The Library | Page 5

because every writer is obliged to make the closest acquaintance
with books in the direction where his own studies lie, the writings of
French authorities are frequently cited in the following pages.
This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste and
passion of book-collecting, and of the class of men known invidiously
as book-worms and book-hunters. They and their simple pleasures are
the butts of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who cannot endure in
others a taste which is absent in themselves. Important new books have
actually been condemned of late years because they were printed on
good paper, and a valuable historical treatise was attacked by reviewers
quite angrily because its outward array was not mean and forbidding.
Of course, critics who take this view of new books have no patience
with persons who care for "margins," and "condition," and early copies
of old books. We cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not
necessary to be disturbed by his clamour. People are happier for the
possession of a taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the
demons of Scripture, possess them. The wise collector gets instruction
and pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long run,
he and his family do not lose money. The amusement may chance to
prove a very fair investment.
As to this question of making money by collecting, Mr. Hill Burton
speaks very distinctly in "The Book-hunter:" "Where money is the
object let a man speculate or become a miser. . . Let not the collector
ever, unless in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any
of his treasures. Let him not even have recourse to that practice called

barter, which political philosophers tell us is the universal resource of
mankind preparatory to the invention of money. Let him confine all his
transactions in the market to purchasing only. No good comes of
gentlemen-amateurs buying and selling." There is room for difference
of opinion here, but there seems to be most reason on the side of Mr.
Hill Burton. It is one thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the
money he expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find
themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste. It is quite
another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to sell
again at a profit as soon as occasion offers. It is necessary also to warn
the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes. He must buy
experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to
disappoint him. He will pay dearly for the wrong "Caesar" of 1635, the
one WITHOUT errors in pagination; and this is only a common
example of the beginner's blunders. Collecting is like other forms of
sport; the aim is not certain at first, the amateur is nervous, and, as in
angling, is apt to "strike" (a bargain) too hurriedly.
I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of sport. People
talk of "book-hunting," and the old Latin motto says that "one never
wearies of the chase in this forest." But the analogy to angling seems
even stronger. A collector walks in the London or Paris streets, as he
does by Tweed or Spey. Many a lordly mart of books he passes, like
Mr. Quaritch's, Mr. Toovey's, or M. Fontaine's, or the shining store of
M.M. Morgand et Fatout, in the Passage des Panoramas. Here I always
feel like Brassicanus in the king of Hungary's collection, "non in
Bibliotheca, sed in gremio Jovis;" "not in a library, but in paradise." It
is not given to every one to cast angle in these preserves. They are kept
for dukes and millionaires. Surely the old Duke of Roxburghe was the
happiest of mortals, for to him both the chief bookshops and auction
rooms, and the famous salmon streams of Floors, were equally open,
and he revelled in the prime of book-collecting and of angling. But
there are little tributary streets, with humbler stalls, shy pools, as it
were, where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an Elzevir,
or an old French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a Restoration
comedy. It is usually a case of hope unfulfilled; but the merest nibble of
a rare book, say Marston's poems in the original edition, or Beddoes's
"Love's Arrow Poisoned," or Bankes's "Bay Horse in a Trance," or the

"Mel Heliconicum" of Alexander Ross, or "Les Oeuvres de Clement
Marot, de Cahors, Vallet de Chambre du Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre
Gaultier, 1551;" even a chance at something of this sort will kindle the
waning excitement, and add a pleasure to a man's walk in