Part 21

So in likewise, I am in such case, Though I naught can, I would be called wise; Also I may set another in my place Which may for me my books exercise; Or else I shall ensue the common guise, And say _concedo_ to every argument, Lest by much speech my Latin should be spent.

S. BRANT. _Shyp of Folys of the Worlde_, 1509.

THE ENVOY OF ALEXANDER BARCLAY, TRANSLATOR

EXHORTING THE FOOLES ACCLOYED WITH THIS VICE TO AMEND THEIR FOLLY

Say worthy doctors and clerks curious: What moveth you of books to have such number, Since divers doctrines through ways contrarious Doth man's mind dsitract and sore encumber; Alas, blind men awake, out of your slumber, And if ye will needs your books mutliply With diligence endeavour you some to occupy.

A. BARCLAY.

LETTER-FERRETS

Dionysius scoffeth at those grammarians who ploddingly labour to know the miseries of Ulysses, and are ignorant of their own.... Except our mind be the better, unless our judgement be the sounder, I had rather my scholar had employed his time in playing at tennis; I am sure his body would be the nimbler. See but one of these our university men or bookish scholars return from school, after he hath there spent ten or twelve years under a pedant's charge: who is so inapt for any matter? who so unfit for any company? who so to seek if he come into the world? all the advantage you discover in him is that his Latin and Greek have made him more sottish, more stupid, and more presumptuous, than before he went from home.... My vulgar Perigordian speech doth very pleasantly term such self-conceited wizards, letter-ferrets, as if they would say letter-stricken men, to whom (as the common saying is) letters have given a blow with a mallet.--MONTAIGNE.

DAINTIES THAT ARE BRED OF A BOOK

Sir, he hath not fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.--W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._

AN ANTIQUARY

He loves no library, but where there are more spiders' volumes than authors', and looks with great admiration on the antique work of cobwebs. Printed books he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable. He would give all the books in his study (which are rarities all) for one of the old Roman binding, or six lines of Tully in his own hand.--J. EARLE. _Microcosmographie._

AN IGNORANT BOOK-COLLECTOR

With what, O Codrus! is thy fancy smit? The flower of learning, and the bloom of wit. Thy gaudy shelves with crimson bindings glow, And Epictetus is a perfect beau. How fit for thee bound up in crimson too, Gilt, and, like them, devoted to the view! Thy books are furniture. Methinks 'tis hard That Science should be purchased by the yard, And T----n, turned upholsterer, send home The gilded leather to fit up thy room. If not to some peculiar end assigned, Study's the specious trifling of the mind; Or is at best a secondary aim, A chase for sport alone, not game: If so, sure they who the mere volume prize, But love the thicket where the quarry lies. On buying books Lorenzo long was bent; But found at length that it reduced his rent. His farms were flown; when lo! a sale comes on, A choice collection! What is to be done? He sells his last; for he the whole will buy; Sells even his house, nay wants whereon to lie: So high the generous ardour of the man For Romans, Greeks, and Orientals ran. When terms were drawn, and brought him by the clerk, Lorenzo signed the bargain--with his mark. Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair. Not in his authors' liveries alone Is Codrus' erudite ambition shown. Editions various, at high prices bought, Inform the world what Codrus would be thought; And, to his cost, another must succeed, To pay a sage, who says that he can read, Who titles knows, and Indexes has seen; But leaves to ---- what lies between, Of pompous books who shuns the proud expense, And humbly is contented with the sense.

