The Library | Page 8

are more faded and of
less account than the memory of the dreams of childhood. It is because
our books are friends that do change, and remind us of change, that we
should keep them with us, even at a little inconvenience, and not turn
them adrift in the world to find a dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls. We
are a part of all that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr.
Tennyson's Ulysses, and we owe some respect, and house-room at least,
to the early acquaintances who have begun to bore us, and remind us of
the vanity of ambition and the weakness of human purpose. Old school
and college books even have a reproachful and salutary power of
whispering how much a man knew, and at the cost of how much
trouble, that he has absolutely forgotten, and is neither the better nor
the worse for it. It will be the same in the case of the books he is eager
about now; though, to be sure, he will read with less care, and forget

with an ease and readiness only to be acquired by practice.
But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches
moral lessons, as "dauncyng" also does, according to Sir Thomas Elyot,
in the "Boke called the Gouvernour," but because it affords a kind of
sportive excitement. Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase.
Book catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him
all the pleasures of the sport at home. He reads the booksellers'
catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with pencil, he writes by
return of post, or he telegraphs to the vendor. Unfortunately he almost
always finds that he has been forestalled, probably by some
bookseller's agent. When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious
that Parisians have the pick of the market before our slow letters reach
M. Claudin, or M. Labitte. Still the catalogues themselves are a kind of
lesson in bibliography. You see from them how prices are ruling, and
you can gloat, in fancy, over De Luyne's edition of Moliere, 1673, two
volumes in red morocco, double ("Trautz Bauzonnet"), or some other
vanity hopelessly out of reach. In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and
Fatout print a facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition. The
bust of Moliere occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as
Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the "Precieuses Ridicules"), stand on
either side. In the second volume are Moliere, and his wife Armande,
crowned by the muse Thalia. A catalogue which contains such exact
reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a work of art, and
serviceable to the student. When the shop of a bookseller, with a
promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant,
bibliophiles have been known to rush to the spot in the grey morning,
before the doors open. There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay
comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain
outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers' Row. There is a length
to which enthusiasm cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at
rising early in the morning. But, when we think of the sport of
book-hunting, it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally
turns. Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was in
an auction-room that Guibert de Pixerecourt, being outbid, said, in
tones of mortal hatred, "I will have the book when your collection is
sold after your death." And he kept his word. The fever of gambling is
not absent from the auction-room, and people "bid jealous" as they

sometimes "ride jealous" in the hunting-field. Yet, the neophyte, if he
strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle.
The chamber has the look of a rather seedy "hell." The crowd round the
auctioneer's box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at
Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany,
they would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour.
Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked down for trifling
sums. Let the neophyte try his luck, however, and prices will rise
wonderfully. The fact is that the sale is a "knock out." The bidders are
professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to distribute
them afterwards among themselves. Thus an amateur can have a good
deal of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper value, and
by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to "run him
up." The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of
gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the
owner of