freeman Clarke: “Miss
Peabody has kindly sentme your manu-
script piece on Goethe and Carlyle. I
have read it with great pleasure and
a feeling of gratitude, at the same
time with a serious regret that it was
not published. I have forgotten what
reason you assigned for not printing
it ; I cannot think of any sufficient
one. Is it too late now P Why not
change its form a little, and annex to
it some account of Carlyle's later
pieces, to wit, Diderot and Sartor Re-
sartus. The last is complete, and he
has sent it to me in a stitched pamph-
let. Whilst I see its vices (relatively
to the reading public) of style, I can-
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 227
not but esteem it a noble philosophical
poem, reflecting the ideas, institutions,
men of this very hour. And it seems
to me that it has so much wit and
other secondary graces as must strike
a class who would not care for its
primary merit—that of being a sincere
exhortation to seekers of truth.”
The Sarfor Resartus Stanley took
with him to Africa. [You ask me
what books I carried with me to take
toross Africa. I carried a great many
—three loads, or about 180 lbs. weight;
out as my men lessened in numbers
stricken by famine, fighting, and sick-
ess, they were one by one reluctantly
. hrown away, until finally, when less
than 300 miles from the Atlantic, I
tossessed only the Bible, Shakespeare,
larlyle's Sartor Resartus, Norie's
Wavigation, and Nautical A/manac
or 1877. Poor Shakespeare was
ſterwards burned by demand of the
! I 5–2
228 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
foolish people of Zinga. At Bonea,
Carlyle, and Norie, and Nautical Al-
manac were pitched away, and I had
only the old Bible left.—H. M. Stan-
ley, in the Pall Mall Gazette.]
Emerson's AWature sent to Carlyle
by the author. [Your little azure-
coloured /Vature gave me true satis-
faction. You say it is the first chapter
of something greater. I call it rather
the foundation and ground-plan on
which you may build whatsoever of
great and true which has been given
you to build. It is the true Apoca-
lypse, this, when the open secret be-
comes revealed to a man. I rejoice
much in the glad serenity of soul with
which you look out on this wondrous
dwelling-place of yours and mine, with
an ear for the eternal melodies, which
pipe in the winds round us, and utter
themselves forth in all sounds, and
sights, and things. . . . In fine, sit
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 229
still at Concord with such spirits as
you are of, under the blessed skyey
influences, with an open sense, with
the great book of existence round
you; we shall see whether you, too,
get not something blessed to read us
from it—Carlyle to Emerson.]
Marryat's AWovels in which Carlyle
sought forgetfulness after the destruc-
tion of the MS. of the first volume
of his French Revolution. [Sitting
one evening (writes one who knew
Carlyle) in the drawing-room of the
house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, myself
and Carlyle were in conversation upon
general subjects, when I remarked :
“I have heard that the manuscript
of The French Revolution was de-
stroyed before going to the printer's.
Was that so 2°
“Ay, ay; it was so.”
“What did you do under the
circumstances * *

23O THE LOVED BOOKS OF
“For three days and nights I could
neither eat nor sleep, but was like a
daft man.”
“But what did you do at last?”
“Well, I just went away into the
country;” and here he burst out in a
fit of laughter, and then said, “I did
nothing for three months but read
Nſarryat’s novels; and, after a serious
pause, he remarked, “I set to and
wrote it all over again,” but, in a
melancholy tone, concluded, “I dinna
think it's the same. No, I dinna
think it's the same.”]
The House of the Seven Gables sent
by Hawthorne to Washington Irving,
who acknowledged the gift in the
following words: “Accept my most
cordial thanks for the little volume
you have had the kindness to send
me. I prize it as the right hand of
fellowship extended to me by one
whose friendship I am proud and
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 23 I
happy to make, and whose writings I
have regarded with admiration, as
among the very best that have ever
issued from the American press.”
The little volume of Barry Corn-
walls's Poems which was sent to
Hawthorne, accompanied by the letter
containing the following extract :
“I have ventured to send you a little
book of mine, principally because it
is a pleasure to me to do so, a little
perhaps in the hope of pleasing you.
Being desirous of drawing closer the
acquaintance which I Some time ago
formed with you, through the medium
of Mrs. Butler, afterwards through
your books, I can hit upon no better
method than this that I have adopted.
It is a long way to send such a trifle;
but I foresee that you have more than
even the author's good-nature, and will
accept graciously my little venture.
“Your two last books have become
232 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
very popular here. For my own part,
I have read them with great pleasure;
and you will not feel displeased, Ithink,
when I tell you that, whilst I was read-
ing your last book (The House with the
Seven Gables) the turn of the thought
or phrase often brought my old friend
Charles Lamb to my recollection.
“I entertain the old belief that one
may know a good deal of an author
(independently of his genius or capa-
city, I mean) from his works. And
if you or Mr. Longfellow should
assert that you are not the men that
you really are, why, I shall turn a
deaf ear to the averment, and put
you both to the proof.”
The Book of Martyrs which caused
Hawthorne to speculate in the follow-
ing uncanny manner as to its history:
“At the shop-window of a carpenter
and undertaker (at Bath), I saw two
or three rows of books, of all sizes,
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 233
|
from folio to duodecimo, and mostly
wearing an antique aspect. There
was the old folio of Fox's Book of
Martyrs, and volumes of old sermons,
and histories, looking like books that
had long been the household litera-
ture of families, and which the present
owner had got possession of, prob-
ably, when he went to measure the
dead man for his coffin, and perform
the other funeral rites—taking these
volumes, perhaps, in part payment
for his services.”
Tennyson's Mosses from an Old
Manse. [I had the pleasure not long
|
since of sending to Alfred Tennyson
(whom I knew in England) your
Mosses, as he wanted to see more
New England poetry from the pen of
the author of The Scarlet Letter.
—F. G. Tuckerman to Nathaniel
Hawthorne, April 4th, I86 I.]
234 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
\
The Linnet’s Life which George
Eliot read over and over again, when
but a child of five years of age, and
which bears the inscription: “The
first book that George Eliot read.”
“It made me very happy,” she wrote,
“when I held it in my little hand, and
read it over and over again.”
The Gall/?ve?’s Travels and Dozz
Quixote, which were carried about by
Heine in his boyhood, and read on
every possible opportunity.
The Don Quixote possessed by the
nameless young man, who, walking
one day with it in his hand, burst
every now and then into fits of immo-
derate laughter, as the humour of the
whole affair seized him, and whose
conduct so interested Philip III. that
he exclaimed: “Either that young
man is mad, or he is reading Don
Quixote.” A queer commentary this
on the generally accepted fact that the
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 235
immortal author, Cervantes, died of
hunger.
The Vicar of Wakefield which
belonged to Lord Holland. [This
little work of Goldsmith's remained
unnoticed, and was attacked by the
reviews, until Lord Holland, who had
been ill, sent to his bookseller for
Some a musing book: this was sent ;
and he was so pleased that he spoke of
it in the highest terms to a large com-
pany who dined with him a few days
after. The consequence was that the
whole impression was sold off in a few
days.-Goodhugh's Library Manual.]
Any of the volumes taken to
the Castle of Louvestein in the
box in which the illustrious Grotius
escaped from his captivity.”
* Grotius was imprisoned for life on account of
his having taken part in the political disputes
which agitated Holland. He was, however, in
his captivity allowed books to read, which were
transmitted to and from the castle in a box, in
which he himself ultimately escaped.
236 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
which comforted the heart of Louis
XVI. in his troubles, in the Temple;
and the copy of the same book which
Lord Wolseley likes “reading at odd
moments.”
The Complete Angler which Lamb
loved as a friend. Concerning the
work, he wrote: “It breathes the very
spirit of innocence, purity, and sim-
plicity of heart. There are many
choice old verses interspersed in it.
It would sweeten a man's temper at
any time to read it; it would Chris-
tianize every discordant angry pas-
sion.” Lamb was anxious that his
friends should also love old Izaak.
Writing to Coleridge, under date IOth
June, 1796, he says: “I have just
been reading a book which I may be
too partial to, as it was the delight of
my childhood ; but I will recommend
it to you : it is Izaak Walton's Com-
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 237
plete Angler. All the scientific part
you may omit in reading. The dia-
logue is very simple, full of pastoral
beauties, and will charm you.” To
this Coleridge apparently neglected
to reply; for we find Lamb referring
to the matter again in the following
October : “Among all your quaint
readings, did you ever light upon
Walton's Complete Angler 2 I asked
you the question once before.”
The copy of Richardson's Pamela
once the property of Lamb. [I do not
remember a more whimsical surprise
than having been once detected, by a
familiar damsel, reclined at my ease
upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her
Cythera) reading Pamela. There was
nothing in the book to make a man
seriously ashamed at the exposure;
but as she seated herself down by me,
and seemed determined to read in
company, I could have wished it had
238 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
been any other book. We read on
very Sociably for a few pages; but
not finding the author much to her
taste she got up and went away.
Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to
conjecture, whether the blush (for
there was one between us) was the
property of the nymph or the swain
in this dilemma. From me you
shall never get the secret.—Detached
Thoughts on Books and Reading.]