E. YOUNG. _The Love of Fame._

THE BIBLIOMANIA

What wild desires, what restless torments seize The hapless man, who feels the book-disease, If niggard Fortune cramp his generous mind, And Prudence quench the spark by heaven assigned! With wistful glance his aching eyes behold The Princeps-copy, clad in blue and gold, Where the tall Book-case, with partition thin, Displays, yet guards, the tempting charms within: So great Facardin viewed, as sages tell, Fair Crystalline immured in lucid cell. Not thus the few, by happier fortune graced, And blessed, like you, with talents, wealth, and taste, Who gather nobly, with judicious hand, The Muse's treasures from each lettered strand. For you the Monk illumed his pictured page, For you the press defies the spoils of age; Faustus for you infernal tortures bore, For you Erasmus starved on Adria's shore. The Folio-Aldus loads your happy shelves, And dapper Elzevirs, like fairy elves, Show their light forms amidst the well-gilt Twelves, In slender type the Giolitos shine, And bold Bodoni stamps his Roman line. For you the Louvre opes its regal doors, And either Didot lends his brilliant stores: With faultless types, and costly sculptures bright, Ibarra's Quixote charms your ravished sight: Laborde in splendid tablets shall explain Thy beauties, glorious though unhappy Spain! O hallowed name, the theme of future years, Embalmed in Patriot-blood, and England's tears, Be thine fresh honours from the tuneful tongue, By Isis' stream which mourning Zion sung! But devious oft from every classic Muse, The keen Collector meaner paths will choose: And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys. In vain might Homer roll the tide of song, Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng; If crossed by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade Or too oblique, or near, the edge invade, The Bibliomane exclaims, with haggard eye, 'No margin!' turns in haste, and scorns to buy. He turns where Pybus rears his Atlas-head, Or Madoc's mass conceals its veins of lead. The glossy lines in polished order stand, While the vast margin spreads on either hand, Like Russian wastes, that edge the frozen deep, Chill with pale glare, and lull to mortal sleep. Or English books, neglected and forgot, Excite his wish in many a dusty lot: Whatever trash _Midwinter_ gave to-day, Or _Harper's_ rhyming sons, in paper gray, At every auction, bent on fresh supplies, He cons his Catalogue with anxious eyes: Where'er the slim italics mark the page, _Curious and rare_ his ardent mind engage. Unlike the swans, in Tuscan song displayed, He hovers eager o'er oblivion's shade. To snatch obscurest names from endless night, And give Cokain or Fletcher back to light. In red morocco dressed he loves to boast The bloody murder, or the yelling ghost; Or dismal ballads, sung to crowds of old, Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold. Yet to the unhonoured dead be Satire just; Some flowers 'smell sweet and blossom in their dust'. 'Tis thus even Shirley boasts a golden line, And Lovelace strikes, by fits, a note divine. The unequal gleams like midnight-lightnings play, And deepened gloom succeeds, in place of day.

But human bliss still meets some envious storm; He droops to view his Paynter's mangled form: Presumptuous grief, while pensive Taste repines O'er the frail relics of her Attic shrines! O for that power, for which magicians vie, To look through earth, and secret hoards descry! I'd spurn such gems as Marinel beheld, And all the wealth Aladdin's cavern held, Might I divine in what mysterious gloom The rolls of sacred bards have found their tomb: Beneath what mouldering tower, or waste champaign, Is hid Menander, sweetest of the train: Where rests Antimachus' forgotten lyre, Where gentle Sappho's still seductive fire; Or he, whom chief the laughing Muses own, Yet skilled with softest accents to bemoan Sweet Philomel in strains so like her own. The menial train has proved the scourge of wit, Even Omar burnt less Science than the spit. Earthquakes and wars remit their deadly rage, But every feast demands some fated page. Ye Towers of Julius, ye alone remain Of all the piles that saw our nation's stain, When Harry's sway oppressed the groaning realm, And Lust and Rapine seized the wavering helm. Then ruffian-hands defaced the sacred fanes, Their saintly statues and their storied panes; Then from the chest, with ancient art embossed, The penman's pious scrolls were rudely tossed; Then richest manuscripts, profusely spread, The brawny churls' devouring oven fed: And thence collectors date the heavenly ire That wrapt Augusta's domes in sheets of fire.

Taste, though misled, may yet some purpose gain, But Fashion guides a book-compelling train. Once, far apart from Learning's moping crew, The travelled beau displayed his red-heeled shoe, Till Orford rose, and told of rhyming peers, Repeating _noble_ words to polished ears; Taught the gay crowd to prize a fluttering name, In trifling toiled, nor 'blushed to find it fame'. The lettered fop now takes a larger scope, With classic furniture, designed by Hope, (Hope whom upholsterers eye with mute despair, The doughty pedant of an elbow-chair;) Now warmed by Orford, and by Granger schooled In Paper-books, superbly gilt and tooled, He pastes, from injured volumes snipped away, His _English Heads_, in chronicled array. Torn from their destined page (unworthy meed Of knightly counsel, and heroic deed) Not Faithorne's stroke, nor Field's own types can save The gallant Veres, and one-eyed Ogle brave. Indignant readers seek the image fled, And curse the busy fool, who _wants a head_.

