Part 23

While the plodding votary of _meaning_ is anxiously inquiring out the sense of the oracle, his fellow-worshipper, remembering that our _eyes_ were not given us for nothing, is entranced in admiration of the stately form or gorgeous vestment of the priest that utters it:--in plainer terms, he stands exploring, without end, the type, of jetty black and dazzling cut, that seems to float amidst a satin sea of cream--(it is impossible to be watching after one's metaphors on such inspiring occasions)--roves, in gazing ecstasy, from page to page, till here and there arrested by the choice vignette or richly tinctured plate: at length, 'lassatus, necdum satiatus' with the beauties of the interior, he reverently closes the superbly-plated leaves; and, turning to the sumptuous, silk-lined cover, marvels as he views the verdant, red, or purple pride of Russia, Turkey, or Morocco, glittering, in every part, with the mazy flourishes of golden decoration!--'Miror, immo etiam stupeo!' is the language of his heart--if it cannot be of his tongue.--J. BERESFORD. _Bibliosophia._

BOOKBINDINGS

Embodied thought enjoys a splendid rest On guardian shelves, in emblem costume dressed; Like gems that sparkle in the parent mine, Through crystal mediums the rich coverings shine; Morocco flames in scarlet, blue and green, Impressed with burnished gold, of dazzling sheen; Arms deep embossed the owner's state declare, Test of their worth--their age--and his kind care. Embalmed in russia stands a valued pile, That time impairs not, nor vile worms defile; Russia, exhaling from its scented pores Its saving power to these thrice-valued stores, In order fair arranged in volumes stand, Gay with the skill of many a modern hand; At the expense of sinew and of bone, The fine papyrian leaves are firm as stone: Here all is square as by masonic rule, And bright the impression of the burnished tool. On some the tawny calf a coat bestows, Where flowers and fillets beauteous forms compose: Others in pride the virgin vellum wear, Beaded with gold--as breast of Venus fair; On either end the silken head-bands twine, Wrought by some maid with skilful fingers fine-- The yielding back falls loose, the hinges play, And the rich page lies open to the day. Where science traces the unerring line, In brilliant tints the forms of beauty shine; These, in our works, as in a casket laid, Increase the splendour by their powerful aid.

J. MACCREERY.

Hark you, sir; I'll have them very fairly bound: All books of love, see that at any hand.

W. SHAKESPEARE. _The Taming of the Shrew._

DISCRIMINATION IN BINDINGS

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is _our_ costume. A Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's _Seasons_, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old 'Circulating Library' _Tom Jones_, or _Vicar of Wakefield_! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight!--of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in?

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes--Great Nature's Stereotypes--we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be 'eterne'. But where a book is at once both good and rare--where the individual is almost the species, and when _that_ perishes,

We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine--

such a book, for instance, as the _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_, by his Duchess--no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel.

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sidney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller--of whom we _have_ reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books--it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with _plates_, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery _engravings_, which _did_. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled.--On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular?--The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford Church to let him white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear--the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By----, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets.

I think I see them at their work--these sapient trouble-tombs.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._

SUITABLE BINDINGS

Books, no less than their authors, are liable to get ragged, and to experience that neglect and contempt which generally follows the outward and visible signs of poverty. We do therefore most heartily commend the man, who bestows on a tattered and shivering volume such decent and comely apparel as may protect it from the insults of the vulgar, and the more cutting slights of the fair. But if it be a rare book, 'the lone survivor of a numerous race,' the one of its family that has escaped the trunk-makers and pastry-cooks, we would counsel a little extravagance in arranging it. Let no book perish, unless it be such an one as it is your duty to throw into the fire. There is no such thing as a worthless book, though there are some far worse than worthless; no book which is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there are some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none who should be suffered to starve.

The binding of a book should always suit its complexion. Pages, venerably yellow, should not be cased in military morocco, but in sober brown russia. Glossy hot-pressed paper looks best in vellum. We have sometimes seen a collection of old whitey-brown black-letter ballads, &c., so gorgeously tricked out, that they remind us of the pious liberality of the Catholics, who dress in silk and gold the images of saints, part of whose saintship consisted in wearing rags and hair-cloth. The costume of a volume should also be in keeping with its subject, and with the character of its author. How absurd to see the works of William Penn in flaming scarlet, and George Fox's Journal in Bishop's purple! Theology should be solemnly gorgeous. History should be ornamented after the antique or Gothic fashion. Works of science, as plain as is consistent with dignity. Poetry, _simplex munditiis_.--HARTLEY COLERIDGE. _Biographia Borealis: William Roscoe._

'TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE

Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside, is the proper relation between a man of sense and his books.--LORD CHESTERFIELD. _Letters to his Son._

THE OUTSIDE OF A BOOK

As great philosophers hold that the _esse_ of things is _percipi_, so a gentleman's furniture exists to be looked at. Nevertheless, sir, there are some things more fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say, from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against _ennui_, if _ennui_ should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the _ennui_, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle.--T. L. PEACOCK. _Crotchet Castle._

BOOKS YOU MAY HOLD IN YOUR HAND

Johnson used to say that no man read long together with a folio on his table. 'Books,' said he, 'that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS AND NIGHTMARE