The copy of the same work which
figures in the story once told Sir John
Herschell. [The blacksmith of the vil-
lage (in which the tale-teller resided)
had got hold of Richardson's novel
Aa/zela, or Wärtzle A'ezwarded, and
used to read it aloud in the long
summer evenings, seated on his anvil,
and never failed to have a large and
attentive audience. It is a pretty
long-winded book, but their patience
was fully a match for the author's
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 239
prolixity, and they fairly listened to it
all. At length, when the happy hour
of fortune arrived, which brings the
hero and heroine together, and sets
them living long and happily accord-
ing to the most approved rules, the
villagers were so delighted as to raise a
great shout, and, procuring the church
keys, actually Set the parish bells ring-
ing.]
The copy of White's Watura/
History and Antiquities of Selborne
which Dr. Scrope Berdmore, then
Warden of Merton College, read
with such avidity immediately on
its publication. Edward Jesse used
to relate an anecdote which he re-
ceived from one of White's nephews.
The worthy old Warden, with a keen
appreciation of the merits of the book,
prophesied concerning its future in
these words: “Your uncle has sent
into the world a publication with
24O THE LOVED BOOKS OF
nothing to call attention to it but
an advertisement or two in the news-
papers; but depend upon it the time
will come when very few who buy
books will be without it.”
Abraham Lincoln's Artemus Ward,
/his Book. [Calling upon Mr. Lincoln
on one of the darkest days in the late
war, I was surprised to see upon his
mantelpiece a couple of volumes—
one a small Bible, the other Artemazus
Ward, his Book, “Do you read
Artemus Ward * I asked him. “I
don’t read anybody else,” he an-
nounced with a smile on his care-
worn face ; “he is inimitable,”—
Edmund Kirke.]
The well-used copy of Montes-
quieu's Esprit des lois, which Madame
de Staël used in, her studies when
but fifteen years of age, and in the
margins of which she wrote her com-
ments after the manner of a tried
SOME OTHER FOLKS. 24I
eviewer. Also her copies of Rous-
seau's Works. [Madame de Staël's
idol was Rousseau, and she wor-
shipped him ardently. The influence
of his writings is to be seen in all her
works of fiction, and upon his genius
sº modelled her own.] One would
alsº desire to have that volume of
ing at the time some of its finest
passages. -
Any of the volumes in which John
Selden's bookmarks were found. [It
appears to have been the habit of this
ſearned man, when disturbed in his
*f
He must certainly have been a whole-
sale purchaser of these “other eyes,”
for when his valuable library, which
he bequeathed to the University of
Q: ford, came to be examined, these
I6










242 THE LOVED BOOKS OF
curious markers were found by)
dozens.”]
At/alie of Racine, and the Petit;
Caréme of Massillon : the tragedies
of the one were considered by him.
the finest model of French verse :
j'.
* Lamb's ideas of bookmarking are to be found!
in his correspondence with Coleridge. “A book)
reads the better,” he writes, “which is our own,
and has been so long known to us that we know
the topography of its blots and dog's-ears, and can
trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with
buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is
the maximum.”
Whenever Young, the poet, came to a striking ſº
passage in his reading he folded the leaf, and at
his death books were found in his library which
had long resisted the power of closing.
When Montaigne got to the end of a volume
which he considered unworthy to be re-read, it
was his custom to jot down in it the time he had
read it, as well as his considerations as to its }:
worth. - .* --
Voltaire's practice was to note in the books he
read, whatever of censure or approbation they de-
served. A ſriend of his used to complain that .
the works he lent him were returned always dis-
figured by his remarks.













SOME OTHER FOLKs. 243
th: sermons of the other, of French
prose.]
Malherbe's Horace. [Malherbe, the
father of French poetry, had one
favourite author, and that was Horace.
He laid him on his pillow, took him
&c, the fields, called him his breviary.]
The books read by Frederick
& William Robertson of Brighton, when,
expecting that his youthful dreams
ſieve to be fulfilled, he looked to
receive a commission in the army and
êe sent to India. [He would have
thought it a sin against truthfulness
ºf character if he had adopted a
ºreer without a special training for
sº work. With this purpose he
audied the early history and geo-
tº aphy of India, and the characters
jº campaigns, and made himself
; ºnaster of the strategical movements













I6–2
244 LOVED BOOKS OF OTHER FOLKS.
of the British generals in that country. |
The fortunes of India, and the con- |
stitution which the English had
elaborated for their large dependency,
became familiar to him.—Life and
Letters of F. W. Robertson.]
The Bible from which John Knox's
wife read to him in his last hours. .
[His wife sat by him with the Bible ||
open on her knees. He desired her ||
to read the fifteenth of the first of
Corinthians. “Is not that a beautifulº
chapter P’’ he asked ; and then added, º
“Now, for the last time, I commendº
my spirit, Soul, and body into Thy:
hands, O Lord.”]











APPENDIX.
A WRITER in the Quarterly Review
for June, I844, after lamenting the
- miserable paltriness of the work of the
everal “Pictorials” issued in his time,
#oes on to say:
“Five lustres since, and ‘Illustra-
ion had a quite different meaning
rom that which it now obtains. A
book was then called “Illustrated
which was crammed, like a candidate
for honours, with all that related to all
that the book contained. To this end,
every portrait, in every state—etch-
ing, proof ‘before letters, finished
proof, and reverses—of every person,
ºvery view of every place, was if pos-
sible procured ; and where engravings
ºd not exist, drawings were made,
i

* |
246 APPENDIX.
until the artist's skill and the collec-
tor's purse were alike exhausted. The
germ of this system of illustration ex-
isted as early as the time of Charles I.
The pious but ascetic Nicholas Ferrar
had bought, says Dr. Peckard,” during
his travels on the Continent,
“‘A very great number of prints engraved by
the best masters of that time, all relative to histo-
rical passages of the Old and New Testaments:
indeed, he let nothing of this sort that was valuable
escape him.’
“These prints Ferrar employed in
ornamenting various compilations
from the Scriptures; amongst others,
“‘He composed a full harmony, or concord-
ance, of the four Evangelists, adorned with many
beautiful pictures, which required more than a
year for the composition, and was divided into
I5O heads or chapters.’
“The history of this “illustrated
book, the first we believe of its kind,
is curious :
‘‘ ‘In May, 1633, his Majesty set out upon his
journey to Scotland, and in his progress he stepped
a little out of his road to view Little Gidding in
Huntingdonshire, which by the common people
* “In Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography,
ed. I839, vol. iv., p. 189.”
APPENDIX. 247
-n
was called the Protestant Wunnery.* The family
having notice, met his Majesty at the extremity of
the parish, at a place called from this event the
King's Close, and, in the form of their solemn
processions, conducted him to their church, which
he viewed with great pleasure. He inquired into,
and was informed of the particulars of their public
and domestic economy; but it does not appear
that at this time he made any considerable stay.
The following summer his Majesty and the Queen
passed two nights at Apthorpe in Northampton-
shire, the seat of Mildmay Fane, Earl of West.
moreland. From thence he sent one of his
gentlemen to intreat (his Majesty's own word) a
sight of Zhe Cozzcordance, which, he had heard,
was sometime since done at Gidding, with assur-
ance that in a few days, when he had perused it,
he would send it back again. Mr. N. Ferrar was
then in London, and the family made some little
demur, not thinking it worthy to be put into his
Majesty's hands, but at length they delivered it to
the messenger. But it was not returned in a few
days, or weeks : some months were elapsed when
the gentleman brought it back from the King, who
was then at London. He said he had many
things to deliver to the family from his master :
first, to yield the King's hearty thanks to them all
for the sight of the book, which passed the report
he had heard of it ; then to signify his approba-
tion of it in all respects ; next, to excuse him in
two points, the first for not returning it so soon
as he had promised, the other, for that he had in
many places of the margin written notes in it with
his own hand ; and “(which I know will please
you),” said the gentleman, “you will find an in-
stance of my master's humility in one of the margins.
* See also /o/in Inglesant.
248 APPENDIX.
The place I mean is where he had written some-
thing with his own hand, and then put it out
again, acknowledging that he was mistaken in
that particular.” Certainly this was an act of
great humility in the King, and worthy to be
noted ; and the book itself is much graced by it.
The gentleman further told them that the King
took such delight in it, that he passed some part
of every day in perusing it. And lastly, he said,
“to show you how true this is, and that what I
have declared is no court compliment, I am ex-
pressly commanded by my master earnestly to
request of you, Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, and of the
young ladies, that you would make him one of
these books for his own use ; and if you will please
to undertake it, his Majesty says you will do him
a most acceptable service.”
