Part 4

TOO MANY BOOKS.

ROBERT LEIGHTON. _From 'Reuben, and Other Poems.' 1875_

I would that we were only readers now, And wrote no more, or in rare heats of soul Sweated out thoughts when the o'er-burden'd brow Was powerless to control.

Then would all future books be small and few, And, freed of dross, the soul's refinèd gold; So should we have a chance to read the new, Yet not forego the old.

But as it is, Lord help us, in this flood Of daily papers, books, and magazines! We scramble blind as reptiles in the mud, And know not what it means.

Is it the myriad spawn of vagrant tides, Whose growth would overwhelm both sea and shore, Yet often necessary loss, provides Sufficient and no more?

Is it the broadcast sowing of the seeds, And from the stones, the thorns and fertile soil, Only enough to serve the world's great needs Rewards the sower's toil?

Is it all needed for the varied mind? Gives not the teeming press a book too much-- Not one, but in its dense neglect shall find Some needful heart to touch?

Ah, who can say that even this blade of grass No mission has--superfluous as it looks? Then wherefore feel oppressed and cry, Alas, There are too many books!

FROM THE FLY-LEAF OF THE ROWFANT MONTAIGNE (FLORIO, 1603).

FREDERICK LOCKER. _Written for the present collection._

Of yore, when books were few and fine, Will Shakspere cut these leaves of mine, But when he passed I went astray Till bought by Pope, a gift for Gay. Then, later on, betwixt my pages A nose was poked--the Bolt-Court Sage's.

But though the Fame began with Rawleigh, And had not dwindled with Macaulay, Though still I tincture many tomes Like Lowell's pointed sense, and Holmes', For me the halcyon days have past-- I'm here, and with a dunce at last.

MY BOOKS.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _Written in December, 1881._

Sadly as some old mediæval knight Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield, The sword two-handed and the shining shield Suspended in the hall, and full in sight, While secret longings for the lost delight Of tourney or adventure in the field Came over him, and tears but half concealed Trembled and fell upon his beard of white, So I behold these books upon their shelf, My ornaments and arms of other days; Not wholly useless, though no longer used, For they remind me of my other self, Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways, In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

THE SOULS OF BOOKS.

EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. _From 'Earlier Poems.'_

I.

Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room-- High-roof'd, with casements, through whose purple pane Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom, Shy as a fearful stranger. There THEY reign (In loftier pomp than waking life had known), The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave. When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb, The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne! Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe, All that divide us from the clod ye gave!-- Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!-- What were our wanderings if without your goals? As air and light, the glory ye dispense Becomes our being--who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought-- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung? Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspere sung!

II.

Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard The various murmur of the laboring crowd, How still, within those archive-cells interr'd, The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud Passions and tumults of the circling world! From them, how many a youthful Tully caught The zest and ardor of the eager Bar; From them, how many a young Ambition sought Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar-- By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd, And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car! They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth; They made yon Poet wistful for the star; Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth-- The unseen sires of all our beings are,--

III.

And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart; I hear it beating through each purple line. This is thyself, Anacreon--yet, thou art Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine. I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold, Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!-- Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old, "It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"[31] These _are_ yourselves--your life of life! The Wise, (Minstrel or Sage) _out_ of their books are clay; But _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise, Angels--that, side by side, upon our way, Walk with and warn us! Hark! the world so loud, And they, the movers of the world, so still!

What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead, Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!" And what the charm that can such health distil From wither'd leaves--oft poisons in their bloom? We call some books immoral! _Do they live?_ If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace-- God wills that nothing evil shall endure; The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, As the dust leaves the disembodied soul! Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb! Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint? No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er, And linger only on the hues that paint The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore. None learn from thee to cavil with their God; None commune with thy genius to depart Without a loftier instinct of the heart. Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute-- FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod Lift us! The life which soars above the brute Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute! Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;[32]--born Of him,--the Master-Mocker of Mankind, Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen, Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,-- Do we not place it in our children's hands, Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?-- God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!-- Well, and what mischief can the libel do? O impotence of Genius to belie Its glorious task--its mission from the sky! Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn-- And lo! the book, from all its ends beguil'd, A harmless wonder to some happy child!

