The Book-Hunter in London | Page 3

Stowe, a Montaigne, and a
Bible, and probably half a dozen other books of less moment. And yet,
with this poor show, he was as genuine a book-lover as Ben Jonson or
my Lord Verulam. Lord Burleigh, Grotius, and Bonaparte are said to
have carried their libraries in their pockets, and doubtless Shakespeare
could have carried his under his arm.
If all great men have not been book-collectors in the manner which is
generally understood by the phrase, it is certain that they have, perhaps
without a single exception, been book-lovers. They appear, for the most
part, to have made a constant companion of some particularly favourite
book; for instance, St. Jerome slept with a copy of Aristotle under his
pillow; Lord Clarendon had a couple of favourites, Livy and Tacitus;
Lord Chatham had a good classical library, with an especial fondness
for Barrow; Leibnitz died in a chair with the 'Argenis' of Barclay in his
hand; Kant, who never left his birthplace, Königsburg, had a weakness
in the direction of books of travel. 'Were I to sell my library,' wrote
Diderot, 'I would keep back Homer, Moses, and Richardson.' Sir W.
Jones, like many other distinguished men, loved his Cæsar.
Chesterfield, agreeing with Callimachus, that 'a great book is a great
evil,' and with La Fontaine--
'Les longs ouvrages me font peur Loin j'épuiser une matière Il faut n'en
prendre que la fleur'--
hated ponderous, prosy, pedantic tomes. Garrick had an extensive
collection on the history of the stage, but Shakespeare was his only
constant friend. Gibbon was a book-collector more in the sense of a
man who collects books as literary tools than as a bibliophile. But it is
scarcely necessary just now to enter more fully into the subject of great
men who were also book-lovers. Sufficient it is, perhaps, to know that
they have all felt the blessedness of books, for, as Washington Irving in
one of his most lofty sentences has so well put it, 'When all that is
worldly turns to dross around us, these [the comforts of a well-stored

library] only retain their steady value; when friends grow cold, and the
converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace,
these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and
cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor
deserted sorrow.'
It is infinitely easier to name those who have collected books in this
vast and unwieldy London of ours, than it is to classify them. To adopt
botanical phraseology, the genus is defined in a word or two, but the
species, the varieties, the hybrids, and the seedlings, how varied and
impossible their classification! Most men have bought books, some
have read a few, and others many; but beyond this rough grouping
together we shall not attempt anything. One thing, however, the
majority of book-collectors agree in, and that is in regarding their own
generation as a revolution--they have, as Butler has described it in his
picture of an antiquary, 'a great value for that which is past and gone,
like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra.'
Differing in many, and often material, points as one book-collector
does from another, the entire passion for collecting may be said to
focus itself into two well-defined grooves. A man either collects books
for his own intellectual profit, or out of pure ostentatious vanity. In the
ensuing pages there will be found ample and material facts in regard to
the former, so that we may say here all that we have to say regarding
the latter. The second type of book-enthusiast has two of the most
powerful factors in his apparently reckless career--his own book-greed,
and the bookseller who supplies and profits by him.
'What do you think of my library?' the King of Spain once asked Bautru,
the French wit, as he showed him the collection at the Escurial, at that
time in the charge of a notoriously ignorant librarian.
'Your Majesty's library is very fine,' answered Bautru, bowing low; 'but
your Majesty ought to make the man who has charge of it an officer of
the Treasury.'
'And why?' queried the King.

'Because,' replied Bautru, 'the librarian of your Majesty seems to be a
man who never touches that which is confided to him.'
There are many varieties of the ignorant collector type. The most
fruitful source is the nouveau riche. Book-collecting is greatly a matter
of fashion; and most of us will remember what Benjamin Franklin said
of this prevailing vice: 'There are numbers that, perhaps, fear less the
being in hell, than out of the fashion.' The enterprising individual who,
on receipt of a catalogue of medical books, wired to the bookseller,
'What will you take for the lot?' and on a price being quoted, again
telegraphed, 'Send them