“‘Mr. Ferrar and the young ladies returned their
most humble duty, and immediately set about
what the King desired. In about a year's time it
was finished, and it was sent to London to be
presented to his Majesty by Dr. Laud, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and Dr. Cosins, one of the King's
chaplains. This book was bound entirely by
Mary Collet (one of Mr. Ferrar's nieces), all
wrought in gold, in a new and most elegant
fashion. The King, after long and serious looking
it over, said, “This is indeed a most valuable
work, and in many respects worthy to be presented
to the greatest prince upon earth, for the matter
it contains is the richest of all treasures. The
laborious composure of it into this excellent form
of an harmony, the judicious contrivance of the
method, the curious workmanship in so neatly
cutting out and disposing the text, the nice laying
of these costly pictures, and the exquisite art ex-
pressed in the binding, are, I really think, not to
be equalled. I must acknowledge myself to be
APPENDIX. 249
greatly indebted to the family for this jewel, and
whatever is in my power, I shall at any time be
ready to do for any of them.”
“King Charles's statues, pictures,
jewels, and curiosities were sold and
dispersed by the regicide powers ;
from this fate, happily, the royal col-
lection of manuscripts and books was
preserved ; neither was it, like the
archiepiscopal library at Lambeth,
doled out, piecemeal, to Hugh Peters
and his brother fanatics. This good
service was mainly owing to Bulstrode
Whitelocke.* When the British
Museum was founded, King George II.
presented to it the whole of the royal
library; and Ferrar's Concordance,
with another similarly illustrated com-
pilation by him, is there preserved in
safety. The Rev. Thomas Bowdler
* “‘Jan. 18, 1647. The manuscripts and books
in Whitehall, because of soldiers being there, were
ordered to be removed to St. James's House, and
placed there, which I furthered in order to the
preservation of those rare monuments of learning
and antiquity which were in that library.”—Memo-
rials, p. 288, ed. I732.”
250 APPENDIX.
of Sydenham, the representative of
the last baronet of the Cotton family,
the founders of the Cottonian Library,
possesses another of the Ferrar vol-
umes. Of those which were presented
by Ferrar to George Herbert and
Dr. Jackson no record remains.
“The system of which we now speak
was not fully developed until the pub-
lication of Granger's Biographical His-
tory of England. Something may be
said in favour of those who, with
gentle dulness and patient industry,
haunted the printsellers’ shops to col-
lect all the engraved portraits which
Granger had enumerated. There is
a charm in the human face divine,
although it must needs be powerful
to call forth—as it does—twenty, or
thirty, or fifty guineas from a collec-
tor's pocket for a coarsely executed
cut of some Meg Merrilies, some Tom
of Bedlam, or some condemned crimi-
nal, of which the only value is being
APPENDIX. 25 I
‘mentioned by Granger.” However,
the dross is always the dearest portion
of a collector's treasure, be it in books
or prints. Strutt's Dictionary of En-
gravers, to be completely “illustrated
in a collector’s eyes, should contain
every work of every engraver men-
tioned in it (Hollar alone would cost
A, IO,OOO, could a set of his works be
procured) : yet this has been at-
tempted, and so has Rees' Cyclopædia /
The copy of Pennant's History of
London which was bequeathed to the
British Museum by Mr. Crowle cost
that gentleman £7,000; and the ‘Illus-
trated 'Clarendon and Burnet, formed
by the late Mr. Sutherland, of Gower
Street, and continued by his widow,
who has munificently presented it to
the Bodleian Library, cost upwards of
A 12,OOO. This, perhaps the richest
‘pictorial 'history which exists, or is
likely to exist, deserves more than a
passing notice. It contains nearly
252 APPENDIX.
nineteen thousand prints and draw-
ings : there are seven hundred and
thirty-one portraits of Charles I., five
hundred and eighteen of Charles II.,
three hundred and fifty-two of Crom-
well, two hundred and seventy-three
of James II., and four hundred and
twenty of William III. The collec-
tion fills sixty-seven large volumes.
Forty years were spent in this pursuit.
The Catalogue of the ‘Illustrations,’
of which a few copies only were printed
for distribution as presents by Mrs.
Sutherland, fills two large quarto vol-
umes. In mere numbers, however,
Mr. Sutherland was surpassed by the
foreign ecclesiastic who is said to have
amassed twelve thousand ‘portraits '
of the Virgin Maryl We know of
copies of Byron's works, and Scott’s
works, each “illustrated with many
thousands of prints and drawings, and
each increasing almost daily.
“The venerable bibliopole and bib-
APPENDIX. 253
liographer, M. Brunet, says, in his
Manuel du Libraire, art. Strutt, of a
copy of the Dictionary formerly be-
longing to Messrs. Longman, and
valued by them at 62,OOO :
** * Cette manie de faire des livres précieux me
rappelle la réponse que me fit un capitaliste à qui
je montrais un volume d'une valeur considérable.
** Tenez !'' me dit-il froidement, en me présentant
un portefeuille rempli de billets de banque, **voilà
un volume encore plus précieux que le vôtre."
Ce mot me paraît sans réplique, et je ne crois pas
qu'il y ait dans les trois royaumes de la Grande
Bretagne un curieux qui pût montrer une illus-
trated copie plus précieuse qu'un pareil porte-
feuille. Au surplus, ne disputons pas des goûts,
mais croyons que celui de l'amateur de billets de
banque serait celui de bien des gens.'
* This system of * illustration ' has,
however, had its day : it required
time, money, and, moreover, know-
ledge and taste. Illustrations are now
wanted ready-made for the million. ...
" Of a very different nature from
the books which we have just men-
tioned is that which, under the aus-
pices, and chiefly at the expense of
254 APPENDIX.
the French Government, is under-
taken by the Comte Auguste de Bas-
tard, brother of the late Comte de
Bastard, a President of the Cour de
Cassation, and Vice-President of the
Chambre des Pairs de France. We
ourselves have seen this splendid
work—the Pełmżures et Orme/aents des
Manuscriţs—but it is probable that
many of our readers will never have
the like advantage, for we believe that
there are not two copies in England
of this costly book. Costly we may,
indeed, well call it, for the seventeen
livraisons of the first of the three
sections into which the Partie Franz-
gaise alone is divided, are published at
the price of 1,800 francs, or seventy-
two sterling pounds, each—so that
this first portion, only forming, at the
most, three volumes ‘grands in-folio
jésus’ (who but Frenchmen would
ever so profane the name 2), will cost
30,600 francs, or £1,226 Sterling (we
APPENDIX. 255
have Count Bastard's handwriting
now before us), being at the rate of
4, Io and upwards for each coloured
plate! The Partie Française is to
consist of three sections, which, if of
equal size, will amount to £3,678
The conditions of subscription men-
tion that ‘a partir du I* Juillet, 1840,
il paraîtra, chaque année, de quatre à
six livraisons, qui seront payées, ar-
- - w - V & º º
gent comptant, à Paris, au domicile
de l'éditeur, rue Saint Dominique,
No. 93, Faubourg St. Germain. . . . .
Comme garantie du travail, les
* planches portent tous ces mots, Le
Comte Auguste de Bastard direzit, et
un timbre sec aux armes de l'éditeur.’
* We fear that neither our announce-
ment, nor the Count's guarantee, will
rocure him many subscribers. Of
he great accuracy as well as unrivalled
plendour of this book there can be
to doubt; nor would we insinuate
nything tending to depreciate its
256 APPENDIX. \
high merits as a work of art, or ‘illus-
trated book,' but we openly express
our opinion that the vast cost is not
compensated by the result obtained.
MSS. themselves would be as acces-
sible as this book, which would repre-
sent only a small portion of a few. If
Count Auguste de Bastard's work
should comprise only two other parts
of equal extent with the French, the
cost of a single copy will be upwards
of eleven thousand pounds ! a sum
which, if well managed, would produce
an entire edition of a work of high
character and great beauty. The
Antiquities of Mexico, a magnificent
work put forth at the sole expense of
a young Irish nobleman, the late Vis
count Kingsborough, cost his lordship
we believe, about £30,000; but fo
this sum a whole edition of a book in
seven volumes in large folio, with ver
numerous coloured plates, was ob
tained, and, in relation to its bull
A PPENDIX. 257
and necessary price, copies were ex-
tensively circulated.” However, be
the cost of the Count's work what it
may, the French Government cannot
be taxed with want of liberality, for it
has subscribed for sixty copies (in-
cluding that of the editor, and the
four required by the “Copyright Act ’
of France), out of the one hundred
copies printed. This subscription, for
the first section of the first part alone,
amounts to £73,560, or, for the Partie
Française, to £220,680, and, should
the whole be completed, on the least
proposed scale, to £668,040, or, in
francs, to I6,032,960 ! Of this enor-
mous sum, we believe that the French
Chambers have already paid no little
portion. At this rate “Illustrated
* Of this splendid book two copies were printed
on vellum, which when illuminated and bound
were estimated to cost £2,000 each. Lord Kings-
borough presented one to the British Museum, the
second to the Bodleian Library.
I7
|
258 APPENDIX. º
|
Books’ become of great national imi
portance, and the length of our notice
of the Count's work is amply justi.
fied.”
|
|


I N D E X.
