THE LOVE OF BOOKSTHE LOVE OF BOOKS
BY
LUTHER A. BREWER
WITH A REPRINT OF LEIGH HUNTS ESSAY ON KMY BOOKS”
PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE FRIENDS OF LUTHER ALBERTUS AND ELINORE TAYLOR BREWER CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA CHRIST-MAS NINETEEN TWENTY-THREECopyrighted 1923 hy
Luther A. Brewer
THE TORCH PRESS
CEDAR RAPIDS
IOWATHE LOVE OF BOOKS
AS a lover of books, Leigh Hunt appeals to us. For did he not express the wish that the end of his days ־ on earth might come to him with his head upon a loved volume. And did he not write to a correspondent
*that he was “a very glutton of books,” and that he thought
“nothing of devouring half a volume before breakfast.” His love for books is given voice in all his correspondence and in all his writings. Like David for the Dora of Dickens, he was steeped in love with them. Given books and the opportunity of reading them, and what did it concern him that there was lack of bread and meat in the house, and the “Executioner” was at the door. How he loved his favorite Italian authors, and what pangs were his when he was compelled to offer his set of Italian classics at much less than it cost him, because his necessities no longer permitted of its retention in his library.
Then there is that picture of an ideal situation, as he saw it, “a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet.”
Is not that a picture that pleases all of us who love books? And it calls to mind that comfortable situationalluded to by John Masefield in his poem, “On Growing Old:״
Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying,
My dog and I are old, too old for roving,
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute,
The clock ticks to my heart; a withered wire Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight, the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.
Beauty, have pity, for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Spring time of man all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand Asks only a penny from the passing crowd.
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom, and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close Even the night will blossom as the rose.
[6]Perhaps Hunt had the feeling in his heart so nicely expressed by J. Rogers Rees: “The ability to lose one’s self at will in the world of imaginative creation has saved many a lover of literature from hours of unnecessary care and sorrow, enabling him to ignore difficulties under which he would otherwise have been crushed.”
Someone with wisdom has said that every man who has the opportunity should read Homer, Horace, Milton, and Shakespeare. Certainly: but why were not the Bible and Hunt included? Hunt is chatty, pleasant reading, and there is not one to deny literary supremacy to the Bible. Moreover, why say “opportunity” — every man who has the opportunity should read? Are we in these swiftly moving days of the radio and the air ship so busy that we lack the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the choice spirits of other times, those “masters who instruct us without rod or ferrule;” who are not asleep when we approach them, and if we enquire of them “they do not withdraw themselves,” never chide when mistakes are made, never laugh at our ignorance? With “eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for sleep” the day is divided in such a way as to present the opportunity if there is the desire back of it.
We are not grateful enough for books. We fail to realize that they are our best friends, our most faithful companions, if we would only make them such. They ever are true and honest with us. They tell not our secrets; they intrude not on those hours when we would be alone to refresh our souls with quiet thought.
The home without books is not a home in the true
[7]sense of the word. It is merely a place in which to stay over night, or on a rainy day, or a stormy evening. Cheap furniture and rag carpets, with a few books, make an inviting abiding place. Carved chairs and tables and Persian carpets, without books, make a place it is good to keep away from. We do not claim that books are made for furniture, but nothing else so beautifies and embellishes a home. We prefer a home filled with books rather than with furniture. We will take both if we can, but at all events we want the books — the parchments that St. Paul was so solicitous about when in prison. In books we lose ourselves and all our cares.
Was it not our own Edwin P. Whipple who said: “Books — lighthouses erected in the sea of time?”
Some one may be foolish enough to seek counsel on what to read. That problem we must decide for ourselves. It is a grave mistake to think that what pleases others will entertain us. Melancthon, it is said, collected and read only four authors — Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy. His reading seems to have been varied enough. Doubtless these four ancients helped the great reformer, but there are times when mind and body demand lighter food. The mood has something to do with it. May we suggest that in our reading we should take up a book with a purpose, for every volume taken up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up one with a purpose. The volume should be one to interest us, regardless of its subject, else the fate of one Du Fresnoy may be ours, who, a lover of the books that stood the
[8]test of time, slumbered over the dullness of a new one, fell into the fire, and thus met his death.
Like Lamb, Hunt loved his books for their contents. So, too, can it be said of most of us whose hobby is the collecting of books. Because we covet perfect copies, and perhaps love the sight and the feeling of fine bindings on them, is not at all an indication that we value appearance more than material. It is a compliment we pay to an author we love when we case his writings in crushed red morocco levant, or in polished calf. We love our wives or admire other beautiful women (of course our wives are beautiful) the more if they are neatly and becomingly dressed. Love and admiration grow cold when their objects are slatternly and raggedly clothed. It is no more a crime to love beauty in books than it is difficult fully to appreciate a slouchy woman. We lovers of books are not in sympathy with the man mentioned by Lucian who was so much occupied with the polishing of his bindings that he had not the leisure to make himself familiar with the contents of his beloved volumes.