Of the great passion of Henry the Seventh for fine books, even before he ascended the throne of England, there can be no doubt. I will not, however, take upon me to say that the slumbers of this monarch were disturbed in consequence of the extraordinary and frightful passages, which, accompanied with bizarre cuts, were now introduced into almost every work, both of ascetic divinity, and also of plain practical morality. His predecessor, Richard, had in all probability been alarmed by the images which the reading of these books had created; and I guess that it was from such frightful objects, rather than from the ghosts of his murdered brethren, that he was compelled to pass a sleepless night before the memorable battle of Bosworth Field. If one of those artists who used to design the horrible pictures which are engraved in many old didactic volumes of the period, had ventured to take a peep into Richard's tent, I question whether he would not have seen, lying upon an oaken table, an early edition of some of those fearful works of which he had himself aided in the embellishment, and of which Heinecken has given us such curious facsimiles: and this, in my humble apprehension, is quite sufficient to account for all the terrible workings in Richard which Shakespeare has so vividly described.--T. F. DIBDIN. _Bibliomania._

DELIGHT IN BOOK-PRINTS

I yield to none in my love of bookstall urbanity. I have spent as happy moments over the stalls (until the woman looked out) as any literary apprentice boy who ought to be moving onwards. But I confess my weakness in liking to see some of my favourite 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 containing 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

Vanity Fair, 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 schoolboy 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.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My Books._

A NEAT RIVULET OF TEXT

LADY SNEERWELL. I wonder, Sir Benjamin, you never publish anything.

SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE. To say truth, ma'am, 'tis very vulgar to print; and as my little productions are mostly satires and lampoons on particular people, I find they circulate more by giving copies in confidence to the friends of the parties. However, I have some love elegies, which, when favoured with this lady's smiles, I mean to give to the public.

CRABTREE. 'Fore Heaven, ma'am, they'll immortalize you!--you will be handed down to posterity, like Petrarch's Laura, or Waller's Sacharissa.

SIR BENJAMIN. Yes, madam, I think you will like them, when you shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.--R. B. SHERIDAN. _The School for Scandal._

THE BOOKWORMS

Through and through the inspired leaves, Ye maggots, make your windings; But, oh! respect his lordship's taste, And spare his golden bindings.

R. BURNS.

THE BOOKWORM

Come hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day The bookworm, ravening beast of prey, Produced 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 forced 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 passed, 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 act to fly. His roses nipped 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 destroyed The work of love in Biddy Floyd; They rent Belinda's locks away, And spoiled 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 reached the plays that Dennis writ; You reached 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 filled 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 stretched beneath the hand! Lay bare the monster's entrails here, And see what dangers threat the year: Ye gods! what sonnets 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 missed 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 D'Urfey do.

Rent from the corpse, on yonder pin, I hang the scales that braced 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 labours see Come share the triumph all with me! Ye critics, born to vex the Muse, Go mourn the grand ally you lose!'

T. PARNELL.

A MOTH

Here he beholds in triumph sit The bane of beauty, sense, and wit; Demolished distichs round his head, Half lines and shattered stanzas spread, While the insulting conqueror climbs O'er mighty heaps of ruined rhymes, And, proudly mounted, views from high, Beneath, the harmonious fragments lie; Boasting himself from foes secured, In stanzas lodged, in verse immured.

W. KING (?) _Bibliotheca._

THE CURE FOR BOOKWORMS

There is a sort of busy worm That will the fairest books deform, By gnawing holes throughout them; Alike through every leaf they go, Yet of its merits naught they know, Nor care they aught about them.

Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint The poet, patriot, sage, or saint, Nor sparing wit nor learning: Now, if you'd know the reason why, The best of reasons I'll supply-- 'Tis bread to the poor vermin.

Of pepper, snuff, or 'bacca smoke, And russia-calf they make a joke. Yet why should sons of science These puny, rankling reptiles dread? 'Tis but to let their books be read, And bid the worms defiance.

J. F. M. DOVASTON.

ROYAL PATRONAGE OF BOOKS

Queen Charlotte, when discussing books with Fanny Burney and Mrs. Delany, during the former's residence at Court at Windsor, praised the work of a writer who had translated a German book into English, saying 'I wish I knew the translator,' to which Miss Burney replied, 'I wish the translator knew that!'

'Oh,' said the Queen,--'it is not--I should not like to give my name, for fear I have judged ill: I picked it up on a stall. Oh, it is amazing what good books there are on stalls.'

'It is amazing to me,' said Mrs. Delany, 'to hear that.'

'Why, I don't pick them up myself; but I have a servant very clever; and if they are not to be had at the bookseller's, they are not for me any more than for another.'--From MADAME D'ARBLAY. _Diary._

THE TREASURE

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? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late--and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-wards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome--and when you presented it to me--and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or 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 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.--C. LAMB. _Old China._

THE MOST VALUABLE BOOK

We ought not to get books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, and bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book.--J. RUSKIN. _Political Economy of Art (A Joy for Ever)._

THE READERS AT THE BOOKSTALL

There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection--the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls--the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they 'snatch a fearful joy'. Martin B----, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas: