In the Track of the Bookworm.
by Irving Browne.
I.
OBJECTS OF COLLECTION.
Philosophers have made various and ingenious but incomplete attempts to form a succinct definition of the animal, Man. At first thought it might seem that a perfect definition would be, an animal who makes collections.
But one must remember that the magpie does this. Yet this definition is as good as any, and comes nearer exactness than most. What has not the animal Man collected? Clocks, watches, snuff-boxes, canes, fans, laces, precious stones, china, coins, paper money, spoons, prints, paintings, tulips, orchids, hens, horses, match-boxes, postal stamps, miniatures, violins, show-bills, play-bills, swords, buttons, shoes, china slippers, spools, birds, butterflies, beetles, saddles, skulls, wigs, lanterns, book-plates, knockers, crystal balls, shells, penny toys, death-masks, tea-pots, autographs, rugs, armour, pipes, arrow heads, locks of hair and key locks, and hats (Jules Verne's "Tale of a Hat"), these are some of the most prominent subjects in search of which the animal Man runs up and down the earth, and spends time and money without scruple or stint. But all these curious objects of search fall into insignificance when compared with the ancient, noble and useful passion for collecting books. One of the wisest of the human race said, the only earthly immortality is in writing a book; and the desire to accumulate these evidences of earthly immortality needs no defense among cultivated men.
II.
WHO HAVE COLLECTED BOOKS.
The mania for book-collecting is by no means a modern disease, but has existed ever since there were books to gather, and has infected many of the wisest and most potent names in history. Euripides is ridiculed by Aristophanes in "The Frogs" for collecting books. Of the Roman emperor, Gordian, who flourished (or rather did not flourish, because he was slain after a reign of thirty-six days) in the third century, Gibbon says, "twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations." This combination of uxorious and literary tastes seems to have existed in another monarch of a later period--Henry VIII.--the seeming disproportion of whose expenditure of 10,800 pounds for jewels in three years, during which he spent but 100 pounds for books and binding, is explained by the fact that he was indebted for the contents of his libraries to the plunder of monasteries.
Henry printed a few copies of his book against Luther on vellum. Cicero, who possessed a superb library, especially rich in Greek, at his villa in Tusculum, thus describes his favorite acquisitions: "Books to quicken the intelligence of youth, delight age, decorate prosperity, shelter and solace us in adversity, bring enjoyment at home, befriend us out-of-doors, pass the night with us, travel with us, go into the country with us."
Petrarch, who collected books not simply for his own gratification, but aspired to become the founder of a permanent library at Venice, gave his books to the Church of St. Mark; but the greater part of them perished through neglect, and only a small part remains. Boccaccio, anticipating an early death, offered his library to Petrarch, his dear friend, on his own terms, to insure its preservation, and the poet promised to care for the collection in case he survived Boccaccio; but the latter, outliving Petrarch, bequeathed his books to the Augustinians of Florence, and some of them are still shown to visitors in the Laurentinian Library. From Boccaccio's own account of his collection, one must believe his books quite inappropriate for a monastic library, and the good monks probably instituted an auto da fe for most of them, like that which befell the knightly romances in "Don Quixote." Perhaps the naughty story-teller intended the donation as a covert satire. The walls of the room which formerly contained Montaigne's books, and is at this day exhibited to pilgrims, are covered with inscriptions burnt in with branding-irons on the beams and rafters by the eccentric and delightful essayist. The author of "Ivanhoe" adorned his magnificent library with suits of superb armor, and luxuriated in demonology and witchcraft. The caustic Swift was in the habit of annotating his books, and writing on the fly-leaves a summary opinion of the author's merits; whatever else he had, he owned no Shakespeare, nor can any reference to him be found in the nineteen volumes of Swift's works. Military men seem always to have had a passion for books. To say nothing of the literary and rhetorical tastes of Caesar, "the foremost man of all time," Frederick the Great had libraries at Sans Souci, Potsdam, and Berlin, in which he arranged the volumes by classes without regard to size. Thick volumes he rebound in sections for more convenient use, and his favorite French authors he sometimes caused to be reprinted in compact editions to his taste. The great Conde inherited a valuable library from his father, and enlarged and loved it. Marlborough had twenty-five books on vellum, all earlier than 1496. The hard-fighting Junot had a vellum library which sold in London for 1,400 pounds, while his great master was not too busy in conquering Europe not only to solace himself in his permanent libraries, and in books which he carried with him in his expeditions, but to project and actually commence the printing of a camp library of duodecimo volumes, without margins, and in thin covers, to embrace some three thousand volumes, and which he had designed to complete in six years by employing one hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, at an outlay of about 163,000 pounds. St. Helena destroyed this scheme. It is curious to note that Napoleon despised Voltaire as heartily as Frederick admired him, but gave Fielding and Le Sage places among his traveling companions; while the Bibliomaniac appears in his direction to his librarian: "I will have fine editions and handsome bindings. I am rich enough for that." The main thing that shakes one's confidence in the correctness of his literary taste is that he was fond of "Ossian." Julius Caesar also formed a traveling library of forty-four little volumes, contained in an oak case measuring 16 by 11 by 3 inches, covered with leather. The books are bound in white vellum, and consist of history, philosophy, theology, and poetry, in Greek and Latin. The collector was Sir Julius Caesar, of England, and this exquisite and unique collection is in the British Museum. The books were all printed between 1591 and 1616.