Proudly he shows, with many a smile elate The scrambling subjects of the _private plate_; While Time their actions and their names bereaves, They grin for ever in the guarded leaves. Like poets, born, in vain collectors strive To cross their Fate, and learn the art to thrive. Like Cacus, bent to tame their struggling will, The Tyrant-passion drags them backward still: Even I, debarred of ease, and studious hours, Confess, 'mid anxious toil, its lurking powers. How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold The small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold! The eye skims restless, like the roving bee, O'er flowers of wit, or song, or repartee, While sweet as springs, new-bubbling from the stone, Glides through the breast some pleasing theme unknown. Now dipped in Rossi's terse and classic style, His harmless tales awake a transient smile. Now Bouchet's motley stores my thoughts arrest, With wondrous reading, and with learnèd jest. Bouchet whose tomes a grateful line demand, The valued gift of Stanley's liberal hand. Now sadly pleased, through faded Rome I stray, And mix regrets with gentle Du Bellay; Or turn, with keen delight, the curious page, Where hardly Pasquin braves the Pontiff's rage.

But D----n's strains should tell the sad reverse, When Business calls, inveterate foe to verse! Tell how 'the Demon claps his iron hands', 'Waves his lank locks, and scours along the lands.' Through wintry blasts, or summer's fire I go, To scenes of danger, and to sights of woe. Even when to Margate every Cockney roves, And brainsick-poets long for sheltering groves, Whose lofty shades exclude the noontide glow, While Zephyrs breathe, and waters trill below, The rigid Fate averts, by tasks like these, From heavenly musings, and from lettered ease. Such wholesome checks the better genius sends, From dire rehearsals to protect our friends: Else when the social rites our joys renew, The stuffed portfolio would alarm your view, Whence volleying rhymes your patience would o'ercome, And, spite of kindness, drive you early home. So when the traveller's hasty footsteps glide Near smoking lava on Vesuvio's side, Hoarse-muttering thunders from the depths proceed, And spouting fires incite his eager speed. Appalled he flies, while rattling showers invade, Invoking every saint for instant aid: Breathless, amazed, he seeks the distant shore, And vows to tempt the dangerous gulf no more.

J. FERRIAR. _The Bibliomania._

BIBLIOSOPHIA

I will begin, by designating the high and dignified passion in question by its true name--BIBLIOSOPHIA,--which I would define--_an appetite for_ COLLECTING _Books_--carefully distinguished from, wholly unconnected with, nay, absolutely repugnant to, all idea of READING them.

Observe, then, with merited admiration, the several points of superiority, which distinguish the _Collector_, when brought into fair and close comparison with the _Student_. As

First; the said _Collector_ proceeds straight forward to his object, and (with one only exception which will hereafter be shown) under the most rational hopes of accomplishing it. There is but a certain, and limited, number of books to which he and his inquisitive fraternity have agreed to consecrate the epithet 'curious'; and all of these--with the requisite allowance of cash, cunning, luck, patience, and time--he is within the 'potentiality' of drawing, sooner or later, within his clutches:--whereas the _Student_, granting him the wealth of a brewer, the cunning of a horse-dealer, the luck of a fool, the patience of Jerry Sneak, and the longevity of the Wandering Jew, can never hope even to _taste_ an hundredth part of the volumes which he meditates to devour.

In the next place, the treasures of the _Collector_, when once he has submitted to the pleasing toil of procuring them, are his own;--his own, I mean, in the single sense in which he is desirous so to call them; for he leaves them in the safe custody of his shelves, until the arrival of that proud moment, when he shall be dared by an envious rival, to prove that the title-page of some forgotten (and thence remembered) volume, is perfect--or properly imperfect; or that it enjoys the reputation of having been printed, long before the Art had approached towards any tolerable degree of improvement; or, that it possesses some one, or more, of those curious advantages, upon which a fitter occasion for expatiating will present itself by and by:--and now, how stands the point of _possession_, with the _Student_?--unprosperously indeed!--for besides that, as already observed, he can never possibly possess, in _his_ sense of that expression, more than a wretched modicum of his coveted treasures, he is doomed to a very precarious property even in those which he may have actually hoarded; inasmuch as they are entrusted to the care of that most treacherous of all librarians, _Memory_,--which, at all times, and of necessity, treats the Student's collections, as the professed Collector, occasionally, and by choice only, is tempted to treat _his_,--by casting out a great part of them for want of room.... 'Let us now be told no more,' of the superiority of the _Student_ over the _Collector_.--J. BERESFORD. _Bibliosophia._