Hunt, having two shillings to lay out for the purchase of a coveted volume in plain binding instead of two pounds ten on a tooled morocco one, could yet express the wish, in his translation of Ver-Vert'. “If I had the leisure and the means of Mr. Rogers, nothing should hinder me from trying to out-do (in one respect) the delicacy of his publications, in versifying a subject so worthy of vellum and morocco. The paper should be soft as the novices’ lips, the register as rose-coloured;
[9]every canto should have vignettes from the hand of Stothard; and the binding should be green and gold, the colours of the hero.”
From the many letters of Leigh Hunt in our possession, it is easy to form the opinion that Hunt fought shy of social attentions, wisely preferring an evening in his study among his books to the burden of keeping up his share of the entertainment at an evening party. He went out but little, giving his ill-health as an excuse for declining an invitation, though this, we believe, was not always the true reason. Occasionally he was present at the delightful weekly assemblies in the home of Charles and Mary Lamb, and he enjoyed visits with the Novellos and with Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. But these absences from his home were not of frequent occurrence.
Perhaps he subscribed to the sentiment expressed to Dean Swift by Doctor Sheridan:
“While you converse with lords and dukes,
I have their betters here — my books:
Fixed in an elbow-chair at ease I choose my companions as I please.
I’d rather have one single shelf Than all my friends except yourself;
For after all that can be said Our best acquaintances are the dead.”
Leigh Hunt, like other lovers of books, took pleasure in the perusal of second-hand book catalogues:
‘A catalogue is not a mere catalogue or list of saleables, as the uninitiated may fancy. Even a common auctioneer’s catalogue of goods and chattels suggests a thou-
[10]sand reflections to a pursuer of knowledge. Judge then what the case must be with a catalogue of books; the very titles of which run the rounds of the whole world, visible and invisible; geographies — biographies—■histories — loves — hates — joys — sorrows — cookeries — sciences — fashion, — and Eternity! We speak on this subject from the most literal experience; for often and often have we cut open a new catalogue of old books, with all the fervour and ivory folder of a first love; often read one at tea; nay, at dinner; and have put crosses against dozens of volumes in the list, out of the pure imagination of buying them, the possibility being out of the question”
We like Hunt because he writes from the heart. He compels us to believe in his sincerity. Boileau asked the question, “Why are my verses read by all,״ and answered it by saying, “It is only because they speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write.״ There is so much of the man himself in Hunt’s writings that it is not difficult for his readers to draw a mental picture of him. Sincerity and truth are in everything he wrote.
In his Farewell Address in the Monthly Repository, 1838, Hunt states that it is his desire to end life as he began it, “in what perhaps is my only true vocation, that of a lover of nature and books .	.	. possessed of one
golden secret, tried in the fire, which I still hope to recommend in future writings; namely, the art of finding as many things to love as possible in our path through life, let us otherwise try to reform it as we may.”
[11]How we collectors of books wish at times we could say truly with Will Cobbett, that books “cost little.” Comparatively, Cobbett gave utterance to a truth, for books, even many of the rarest, cost little when measured by the sums we spend for automobiles. Then a rare book has this advantage: its value does not decrease with use and time, a statement that cannot be made with reference to the motor car. And then
“How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold The small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold.”
Lamb railed against books finely bound that did not merit such royal splendors, and expressed the wish that it might be possible to strip off the leather from such common tomes — “imposters” he called them — so that he might “warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.”
This was a sane wish.
In that charming essay, “Old China,” Lamb draws a picture of a lover of books that touches our heart:
“Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare — and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden*? . . . Can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit — your old corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the
[12]mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it — a great affair we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old folio? Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.״
Leigh Hunt without doubt held with John Lilly, a sixteenth century savant, that “far more seemely were it for thee to have thy Studie full of Bookes, than they Purses full of Mony.״
Certainly, Hunt’s purse never was full of money, but he had books in his study — in fact he made books there that have given us much joy.
In commending old age, Alonzo of Aragon was pleased to say that age appeared to be best in four things: “old wood best to burn; old wine to drink; old friends to trust; and old authors to read.”
In these days we must perforce forego the old wine to drink. The old friends are vanishing to that dim shore which soon will receive us. But we have the consolation that there is an abundance of old wood to burn, and that we are privileged to select the old authors we would read.
Here is a touching prayer sent up to heaven by that old and beloved antiquary, Thomas Hearne, that merits the indorsement of all lovers of books:
“O most gracious and worshipful Lord God, wonderful in Thy providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou hast always taken of me. I continually meet with signal instances of this Thy providence, and one act yesterday, when I unexpectedly met with
[13]three old Manuscripts, for which, in a particular manner, I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue the same protection to me a poor helpless sinner, and that for Jesus Christ his Sake.”
