The Library | Page 7

Uzanne, in a prose ballade of
book-hunters--then, calm, glad, heroic, the bouquineurs prowl forth,
refreshed with hope. The brown old calf-skin wrinkles in the sun, the
leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover of a quarto. The

dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees seem to wither, their
leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is walking the streets.
Under his vast umbrella the book-hunter is secure and content; he
enjoys the pleasures of the sport unvexed by poachers, and thinks less
of the heat than does the deer-stalker on the bare hill-side.
There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in the stalls. The
decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of ambition,
are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections. The presentation
volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the
poet who was his "Master," to the critic whom he feared, to the friend
with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration. The critic has not
even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely torn three or four apart with
his finger and thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let the poems
slip into some corner of his library, whence they were removed on
some day of doom and of general clearing out. The sale of the library of
a late learned prelate who had Boileau's hatred of a dull book was a
scene to be avoided by his literary friends. The Bishop always gave the
works which were offered to him a fair chance. He read till he could
read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress
could be traced like that of a backwoodsman who "blazes" his way
through a primeval forest. The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty
before the thirtieth page. The melancholy of the book- hunter is aroused
by two questions, "Whence?" and "Whither?" The bibliophile asks
about his books the question which the metaphysician asks about his
soul. Whence came they? Their value depends a good deal on the
answer. If they are stamped with arms, then there is a book ("Armorial
du Bibliophile," by M. Guigard) which tells you who was their original
owner. Any one of twenty coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a
hundred times the value of the volume which it covers. If there is no
such mark, the fancy is left to devise a romance about the first owner,
and all the hands through which the book has passed. That Vanini came
from a Jesuit college, where it was kept under lock and key. That copy
of Agrippa "De Vanitate Scientiarum" is marked, in a crabbed hand and
in faded ink, with cynical Latin notes. What pessimist two hundred
years ago made his grumbling so permanent? One can only guess, but
part of the imaginative joys of the book-hunter lies ' in the fruitless
conjecture. That other question "Whither?" is graver. Whither are our

treasures to be scattered? Will they find kind masters? or, worst fate of
books, fall into the hands of women who will sell them to the
trunk-maker? Are the leaves to line a box or to curl a maiden's locks?
Are the rarities to become more and more rare, and at last fetch
prodigious prices? Some unlucky men are able partly to solve these
problems in their own lifetime. They are constrained to sell their
libraries--an experience full of bitterness, wrath, and disappointment.
Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which life has no
worse sorrow. A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If
you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it
years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself. As a man's
tastes and opinions are developed his books put on a different aspect.
He hardly knows the "Poems and Ballads" he used to declaim, and
cannot recover the enigmatic charm of "Sordello." Books change like
friends, like ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in the
contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them
is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in
him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days.
The vanished past returns when we look at the pages. The vicissitudes
of years are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering
ghosts of desire and hope return to their forbidden home in the heart
and fancy. It is as well to have the power of recalling them always at
hand, and to be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions
which were so powerful and full of life, and now