GOLDEN VOLUMES! RICHEST TREASURES!

Golden volumes! richest treasures! Objects of delicious pleasures! You my eyes rejoicing please, You my hands in rapture seize! Brilliant wits and moving sages, Lights who beamed through many ages, Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achieved, Dear volumes!--you have not deceived!

This passion for the acquisition and enjoyment of _books_ has been the occasion of their lovers embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments: a rage which ostentation may have abused; but when these volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bindings are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great Thuanus was eager to procure the finest copies for his library, and his volumes are still eagerly purchased, bearing his autograph on the last page. A celebrated amateur was Grollier, whose library was opulent in these luxuries; the Muses themselves could not more ingeniously have ornamented their favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries of our own curious collectors. He embellished their outside with taste and ingenuity. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness, the compartments on the binding are drawn, and painted, with different inventions of subjects, analogous to the works themselves; and they are further adorned by that amiable inscription, _Jo. Grollierii et amicorum_!--purporting that these literary treasures were collected for himself and for his friends.--I. D'ISRAELI. _Curiosities of Literature: Libraries._

A MALADY OF WEAK MINDS

The Bibliomania, or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they themselves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called the _madhouses of the human mind_; and again, the _tomb of books_, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library--and as it was facetiously observed, these collections are not without a _Lock on the Human Understanding_.--I. D'ISRAELI. _Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania._

AN UNWORTHY PROFESSOR

'I will frankly confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant bibliomaniac--that I love books dearly--that the very sight, touch, and mere perusal----'

'Hold, my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon; 'you have renounced your profession--you talk of _reading_ books--do bibliomaniacs ever _read_ books?'--T. F. DIBDIN. _Bibliomania._

A BIBLIOMANIAC

You observe, my friends, said I, softly, yonder active and keen-visaged gentleman? 'Tis Lepidus. Like Magliabechi, content with frugal fare and frugal clothing and preferring the riches of a library to those of house-furniture, he is insatiable in his bibliomaniacal appetites. 'Long experience has made him sage:' and it is not therefore without just reason that his opinions are courted and considered as almost oracular. You will find that he will take his old station, commanding the right or left wing of the auctioneer; and that he will enliven, by the gaiety and shrewdness of his remarks, the circle that more immediately surrounds him. Some there are who will not bid till Lepidus bids; and who surrender all discretion and opinion of their own to his universal book-knowledge. The consequence is that Lepidus can, with difficulty, make purchases for his own library, and a thousand dexterous and happy manoeuvres are of necessity obliged to be practised by him, whenever a rare or curious book turns up.... Justly respectable as are his scholarship and good sense, he is not what you may call a _fashionable_ collector; for old chronicles and romances are most rigidly discarded from his library. Talk to him of Hoffman, Schoettgenius, Rosenmuller, and Michaelis, and he will listen courteously to your conversation; but when you expatiate, however learnedly and rapturously, upon Froissart and Prince Arthur, he will tell you that he has a heart of stone upon the subject; and that even a clean uncut copy of an original impression of each, by Verard or by Caxton, would not bring a single tear of sympathetic transport to his eyes.--T. F. DIBDIN. _Bibliomania._

THE ENVIABLE BOOKWORM

The character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere bookworm. There is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives among old authors, if he does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and turns over the page, and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow; but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk and leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things. He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names of these things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many figures in a _camera obscura_. He reads the world, like a favourite volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old work which he is preparing for the press, only to make emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, affectionate creatures--if Tray could but read! His mind cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others, or the consciousness of one in itself.--W. HAZLITT. _On the Conversation of Authors._

EARS NAILED TO BOOKS