One can get pleasure from the work of arranging and re-arranging his treasures. A new Hunt item has arrived — a place must be found for it — and in finding that place an evening passes pleasantly and profitably.
Wordsworth once found Southey in his dotage “patting with both hands his books affectionately, like a child.”
Southey’s son says of his father that “His dearly prized books were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and taking them down mechanically.”
Says Fany Fern: “You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to your dear old book, and forget them all in dreamland. It shall be a friend that shall be always at hand; that shall never try you by caprice, or pain you by forgetfulness, or wound you by distrust.”
With these examples of book-loving to inspire Hunt — and ourselves — we can turn now to that appreciative essay on “My Books” perhaps a little bit better prepared for its enjoyment.
May our friends, this Christmas season, get out of its reading the pleasure which has been ours, oh, so often.
Luther A. Brewer Elinore Taylor Brewer
[H]MY BOOKS
By Leigh Hunt
SITTING, last winter, among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me; to wit, a table of highpiled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet; I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books,— how I loved them, too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and my Arabian Nights'. then above them at my Italian poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Tope, my romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on a writing-desk; and thought how natural it was in Cfharles] L[amb] to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer. At the same time I wondered how he could sit in that front room of his with nothing but a few unfeeling tables and chairs, or at best a few engravings in trim frames, instead of putting a couple of arm-chairs into the back-room with the books in it, where there is but one window. Would I were there, with both [15]the chairs properly filled, and one or two more besides! “We had talk, sir,”— the only talk capable of making one forget the books.
Good God! I could cry like one of the Children in the Wood to think how far I and mine are from home; but this would not be “decent or manly;” so I smile instead, and am philosophical enough to make your heart ache. Besides, I shall love the country I am in more and more, and on the very account for which it angers me at present.
This is confessing great pain in the midst of my books. I own it; and yet I feel all the pleasure in them which I have expressed.
Take me, my book-shelves, to your arms,
And shield me from the ills of life.
No disparagement to the arms of Stella; but in neither case is pain a reason why we should not have a high enjoyment of the pleasure.
I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to lean my head against them. Living in a southern climate, though in a part sufficiently northern to feel the winter, I was obliged, during that season, to take some of the books out of the study, and hang them up near the fireplace in the sitting-room, which is the only room that has such a convenience. I therefore walled
[16]myself in, as well as I could, in the manner above mentioned. I took a walk every day, to the astonishment of the Genoese, who used to huddle against a bit of sunny wall, like flies on a chimney-piece; but I did this only that I might so much the more enjoy my English evening. The fire was a wood fire instead of a coal; but I imagined myself in the country. I remember at the very worst that one end of my native land was not nearer the other than England is to Italy.
While writing this article I am in my study again. Like the rooms in all houses in this country which are not hovels, it is handsome and ornamented. On one side it looks toward a garden and the mountains; on another to the mountains and the sea. What signifies all this? I turn my back upon the sea; I shut up even one of the side windows loking upon the mountains, and retain no prospect but that of the trees. On the right and left of me are book-shelves; a bookcase is affectionately open in front of me; and thus kindly enclosed with my books and the green leaves, I write. If all this is too luxurious and effeminate, of all luxuries it is the one that leaves you the most strength. And this is to be said for scholarship in general. It unfits a man for activity, for his bodily part in the world; but it often doubles both the power and the sense of his mental duties; and with much indignation against his body, and more against those who tyrannise over the intellectual claims of mankind, the man of letters, like the magician of old, is prepared “to play the devil” with the great men of this world, in a style that astonishes both the sword and the toga.
I do not like this fine large study. I like elegance. I [17]like room to breathe in, and even walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself, give me a small, snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it, looking upon trees. Some prefer a place with few or no books at all—nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus; but I should say that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did not recollect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round tower, walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one’s books while writing — at least they say so. For my part, I think I have them in a sort of side-long mind’s-eye; like a second thought, which is none—like a waterfall or a whispering wind.
I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense apartment, with books all in Museum order, especially wire-safed. I say nothing against the Museum itself, or public libraries. They are capital places to go to, but not to sit in; and talking of this, I hate to read in public, and in strange company. The jealous silence; the dissatisfied looks of the messengers; the inability to help yourself; the not knowing whether you really ought to trouble the messengers, much less the gentleman in black, or brown, who is, perhaps half a trustee; with a variety of other jarrings between privacy and publicity, prevent one’s settling heartily to work. They say “they manage these things better in France;” and I dare say they do; but I think I should feel still more distrait in France, in spite of the benevolence of the servitors, and the generous profusion of pen, ink, and paper. I should
[18]feel as if I were doing nothing but interchanging amenities with polite writers.