[31] 'Comus.'

[32] 'Gulliver's Travels.'

IV.

All books grow homilies by time; they are Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we Who _but_ for them, upon that inch of ground We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar; Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round, And feel the Near less household than the Far! Traverse all space, and number every star, There is no Past, so long as Books shall live! A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign Of Jove revives and Saturn:--at our will Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill; Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;[33]--along Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song; With Ægypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile, And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile:-- Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er, Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!

[33] Plut. in 'Vit. Cim.'

V.

Ye make the Past our heritage and home: And is this all? No; by each prophet-sage-- No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page, Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams, World-wearied Tully!--and, above ye all, By THIS, the Everlasting Monument Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent The types of Truths whose life is THE TO-COME; In you soars up the Adam from the fall; In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given-- Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;-- Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven, Without one gravestone left upon the Earth?

DE LIBRIS.

COSMO MONKHOUSE. _Written for the present collection._

True--there are books and books. There's Gray, For instance, and there's Bacon; There's Longfellow, and Monstrelet, And also Colton's 'Lacon,' With 'Laws of Whist' and those of Libel, And Euclid, and the Mormon Bible.

And some are dear as friends, and some We keep because we need them; And some we ward from worm and thumb, And love too well to read them. My own are poor, and mostly new, But I've an Elzevir or two.

That as a gift is prized, the next For trouble in the finding; This Aldine for its early text, That Plantin for the binding; This sorry Herrick hides a flower, The record of one perfect hour.

But whether it be worth or looks We gently love or strongly, Such virtue doth reside in books We scarce can love them wrongly; To sages an eternal school, A hobby (harmless) to the fool.

Nor altogether fool is he Who orders, free from doubt, Those books which "no good library Should ever be without," And blandly locks the well-glazed door On tomes that issue never more.

Less may we scorn his cases grand, Where safely, surely linger Fair virgin fields of type, unscanned And innocent of finger. There rest, preserved from dust accurst, The first editions--and the worst.

And least of all should we that write With easy jest deride them, Who hope to leave when "lost to sight" The best of us inside them, Dear shrines! where many a scribbler's name Has lasted--longer than his fame.

EX LIBRIS.

ARTHUR J. MUNBY. _Written for the present collection._

Man that is born of woman finds a charm In that which he is born of. She it is Who moulds him with a frown or with a kiss To good or ill, to welfare or to harm: But, when he has attain'd her soft round arm And drawn it through his own, and made her his, He through her eyes beholds a wider bliss, As sweet as that she gives him, and as warm.

What bliss? We dare not name it: her fond looks Are jealous too; she hardly understands, Girt by her children's laughter or their cries, The stately smooth companionship of books: And yet to her we owe it, to her hands And to her heart, that books can make us wise.

ON AN INSCRIPTION.

"_Edward Danenhill: Book given him by Joseph Wise, April ye 27th, 1741,"_ ARTHUR J. MUNBY. _was the inscription in a copy of Carew's 'Poems' (1651). Written for the present collection._

A man unknown this volume gave, So long since, to his unknown friend, Ages ago, their lives had end, And each in some obscurest grave Lies mixt with earth: none now would care To ask or who or what they were. But, though these two are underground, Their book is here, all safe and sound; And he who wrote it (yea, and more Than a whole hundred years before) He, the trim courtier, old Carew, And all the loves he feign'd or knew, Have won from Aphrodite's eye Some show of immortality. 'Tis ever thus; by Nature's will The gift outlasts the giver still; And Love itself lives not so long As doth a lover's feeblest song. But doubly hard is that man's case, For whom and for his earnest rhymes Neither his own nor after-times Have any work, have any place: Who through a hundred years shall find No echoing voice, no answering mind; And, when this tann'd and tawny page Has one more century of age, And others buy the book anew, Because they care for old Carew, Not one who reads shall care or know What name was his, who owns it now: But all he wrote and all he did Shall be in such oblivion hid As hides the blurr'd and broken stones That cover his forgotten bones.

TO MY BOOKS.

CAROLINE NORTON. _From the 'Dream and other Poems.' 1840._

Silent companions of the lonely hour, Friends, who can never alter or forsake, Who for inconstant roving have no power, And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take, Let me return to YOU; this turmoil ending Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought, And, o'er your old familiar pages bending, Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought; Till, haply meeting there, from time to time, Fancies, the audible echo of my own, 'T will be like hearing in a foreign clime My native language spoke in friendly tone, And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell On these, my unripe musings, told so well.

'DESULTORY READING.'

F. M. P. _From the London 'Spectator' of January 16, 1886._

O finest essence of delicious rest! To bid for some short space the busy mill Of anxious, ever-grinding thought be still; And let the weary brain and throbbing breast Be by another's cooling hand caressed. This volume in my hand, I hold a charm Which lifts me out of reach of wrong or harm. I sail away from trouble; and most blessed Of every blessing, can myself forget: Can rise above the instance low and poor Into the mighty law that governs yet. This hingèd cover, like a well hung door, Shuts out the noises of the jangling day, These fair leaves fan unwelcome thoughts away.

THE BOOKWORM.

THOMAS PARNELL. _Translated from the Latin of Theodore Beza._

Come hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day The bookworm, ravening beast of prey, Produc'd by parent Earth, at odds, As fame reports it, with the gods. Him frantic hunger wildly drives Against a thousand authors' lives: Through all the fields of wit he flies; Dreadful his head with clustering eyes, With horns without, and tusks within, And scales to serve him for a skin. Observe him nearly, lest he climb To wound the bards of ancient time, Or down the vale of fancy go To tear some modern wretch below. On every corner fix thine eye, Or ten to one he slips thee by.

See where his teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from his deep retreat. But who the shelter's forc'd to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song He draws the tadpole form along, He mounts the gilded edge before, He's up, he scuds the cover o'er, He turns, he doubles, there he past, And here we have him, caught at last.

Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse The sweetest servants of the Muse-- Nay, never offer to deny, I took thee in the fact to fly. His rose nipt in every page, My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage; By thee my Ovid wounded lies; By thee my Lesbia's Sparrow dies; Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd The work of love in Biddy Floyd; They rent Belinda's locks away, And spoil'd the Blouzelind of Gay. For all, for every single deed, Relentless justice bids thee bleed: Then fall a victim to the Nine Myself the priest, my desk the shrine.

Bring Homer, Virgil, Tasso near, To pile a sacred altar here: Hold, boy, thy hand outruns thy wit, You reach'd the plays that Dennis writ; You reach'd me Philips' rustic strain; Pray take your mortal bards again.

Come, bind the victim,--there he lies, And here between his numerous eyes This venerable dust I lay From manuscripts just swept away. The goblet in my hand I take, For the libation's yet to make: A health to poets! all their days May they have bread, as well as praise; Sense may they seek, and less engage In papers fill'd with party rage. But if their riches spoil their vein, Ye Muses, make them poor again.

Now bring the weapon, yonder blade With which my tuneful pens are made. I strike the scales that arm thee round, And twice and thrice I print the wound; The sacred altar floats with red, And now he dies, and now he's dead.

How like the son of Jove I stand, This Hydra stretch'd beneath the hand! Lay bare the monster's entrails here, And see what dangers threat the year: Ye gods! what sonnet on a wench! What lean translations out of French! 'Tis plain, this lobe is so unsound, S--prints, before the months go round.

But hold, before I close the scene The sacred altar should be clean. O had I Shadwell's second bays, Or, Tate, thy pert and humble lays! (Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow I never miss'd your works till now,) I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, That only way you please the Nine: But since I chance to want these two, I'll make the songs of Durfey do.