Southey brought together fourteen thousand volumes, the most valuable collection which had up to that time been acquired by any man whose means and estate lay, as he once said of himself, in his inkstand. Time fails me to speak of Erasmus, De Thou, Grotius, Goethe, Bodley; Hans Sloane, whose private library of fifty thousand volumes was the beginning of that of the British Museum; the Cardinal Borromeo, who founded the Ambrosian Library at Milan with his own forty thousand volumes, and the other great names entitled to the description of Bibliomaniac. We must not forget Sir Richard Whittington, of feline fame, who gave 400 pounds to found the library of Christ's Hospital, London.
The fair sex, good and bad, have been lovers of books or founders of libraries; witness the distinguished names of Lady Jane Gray, Catherine De Medicis, and Diane de Poictiers.
It only remains to speak of the great opium-eater, who was a sort of literary ghoul, famed for borrowing books and never returning them, and whose library was thus made up of the enforced contributions of friends--for who would have dared refuse the loan of a book to Thomas de Quincey? The name of the unhappy man would have descended to us with that of the incendiary of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. But the great Thomas was recklessly careless and slovenly in his use of books; and Burton, in the "Book-hunter," tells us that "he once gave in copy written on the edges of a tall octavo 'Somnium Scipionis,' and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the letter-press Latin and the manuscript English." I seriously fear that with him must be ranked the gentle Elia, who said: "A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us that we know the topography of its blots and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum." And yet a great degree of slovenliness may be excused in Charles because, according to Leigh Hunt, he once gave a kiss to an old folio Chapman's "Homer," and when asked how he knew his books one from the other, for hardly any were lettered, he answered: "How does a shepherd know his sheep?"
The love of books displayed by the sensual Henry and the pugnacious Junot is not more remarkable than that of the epicurean and sumptuous Lucullus, to whom Pompey, when sick, having been directed by his physician to eat a thrush for dinner, and learning from his servants that in summer-time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus' fattening coops, refused to be indebted for his meal, observing: "So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not lived." Of him the veracious Plutarch says: "His furnishing a library, however, deserved praise and record, for he collected very many and choice manuscripts; and the use they were put to was even more magnificent than the purchase, the library being always open, and the walks and reading rooms about it free to all Greeks, whose delight it was to leave their other occupations and hasten thither as to the habitation of the Muses."
It is not recorded that Socrates collected books--his wife probably objected--but we have his word for it that he loved them. He did not love the country, and the only thing that could tempt him thither was a book.
Acknowledging this to Phaedrus he says:
"Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country.
Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world. And now having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best."
III.
DIVERSE TASTES.