A grand private library, which the master of the house also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, much less of authorship. I cannot take kindly to it. It is certainly not out of envy; for three parts of the books are generally trash, and I can seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together. It reminds me of a fine gentleman, of a collector, of a patron, of Gil Bias and the Marquis of Marialva; of anything but genius and comfort. I have a particular hatred of a round table (not the Round Table, for that was a dining one) covered and irradiated with books, and never met with one in the house of a clever man but once. It is the reverse of Montaigne’s Round Tower. Instead of bringing the books around you, they all seem turning another way, and eluding your hands.
Conscious of my propriety and comfort in these matters, I take an interest in the bookcases as well as the books of my friends. I long to meddle and dispose them after my own notions. When they see this confession, they will acknowledge the virtue I have practised. I believe I did mention his book-room to C. L., and I think he told me that he often sat there when alone. It would be hard not to believe him. His library, though not abounding in Greek or Latin (which are the only things to help some persons to an idea of literature), is anything but superficial. The depth of philosophy and poetry are there, the innermost passages of the human heart. It has some Latin, too. It has also a handsome contempt for
[19]appearance. It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;—now a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor; a Spinoza; an old English Dramatist; Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are “neat as imported.” The very perusal of the backs is a “discipline of humanity.” There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell: there Guzman d’Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the “high fantastical” Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids. There is an approach to this in the library of W. C., who also includes Italian among his humanities. W[illiam] H[azlitt], I believe, has no books, except mine; but he has Shakespeare and Rousseau by heart. V[incent] N[ovello], who, though not a book-man by profession, is fond of those who are, and who loves his volume enough to read it across the fields, has his library in the common sitting-room, which is hospitable. H[enry] R[obinson]’s books are all too modern and finely bound, which, however, is not his fault, for they were left him by will,— not the most kindly act of the testator. Suppose a man were to bequeath us a great japan chest three feet by four, with an injunction that it was always to stand on the tea-table. I remember borrowing a book of H. R., which, having lost, I replaced with a copy equally well bound. I am not sure I should [20]have been in such haste, even to return the book, had it been a common-looking volume; but the splendour of the loss dazzled me into this ostentatious piece of propriety. I set about restoring it as if I had diminished his fortunes, and waived the privilege a friend has to use a man’s things as his own. I may venture upon this ultra-liberal theory, not only because candour compels me to say that I hold it to a greater extent, with Montaigne, but because I have been a meek son in the family of book-losers. I may affirm, upon a moderate calculation, that I have lent and lost in my time (and I am eight-and-thirty), half-a-dozen decent-sized libraries,— I mean books enough to fill so many ordinary bookcases. I have never complained; and self-love, as well as gratitude, makes me love those who do not complain of me.
But, like other patient people, I am inclined to burst out now that I grow less strong,— now that writing puts a hectic to my cheek. Publicity is nothing nowadays “between friends.” There is R., not H. R., who in return for breaking my set of English Poets, makes a point of forgetting me, whenever he has poets in his eye; which is carrying his conscience too far. But W[illiam] H[azlitt] treated me worse; for not content with losing other of said English Poets, together with my Philip Sidney (all in one volume) and divers pieces of Bacon, he vows I never lent them to him; which is “the unkindest cut of all.” This comes of being magnanimous. It is a poor thing after all to be “pushed from a level consideration” of one’s superiority in matters of provocation. But W[illiam] H[azlitt] is not angry on this occasion though he is forgetful; and in spite of his offences against
[21]me and mine (not to be done away with by his good word at intervals), I pardon the irritable patriot and metaphysician, who would give his last penny to an acquaintance, and his last pulse to the good of mankind. Why did he fire up at an idle word from one of the few men [Shelley], who thought as deeply as himself, and who “died daily” in the same awful cause? But I forgive him, because he forgave him, and yet I know not if I can do it for that very reason.
“Come, my best friends, my books, and lead me on:
’Tis time that I were gone.”
I own I borrow books with as much facility as I lend. I cannot see a work that interests me on another person’s shelf, without a wish to carry it off; but, I repeat, that I have been much more sinned against than sinning in the article of non-return; and am scrupulous in the article of intention. I never had a felonious intent upon a book but once; and then I shall only say, it was under circumstances so peculiar, that I cannot but look the conscience that induced me to restore it, as having sacrified the spirit of its very self to the letter; and I have a grudge against it accordingly. Some people are unwilling to lend their books. I have a special grudge against them, particularly those who accompany their unwillingness with uneasy professions to the contrary, and smiles like Sir Fretful Plagiary. The friend who helped to spoil my notions of property, or rather to make them too good for the world “as it goes,” taught me also to undervalue my squeamishness in refusing to avail myself of the books of these gentlemen. He showed me how it was doing good to all
[22]parties to put an ordinary face on the matter; though I know his own blushed not a little sometimes in doing it, even when the good to be done was for another. (Dear S[helley], in all thy actions, small as well as great, how sure was the beauty of thy spirit to break forth.) I feel, in truth, that even when anger inclines me to exercise this privilege of philosophy, it is more out of revenge than contempt. I fear that in allowing myself to borrow books, I sometimes make extremes meet in a very sinful manner, and do it out of a refined revenge. It is like eating a miser’s beef at him.
