The Pleasures of a Book-worm

Front matter

THE PLEASURES

OF A

BOOK-WORM.

Chapter 1

CONCERNING BOOKS AND LOVERS OF BOOKS.

I.

"I picked it up" has become a recognised phrase in all kinds of collecting manias, and in simple English means that for a few pence, shillings, or pounds—very much, of course, below its actual value—an article of some peculiar and undoubted worth has been secured. When a man declares with gusto to a friend, "I picked it up," it is tantamount to a boast, on his part, of superior knowledge as well as good luck. The unexpressed sentence runs just thus: "You see this article was for sale; I knew its value, but the seller didn't; therefore my knowledge was to me power, inasmuch as through it I was enabled to take advantage of the seller and to 'pick up' what I wanted for a mere song."

In the list of numerous hobbies, that of accumulating books of more than ordinary interest, especially books which on account of associations have become unique, has procured for itself quite a prominent position. And why should it not? Carefully and judiciously pursued, the collecting of books is not expensive, and is likely to ruin no one; carried out as the result of knowledge, it is a good investment for one's spare sovereigns; as an occupation for odd moments it is pleasurable, and just exciting enough to keep the head in healthy exercise and the blood warm and freely flowing; as co-ordinate with a love of what the books actually contain of wisdom or imagination, it is elevating and purifying; as dependent on a hero-worship of great authors, it lifts one up through sympathy into communion with them, thus giving a mental access to their friendship which external circumstances can neither hinder nor take away. In short, it seems to me that a great love of books has in it at all times the power to enlarge men's hearts, and to fill them with wider and truly educating sympathies. This education may be misunderstood and neglected by the many, but its effects are as certain and decided as those which came to Hawthorne's Ernest, from his persistent fellowship with The Great Stone Face.

The pleasure of possessing a unique volume does not lie solely in the fact that by so much one is wealthier than anybody else at the same time; it depends rather on a laying hold of the associations which constitute the real value of the book. The worth of a copy of the first edition of an early work by a famous author, arises not so much from its containing the original expression of thoughts, which in subsequent issues get so polished or twisted as to become, in many instances, scarcely recognisable, as that it tells to one capable of creeping into the author's soul the tale of his hopes and fears, his ambitions and disappointments, his yearnings and successes. The book speaks, to an appreciative possessor, of the circumstances, happy or sorrowful, under which it was conceived, written, published; the difficulty or ease with which it found its way through the press to the public; and its reception, favourable or otherwise, by critics and general readers. Nothing, in short, is too trivial about a book to interest the genuine book-lover; the amount gained or lost by its publication; the particulars of the disposal of the copyright; the letters or opinions of competent judges regarding it, all help to fill up the nook allotted in his mind to that particular work.

If, however, the book, by dedication or inscription, carries indication of a friendship existing between its author and one of the world's great men, so far is its value, as a centre of association of ideas, enhanced. If, in addition to this, it bears upon it, by autograph marks or otherwise, unmistakable proof of having been read and loved by some famous character, its worth becomes tenfold increased. One begins then to base its value upon its weight in gold.

As illustrative of these remarks, there lie before me now upon my study-table eight volumes of no particular intrinsic value; their worth arising from associations shall, however, be decided upon by my book-loving readers. But be it first simply mentioned that to me they are valued treasures.

Let us begin with this octavo in boards. Its title-page runs thus: British Galleries of Art. London: Printed for G. and W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria-Lane. 1824. On its fly-leaf, in Hazlitt's autograph, is inscribed: "To J. Northcote, Esq., with the respects of the Author." Indirectly, this book repeats to me the story of Hazlitt's connection and quarrel with Northcote, the famous painter. During Campbell's editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, the former wrote for it a series of papers entitled "Boswell Redivivus," which professed to contain the substance of conversations between the author (Hazlitt) and Northcote. It is, however, pretty certain that often in these papers Hazlitt recorded his own views, indifferent as to whether they appeared as coming from Northcote or himself. Occasionally sharp and bitter sayings about living personages were given utterance to, and in one instance a few unpleasant truths concerning a certain , at that time a celebrated Dissenting minister, and a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, got mixed up in the reported conversations. Just after the appearance of the paper in question—No. VI. of the series—P. G. Patmore called upon Northcote, and thus describes the interview and its sequel in My Friends and Acquaintance:

I am very ill, indeed,' said he, in reply to my inquiry as to his health. 'I did not think I should have lived. That monster has nearly killed me.'

"I inquired what he meant.