ABBOTSFORD, 175
About Charles Lamb, 140
Abyssinian beef-eating, 194
Adams' (Dr.) and Dr. Johnson's chat about the
latter's Dicţionary, 150, note
Addison, I32
x y Pope in his garret, 73-4
Address by Sir J. F. W. Herschell to subscribers to
the Windsor and Eton Public Library on 29th
January, 1833, quoted, 238-9
Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, 166
Advertisements in books, 132-4
Aldrich (Thomas Bailey), 90, 180
Alcott, Mr. Bronson, 56
Alison (A.), his opinion on law and literature, IOI-2
Allcott (Louisa), her mode of composition, 62, note
Andrews (Miles Peter), notice of, 193
Anecdote of a copy of Pope's Homer, 137-9
* x ,, Bishop Sanderson and Izaak Walton,
2O2-4
Anecdote of Earl of Dorset and AEaradise Los?, 205-6
p > ,, Dr. Johnson and his proposed Diction-
ary of 7'rade and Commerce, I49-51
Anecdote of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, 150, note
y y ,, publisher of Smollett's History of Aºng-
Zand, 169-70
Anecdotes of authors and publishers, 151-5
p > ,, literature, Evelyn's diary, 51-4
y 2 ,, Supposed madmen, 168-9

I7—2
26o INDEX.
Antiquities of Mexico, cost of the, 256-7
Appledore, 68
Apthorpe, Northamptonshire, 247
Arab-lovers of Robinsozz Crusoe, 146
Arnold (Matthew) quoted, 4
Ascot, 17o
Ashley, 5o
Augustine (Saint), 75, and note
Author can be read from his works, 232
,, his relations with the world, 65
Authors' favourite nooks, 15-6
$ $ trouble, woman's tidying is an, 70-2
Authors, different conditions agree with different, 60-5
,, and publishers, anecdotes of, I5I-5 *
Autographs, 49-51, 52-4
Bacon's Literary and Professional Works, 133
y y Philosophical Works, 132
Ballads, etc., I73-6
Balzac, anecdote of, I53-5
Barnave, 171
‘Barry Cornwall.’ See Procter,
Bassenthwaite Lake, 28
Bastard (Comte Auguste de), 254-8
Baxter's Call, 2II
3 y Sazzęs' A'est, 2II
Beaconsfield (Lord), 208
Beattie (Dr.), Essay on Truth, 148
Beaumont and Fletcher (Lamb's), 41
Beazzties of the Spectator, 164
Berdmore (Dr. Scrope), his opinion of White's Sel-
borne, 239-240
Berghem’s wife, 72-3
Berulle (Madelene de), 162
Bible, 2II, 221, 227, 240
,, John Knox's wife's, 244
Bilfrid, 185
Black (William), Carlyle's question to, 14
$ 3 y j his houseboat, 99
Blacklock, -, LL.D., notice of, 193
Blackwood's Magazine, 81
Blencathara, 28, 29, 33
INDEX. 261
º, Sian Library, 257
... * p 7 has Mr. Sutherland's illustrated
"... rendon and Burnet, 251-2
tº parte (Lucien), portrait of, 88, See also Na-
- - irº. COI).
£5.3.3 a, 228
º, 3% of Job, 49
tº-hunters are not always sinless, 121-32
£ºk-Core quoted, 126-8
tººk-lovers, famous men who were or are, 202-Io
Łóð's-marking, four worthy modes of 242, note
ºrk taking the place of nature, I86-92
*:ks compared with tabbies, I2O-I
in the Old Manse, 48-50
loss of these is the greatest, 2IO-13
on borrowing, II6-9
3 ºkseller whose customers never read before buying,
3. "SO
ksellers' advertisements, 132-4
ºkworm's study, Gallienne on, IIo
ºo: "owdale, 28
º:on, 62 ; note, 86, III
tº well's Johnson, 16-17
$ºrdler (Rev. Thomas), 249-50
$ºsiana, 79
§: ºy (Mr.), 51-2
º, ; Harte, 57
* †hton, 243
Yºrºsot, 171
ºf ish Museum, 249, 25I, 257
y y copy of Florio's Montaigne, 225
ºcq (Philip le), notice of, 194
*... whe (C. F.), Artemus Ward, Lincoln's favourite,
4O
ce (Charles), notice of, 194
tised Reed, 204
3, unet (M.) quoted, 253
‘....shan (Dr.), Domestic Medicine, 147
abury (Henry), notice of, IQ4-5
,, . (Mrs.), 195 -
y y (Sir Thomas Charles), 195
ºrckhardt and Robinson Crusoe, I45-6
/

262 INDEX.
Burney (Martin), 129
Burns, Carlyle's opinion on, I4
,, mode of composition, 2I
,, picture of, II
Burton's (Robert) Anatomy of Melancholy and Dr.
Johnson, 23, 135-6
Business man’s recreation, 3-4
Butler (Mrs.), 231
Buzot, 171
Pyron, I47, 252
y y {{..., I79
,, controversy, I79
2 º' (Lord) liked Montaigne, 225
Calabria, 220
Calcutta, Bishop of, 180
Carlyle, 166 /
y y and Sterling's copy of St. Augustine, 78, note
9 x bust and etchings of, Io-II .
y 9 French Revolution (loss of M.S. vol.), 229-30
j j Helwick's etchings of, II
his copy of Procter's Memoir of Charles
3 y
Lazzê, I4I
Carlyle, his opinion of Burns, I4
3 y 3 y } y. ,, Emerson's AWałzcze, 228-9
y x x 3 y y y 2 Lamb, I4I-3
3 y 3 y , , , , Shakespeare, I4
J. J. y y , , , , Tennyson, I3-14
3 y ,, objection to garden tenants, I3, note
2 x A’emāzz?scences, I4I-3
,, Rossetti (D. G.) akin to him in temper of
work, I4
Carlyle's Works, presentation copies to Emerson,
226-7
Castellan, 224
Castle of Louvestein, Grotius was imprisoned in, 235
Catalogue of Five Hundred Celebrated Authors of
Great Britain now Living quoted, 192-201
Caus (Solomon de) Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes
avec diverses Machines tant utiles que puissantes,
I68
Century, 58, 89
INDEX. 263
Century, quoted, 68-9. See also Scribner.
Cervantes's Don Quixote, 234, 345
Chambre des Pairs de France, 254
Channings, the, 57
Charles I., 203, 252
,, , ,, examines N. Ferrar's Concordance, 246
,, , , gives N. Ferrar commission to illustrate
the four gospels, 247-86 "w
Charles II., 252 -
Chatterton, 137 -
Chesterfield (Lord) on books, 160
Christian Year, 164
‘Christopher North.’ See Wilson.
Church Disestablishment, 178
Clarendon and Burnet, Mr. Sutherianº's illustrated
Copy, 25I-2 is
Clarke (Charles and Mary Cowden), 43 note
Clarke (James Freeman), letter of Emerson to,
quoted, 226-7 - s
Coleridge, 33, 36, 242, note º
} % and Lamb, anecdote of, 83, note \
3 * ,, Southey, 221 \
}} ,, Southey's library, 25 &
33 Lamb queries him as to Walton's Anglex,
236-7 \

Coleridge's study at Southey's house, 26
Collet (Mary), 248
Collignon (Auguste), 224
Complete Angier, Lamb's love for the, 236-7
Concord, 44, 45, 55, 59, 62
x y River, III
Confessions of an Opium Eater, 25
Cosins (Dr.), 248
Cotton (Charles, M.D.), notice of, 195
,, family, 250
Cotton's translation of Montaigne's Essays, 223-4
Cour de Cassation, 254
Courier º Louis), his Iliad, 220
Courier (the), 221
Covent Garden, 33
3 y x 3 Lamb at, 4o
Coventry, 69
264 - INDEX.
Craven (Lady), x93
Cromwell, 252
Crowle (Mr.), his illustrated Pennant's History of -
London, 251 -
Cumberland, 28, 29 * .
Czarina Eudoxia Foederowza, Consort to Peter the
Great, Life of 196

Dacier's Pfutarch's/Zives, 170-1
Daniel (George) aſid Charles Lamb, 173-4
y 5 ,, guoted, 40-1
Dante, I22 /
Danton, I7I
D'Avenant (Jóhn), 113 - .
y y Sir William), II3-4
Death, Io.473 "
Defoe's Kºnson Crºesoe, I43-6 |
Ale Amitatione Christi, 164
Derwentwater Lake, 27-8 -
Detached Zhoughts on Books and Reading, 129
Devgfishire (Duchess of), 198 |
Diał, the, 57 |
Dickens, engraving of ‘The Empty Chair at Gad':
/Hill,’ 11 .
Discourse on Oratory, 199 t
D'Israeli (Isaac), 207 |
Dissipation, a comedy, 193 i.