I yield to none in my love of bookstall urbanity. I have spent as happy moments over the stalls as any literary apprentice boy who ought to be moving onwards. But I confess my weakness in liking to see some of my favorite purchases neatly bound. The books I like to have about me most are — Spenser, Chaucer, the minor poems of Milton, the Arabian Nights, Theocritus, Ariosto, and such old good-natured speculations as Plutarch’s Morals. For most of these I like a plain, good, old binding, never mind how old, provided it wears well; but my Arabian Nights may be bound in as fine and flowery a style as possible, and I should love an engraving to every dozen pages. Book-prints of all sorts, bad and good, take with me as much as when I was a child: and I think some books, such as Prior’s poems, ought always to have portraits of the authors. Prior’s airy face with his cap on is like having his company. From early association, no edition of Milton pleases me so much as that in which there are pictures of the Devil with brute ears, dressed like a Roman General: nor of Bunyan, as the one contain-
[23]ing the print of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the Devil whispering in Christian’s ear, or old Pope by the wayside, and
With the Pilgrims suffering there.”
I delight in the recollection of the puzzle I used to have with the frontispiece of the Tale of a Tub, of my real horror at the sight of that crawling old man, representing Avarice, at the beginning of Enfield's Speaker, the Looking-Glass, or some such book; and even of the careless school-boy hats, and the prim stomachers and cottage bonnets, of such golden-age antiquities as the Village School. The oldest and most worn-out woodcut, representing King Pippin, Goody Two Shoes, or the grim Soldan, sitting with three staring blots for his eyes and mouth, his sceptre in one hand, and his other five fingers raised and spread in admiration at the feats of the Gallant London ’Prentice, cannot excite in me a feeling of ingratitude. Cooke’s edition of the British Poets and Novelists came out when I was at school: for which reason I never could put up with Suttaby’s or Walker’s publications, except in the case of such works as the Fairy Tales, which Mr. Cooke did not publish. Besides, they are too cramped, thick, and mercenary; and the pictures are all frontispieces. They do not come in at the proper places. Cooke realized the old woman’s beau ideal of a prayer-book,— UA little book, with a great deal of matter, and a large type:”—for the type was really large for so small a volume. Shall I ever forget his Collins and his Gray, books at once so “superbly ornamented” and so inconceivably cheap? Sixpence could procure much before; but
[24]never could it procure so much as then, or was at once so much respected, and so little cared for. His artist Kirk was the best artist, except Stothard, that ever designed for periodical works; and I will venture to add (if his name rightly announces his country) the best artist Scotland ever produced, except Wilkie, but he unfortunately had not enough of his country in him to keep him from dying young. His designs for Milton and the Arabian Nights, his female extricated from the water in the Tales of the Genii, and his old hag issuing out of the chest of the Merchant Abadah in the same book, are before me now, as vividly as they were then. He possessed elegance and the sense of beauty in no ordinary degree; though they sometimes played a trick or so of foppery. I shall never forget the gratitude with which I received an odd poet, which a boarder distributed among three or four of us, “with his mother’s compliments.” The present might have been more lavish, but I hardly thought of that. I remember my number. It was the one in which there is a picture of the poet on a sofa, with Cupid coming to him, and the words underneath, “Tempt me no more, insidious love!” The picture and the number appeared to me equally divine. I cannot help thinking to this day, that it is right and natural in a gentleman to sit in a stage dress, on that particular kind of sofa, though on no other, with that exclusive hat and feathers on his head, telling Cupid to begone with a tragic air.
Cowley says that even when he was “ a very young boy at school, instead of his running about on holidays, and playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or
[25]with some one companion, if he could find one of the same temper.״ When I was at school, I had no fields to run into, or I should certainly have gone there; and I must own to having played a great deal; but then I drew my sports as much as possible out of books, playing at Trojan wars, chivalrous encounters with coal-staves, and even at religious mysteries. When I was not at these games, I was either reading in a corner, or walking round the cloisters with a book under one arm and my friend linked with the other, or with my thoughts. It has since been my fate to realize all the romantic notions I had of a friend [Shelley] at that time, and just as I had embraced him in a distant country, to have him torn from me. This it is that sprinkles the most cheerful of my speculations now with tears, and that must obtain me the reader’s pardon for a style unusually chequered and egoistical. No man was a greater lover of books than he. He was rarely to be seen, unless attending to other people’s affairs, without a volume of some sort, generally of Plato or one of the Greek tragedians. Nor will those who understand the real spirit of his scepticism, be surprised to hear that one of his companions was the Bible. He valued it for the beauty of some of its contents, for the dignity of others, and the curiosity of all; though the philosophy of Solomon he thought too ־Epicurean, and the inconsistencies of other parts afflicted him. His favourite part was the book of Job, which he thought the grandest of tragedies. He projected founding one of his own upon it; and I will undertake to say, that Job would have sat in that tragedy with a patience and profundity of thought
[26]worthy of the original. Being asked on one occasion, what book he would save for himself if he could save no other? he answered, “The oldest book, the Bible.״ It was a monument to him of the earliest, most lasting, and most awful aspirations of humanity. But more of this on a fitter occasion.