Why, that diabolical Hazlitt. Have you seen what lies he has been telling about me in his cursed "Boswell Redivivus?" I have been nearly dead ever since the paper appeared. Why, the man is a demon. Nothing human was ever so wicked. Do you see the dreadful hobble he has got me into with the Mudges? Not that I said what he has put down about Mudge. But even if I had, who could have supposed that anyone in a human form would have come here to worm himself into my confidence, and get me to talk as if I had been thinking aloud, and then go and publish it all to the world! Why, they will think we go snacks in the paltry profits of his treachery. It will kill me. What am I to do about it? I would give a hundred pounds to have the paper cancelled. But that would do no good now. It has gone all over the world. I have never had a moment's rest since it appeared. I sent to Mr. Colburn to come over to me about it; but he took no notice of my message, so I went over to him. But they wouldn't let me see him; and all I could get out of his people was, that they would tell him what I said. I told them to tell him that it would be the death of me. But Campbell has been a little more civil about it. I wrote him a letter—such a letter! I'll show it you. And he has replied very handsomely, and seems to be touched by my situation. At any rate,' added he, bitterly, 'I have put a spoke into the wheel of that diabolical wretch Hazlitt.'

"And then he showed me the letter he had written to Campbell, and Campbell's reply. I think I never read anything more striking in its way then his letter to Campbell. Though brief, it was a consummate composition—pathetic even to the excitement of tears—painting the dreadful state of his mind under the blow which the (alleged) treachery of Hazlitt had given to it, and treating the thing as a deliberate attempt to 'bring his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.' I particularly seem to remember that these very words were used in it. The whole tendency of the letter was to create an inference in Campbell's mind that the thing had come upon the writer like a thunder-clap, and that even in regard to those parts of the conver- sations which were truly reported (which he denied to be the case in the matter in question), he was the most betrayed and ill-used person in the world. And all this in the face of the fact that the paper of which he complained was the sixth of a series that had appeared in the (then) most popular literary periodical of the day; that they had all appeared there with his full knowledge and consent; that he had, ever since the commencement of them, been almost daily complimented on the conspicuous figure he was cutting in his new character of the best converser of the day; and that a considerable portion of what had appeared of the 'Boswell Redivivus' up to that time had consisted (on Northcote's part, at least) of depreciating estimates of many of the most conspicuous living writers, artists, etc.

"It is, of course, with reference to these facts that I have spoken of Northcote's feelings as 'ludicrous,' on this unlooked-for exposure of truths of which he did not wish to be known as the author: for the astonishing force and pungency of the unpalatable truths that he put forth about every living individual of whom he spoke (sometimes in their presence, and even to themselves), and the double edge and effect that were given to his words by the exquisitely simple and naïve manner in which he uttered them—as if an inspired infant were speaking—was the characteristic of his talk. And he knew all this better than anybody could tell him, and evidently prided himself upon it.

"Campbell's reply to Northcote was, I remember, in a tone precisely correspondent with the letter which called for it. He declared his unmitigated horror at the outrage that had been committed on Northcote's feelings; absolved himself from all participation in it by naïvely stating that he had not seen a line of the paper till its publication, having been absent from town on other business; and declared that 'the diabolical Hazlitt should never write another line in the magazine during his management of it.' These, I think, were his very words.

"The sequel of the history of these conversations includes the most characteristic point of all. Not very long after the incident I have referred to above, the conversations were republished in a separate form, with large and valuable additions from the same source, and obtained through the same means and agent; and this with the knowledge and tacit consent of Northcote himself, and with all their obnoxious truths unexpunged, excepting those in which Northcote's own personal connexions were concerned; and the 'diabolical Hazlitt' continued to write as usual in the New Monthly, under Campbell's (ostensible) editorship!"

The title-page of the volume next claiming our attention, and which once belonged to William Johnson Fox, minister of Finsbury Chapel and M.P. for Oldham, bears the imprint: Discourses by William Ellery Channing. Boston: Published by Charles Bowen. 1832. On the first blank page, in the handwriting of the author, is the following: "Rev. W. J. Fox, from his friend Wm. E. Channing." What a binding link this between two great souls, each eager and earnest in his proclama- tion of the necessity of liberty for the individual conscience, and yet so divergent in attachment to the trifles which get to be insisted on in a ministry of any duration and influence! What increase the interest and peculiar value of this volume are the corrections, nine in number, in Channing's own handwriting, of errors which had crept into the text in its passage through the press. Several of these corrections are wanting in both Barker's and the Centennial editions of Channing's Collected Works.