Dodsley (Robert), 147
Don Quixote, 23-45 a -
Dorset (Earl of), 205-6 |’

2O - -
Drogheda (Countess of) meets Wycherley at a book
seller's, etc., 214-16
Drummond of Hawthornden, 97
Dryden, 51
5 y his opinion on Paradise Lost, 206
Dublin, II9
1 * theatre, 198
Dürer's (Albert) wife, 72
Early rising, 22-3
|
Dowden (Professor), his copy of Shelley's works, 119. -
- l
f
- - \
INDEX. 265
Aarthly Paradise quoted, I23
Easedale, 32
Economy of Human Life, I64
Edinburgh, 77, 194
Edward VI., 51
Eliot (George), 68-9, I47 r
and Imitation of Christ, 164-5
her copy of The Lännet's Zife, 234
Mill on the Floss quoted, 164, note
y y y
p : y J
3 y 3 y
y y study, 68-9
Eliot's (George) Cozzetry quoted, 68-9
Elizabeth (Queen), 51
Emerson (Ralph Waldo), 44, 45, 55, 58
criticism of Sartor, 226-7
his copy of Carlyle's Worés,
226-7
Emerson (Ralph Waldo), his copy of Montaigne's
Essays and connecting anecdotes, 223-5
Emerson (Ralph Waldo) on a river trip, 95-6
poem Good-bye quoted,
IOO-I
portrait of, II
A'epresentative Men quoted,
p > J p 3 y
3 y 3 y p >
y y 9 p. y J
223-6
- 3 -
Emerson (Ralph Waldo), the copy of Nature sent
to Carlyle, 228-9
Emerson, The Homes and Haunts of 56
Emerson's residences, 45-50, 55-58
y y study, III
Enfield, 83
; : Lamb at, 40
English lakes, 191
Eon (– d’), notice of, 195-6
Epsom, 190
Jºssay on the Law of Libels, 197
Essays of Elia, 4o
Ethelwold, 185
Evelyn (Lady), 52-4
, , (Sylva), 53 .
y y x y Memoirs, 52
,, family, 51
AEvelyn's Diary, discovery of, 51-4
266 - INDEX.
Jºvelyn's Kalendarium or Diary, 54
Evenings, peaceful, are valuable, I8-20
Eversley suited Kingsley entirely, 74-7
Axamizzer, 43
Faëry Queen, 42, 79
Fairbeard (Mr.), Wycherley's friend, 214-15
Fane (Mildmay), Earl of Westmoreland, 247
Ferrar (Nicholas), books illustrated by him, 249-50
introduces illustrating, 246-9 !
Field (Barron), letter from Charles Lamb to, 126
note
Fielding's Tom Jones, 174, 216-17
Fields, 90 -
Florio, his translation of Montaigne, 225
Fludd, 135-6
‘Foleshill, 69 -
Fox's Book of Martyrs, Hawthorne's speculations or
a copy of 232-3 -
Frederick the Great, Carlyle's, 13
French Revolutionists, 171
Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book, etc., quoted, 181-6 -
Froude (J. A.), Reminiscences of Carlyle, I41-3 .
Fuller (Margaret), 57
Gallienne (Richard le) quoted, IIo
Gaoler's treatment of Leigh Hunt, 222-3
Garden, 7-8 r
y y in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, its inhabitants, 12
Gardene’s Daughter quoted, I8
Garrets, literary men lived in these by necessity, 73 . .
Genius is rare, 63
George II. , 249
Germany, life in, 187-192
Gibbon (Edward), anecdote of, I52
j y ; : Roman Empire, I49
Gladstone (W. E.), 208
Godolphin, 5o
Goëthe, 226
| , ,
E. Y., Summer Days quoted, 187-92 i | -
|
|
Fleet Street, 33-4 | ... '
i
p conversationsin, 13
INDEX. 267
Göethe, his copy of Scott and critical opinion on
Scott's genius, 177-8
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 174
p > travelling, 98
Goodhugh’s Library Manual quoted, 51-4, 235
Gordon (C. G.), his Imitation of Christ, 166
Gower Street, 251
Gracian, 24
Granger's Biographical History of England, the be-
ginning of modern book-illustrating, 250-I
Graziella (Lamartine's early love), 218-20
Gregory's Letters, 164
Grotius (Hugo), books and box at Castle of Louve-
Stein, 235
Guerchy (Count de), d'Eon was his secretary, 195-6
Gulliver's Travels, 234 -
Hakluyt, C. Kingsley's, 76 .
Halifax (Dr. Samuel), notice of, 197
Hall's (Bishop) Contemplations, 135-6
Aameleſſ quoted, I22-3
Harper's Monthly, 89
Harrison (Rev. William), 74
Hawthorne (Julian) quoted, 176
y y Nathaniel), 44, 48, 55, 58, 59, 178-80
! j y y favourite flowers, 8, note
3 J y y his copy of Scott's works, 176
y 3 J. J. Irving accepts The House of
Seven Gables, 230-1
Hawthorne (Nathaniel), Life, 58
3 * 3 y mode of work, 21
3 x 3 on the man of genius, I5
y \ º j Procter sends him a copy of
his Poems, 231-2 -
Hawthorne (Nathaniel) speculates on a copy of Fox's
Book of Martyrs, 232-3
Hawthorne (Nathaniel), Tennyson's copy of Mosses
from an old Manse, 233 t
Haydn's dress when composing, 82
Hazlitt (W.), 221
Hazlitt's edition of Montaigne's Essays, 225
Heber (Dr. Reginald), 180
268 INDEX.
Heine, books of his boyhood, 234
Henry VII., 50
,, VIII., 50
Herbert (George), Poems, 2II
,, of Cherbury (Lord), Poems, 2II
Herbert Street, Salem, 58
Herschell (Sir John), his story of Richardson's
Pamela, 238-
Herschell (Sir John). See Address.
Hildebrandt, 188
Aſistory of Surrey, 52
,, . Opinions, etc., of Isaac Bickerstaff, 132
Hobbies, 52
“Hogarths” (Lamb's), 41
Holland, 235
3 y (Lord), he praises Vicar of Wakefield, 235
Hollar, 251
Holmes (O. W.), 90
Aſomer, 208 -
y y Iliad, copies owned by celebrated men, 220-1 .
,, Kingsley's (C.), 76
Płorace, 209
y J Malherbe's copy, 243
Horne (Richard Hengist), his study, 88
Horsley (Samuel, D.D., F.R.S.), notice of, 196
House, charms of an old, 5-7
Aouse of Seven Gables, W. Irving's acceptance of a
copy, 23O-I
Aouse of Seven Gables, Procter on The, 232
Howells (W. D.), 90
Aundred Best Books, 158
Hungerford (Old) Market, 50
Hunt (Mrs. Leigh), her portrait of Shelley, 88
,, (Leigh), Autobiography quoted, 222-3
1 y ſº y his anecdote of Lord Byron, 225
tº y 9 y ,, books were few, 43
,, prison copy of Pindar, 222-3
y y j j , , , , TCOm, 41-2
y y y J ,, studies, 41-3
Hurd (Richard, D.D.), notice of, rg6-7
Ideal study, arrangement of books, 86, 97-8
INDEX. 269
Ideal Study, the room, 85-6
//iad, copies owned by celebrated men, 220-1
Illustrating, examples of 246-53
“Illustrating,” what it did mean, 245-6
Imitation of Christ, I65-6
India House, 83
India, Robertson's (F. W.), preparation to go to,
243-4
Indicator, 43
Inglefield (John), notice of, 197
Ireland (Alexander), paper on Lamb, I42-3
Irving (Washington), 177
y 9 y 3 accepts Hawthorne's House oy
Seven Gables, 230-I
Irving (Washington) on the growth of literature, I
y y y y Sketch Book quoted, 212
Italy, Lamartine travels into, 218
ames II., 252
}. (Douglas), his Scott, 176
Jerusalem Delivered, 63
Jesse (Edward), 239
Jesus Christ, 198
Job, Book of, 49
John Inglesant, 247
Johnson (Dr.), effect of Burton's Anatomy of Melan-
choly on, 23
Johnson (Dr.), his character is well known, 16-17
* , ,, his proposal to write a D2&tionary of
Trade and Commerce, 149-51
Johnson (Dr.), Rambler, 149
Jonson (Ben), 79
33 ,, his autograph, 225
} % , , (Lamb's), 41
Karl, I88
Kempis (Thomas à), 164-6
Kersey's Dictionary of Old Words, 137
Keswick, 25, 33
Kingsborough (Lord) published The Antiquities of
Mexico, 256-7 • *
Kingsley (Charles), Eversley suited him entirely, 74-7
27o INDEX.