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books. The idea of an ancient library perplexes our sympathy by its map-like volumes, rolled upon cylinders. Our imagination cannot take kindly to a yard of! wit, or to thirty inches of moral observation, rolled out like linen in a draper’s shop. But we conceive of Plato as a lover of books; of Aristotle certainly; of Plutarch, Pliny, Horace, Julian, and Marcus Aurelius. Virgil, too, must have been one; and, after a fashion, Martial. May I confess, that the passage which I recollect with the greatest pleasure in Cicero, is where he says that books delight us at home, and are no impediment abroad: travel with us, ruralise with us. His period is rounded off to some purpose: “Delect ant do mi, non impediunt foris: peregrinantur, rusticantur^ I am so much of this opinion that I do not care to be anywhere without having a book or books at hand, and like Dr. Orkborne, in the novel of Camilla, stuff the coach or post-chaise with them whenever I travel. As books, however, become ancient, the love of them becomes more unequivocal and conspicuous. The ancients had little of what we call learning. They made it. They were also no very eminent buyers of books — they made books for posterity. It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love
[27]them much. The scholar, in Chaucer, who would rather
haVC	“At his beddes head
A twenty bokes, clothed, in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Then robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltrie,—”
doubtless beat all our modem collectors in his passion for reading; but books must at least exist, and have acquired an eminence, before their lovers can make themselves known. There must be a possession, also, to perfect the communion; and the mere contact is much, even when our mistress speaks an unknown language. Dante puts Homer, the great ancient, in his Elysium upon trust; but a few years afterwards, Homer, the book, made its appearance in Italy, and Petrarch, in a transport, put it upon his bookshelves, where he adored it, like “the unknown God.״ Petrarch ought to be the god of the bibliomaniacs, for he was a collector and a man of genius, which is an union that does not often happen. He copied out, with his own precious hand, the manuscripts he rescued from time, and then produced others for time to reverence. With his head upon a book he died. Boccaccio, his friend, was another; nor can one look upon the longest and most tiresome works he wrote (for he did write some tiresome ones, in spite of the gaiety of his Decameron), without thinking, that in that resuscitation of the world of letters it must have been natural to a man of genius to add to the existing stock of volumes, at whatsoever price. I always pitch my completest idea of a lover of books, either in those dark ages, as they are called,
(“Cui cieco a torto il cieco volgo appella —”)
[28]or in the gay town days of Charles II, or a little afterwards. In both times the portrait comes out by the force of contrast. In the first, I imagine an age of iron warfare and energy, with solitary retreats, in which the monk or the hooded scholar walks forth to meditate, his precious volume under his arm. In the other, I have a triumphant example of the power of books and wit to contest the victory with sensual pleasure: — Rochester, staggering home to pen a satire in the style of Monsieur Boileau; Butler, cramming his jolly duodecimo with all the learning that he laughed at ; and a new race of book poets come up, who, in spite of their periwigs and petit-maîtres, talk as romantically of “the bays,״ as if they were priests of Delphos. It was a victorious thing in books to beguile even the old French of their egotism, or at least to share it with them. Nature never pretended to do as much. And here is the difference between the two ages, or between any two ages in which genius and art predominate. In the one, books are loved because they are the records of Nature and her energies; in the other, because they are the records of those records, or evidences of the importance of the individuals, and proofs of our descent in the new imperishable aristocracy. This is the reason why rank (with few exceptions) is so jealous of literature, and loves to appropriate or withhold the honours of it, as if they were so many toys and ribbons, like its own. It has an instinct that the two pretentions are incompatible. When Montaigne (a real lover of books) affected the order of St. Michael, and pleased himself with possessing that fugitive little piece of importance, he did it because he would pretend to be above nothing that he really felt, [29]or that was felt by men in general; but at the same time he vindicated his natural superiority over this weakness by praising and loving all higher and lasting things, and by placing his best glory in doing homage to the geniuses that had gone before him. He did not endeavour to think that an immortal renown was a fashion, like that of the cut of his scarf; or that by undervaluing the one, he should go shining down to posterity in the other, perpetual lord of Montaigne and of the ascendant.
