Gossip in a Library

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Gossip in a Library, by Edmund Gosse

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Title: Gossip in a Library
Author: Edmund Gosse
Release Date: March 18, 2004 [eBook #11628]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY
EDMUND GOSSE
1913

OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE
Northern Studies. 1879.
Life of Gray. 1882.
Seventeenth-Century Studies. 1883.
Life of Congreve. 1888.
A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature. 1889
Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. 1890.
The Secret of Narcisse: a Romance. 1892.
Questions at Issue. 1893.
Critical Kit-Kats. 1896.
A Short History of Modern English Literature. 1897.
Life and Letters of John Donne. 1899.
Hypolympia. 1901.
French Profiles. 1904.
Life of Jeremy Taylor. 1904.
Life of Sir Thomas Browne. 1905.
Father and Son. 1907.
Life of Ibsen. 1908.
Two Visits to Denmark. 1911.
Collected Poems. 1911.
Portraits and Sketches. 1912.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
CAMDEN'S "BRITANNIA"
A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES
A POET IN PRISON
DEATH'S DUEL
GERARD'S HERBAL
PHARAMOND
A VOLUME OF OLD PLAYS
A CENSOR OF POETS
THE ROMANCE OF A DICTIONARY
LADY WINCHILSEA'S POEMS
AMASIA
LOVE AND BUSINESS
WHAT ANN LANG READ
CATS
SMART'S POEMS
POMPEY THE LITTLE
THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNGLE
BEAU NASH
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE
THE DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE
PETER BELL AND HIS TORMENTORS
THE FANCY
ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS
THE DUKE OF RUTLAND'S POEMS
IONICA
THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
INDEX

O blessed Letters, that combine in one All ages past, and make one live with all: By you we doe conferre with who are gone, And the dead-living unto councell call: By you th' unborne shall have communion Of what we feele, and what doth us befall.
SAM. DANIEL Musophilus. 1602.

INTRODUCTORY
It is curious to reflect that the library, in our customary sense, is quite a modern institution. Three hundred years ago there were no public libraries in Europe. The Ambrosian, at Milan, dates from 1608; the Bodleian, at Oxford, from 1612. To these Angelo Rocca added his in Rome, in 1620. But private collections of books always existed, and these were the haunts of learning, the little glimmering hearths over which knowledge spread her cold fingers, in the darkest ages of the world. To-day, although national and private munificence has increased the number of public libraries so widely that almost every reader is within reach of books, the private library still flourishes. There are men all through the civilised world to whom a book is a jewel--an individual possession of great price. I have been asked to gossip about my books, for I also am a bibliophile. But when I think of the great collections of fine books, of the libraries of the magnificent, I do not know whether I dare admit any stranger to glance at mine. The Mayor of Queenborough feels as though he were a very important personage till Royalty drives through his borough without noticing his scarf and his cocked hat; and then, for the first time, he observes how small the Queenborough town-hall is. But if one is to gossip about books, it is, perhaps, as well that one should have some limits. I will leave the masters of bibliography to sing of greater matters, and will launch upon no more daring voyage than one autour de ma pauvre bibliothèque.
I have heard that the late Mr. Edward Solly, a very pious and worshipful lover of books, under several examples of whose book-plate I have lately reverently placed my own, was so anxious to fly all outward noise that he built himself a library in his garden. I have been told that the books stood there in perfect order, with the rose-spray flapping at the window, and great Japanese vases exhaling such odours as most annoy an insect-nostril. The very bees would come to the window, and sniff, and boom indignantly away again. The silence there was perfect. It must have been in such a secluded library that Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard the male book-worm flap his wings, and crow like a cock in calling to his mate. I feel sure that even Mentzelius, a very courageous writer, would hardly pretend that he could hear such a "shadow of all sound" elsewhere. That is the library I should like to have. In my sleep, "where dreams are multitude," I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden. The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man--"a library in a garden!" It sounds like having a castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia, and I suppose that merely to wish for it is to be what indignant journalists call "a faddling hedonist."
In the meanwhile, my books are scattered about in cases in different parts of a double sitting-room, where the cats carouse on one side, and