Kingsley (Charles), his absent-mindedness, 76-7
y 9 3 3 His Letters and Memoirs of his
Zéfe, quoted, 74-7
Kingsley (Charles), his wide knowledge, 74-7
p > Rose G.) quoted, 68-9
A ºn/ºvervankotſdarſ?ražengotchderms, IQ3-4
Kirke (Edmund), anecdote of Lincoln quoted, 240
Knox (John), his Bible, 244
Lamartine, anecdotes of his younger days, 217-20
Lamartine's Conftdences, 218
Lamb (Charles), 19, 221, 232
j J 2 3 and Coleridge, anecdote of, 83, note
y 9 2 x and George Daniel, 173-4
y’s 3 y as a horticulturist, 4o
y y 5 p. Carlyle's opinion of, I4I-3
p : y y Detached Thoughts on Books and
Reading quoted, 129, 237-8
Lamb (Charles), his account of his aunt's reading,
I65-6
Lamb (Charles), his attachments all local, 34
, , , , ,, copy of Richardson's Pamela,
237-8
Ilamb (Charles), his ideas of book-marking, 242, note
j j 3 J. ,, love for Walton's Complete
Angler, 236-7
Lamb (Charles), his love of London life, 32
$ 9 is p ,, opinion of L. Hunt's prison-
room, 41
Lamb (Charles), his opinion on soiled books, 174-5
y y 25 letter to Barron Field, I26, note
y y 25 Letters of Charles, I4o
y 3 33 Memoir of Charles, I40-43
x 3 99 various studies, 1806, 35-4I
,, (Mary), her account of Lamb's lodgings, 36-8
Lambeth, 249
Landor (W. S.), 97
33 3 y his copy of Talſourd's Letters of
Charles Lamb, I4o
Lang (Andrew) quoted, I25
Langbain (Mr.), Lives, etc., of English Dramatic
Poets, II3
INDEX. 271
Lardner's Caffènet Cyclopædia, I32
Laud (Dr.), 248
Lauderdale, 5o
Law (The) against Lovers, II4
Lay of the Wily Villain quoted, 126-8
Zectures on Eloczºtzozz, 199
p 7 ,, the Art of Reading Prose and Verse, 199
} y. ,, , , History of France, I32
‘‘Lenora,” 188
Lessing, 188
Letter to the Count de Guerchy, 196
Letters, Memoirs, and Negotiations (d'Eon's), 196
Lettres Spirituelles du R. P. Barre, 162
Lexington Road, 55
Lincoln (Abraham), his Bible and Artemus Ward,
24O
Azzzzzet's Life, George Eliot's copy, 234
Literary man's prayer, 73
2 y Mecca, a, 44
Literature, Irving (W.) on, I
the business man's recreation, 3-4
Little Britain, 130, 203, 205-6
Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, 246
Little Queen Street, I65
Alives and Characters of the AEnglish Dramatic Aoets,
II3
Locke, 173
Lockhart quoted, IOS
Lofft (Capel), notice of, 197
London, an illustrated copy of Pennant's History of
Zondon, 25I
London, Lamb's love of, 32-5
y y Southey's hatred of, 35
Longfellow (H. W.), 57, I47, 232
9 3 Axcelsior, 16o
2 y portrait of, II
Longman (Messrs.), their copy of Strutt's Dictionary,
253
I_ouis XVI., 236
Louvre, 209
Æove of our Country, 198
Lowell (J. R.), 90
272 INDEX.
Lowell (J. R.), his comments on Leigh Hunt's copy
of Tom Jones, 216-7
Lowells, the, 57.
Lucretius, I22
Lytton (Lord), 208-9
Macaulay (T. B.), 207-8
Madoc, 22I
Mainwaring, notice of, 197
Malherbe, his copy of Aorace, 243
Manchester Literary Club, I42
Mansfield (Lord), 196 -
Man's (a) quiet hours should always be happy, 91-2
Marie Antoinette, 172
Marlborough (Sarah, Duchess of), 53
Marryat's AVovels read by Carlyle, 229-30
Mary, portraits of Virgin, 252
Queen of Scots, 20I
y y , , , , ,, Prayer Book, 163-4
Measure for Measure, II4
Meditations of Marcus Aurelias, Louis XVI. and
Wolseley's copies, 236
Melancthon's books, 173
Mémoire des Finances, IQ6
Meredith (George), 12
Merton College, 239
Methodism, 179
Meg Merrilies, 250
Michael Angelo's fate, 56
Midwinter (Edward), 133-4
Mill on the Floss quoted, I64, note
Milton, I22
(Lamb's), 175
Aaradise Lost, 63, 205-6
,, (Warton's edition), 43
Mirabeau, I71
Modern Cookery for Private Families, 133.
Molineaux (Mrs.), 52-3
Montaigne, 24, I73
Assays, anecdotes of, 223-6
y J Emerson's copy of, 223-5
his mode of book-marking, 242, note
x 3
y y
J. J.
y 2
y y
* }
INDEX. 273
Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Madame de Staël's
Copy, 24O-I
Montigo (Eugénie de), guitar of, 89
More (Hannah), notice of, 198
Moore's Irish Melodies, 133
J. p. National Airs, 133
Morzzzzzg. Post, 221
Morris (William) quoted, 123
Mosses from an Old Manse, 46, 58, 178–80
p ſº y º ſº y p ,, Tennyson's copy, 233
Moulton (Mrs.), 62, note
Much ado about AVothing, II4
Napoleon, 97, I73
Marrative of the Zoss of the Centazer, 197
Mature (Emerson's), 46, 58
Nautical Almanacé, Stanley's copy, 227-8
Nell Gwynne, 51
Newlands, 28
Newman (Henry Charles Christopher Theodore),
notice of, 198
Newton's (Sir Isaac), 51
x p 3 y J y Principia, 196
North's Plutarch's Lives, 17o
Norie's Navigation, Stanley's copy, 227-8
Ode to the Memory of the Bishop of Sodor and Maz, 200
Ode to the Warlike Genius of Great Britain, 201
O'Keefe (John), notice of, 198-9
Old garden, 7-8
Old house, charms of an, 5-7
Old Manse, Hawthorne and Emerson at the, 45-50, 58
O'Reilly, 90
Ossian, 217
Our Old Home, 58
Oxford, II3
3 y University, 241
P.'s Correspondence, 179-80
Pall Mall Gazette quoted, 227-8
Paradise Lost, 63
g º Regained, 63
I8
274 * INDEX.
Paris, Emerson in, 224-5
, , , Southey in, 209
Parker (Theodore), 57
x y y 9 his library at Boston, 86-8
Paul and Virginia, Lamartine reads, 219-20
Peabody (Miss), 226
Peacock (T. L.), an early riser, 22
Peckard (Dr.) quoted, 246-9
Petztures et Ornements des Mazzuscriţs, grandeur and
cost of, 254-8
Pellico's Francesca da Rimini, 125 -
Aen and Pencil Sketches of American Poets and
their Homes, 89
Pennant's History of London illustrated by Mr.
Crowle, 251
Perigord, 224
Personalities in books, I56-8, 161
Peters (Hugh), 249
Pétion, 171
Petit (Le) Office du S. Enfant Jésus, 162
Philip III., his opinion of Don Quixote, 234-5
Aindar, Leigh Hunt's prison copy, 222-3
Alazzº Dealer, 2I4-15
Alato, 173
A/zzy, 173
/*lutarch, various copies owned by famous men, 170-4
Poet's Homes, 56
Pope (Alexander), 51, IL5
- in Addison's garret, 73-4
y - y y on Wycherley's mode of writing, 24
Pope's Homer, an interesting copy of, I37-9
Portrait Gallery, I64
Pražses of Poetry, 197
Prayer Book, 2II
y ,, Mary Queen of Scots', I63-4
Prayers as said by clergy, I99-200
Primrose Hill, 237
Prime's I go a A'zs/ºzzº, I86
Procter (W. B.), 42, 129 -
literature his landscape, 43-4
Al/emzoz2 of Chaz"/es Zazzê, 14o-I, 143.
Poems sent to Hawthorne, 231-2
p > J. J.
p > y
y 2 y
y J J. J.
INDEX. 275
Psalms, 2II
A tolemy, 173
Publishers and authors, anecdotes of, I5I-5
x y ,, their risk in publishing, I47 55
Purgatory Fºxplored, 63
Puseyites, 179
Quarrels of dead authors, 178-80
y y ,, , , Sectarians, 178
Quarterly Areview quoted, 245-58
Queen Anne, 51
Quincey (De), his sanctum, 17
y y y P ,, study, 252
3 y ,, on Wordsworth, 3I, note
Ramble with Isaac D'Israeli, 207
9 y ,, T. B. Macaulay, 207-8
Raphael's Madonnas, 47
A’asselas, I64
Reading one's self to sleep, 23-4
Recollections of the Lakes, 26
A'eparation, a comedy, 193
Rhine, 189-92
Richardson's (Samuel), Pamela, Lamb's copy of,237-8
y y y y ,, story of the village
blacksmith reading, 238-9 -
Richelieu (Cardinal) and Solomon de Caus, 168
Robertson (Frederick William), his preparation for
Indian Service, 243-4
A’obertson (Frederick William), Liſe and Letters of
quoted, 243-4
Robespierre, 171-2
Robinson Crusoe, I43-6 .
Robinson (Henry Crabb), Diary quoted, 209
y y (Sir George), 145
Rochefoucauld, 24
A’okeby, 20
Roland (Madame), her early readings of Plutarch's
Azzes, 17I-2
Roscoe (William), his creditors took his books, 212-13
Rossetti (D. G.) akin to Carlyle in temper of work, 14
y J ,, garden in Chelsea, I2 -
18–2
.276 INDEX.