The next three volumes are—the Burns which belonged to Dr. John Aitken Carlyle (brother of Thomas Carlyle, and translator of Dante), of whom the author of Sartor Resartus spoke when, upon being offered the degree of LL.D., he excused himself by saying that he had a brother a Doctor, and that if two Dr. Carlyles should appear in Paradise mistakes might arise; the Byron once possessed by William Harrison Ainsworth the novelist, and which bears his book-plate; and a presentation copy, in the author's autograph, of Lyric Offerings, by Laman Blanchard, published by William Harrison Ainsworth, Old Bond Street, in 1828, and inscribed to Charles Lamb. What a delightful conjunction of three great names, all in a thin red-boarded volume!—about which, however, Charles Lamb said, "I shall put them up among my poetical treasures;" and Robert Browning, "What would I do to once again run (real running, for I was a boy) to Bond Street from Camberwell, and come back with a small book brimful of the sweetest and truest things in the world!"

A volume of Wordsworth next claims our notice: The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Complete in one volume. Paris. Published by A. and W. Galignani, No. 18, Rue Vivienne. 1828. This book once belonged to a friend of the poet, who resided at Cardiff, and has inserted in it in Wordsworth's autograph, and dated "The Eve of St. Swithin, 1848," ten verses of the "Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg," which are here, for the nonce, christened "Yarrow Revisited."

Thus far we have had Art, Theology, and Poetry. Next come Politics: Seven Letters on the Recent Politics of Switzerland, by George Grote, Esq., author of a "History of Greece," published by Newby in 1847. This also is a presentation copy in the autograph of the author, who sends with it his "best compliments and regards." What Lord Palmerston would have given to have been the happy recipient of this volume may be gathered from the following anecdote related in Mrs. Grote's admirable life of her husband: "Some months subsequent to this volume's appearance, Mr. Newby was applied to one morning by Lord Palmerston's private secretary, for a copy of the 'Letters on Switzerland.'

Have not a copy left, sir!'

Well, but you must get me one somehow or another.'

Wherefore so urgent, sir?'

Because,' replied the secretary, 'Lord Palmerston, being at Windsor yesterday, Prince Albert manifested unusual earnestness on the subject of Swiss disputes, and soon asked Lord Palmerston whether he had read Grote's little book. Lord Palmerston replied he had not seen it. "Then," said the Prince, "you cannot be qualified to enter fairly upon the discussion of the affairs of Switzerland; pray go and study it directly.

And yet another presentation copy, also in the author's autograph! Three Speeches delivered in the House of Com in favour of a measure for an Extension of Copyright, by T. N. Talfourd, Serjeant-at-Law, published by Moxon, in 1840, and dedicated to William Ewart Gladstone, Esq., M.P. A remarkable association, again, of well-known names!—Gladstone; Thomas Noon Talfourd, the friend and biographer of Lamb; and Moxon, who married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola. To these speeches are added, "Petitions to the House of Commons in favour of the Copyright Bill," by a number of famous authors, to wit, amongst others, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Hood. From a note affixed to Hood's petition we learn that it "was thought too richly studded with jests to be presented to the House of Commons; but its wit embodies too much wisdom to allow of its exclusion from this place." And, forsooth, a truly marvellous composition it is! Never was production like to it exhibited before the august assembly of our nation's lawmakers; and yet each of its quips and cranks throws abundant light upon the mooted question.

II.

The experiences of a book-collector often bring him into close connection with strange characters, and lead him to explore marvellously queer and out-of-the-way corners. I have in my mind's eye just now an old dealer in the second-hand-book line, to whom I am indebted for many first editions, and who, certainly a strange product as regards himself and his surroundings, is well-deserving of enshrinement in the best work of the contemporary novelist. He once had a little corner-shop all to himself, filled with many truly desirable books; but unfavourable circumstances pitted themselves against him, and he was compelled to "put the shutters up." Now, early each day, he goes the round of his customers with the morning newspapers, upon the sale of which he chiefly depends for a livelihood. A little later on in the day he makes another round, this time with a few carefully-picked volumes—the gods only know where he gets them. With his serious old grizzled face he appears at the office, and quietly hands across

"A small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold,"

and lo! behold it is the very book which silently in our heart of hearts we had desired for many a long day. He knows his customers and their several requirements, and in answer to an interrogatory look, meaning: How the deuce came you to know I wanted this? he returns a grim smile, the unwashed, unkempt, thought-reading old sinner that he is! Occasionally, of an odd afternoon, I have sought him out sitting like a big spider up among his treasures. His residence and storeroom are two attics innumerable steps up an old house, the easily accessible rooms of which are let out as offices. What a glorious hunting-ground is here, notwithstanding the filthy plight one's hands and clothes get into long before the hunt is over! And then, having secured an armful of treasures, and paid the price, one prepares to descend. But not so quickly, my friend! You may have gone down a dozen steps or so to the first turn of the stairs, but here your progress is stayed. The late owner of your treasures has perched himself above, and having thrown his arms across the balus- trade, is bending over, assuring you in a confidential tone that he would rather have given you the volumes than have taken their full value for them from many another gentleman.

