Pagan Papers | Page 5

book. Men have been known in moments of

thoughtlessness, or compelled by temporary necessity, to rob, to
equivocate, to do murder, to commit what they should not, to ``wince
and relent and refrain'' from what they should: these things, howbeit
regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to any of us. But
amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural; and it is noteworthy that our
language, so capable of particularity, contains no distinctive name for
the crime. Fortunately it is hardly known to exist: the face of the public
being set against it as a flint -- and the trade giving such wretched
prices.
In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the
reflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment,
sordidly considered: that you are not squandering income but sinking
capital. But you know all the time that you are lying. Once possessed,
books develop a personality: they take on a touch of warm human life
that links them in a manner with our kith and kin. Non angli sed Angeli
was the comment of a missionary (old style) on the small human
duodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many a
buyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into his possession,
must have felt that here was something vendible no more. So of these
you may well affirm Non libri sed liberi; children now, adopted into the
circle, they shall be trafficked in never again.
There is one exception which has sadly to be made -- one class of men,
of whom I would fain, if possible, have avoided mention, who are
strangers to any such scruples. These be Executors -- a word to be
strongly accented on the penultimate; for, indeed, they are the common
headsmen of collections, and most of all do whet their bloody edge for
harmless books. Hoary, famous old collections, budding young
collections, fair virgin collections of a single author -- all go down
before the executor's remorseless axe. He careth not and he spareth not.
``The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy,'' and it is chiefly
by the hand of the executor that she doth love to scatter it. May
oblivion be his portion for ever!
Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the most
insidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is the
bookbinder. Not in that he bindeth books -- for the fair binding is the
final crown and flower of painful achievement -- but because he
bindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, and

the months to years, and still the binder bindeth not: and the heart
grows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden binds her hair,
each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn the
harvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake and
stream, and still the bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voice
whispereth: ``Arise, be a man, and slay him! Take him grossly, full of
bread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming,
swearing, or about some act That hath no relish of salvation in it!'' But
when the deed is done, and the floor strewn with fragments of binder --
still the books remain unbound. You have made all that horrid mess for
nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden over again. As a general
rule, the man in the habit of murdering bookbinders, though he
performs a distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and
takes no personal advantage.
And even supposing that after many days your books return to you in
leathern surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yet
weathered the Cape and sailed into halcyon seas. For these books --
well, you kept them many weeks before binding them, that the
oleaginous printer's-ink might fully dry before the necessary
hammering; you forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic binder
might refold the sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over --
consummatum est -- still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of a
quiet mind. For these purple emperors are not to be read in bed, nor
during meals, nor on the grass with a pipe on Sundays; and these brief
periods are all the whirling times allow you for solid serious reading.
Still, after all, you have them; you can at least pulverise your friends
with the sight; and what have they to show against them? Probably
some miserable score or so of half-bindings, such as lead you
scornfully to quote the hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indian
whose untutored mind clothes him before but leaves him bare behind.
Let us thank the gods that such things are: that to some of