Part 22

A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know anything of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows nothing of the _thing_ which it means in any one of them. He stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotations quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge', except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,--'of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the _corregioscity_ of Correggio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand contour of Michael Angelo',--of all those glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead letter, a byword; and no wonder, for he neither sees nor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens' Watering-place, or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging on the walls of his room for months without his once perceiving them; and if you point them out to him he will turn away from them. The language of nature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does not understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works as prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of it,' from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of school-learning.--W. HAZLITT. _On the Ignorance of the Learned._

THE ANTIQUARY'S TREASURES

The collection was indeed a curious one, and might well be envied by an amateur. Yet it was not collected at the enormous prices of modern times, which are sufficient to have appalled the most determined as well as earliest bibliomaniac upon record, whom we take to have been none else than the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, as, among other slight indications of an infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for folios and quartos of chivalry.... Mr. Oldbuck did not follow these collectors in such excess of expenditure; but, taking a pleasure in the personal labour of forming his library, saved his purse at the expense of his time and toil.... 'Davy Wilson,' he said, 'commonly called Snuffy Davy, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old black-letter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an _editio princeps_ under the mask of a school Corderius.' ... 'Even I, sir,' he went on, 'though far inferior in industry and discernment and presence of mind to that great man, can show you a few--a very few things, which I have collected, not by force of money, as any wealthy man might,--although, as my friend Lucian says, he might chance to throw away his coin only to illustrate his ignorance,--but gained in a manner that shows I know something of the matter. See this bundle of ballads, not one of them later than 1700, and some of them a hundred years older. I wheedled an old woman out of these, who loved them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco, sir, snuff, and the _Complete Syren_, were the equivalent! For that mutilated copy of the _Complaynt of Scotland_, I sat out the drinking of two dozen bottles of strong ale with the late learned proprietor, who, in gratitude, bequeathed it to me by his last will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and trophies of many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Bow, Saint Mary's Wynd,--wherever, in fine, there were to be found brokers and traders, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare and curious. How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect, the value I set upon the article!--how have I trembled, lest some passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall, as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise!--And then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure!--Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this' (displaying a little black smoked book about the size of a primer); 'to enjoy their surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity;--these, my young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil, and pains, and sedulous attention, which our profession, above all others, so peculiarly demands!' ...

Here were editions esteemed as being the first, and there stood those scarcely less regarded as being the last and best; here was a book valued because it had the author's final improvements, and there another which (strange to tell!) was in request because it had them not. One was precious because it was a folio, another because it was a duodecimo; some because they were tall, some because they were short; the merit of this lay in the title-page--of that in the arrangement of the letters in the word Finis. There was, it seemed, no peculiar distinction, however trifling or minute, which might not give value to a volume, providing the indispensable quality of scarcity, or rare occurrence, was attached to it.--SIR W. SCOTT. _The Antiquary._

I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.--LORD MACAULAY.

KISSING A FOLIO

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 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; 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 Pope, 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 C[harles] L[amb] to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's _Homer_.... 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.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My Books._

THE LITERARY HAREM

I must have my literary _harem_, my _parc aux cerfs_, where my favourites await my moments of leisure and pleasure,--my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap; the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part.... The bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it, and would bag in case of fire before all the rest.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Poet at the Breakfast-Table._

BAYARD TAYLOR

Dead he lay among his books! The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb;

So those volumes from their shelves Watched him, silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will never more Turn their storied pages o'er:

Never more his lips repeat Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest! He is gone, who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar, In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aerial space, Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou, whose latest verse Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone, In Deukalion's life, thine own;

On the ruins of the Past Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee, Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books, The peace of God in all thy looks!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

DEFINITIONS

To afford the reader an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in d'Israeli's _Curiosities_ from the _Chasse aux Bibliographes et Antiquaires mal advisés_ of Jean-Joseph Rive:

'A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.'

'A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.'

'A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.'

'A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.'

'A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.'

The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive is bibliotapht. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a classifier of books; and bibliopée 'l'art d'écrire ou de composer des livres', or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author.--J. H. BURTON. _The Book Hunter._

THE LAST EDITIONS THE BEST

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads; for they may profit of the former. But take care not to understand editions and title-pages too well. It always smells of pedantry, and not always of learning.--LORD CHESTERFIELD. _Letters to his Son._

SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS

Plague take all your pedants, say I! He who wrote what I hold in my hand, Centuries back was so good as to die, Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land; This, that was a book in its time, Printed on paper and bound in leather, Last month in the white of a matin-prime Just when the birds sang all together.

Into the garden I brought it to read, And under the arbute and laurustine Read it, so help me grace in my need, From title-page to closing line. Chapter on chapter did I count, As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge; Added up the mortal amount; And then proceeded to my revenge.

Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice An owl would build in, were he but sage; For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis In a castle of the middle age, Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber; When he'd be private, there might he spend Hours alone in his lady's chamber: Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked, --I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate; Next a handful of blossoms I plucked To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate; Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis; Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss And gum that locked our friend in limbo, A spider had spun his web across, And sat in the midst with arms akimbo: So, I took pity, for learning's sake, And, _de profundis, accentibus laetis, Cantate!_ quoth I, as I got a rake, And up I fished his delectable treatise.