Rent from the corps, on yonder pin, I hang the scales that brac'd it in; I hang my studious morning gown, And write my own inscription down.

"This trophy from the Python won, This robe, in which the deed was done, These, Parnell, glorying in the feat Hung on these shelves, the Muses seat. Here Ignorance and Hunger found Large realms of wit to ravage round; Here Ignorance and Hunger fell Two foes in one I sent to hell. Ye poets who my labors see Come share the triumph all with me! Ye critics, born to vex the Muse, Go mourn the grand ally you lose!"

AMONG MY BOOKS.

SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. _From 'Cap and Bells.' 1886._

Among my books--what rest is there From wasting woes! what balm for care! If ills appall or clouds hang low, And drooping, dim the fleeting show, I revel still in visions rare. At will I breathe the classic air, The wanderings of Ulysses share; Or see the plume of Bayard flow Among my books.

Whatever face the world may wear-- If Lillian has no smile to spare, For others let her beauty blow, Such favors I can well forego; Perchance forget the frowning fair Among my books.

A RUINED LIBRARY.

WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK. _Written for the present collection._

"Imperious Cæsar dead and turn'd to clay Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." Here the live thought of buried Cæsar's brain Has served a lazy slut to lay the train That lights a dunce's fire. Here Homer's seen All torn or crumpled in the pettish spleen Of some spoilt urchin. Here a leaf from Glanvil Is reft to mark a place in 'On the Anvil.' Here, too, a heavy-blotted Shakspere's page Holds up an inky mirror to the age; Here looking round you're but too sure to see a Heart-breaking wreck from the 'Via Jacobæa;' Here some rare pamphlet, long a-missing, lurks In an odd volume of 'Lord Bacon's Works;' Here may you find a Stillingfleet or Blair Usurp the binding of a lost Voltaire; And here a tattered Boyle doth gape ungently Upon a damp-disfigured 'Life of Bentley.' Here half a Rabelais jostles for position The quarter of a 'Spanish Inquisition;' Here Young's 'Night Thoughts' lie mixed with Swinburne's 'Ballads' 'Mid scraps of works on Poisons and on Salads; And here a rent and gilt-edged Sterne doth lack a ray Of sun that falls upon a bulging Thackeray; Here--but the tale's too sad at length to tell How a book-heaven's been turned to a book-hell.

MY BOOKS.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. _From 'An Autobiographical_ (BARRY CORNWALL.) _Fragment.' 1877._

All round the room my silent servants wait,-- My friends in every season, bright and dim; Angels and seraphim Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low, And spirits of the skies all come and go Early and late; All from the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, All come, assembling here in order due. And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate, With Erato and all her vernal sighs, Great Clio with her victories elate, Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes. O friends, whom chance and change can never harm, Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die, Within whose folding soft eternal charm I love to lie, And meditate upon your verse that flows, And fertilizes whereso'er it goes, Whether....

TO MY BOOKS ON PARTING WITH THEM.

_The sale of the famous Roscoe library, made necessary by reverses in business,_ WILLIAM ROSCOE. _took place in August and September, 1816._

As one who, destined from his friends to part, Regrets his loss, yet 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.

AMONG MY BOOKS.

FRANCIS ST. CLAIR-ERSKINE, _From 'Sonnets.' 1883._ EARL OF ROSSLYN.

Alone, 'midst living works of mighty dead, Poets and Scholars versed in history's lore, With thoughts that reached beyond them and before, I dream, and leave their glorious works unread; Their greatness numbs me both in heart and head. I cannot weep with Petrarch, and still more I fail when I would delve the depths of yore, And learn old Truths of modern lies instead; The shelves frown on me blackly, with a life That ne'er can die, and helpless to begin, I can but own my weakness, and deplore This waste, this barren brain, ah! once so rife With hope and fancy. Pardon all my sin, Great Ghosts that wander on the Eternal Shore.

THE LIBRARY.

_One of the excerpts from 'Occasional_ JOHN GODFREY SAXE. _Poems' included in his 'Complete Poems.'_