"Because," whispers the insinuating old grizzly, "I know you will care for them and love them as I have done."

This is all very well, no doubt, with its fringe of pathos, especially the hint about the price, when all the while there lies in his pocket, to the utmost sou, the sum first asked by him for his books. And yet with it all, I honestly believe that the extraction of a single volume from his garret-store gives a tug at the old boy's sensibilities, sharp and painful as that attendant on the drawing of a tooth.

Another character pleads with my pen for portraiture—this one a book-buyer. Though he has never been in receipt of an income exceeding £200 a year, yet has he found ways, by dint of self-denial and severe economy, to gather around him an admirable library. His wife, lovingly sympathetic with him in his tastes, rarely has a word of expostulation to offer against the expenditure in this manner of the common fund. His own conscience, however, troubles him occasionally, and bids him remember the total of the various small sums lately parted with in exchange for odd volumes. So the next book carried home is stuffed beneath his waistcoat or down into the bottom of his overcoat-pocket until time and opportunity favour its transfer to a vacant nook on one of his shelves.

"Hollo, Frank!" his wife exclaims sometimes, "when did you get this book? I have not seen it before."

"Oh," answers Frank, "you must have been sleeping, Nellie; that volume has been there a long while now."

"You see," he said to me one day, when we were chatting together about books and book-buying, "it is all very well to buy, buy, buy, when a fellow can't help it; and I know Nellie would say but little were I to cram every room with purchases; but somehow it strikes me occasionally that there are trifles needed about the house which would add greatly to my wife's comfort; if so, my book-buying at this point merges into selfishness. The worst of it is, however, this view of the case does not always stay with me."

Poor near-sighted friend, not to see clearly and definitely that many household comforts must of necessity be wanting when any part of a narrow £200 is spent in his book-pursuit!

He told me that on going home one afternoon with a neat little parcel of purchases, this idea of the selfishness of the whole matter came with such force upon him, that he positively dreaded meeting his wife with her welcome, and felt more like a thief slinking to the scene of some depredation than a respectable man going home to the comfort of his own hearth-stone.

"I laid the parcel," he said, "on the outside of the bay-window at a point where the folds of the curtains inside effectually hid it from the view of anyone within the room. Then I knocked at the door, and skipping and smiling, Nellie came to let me in. Very soon afterwards I found opportunity to raise the window, draw in my parcel, and put it carefully aside to be examined later on, and its contents arranged on a suitable shelf."

I think this friend must be a trifle mad—just let us remember him as a third-of-a-bibliomaniac.

Then the mere perusal of a second-hand catalogue is in itself a pleasure of no mean extent. Leigh Hunt, with truth and tenderness, once said:

"A catalogue is not a mere catalogue or list of saleables, as the uninitiated may fancy. Even a common auctioneer's catalogue of goods and chattels suggests a thousand reflections to a peruser of any knowledge. Judge then what the case must be with a catalogue of books; the very titles of which run the rounds of the whole world, visible and invisible; geographies—biographies—histories—loves—hates—joys—sorrows—cookeries—sciences—fashion,—and eternity! We speak on this subject from the most literal experience; for often and often have we cut open a new catalogue of old books, with all the fervour and ivory folder of a first love; often read one at tea; nay, at dinner; and have put crosses against dozens of volumes in the list, out of the pure imagination of buying them, the possibility being out of the question!"

The very errors which creep into the letterpress of a catalogue are amusing. Were such a thing possible, methinks that many old authors must needs turn in their graves at the sacrilege daily carried on in this direction. Before me just now, and issued at no distant date, are the following advertisements: "Lord Bacon's New Atlantic, edited with Notes by J. A. St. John; 12 mo., cloth, 35., 1852."—"Helen Plumtre's Christ and Christendom [Boyle Lectures for 1866]; 8vo., cloth, 6s., 1867."—W. C. Prince's I Go a Fishing; thick crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 3d., 1873"—And the list could be extended ad libitum.