It is fortunate for the harmony of book-collectors that they do not all desire the same thing, just as it was fortunate for their young State that all the Romans did not want the same Sabine woman. Otherwise the Helenic battle of the books would be fiercer than it is. Thus there are bibliomaniacs who reprint rare books from their own libraries in limited numbers; authors, like Walpole, who print their own works, and whose fame as printers is better deserved than their reputation as writers; like Thackeray, who design the illustrations for their own romances, or, like Astor, who procure a single copy of their novel to be illustrated at lavish expense by artists; amateurs who bind their own books; lunatics who yearn for books wholly engraved, or printed only on one side of the leaf, or Greek books wholly in capitals, or others in the italic letter; or black-letter fanciers; or tall copy men; or rubricists, missal men, or first edition men, or incunabulists.
One seeks only ancient books; another limited editions; another those privately printed; a fourth wants nothing but presentation copies; yet another only those that have belonged to famous men, and still another illustrated or illuminated books. There is a perfectly rabid and incurable class, of whom the most harmless are devoted to pamphlets; another, rather more dangerous, to incorrect or suppressed editions; and a third, stark mad, to play-bills and portraits. One patronizes the drama, one poetry, one the fine arts, another books about books and their collectors; and a very recherche class devote themselves to works on playing-cards, angling, magic, or chess, emblems, dances of death, or the jest books and facetiae. Finally, there are those unhappy beings who run up and down for duplicates, searching for every edition of their favorite authors. In very recent days there has arisen a large class who demand the first editions of popular novelists like Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne, and will pay large prices for these issues which have no value except that of rarity. I can quite understand the enthusiasm of the collector over the beautiful first editions of the Greek and Latin classics, or for the first "Paradise Lost," or even for the ugly first folio "Shakespeare," and why he should prefer the comparatively rude first Walton's Angler to Pickering's edition, the handsomest of this century, with its monumental title page.
But why a first edition of a popular novel should be more desirable than a late one, which is usually the more elegant, I confess I cannot understand. It is one of those things which, like the mystery of religion, we must take on trust. So when a bookseller tells me that a copy of the first issue of "The Scarlet Letter" has sold for seventy-five dollars, and that a copy of the second, with the same date, but put out six months later, is worth only seventy-five cents, I open my eyes but not my purse, especially when I consider that the second is greatly superior to the first on account of its famous preface of apology, and when I read of some one's bidding $1875 for a copy of Poe's worthless "Tamerlane," I am flattered by the reflection that there is one man in the world whom I believe to be eighteen hundred and seventy-five times as great a fool as I am!
IV.
THE SIZE OF BOOKS.
Were I a despotic ruler of the universe I would make it a serious offense to publish a book larger than royal octavo. Books should be made to read, or at all events to look at, and in this view comfort and ease should be consulted. Any one who has ever undertaken to read a huge quarto or folio will sympathize with this view. The older and lazier the Book-Worm grows the more he longs for little books, which he can hold in one hand without getting a cramp, or at least support with arms in an elbow chair without fatigue. Darwin remorselessly split big books in two. Mr. Slater says in "Book Collecting:" "When the library at Sion College took fire the attendants, at the risk of their lives, rescued a pile of books from the flames, and it is said that the librarian wept when he found that the porters had taken it for granted that the value of a book was in exact proportion to its size." Few of us, I suspect, ever read our family Bible, and all of us probably groan when we lift out the unabridged dictionary.
The "Century Dictionary" is a luxury because it is published in small and convenient parts. I cannot conceive any good in a big book except that the ladies may use it to press flowers or mosses in, or the nurses may put it in a chair to sit the baby on at table. I have heard of a gentleman who inherited a mass of folio volumes and arranged them as shelves for his smaller treasures, and of another who arranged his 12-mos on a stand made up of the seventeen volumes of Pinkerton's "Voyages" and Denon's "Egypt"
for shelves. What reader would not prefer a dainty little Elzevir to the huge folio, Caesar's "Commentaries," even with the big bull in it, and the wicker idol full of burning human victims? What can be more pleasing than the modern Quantin edition of the classics? Or, to speak of a popular book, take the "Pastels in Prose," the most exquisite book for the price ever known in the history of printing. The small book ought however to be easily legible. The health and comfort of the human eye should be consulted in the size of the type. Nothing can be worse in this regard than the Pickering diamond classics, if meant to be read; and it seems that there are too many of them to be intended as mere curiosities of printing. Let us approve the exit of the folio and the quarto, and applaud the modern tendency toward little and handy volumes. Large paper however is a worthy distinction when the subject is worth the distinction and the edition is not too large. Nothing raises the gorge of the true Book-Worm more than to see an issue on large paper of a row of histories, for example; and the very worst instance conceivable was a large paper Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary" issued some years ago. The book thus distinguished ought to be a classic, or peculiar for elegance, never a series, or stereotyped, the first struck off, and the issue ought not to be more than from fifty to one hundred copies; any larger issue is not worth the extra margin bestowed, and no experienced buyer will tolerate it. But if all these conditions are observed, the large paper copies bear the same relation to the small that a proof before letters of a print holds to the other impressions. Large margins are very pleasant in a library as well as in Wall Street, and much more apt to be permanent.
