The Bibliotaph | Page 7

books the time will be sure to come when a man may well cry, 'I had rather than forty dollars I had my list of first editions with me!'
The Bibliotaph carried much accurate information in his head, but he never traveled without a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small volume containing printed lists of the first editions of rare books. The volume was interleaved; the leaves were crowded with manuscript notes. An appendix contained a hundred and more autograph letters from living authors, correcting, supplementing, or approving the printed bibliographies. Even these authors' own lists were accurately corrected. They needed it in not a few instances. For it is a wise author who knows his own first edition. Men may write remarkable books, and understand but little the virtues of their books from the collector's point of view. Men are seldom clever in more ways than one. Z. Jackson was a practical printer, and his knowledge as a printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in the first folio of Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson, as the Rev. George Dawson observes, 'ventured beyond the composing-case, and, having corrected blunders made by the printers, corrected excellencies made by the poet.'
It was amusing to discover, by means of these autograph letters, how seldom a good author was an equally good bibliographer. And this is as it should be. The author's business is, not to take account of first editions, but to make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs shall be eager to possess the first editions thereof. It is proverbial that a poet is able to show a farmer things new to him about his own farm. Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet's works, and he will amaze the poet with an account of his own doings. The poet will straightway discover that while he supposed himself to be making 'mere literature' he was in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact science.
The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on the subject of first editions. He was one of the few men who understood the exceeding great virtues of second editions. He declared that a man who was so fortunate as to secure a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary was in better case than he who had bothered himself to obtain a first. When it fell in with his mood to argue against that which he himself most affected, he would quote the childish bit of doggerel beginning 'The first the worst, the second the same,' and then grow eloquent over the dainty Templeman Hazlitts which are chiefly third editions. He thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of Carlyle's French Revolution if it were possible to buy at moderate price a copy of the third edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book, 'good to the touch and grateful to the eye.' But this lover of books grew fierce in his special mania if you hinted that it was also foolish to spend a large sum on an editio princeps of Paradise Lost or of Robinson Crusoe. There are certain authors concerning the desirability of whose first editions it must not be disputed.
The singular readiness with which bookish treasures fell into his way astonished less fortunate buyers. Rare Stevensons dropped into his hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The most inaccessible of pamphlets fawned upon him, begging to be purchased, just as the succulent little roast pigs in The New Paul and Virginia run about with knives and forks in their sides pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he did not despair of buying Poe's Tamerlane for twenty-five cents one of these days; and that a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was a copy of that English newspaper which announced Shelley's death under the caption Now he Knows whether there is a Hell or Not.
He unconsciously followed Heber in that he disliked large-paper copies. Heber would none of them because they took up too much room; their ample borders encroached upon the rights of other books. Heber objected to this as Prosper M��rim��e objected to the gigantic English hoopskirts of 1865,--there was space on Regent Street for but one woman at a time.
Original as the Bibliotaph was in appearance, manners, habits, he was less striking in what he did than in what he said. It is a pity that no record of his talk exists. It is not surprising that there is no such record, for his habits of wandering precluded the possibility of his making a permanent impression. By the time people had fully awakened to the significance of his presence among them he was gone. So there grew up a legend concerning him, but no true biography. He was like a comet, very shaggy and very brilliant, but