A careful and cautious collector soon distinguishes the dear catalogue from the cheap, notwithstanding the practice (which cannot be sufficiently deprecated) of some booksellers of cataloguing volumes which they never had in their possession at perhaps a tenth or twentieth part of their true value. Of course in reply to the order for the volume thus advertised comes the inevitable: "We regret," etc. A thorough-going book-buyer, however, cares little whether the catalogue be issued by an expensive house or not. The book is required upon his shelves, and it must be had. This is generally the state in which even the cautious buyer is found at last. The book must be had, dear or cheap, and consequently is sent for.

In book-hunting, the prime object is to have something to hunt for—something for which auction-sales are to be frequented, catalogues perused, old stalls examined, and book-boxes searched. One need not take to collecting Elzevirs or Aldines if his pocket be other than deep; let him rather look for a copy of each issue of such books as The Secretes of the reverende Maister Alexis of Piemount; The Oxford Sausage, the quaint woodcuts of the first edition (1764) of which are attributed to Bewick, although at that date he was scarcely eleven years of age, and was not apprenticed till three years afterwards; and The Oeconomy of Human Life. However, this is but a hint, and the volumes here mentioned may be supplemented or supplanted by others according to the taste or requirements of the collector. Also worth having, if it can be secured clean and uncut, with Garrick's portrait unspotted, and measuring in its original boards 5 by 8, is Thomas Davies's "Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. Two vols. Printed for the Author, and Sold at his Shop in Great Russell Street, Covent-Garden, 1780."

III.

What a delightful heterogeneity pervades a book-lover's collection, even if it results only from the difference in size of first editions! How perkily, on the shelf upon which my eyes now rest, does the little 12mo. Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo, by Southey, shoulder it alongside his bigger brother in 4to., Roderick, the Last of the Goths! There also are the big Odes and Epistles and the little Fables for the Holy Alliance of Moore, in close propinquity. Certainly the value of a book, be it intrinsic or adventitious, does not depend on its size!

A certain amount of pleasure is to be obtained on a wet evening from the arranging and sorting of one's treasures. Perhaps during the week a volume on Gipsies, or Wales, or Occult Science has been "picked up," and must needs be given a place with proper associates. So a book has to be taken out here and placed there, in what for years has been the resting-place of another, at which a general confusion takes place, needing a little scheming and planning to set to rights. But of this quiet occupation we must whisper only to the initiated, and even to them in low and subdued tones.

One gets thus by degrees to understand, with rare sympathy, the affec- tion expressed by Lamb in the quiet kiss with which he sometimes greeted his best-loved books, and the careful, fondling manner with which rare spirits handle the companions of their most blissful moments. What a broad gleam of sunshine is shot through the dark dotage of Southey's last days by his son, who thus writes: "His dearly prized books were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and taking them down mechanically." Wordsworth, on visiting the poet, found him "patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child."

Chapter 2

HOME AND BOOKS: GLIMPSES OF EARTHLY PARADISE.

"A little peaceful home Bounds all my wants and wishes; add to this My book and friend, and this is happiness." >>Francesco Di Rioja.

I.

HOME.

We have nothing to say against the summer, with its long sunny days, in which it sometimes seems possible to cram a very eternity of delightful existence; but to the book-lover the winter is, emphatically, his season. The tinkle of the sheep-bell on the hillside and the ripple of the troutstream, the scent of the new-mown hay and the rustle of the breeze-bent corn, are all thoroughly enjoyable in their way; but the reader's song is of the drawn curtain and the fire-flicker, the subdued light of the lamp and the wild rush of the wind without. At such a time his books are doubly friends; they partake of his security from the raging inclemency, and share the hospitality which friend proffers friend in storm-time and in need. "My hour of inspiration," says Hawthorne, "is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust, and the snow-flakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper, with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it, like stars at twilight, or like violets in May."

Some of the most delightful word-pictures to be found in our literature are those in which we see great men in the midst of their books. De Quincey, with his marvellous handling of English prose, gives us this: "Let there be a cottage standing in a valley eighteen miles from any town… Let the mountains be real mountains, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high; and the cottage a real cottage—not (as a witty author has it) 'a cottage with a double coach-house;' let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering round the windows through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn—beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn—but winter, in his sternest shape… Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor; whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without,

And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heaven and earth they would together mell; Yet the least entrance find they none at all; Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.' >>Castle of Indolence.

… But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house.