There are some favorite books of which the possessor longs in vain for a large copy, as for instance, the Pickering "Walton and Cotton."
A great deal of fun is made of the Book-Worm because of his desire for large paper and of his insistence on uncut edges, but his reasons are sound and his taste is unimpeachable. The tricks of the book-trade to catch the inexperienced with the bait of large paper are very amusing.
"Strictly limited" to so many copies for England and so many for America, say a thousand in all, or else the number is not stated, and always described as an edition de luxe, and its looks are always very repulsive.
But the bait is eagerly bitten at by a shoal of beings anxious to get one of these rarities--a class to one of whom I once found it necessary to explain that "uncut edges" does not mean leaves not cut open, and that he would not injure the value of his book by being able to read it, and was not bound to peep in surreptitiously like a maid-servant at a door "on the jar." I once knew a satirical Book-Worm who issued a pamphlet, "one hundred copies on large paper, none on small." There is no just distinction in an ugly large-paper issue, and sometimes it is not nearly so beautiful as the small, especially when the latter has uncut edges. The independence of the collector who prefers the small in such circumstances is to be commended and imitated.
Too great inequality in uncut edges is also to be shunned as an ugliness.
It seems that some French books are printed on paper of two different sizes, the effect of which is very grotesque, and the device is a catering to a very crude and extravagant taste.
V.
BINDING.
The binding of books for several centuries has held the dignity of a fine art, quite independent of printing. This has been demonstrated by exhibitions in this country and abroad. But every collector ought to observe fitness in the binding which he procures to be executed. True fitness prevails in most old and fine bindings; seldom was a costly garb bestowed on a book unworthy of it. But in many a luxurious library we see a modern binding fit for a unique or rare book given to one that is comparatively worthless or common. Not to speak of bindings that are real works of art, many collectors go astray in dressing lumber in purple and fine linen--putting full levant morocco on blockhead histories and such stuff that perishes in the not using. It is a sad spectacle to behold a unique binding wasted on a book of no more value than a backgammon board.
There are of course not a great many of us who can afford unique bindings, but those who cannot should at least observe propriety and fitness in this regard, and draw the line severely between full dress and demi-toilette, and keep a sharp eye to appropriateness of color. I have known several men who bound their books all alike. Nothing could be worse except one who should bind particular subjects in special styles, pace Mr. Ellwanger, who, in "The Story of My House," advises the Book-Worm to "bind the poets in yellow or orange, books on nature in olive, the philosophers in blue, the French classics in red," etc. I am curious to know what color this pleasant writer would adopt for the binding of his books by military men, such for example as "Major Walpole's Anecdotes." (p. 262).
Ambrose Fermin Didot recommended binding the "Iliad" in red and the "Odyssey" in blue, for the Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the former and a blue one when they recited the latter. The churchmen he would clothe in violet, cardinals in scarlet, philosophers in black.
I have imagined
HOW A BIBLIOMANIAC BINDS HIS BOOKS.
I'd like my favorite books to bind So that their outward dress To every bibliomaniac's mind Their contents should express.
Napoleon's life should glare in red, John Calvin's gloom in blue; Thus they would typify bloodshed And sour religion's hue.
The prize-ring record of the past Must be in blue and black; While any color that is fast Would do for Derby track.
The Popes in scarlet well may go; In jealous green, Othello; In gray, Old Age of Cicero, And London Cries in yellow.
My Walton should his gentle art In Salmon best express, And Penn and Fox the friendly heart In quiet drab confess.