There is a period of modern times, at which the love of books appears to have been of a more decided nature than at either of these — I mean the age just before and after the Reformation, or rather all that period when bookwriting was confined to the learned languages. Erasmus is the god of it. Bacon, a mighty bookman, saw, among his other sights, the great advantage of loosening the vernacular tongue, and wrote both Latin and English. I allow this is the greatest closeted age of books; of old scholars sitting in dusty studies; of heaps of “illustrious obscure,” rendering themselves more illustrious and more obscure by retreating from the “thorny queaches” of Dutch and German names into the “vacant interlunar caves” of appellations latinised or translated. I think I see all their volumes now, filling the shelves of a dozen German convents. The authors are bearded men, sitting in old woodcuts, in caps and gowns, and their books are dedicated to princes and statesmen, as illustrious as themselves. My old friend Wierus, who wrote a thick book, De Prastigiis Dxmonum, was one of them, and had a fancy worthy of his sedentary stomach. I will confess, once for all, that I have a liking for them all. It is my
[30]link with the bibliomaniacs, whom I admit into our relationship, because my love is large, and my family pride nothing. But still I take my idea of books read with a
. gusto, of companions for bed and board, from the two ages before-mentioned. The other is of too bookworm a description. There must be both a judgment and a fervour; a discrimination and a boyish eagerness; and (with all due humility) something of a point of contact between authors worth reading and the reader. How can I take Juvenal into the fields, or Valcarenghius De Aorta
* Aneurismate to bed with me? How could I expect to walk before the face of nature with the one; to tire my elbow properly with the other, before I put out my candle, and turn round deliciously on the right side? Or how could I stick up Coke upon Littleton against something on the dinner-table, and be divided between a fresh paragraph and a mouthful of salad?
I take our four great English poets to have all been fond of reading. Milton and Chaucer proclaim them-< selves for hard sitters at books. Spenser’s reading is evident by his learning; and if there were nothing else to show for it in Shakespeare, his retiring to his native town, long before old age, would be a proof of it. It is impossible for a man to live in solitude without such assistance, unless he is a metaphysician or mathematician, or the dullest of mankind; and any country town would be solitude to Shakespeare, after the bustle of a metropolis and a theatre. Doubtless he divided his time between his books, and his bowling-green, and his daughter Susanna. It is pretty certain, also, that he planted, and rode on horseback; and there is evidence of all sorts to make it
[31]clear, that he must have occasionally joked with the blacksmith, and stood godfather for his neighbours’ children. Chaucer’s account of himself must be quoted, for the delight and sympathy of all true readers: —
“And as for me, though that I can but lite,
On bookes for to rede I me delite,
And to hem yeve I faith and full credence,
And in mine herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that there is game none,
That fro my bookes maketh me to gone,
But it is seldome on the holy daie;
Save certainly whan that the month of May Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing,
And that the floures ginnen for to spring.
Farewell my booke and my devocion.”
— The Legend of Good Women.
And again, in the second book of his House of Fame, where the eagle addresses him: —
“-------Thou wilt make
At night full oft thine head to ake,
And in thy study as thou writest,
And evermore of Love enditest.
In honour of him and his praisings,
And in his folkes furtherings,
And in his matter all devisest,
And not him ne his folke despisest,
Although thou mayest go in the daunse Of hem, that him list not advance;
Therefore as I said, ywis,
Jupiter considreth well this.
And also, beausire, of other things;
That is, thou hast no tidings Of Loves folk, if they be glade,
[32]Ne of nothing else that God made,
And not only fro ferre countree,
But no tidings common to thee,
Not of thy very neighbouris,
That dwellen almost at thy dores;
Thou hearest neither that ne this,
For whan thy labour all done is,
And hast made all thy rekenings,
Instead of rest and of new things,
Thou goest home to thine house anone,
And all so dombe as anie stone,
Thou sittest at another booke,
Till fully dazed is thy looke.”