Here you have it, dry in the sun, With all the binding all of a blister, And great blue spots where the ink has run, And reddish streaks that wink and glister O'er the page so beautifully yellow: Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks! Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

How did he like it when the live creatures Tickled and toused and browsed him all over, And worm, slug, eft, with serious features, Came in, each one, for his right of trover? --When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face Made of her eggs the stately deposit, And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

All that life and fun and romping, All that frisking and twisting and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping And clasps were cracking and covers suppling! As if you had carried sour John Knox To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box, And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it? Back to my room shall you take your sweet self! Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, _sufficit_! See the snug niche I have made on my shelf. A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you, Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay, And with E. on each side, and F. right over you, Dry-rot at ease till the Judgement-day!

R. BROWNING. _Garden Fancies._

A STUDENT

Over an ancient scroll I bent, Steeping my soul in wise content, Nor paused a moment, save to chide A low voice whispering at my side.

I wove beneath the stars' pale shine A dream, half human, half divine; And shook off (not to break the charm) A little hand laid on my arm.

I read until my heart would glow, With the great deeds of long ago; Nor heard, while with those mighty dead, Pass to and fro a faltering tread.

On the old theme I pondered long-- The struggle between right and wrong; I could not check such visions high, To soothe a little quivering sigh.

I tried to solve the problem--Life; Dreaming of that mysterious strife, How could I leave such reasonings wise, To answer two blue pleading eyes?

I strove how best to give, and when, My blood to save my fellow-men-- How could I turn aside, to look At snowdrops laid upon my book?

Now Time has fled--the world is strange, Something there is of pain and change; My books lie closed upon the shelf; I miss the old heart in myself.

I miss the sunbeams in my room-- It was not always wrapped in gloom: I miss my dreams--they fade so fast, Or flit unto some trivial past.

The great stream of the world goes by; None care, or heed, or question, why I, the lone student, cannot raise My voice or hand as in old days.

No echo seems to wake again My heart to anything but pain, Save when a dream of twilight brings The fluttering of an angel's wings!

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.

OF HANDLING BOOKS

We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety if we just handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places, and commend them to undefiling custody that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their repositories....

In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe....

A stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study ... distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain.... He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it: and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books.... He next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume....

But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other frivolous thing whatever, that occurs to their imagination.... There are also certain thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins for letter paper, leaving only the letters or text, or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which they take away for various uses and abuses, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema.

But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholar that washing should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from his meals to study, before his fingers, besmeared with grease, loosen a clasp or turn over the leaf of a book.--R. DE BURY. _Philobiblon._

DEDUCTIONS FROM SCRIPTURE

The most meek Moses instructs us about making cases for books in the neatest manner, wherein they may be safely preserved from all damage. 'Take this book,' says he, 'and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God' (Deut. xxxi). O, befitting place, appropriate library, which was made of imperishable Shittim wood, and covered all over inside and out with gold! But our Saviour also, by his own example, precludes all unseemly negligence in the treatment of books, as may be read in Luke iv. For when he had read over the scriptural prophecy written about himself in a book debarred to him, he did not return it to the minister till he had first closed it with his most holy hands; by which act students are most clearly taught that they ought not in the smallest degree whatever to be negligent about the custody of books.--R. DE BURY. _Philobiblon._

Is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading?

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Julius Caesar._

AN EDITION DE LUXE

With that of the book loosened were the clasps-- The margin was illumined all with golden rails And bees, enpictured with grasshops and wasps, With butterflies and fresh peacock tails, Engloried with flowers and slimy snails; Ennyield pictures well touched and quickly; It would have made a man whole that had be right sickly To behold how it was garnished and bound, Encovered over with gold of tissue fine; The clasps and bullions were worth a thousand pound; With belassis and carbuncles the borders did shine; With aurum mosaicum every other line Was written.

JOHN SKELTON. _A Replycacion agaynst certayne yong Scolers, &c._

CARE AS TO BINDINGS

Have a care of keeping your books handsome, and well bound, not casting away overmuch in their gilding or stringing for ostentation sake, like the prayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but for their outsides. Yet for your own use spare them not for noting or interlining (if they be printed), for it is not likely you mean to be a gainer by them, when you have done with them: neither suffer them through negligence to mould and be moth-eaten or want their strings and covers. King Alphonsus, about to lay the foundation of a castle at Naples, called for Vitruvius his book of architecture; the book was brought in very bad case, all dusty and without covers; which the king observing said, 'He that must cover us all, must not go uncovered himself'; then commanded the book to be fairly bound and brought unto him. So say I, suffer them not to lie neglected, who must make you regarded; and go in torn coats, who must apparel your mind with the ornaments of knowledge, above the robes and riches of the most magnificent princes.--H. PEACHAM. _The Compleat Gentleman._

GOLD CLASPS AND A GOLDEN STORY

This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover: The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide: That book in many eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Romeo and Juliet._

NOBLER THAN CONTENTS

A book? O rare one! Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment Nobler than that it covers: let thy effects So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers, As good as promise.

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Cymbeline._

LINES HAVE THEIR LININGS, AND BOOTS THEIR BUCKRAM

As in our clothes, so likewise he who looks Shall find much forcing buckram in our books.

R. HERRICK.

EYE-WORSHIP