Rossetti (William M.), 12
'Rousseau, his basis for Emile, 173
Rue de Chaillot, I53
Sacred History, 20I
St. Albans, IQ5
St. James's Street, 152
Salisbury Plain, 38
Sand (George) quoted, 90
Sanderson (Bishop), 202-4
Sarfor Resartzes, Emerson's copy of, 226-7
3 y y 9 Stanley's copy of, 227-8
Scarlet Letter, 233
Schopenhauer, I24
Scotland, 246
Scott (Miss Sophia), her Scott's Poems sent by
Washington Irving, 177
Scott (Sir Walter), I47, 252
J 3 j ñ 9 3 an early riser, 21-3 -
y y 5 y y jº copies of his works owned by
famous men, I76-8
Scott (Sir Walter), Goethe's admiration for him, 177.8
y y º ,, his collection of ballads, 1756
y y y 2 y y ,, composition not disturbed by
outside inconveniences, 20-I
Scott (Sir Walter), his creditors did not take his
books, 2I-2 &
Scott (Sir Walter), his death, IoS -
3 × y y 3 p instance of his parental wisdom,
I77
Scott (Sir Walter), notice of, 199
3 y 3 p. y 9 picture of, II
Scribner. See also Centzczy.
Scrgözer's Monthly, 56
Sea and river, 92-5
Search after Happiness (The), 198
Sea view from the study, 92-4
Selden (John), volumes marked by him, 241-2
Seneca, 24
Sergeant (Old) and his wife, 19
Sermon Preached before the Humane Society, 198
..Ses Loisirs en Angleferre, I96 $ *
INDEX. 277
Seven Dials, 207
Shakespeare (William), 43, 79, II4, 122, 170, 221, 227
p > * , Carlyle's opinion on, I4
his autograph, 225
j y y y in Oxford, II3
Shelley (Percy Bysshe), 9o, 119-20, 122, 126, 178
jº º j p y y and Hawthorne, 179-80
* , portrait of, by Mrs. Leigh
j y J
Hunt, 88
Shelley's copy of Francesca da Rimini, 125
Sheridan (Dr. Thomas), 199
* j ñ (Thomas), notice of, 199-200
Shorthouse (J. H.), John Znglesazzè, 247
Sibbes (Dr. Richard), 203
Skiddaw, 28
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, 44
Smith (Charlotte), notice of, 200
J. P. S. F.), 90
x sº (Tobias) History of England, 169-70
Solitude, I6I
Somerset (Edward). See Worcester (Marquis of).
p : House, 51
Soyuzets and other A'oems, 200
Soz!'s Cozz/2cé, 204
Southey (Robert), 179
y y anecdotes of his bookishness,
209. IO -
Southey (Robert), his hatred of town life, 35
g ,, Iliad, 22I
,, journey to London, 22I
library at Keswick, 25-6, 33
J. P. y y routine of work, 29 30
Spedding's Publishers and Authors, 133, note
Spelling Book, 201
Spenser, 42-3
Staël (Madame de), her Byron's Manfred, 241
p : y J ,, , , Montesquieu's Asprit des
Zois, 240
Staël (Madame de), her Rousseau's Works, 241
Stanhope's Imitation of Christ, 165
Stanley (H. M.), the books he took to Africa, 227-8
Stanleys, the, 57
J p :
y y p :
J. J. y
278. INDEX.
Stedman (E. C.) on Horne quoted, 88 9
Stephen's (Sir J.) Lectures on the History of France,
I22
stºne's (Laurence) book-making, I35-6
y y " ; , Tristram Shandy, I35-6, I47
Sterling (John), his copy of St. Augustine, 75, note
3 y y ,, love for Montaigne, 224-5
Stock (Elliot), Lay of the Wily Villain quoted, 126-8
Stockton-on-Tees, 32
Stockton (F. R.), Rudder Grange, Ioo
Stoddard (R. H.), 9o
Strand, the, 33
Strutt's Dictionary of Engravers for illustrating,
25I, 253
Study, view from the window, 92-4
Sunderland, 5o
Sutherland (Mrs.), 251-2
Sussex, 200
Swift (Dr. J.), 199
Gulliver's Travels, 234
j p ,, . should have been a physician, II5
Swinburne (A. C.), 12
Swiss mountains, IQI
Syllabus of his Lectures on Universal History, A.
Tytler's, 201
y y y y
Talfourd (Thomas Noon), 129
Talfourd's Letters of Charles /.amb, I4o
Talleyrand, anecdote of his wife, 144-6
Tasker (William), notice of, 200-I
Taylor (Jeremy), 80
Temple, 165
y y Lamb's rooms at the, 36
Temple Bar, 140, 187
Tennyson (Alfred), 191
Carlyle's opinion on, 13-14
etching of, II
y 9 Gardener's Daughter, quotation from, 18
y y his copy of Mosses from an Old Manse, 233
Testament, 2II
Thaxter (Celia), her personality shown in her poems,
67-8
3 J.
} g
INDEx. 279
Thoreau, 44, 55, 57, 60, 62
y y his Iliad, 22O-I
y y ,, reason for going to Walden, 60
3 y ,, residences, 59-60
y y ,, Waldezz quoted, 59
Ticknor and Fields, 176
To my Books (William Roscoe), 213
Tom Jones, I74
y - ,, Leigh Hunt's copy, 216-17
Tom of Bedlam, 25o
Trimmer (Mrs.), notice of, 20I
Tuckerman (F. G.), letter to N. Hawthorne quoted,
233
Tuileries, 172
Tunbridge Wells, 214
Twice-fold Tales, 58
Tytler (Alexander), notice of, 201
Upcott (Mr. William), 51-4
Vergniaud, 171
Vicar of Wakefield, 174
y y 3 y y Lord Holland praises, 235
Visions in Verse, for the Instruction of Younger
Minds, 195
Voltaire, his mode of book-marking, 242, note
Walden, 220
,, Pond, 45, 55, 59
Walden quoted, 59
Walpole (Horace), his anecdote of Gibbon, 152
Walton (Izaak), 19, 203-4
,, Lamb's love for the Complete Angler, 236-7
,, Lives, 202
Ward (Artemus). See Browne.
Waverley AVovels, 176-8
Wayside, the, 58
Wealth of Nations, 79
Weill's Schopenhauer, 124, note
Weimar, 177
Welsh hill as a weather sign, 8.9
Westminster Reviezo, 225
28O INDEX.
Westmoreland (Earl of), 247
White Doe of Rylstone, 32
Whitechapel, 207
Whitehall, 249, note
Whitelocke (Bulstrode), 249
j is Memorials quoted, 249, note
White's (Rev. Samuel) Watural History and Antiqui-
Žies of Selborne, Dr. Scrope Berdmore's opinion on,
239-40
Whitman (Walt), favourite books, 221 -
Whitney's (Mrs. A. D. T.) Poems, and her mode of
writing, 66
Whittier (J. G.), 57, 9o .
William III., 252
Willis's (N. P.) poem Idleness quoted, Io9-4
Wilson (Professor), his books and fishing-tackle,
79-80
Wilson (Professor), his carelessness about money, 80-1
y y * A J } study, 77-82
p > ,, Christopher North had no fire in his
study, 90-I
Wilson (John), Memoir of, by his Daughter, quoted,
78-81 -
Wolseley (General Lord), 173, 236
y y y y ,, his Imitation of Christ, 166
Woman's tidying is an author's trouble, 70-2
Wootton (Surrey), 51
Worcester (Marquis of), Century of the Names and
Scantlings of such Inventions as at present I can
call to Mzzd, I67-8 -
Wordsworth's (Christopher) Ecclesiastical Biography
quoted, 246-9
Wordsworth (William), 33, 129
and Southey's library, 25
De Quincey on, 3.I, note
his handling of books, 25.
,, love of outdoor life, 30-2
,, study, 3O-I
3 y 3 * quoted, Io9
Wren, 51
Wycherley (William), his mode of writing, 24
y y ,, reading habits before sleep-
ing, 234
INDEX. 281
Wycherley (William), meeting of the Countess of
Drogheda with, etc., 2I4-16
Yearsley (Mrs. Anne), 198
York Buildings, hunt at, 42-3
Young (Edmund), his mode of book-marking, 242,
In Ote
Zinga, 228
THE ENI).
Elliot Stock, Paternoster Rozw, London,
THE PLEASURES OF A
BOOKW OR M.
By J. ROGERS REES.
(Uniform with “ The Diversions of a Bookworm.")
SECOND EDITION.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
SPECTATOR.—“The little work of Mr. Rees is
written in a somewhat different spirit from Mr.
Harrison's (Choice of Books), and those who wish to
see all that can be said for and against the reading
of books for their intrinsic merits alone cannot do
better than read the two works in conjunction.
While Mr. Rees is so far at one with Mr. Harrison
as to admit that the works of great men ‘best fit
him for everyday existence, giving him health and
strength to live his life and do his work,’ his deepest
love is reserved for rare and out-of-the-way volumes,
which are endeared to him by some special associa-
tion, and ovel whose pages he can linger and dream,
‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’ Mr. Rees
certainly states excellent measons for his preference,
and we think that every true book-lover will sympa-
thize rather with him than with Mr. Harrison. His
dainty little book contains six essays in all, bearing
more or less relation to the pleasures of the book-
worm. . . . The essays are genial and chatty.”
PUBLIC OPINION.—“The Author adopts a most
charming style in relating his experiences, at once
original and taking ; indeed, so much so that thene is
little doubt this work will be largely read. . . . Mr.
Rees may be congratulated in all sincelity for his
admirable book, which is brimming over with sound
literary merit.”
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEws.—“Bright glimpses
of home-life in connection with books. . . . The
Author's desultory talk about the books he loves is
OAAWIONS OF 7THE PM&AESS.
alluring enough to induce a sympathetic reviewer to
talk also.”
BOOKSELLER.—“One of the most delightful opus-
cula of its kind that we have seen for some time.
Mr. Rees is a genuine book-lover, and writes of his
treasures and the circumstances connected with them
with a warmth of affection which only the genuine
bibliophile can know.”
DAILY NEWS.– “An agreeable pocket volume for
the bibliophile who cannot fight with beasts at
Sotheby's for the prizes of rich collectors, but who
makes himself happy with what he can afford.”
INQUIRER.—“An attractive volume of pleasant
chat and friendly gossip, concerning what might be
called the personality of books. Mr. Rees has a
happy faculty of identifying books with their authors
and their readers. . . . We have here six essays,
several of them filled with curious information, and all
of them very interesting to collectors.”
DAILY CHRONICLE. —“Quaint reflections on books
and their writers . . . the spirit of the work is re-
freshing to lovers of literature.”
ACADEMY. — “Mr. Rees has brought together
much gossip that will interest those who are anxious
about the externals of modern books of ‘preciosity.’”
WEST SURREY TIMEs.-‘‘Mr. Rees has managed
to commune with his readers in such a kindly, loving
spirit that he inspires interest without awakening any
feeling of pedantry or boredom. When one can rise
above the tons of trash constantly issuing from the
press, the feeling that the bookworm is a companion-
able fellow must soon be engendered.”
MANCHESTER EXAMINER. — “This dainty little
volume is written for book-lovers, and it is a book
which they will love. . . . The book is delightfully
discursive. Now the writer gossips about the curio-
sities of catalogues, now enumerates the volumes
which the book-lover would specially desire to possess,
and now gives a charming chapter on ‘The Romance
and Reality of Dedications.' The volume belongs to
OA/NZOAVS OA' THE ARESS.
that very small class of works which tempt a reviewer
to prolixity ; but we must content ourselves with
hearlily commending it to all who find an ever-satis-
fying companionship in the Society of books.”
LITERARY WORLD.—‘‘We have to thank Mr. Rees
for giving us a charming little volume, written in a
pleasant quaint way, on a most interesting subject.
. . . Mr. Rees gives a most graphic and amusing
account of the strange characters with which a book-
collector comes in contact, in queer out-of-the-way
corners, and his delight when, with hands and clothes
in ‘filthy plight,’ he at last emerges from the glorious
hunting-grounds with an armful of treasures.”
SOUTH WALEs DAILY NEWS.—“A really charm-
ing little book. . . . There is a reality about it all
which shows the writer has something to say on his
subject, and has not written for the mere sake of
making a book. . . . The tendency of Such a book
as this is all in the right direction, and powerful for
good alike by the charm of the subject and the skill
of the treatment. We would indeed that there were
more of such works.”
WESTERN ANTIQUARY.-“Over the whole of the
volume a charm is thrown which must at once com-
mend it to the ordinary reader, as well as to the
specialist.”
TRUTHSEEKER.—“A quaint, interesting and dainty
book, and of considerable use, moreover, to book-
lovers and collectors. Mr. Rees is rot only a most
entertaining gossip: he is also an excellent guide in
out-of-the-way paths, by no means garrulous, never a
bore, and always shrewd, well-informed, and good-
humoured.”
CITY PRESS,--"Written in a pleasant, easy strain,
and printed and bound in a manner that will com-
mend the work to lovers of books, and especially of
books that are pleasant to handle as well as to read.
‘The Romance and Reality of Dedications’ is a par-
ticularly interesting chapter; as is also “Literature in
Odd Moments.' . . . The Author is naturally a
bibliophile.”
THE DIVERSIONS OF A
B O OKW OR M.
(Uniform with “The Pleasures of a Bookworm,”)
SATCO WD AEDITY.O.W.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
GLASGOW HERALD.—“One continued stream of
interest from beginning to end. . . . His book is
therefore one to take into an odd corner in city or
country. Open it at an accidental page, and there
you will see like the gleam of a diamond the form of
some favourite author of whom Mr. Rees has some
bit of genial gossip to communicate. . . . Will keep
his namé alive for many years to come. . . . really a
prize of its kind.”
FREEMAN.—“We thank Mr. Rees for his bright
and charming volume. Every word that we said in
commendation of his former work (The Pleasures of a
Aookzworm) we could honestly repeat in favour of this,”
LIVERPOOL DAILY POST.-‘‘Book-lovers will not
forget to read two interesting volumes recently offered
to the public by Mr. Rees, and called respectively
The Pleasures of a Bookworm and 7he Diversions of
a Bookworm. These neat little tomes are full of
pleasant gossip about books ancient and modern. . . .
Mr. Rees has something very charming to say about
old volumes that have become endeared to him by
some special association. . . . Excellent work.”
TRUTH.—“A most acceptable present to one of
the tribe.” •
MANCHESTER EXAMINER.—“We intend to pay
Mr. Rees a high compliment, and we think he will
take it as such, when we say that he frequently re-
minds us of Leigh Hunt, whom he resembles in his
love for the simplicities and delicacies not only of
literature, but of external nature and human inter-
course ; in his old-fashioned aestheticism—a very
different because a much more genuine thing than
OA/AV/OAVS OA' 7"AA. AAEA.S.S.
the modern article; and in the genial discursiveness
of his literary manner. . . . just enough, and not
too much, of that flavour of egotism which gives a
personal charm to such essays as those of Montaigne,
Alexander Smith, and the delightſul writer whose
name has just been mentioned. . . . The volume is
rich both in original reflection and in aptly chosen
and interesting quotation.”
RELIQUARY. —“Mr. Rees, who recently produced
a charming and well-received little work, entitled The
A leasures of a Bookworm, has now given us a still
more happy effort. The Diversions of a Bookzvozzº
breathes through every page that intense enjoyment
of true books which cannot fail to communicate itself
in a pleasurable way to all sharers of his tastes. . . .
Lach chapter has its own charm, the opening one
being a most dainty sample of graceful, winning
English ; but perhaps the most attractive and the
most quaintly original is the last. . . . Mr. Rees shows
his love for Charles Lamb in various parts of these
pleasant pages (as every bookworm Surely must),
and we can give him, we are sure, no higher or more
congenial praise than by mentioning that his own
book was placed, when we had read it, upon a
favourite shelf of our study close to the Essays of the
gentle Elia, and next to Forster's Arrest of the Five
Members, which owes its chief value to the fact that
it was given by the author to Barry Cornwall, and
bears his name and tokens of his use.”
TRUTHSEEKER.—“A companion volume to the
lately published Aleasures of a Bookworm, and in every
way as dainty and entertaining. No one could read
it without pleasure, and, to many people, it would be
very charming. Full of pleasant gossip, it is also
enlightening, giving innumerable glimpses of cha-
racter and side-lights upon the lives and habits of
our most notable men in the world of literature. It
is an ideal giſt-book to a friend.”
COURT AND SOCIETY REVIEw.—“A dainty little
book. . . . There is much in this book that will be
interesting to the domestic fireside."
OA'JAVIONS OF THE ARAESS.
WARRINGtoN GUARDIAN. — “Will become a
favourite in many libraries.”
DAILY NEws.—“The bibliophile and the book-
hunter . . . turn with pleasure to volumes like Mr.
Rees' Diversions of a Bookworm. . . . A kindly, com-
fortable, British sort of book.”
SCOTSMAN.—“There is a great deal of pleasant
gossip about books and the ways of bookish men in
Mr Rees' elegantly appointed little volume. . . . A
work which will be read with pleasure by everyone
who has a touch of bibliomania.”
EAST ANGLIAN.—“A volume every way worthy of
the reputation the Author has already gained . . . .
these ‘diversions’ abound with literary information,
conveyed to the reader in a style so genial and culti-
vated as to ensure for the work a prominent position
among books of this character.”
MORNING PoST.— “Mr. Rees chats away plea-
Santly about authors great, and sometimes authors
. Sinall, of their whims and fancies, of the associations
that cling to certain ancient or modern volumes.”
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.—“A dainty volume
which will prove as pleasant a companion by the
fireside in winter as under the trees at midsummer.
The world, alas ! nowadays lives so fast that those
who really care for lettered ease, and are content to
let others struggle for notoriety, are few and far
between ; and we are thankful to Mr. Rees ſor show-
ing us, as he does, the pleasures which may, if we woo
them aright, still cling to books. . . . We cordially
commend these bright and chatty essays on topics
of which book-readers and book-collectors never
weary.”
GLOBE. —“May depend upon appreciation at the
hands of those who have long rejoiced in literary
treasures." -
LONDON :
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
ſ ---. iii. ñº,
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