After I think of the bookishness of Chaucer and Milton, I always make a great leap to Prior and Fenton. Prior was first noticed, when a boy, by Lord Dorset, sitting in his uncle’s tavern, and reading Horace. He describes himself, years after, when Secretary of Embassy at the Hague, as taking the same author with him in the Saturday’s chaise, in which he and his mistress used to escape from town cares into the country, to the admiration of Dutch beholders. Fenton was a martyr to contented scholarship (including a sirloin and a bottle of wine), and died among his books, of inactivity. “He rose late,” says Johnson, “and when he had risen, sat down to his books and papers.” A woman that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he would “lie a-bed and be fed with a spoon.” He must have had an enviable liver, if he was happy. I must own (if my conscience would let me), that I should like to lead, half the year, just such a life (woman included, though not that woman), the other half being passed in the fields and
[33]woods, with a cottage just big enough to hold us. Dacier and his wife had a pleasant time of it; both fond of books, both scholars, both amiable, both wrapt up in the ancient world, and helping one another at their tasks. If they were not happy, matrimony would be a rule even without an exception. Pope does not strike me as being a bookman; he was curious rather than enthusiastic; more nice than wise; he dabbled in modern Latin poetry, which is a bad symptom. Swift was decidedly a reader; the Tale of a Tub, in its fashion as well as substance, is the work of a scholarly wit; the Battle of the Books is the fancy of a lover of libraries. Addison and Steele were too much given up to Button’s and the town. Periodical writing, though its demands seem otherwise, is not favourable to reading; it becomes too much a matter of business, and will either be attended to at the expense of the writer’s books, or books, the very admonishers of his industry, will make him idle. Besides, a periodical work, to be suitable to its character, and warrant its regular recurrence, must involve something of a gossiping nature, and proceed upon experiences familiar to the existing community, or at least likely to be received by them in consequence of some previous tinge of inclination. You do not pay weekly visits to your friends to lecture them, whatever good you may do their minds. There will be something compulsory in reading the Ramblers¡ as there is in going to church. Addison and Steele undertook to regulate the minor morals of society, and effected a world of good, with which scholarship had little to do. Gray was a bookman; he wished to be always lying on sofas, reading “eternal new novels of Crebillon and [34]Marivaux.״ This is a true hand. The elaborate and scientific look of the rest of his reading was owing to the necessity of employing himself: he had not health and spirits for the literary voluptuousness he desired. Collins, for the same reason, could not employ himself; he was obliged to dream over Arabian tales, to let the light of the supernatural world half in upon his eyes. “He loved,” as Johnson says (in that strain of music, inspired by tenderness), “fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.” If Collins had had a better constitution, I do not believe that he would have written his projected work upon the Restoration of Literature, fit as he was by scholarship for the task, but he would have been the greatest poet since the days of Milton. If his friend Thomas Warton had had a little more of his delicacy of organization, the love of books would almost have made him a poet. His edition of the minor poems of Milton is a wilderness of sweets. It is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation; though I confess I am inclined enough to pardon any notes that resemble it, however numerous. The “builded rhyme” stands at the top of the page, like a fair edifice, with all sorts of flowers and fresh waters at its foot. The young poet lives there, served by the nymphs and fauns.
“Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades.
Hue ades, o formose puer; tibi lilia plenis Ecce ferunt nymphse calathis: tibi Candida Nais
[35]Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens,
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi.”
Among the old writers I must not forget Ben Jonson and Donne. Cowley has been already mentioned. His boyish love of books, like all the other inclinations of his early life, stuck to him to the last, which is the greatest reward of virtue. I would mention Izaak Walton, if I had not a grudge against him. His brother fishermen, ’ the divines, were also great fishers of books. I have a grudge against them and their divinity. They talked much of the devil and divine right, and yet forgot what Shakespeare says of the devil’s friend Nero, that he is ״an angler in the lake of darkness.” Selden was called ״the walking library of our nation.” It is not the pleasantest idea of him; but the library included poetry, and wit, as well as heraldry and the Jewish doctors. His Table Talk is equally pithy and pleasant, and truly worthy of the name, for it implies other speakers. Indeed, it was actually what it is called, and treasured up by his friends. Selden wrote complimentary verses to his friends the poets, and a commentary on Drayton’s Tolyolbion. Drayton was himself a reader, addicted to all the luxuries of ’ scholarship. Chapman sat among his books, like an
astrologer among his spheres and altitudes.
How pleasant it is to reflect, that all those lovers of * books have themselves become books! What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have desired? How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs! And how the world has justified their exultation! They had a right to triumph over brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no farther; which generates
[36]and yet is not destroyed. Consider: mines themselves are exhausted; cities perish; kingdoms are swept away, and man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal.
“Muoino le citta, muoiono i regni,
E 1’ uom d’ esser mortal par che si sdegni.”
Yet this little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the press can anything short of an universal convulsion of nature abolish it. To a shape like this, so small yet so comprehensive, so slight yet so lasting, so insignificant yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus: to a shape like this the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the compressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together
“The assembled souls of all that men held wise.”
May I hope to become the meanest of these existences? This is a question which every author who is a lover of books asks himself some time in his life; and which must be pardoned, because it cannot be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet,
“Oh that my name were number’d among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.”
For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, are of consequence to others. But I should like [37]to remain visible in this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself, I could wish to be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the possession of a friend’s mind when he is no more. At all events, nothing while I live and think can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I die; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my overbeating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.
[38]OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED COPIES WERE PRINTED IN DECEMBER NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE BY THE TORCH PRESS CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA