Book lover

“ Happily, I am of the company of men who can walk and read, and have frequently trodden snow-covered ground with my nose a few inches from an open book. Believe me, he who can read whilst walking has a long pull over the book-lover who must needs have quietude and a bended knee upon which to nurse his beloved books.
There is a worthy and distinguished company of book-lovers to whom reading whilst afoot is not only uncongenial but impossible. I seem to remember a passage in which that great book-lover Charles Lamb speaks of his inability to enjoy a book whilst out of doors. ”

“ Alas! that there should be men to whom books are merely so much paper and cloth. ‘A book,’ you tell them, ‘is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured upon purpose, to a life beyond.’ And their answer is a smile. But this is no time for repining. The great army of book-lovers swells with each passing year. From all sides come recruits, often from the most unexpected quarters, from mill and factory, mean street and slum. Yes; ’tis a great day for books, and soon Everyman will have his library, in fact as well as in name. ”

“ Walters’s whole-hearted bookish enthusiasm, I may not pretend, for, as R. L. Stevenson says, in An Apology for Idlers, ‘Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.’ So long, however, as the reading of it be not allowed to deprive either man or woman of drinking deep at the wells of life, there are few greater joys, for young or old, than are to be found within the covers of a noble book; and to the enthusiastic book-lover, Mr. Walters’s volume should prove treasure trove indeed. ”

“ SECOND-HAND BOOKS
The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defence.—Langford.
I HAVE confessed that I am of the company of book-lovers who delight in dipping into the ‘lucky-tubs’ to be found outside booksellers’ windows. I know of no pleasanter way of spending a spare half-hour. Give me a few ‘loose’ coppers, place my feet upon a likely road, and I am content. I am now, let me say, of the happy company of book-fishermen. ”

“ WHAT are the books that tempt? Are they the old, familiar volumes, old friends in old clothes—well-worn editions of the classics? Or are they those same old friends decked in rich and fanciful bindings? I am acquainted with a book-lover who confesses that he has no taste for the fanciful modern reprint. You may show him Lamb, or Hazlitt, or Hunt, or Jefferies, or Stevenson in the richest of binding, and tempt him not. He is not, he declares, to be caught that way. As well might the reader go arrayed in frills and furbelows to a masculine friend and expect to be received with decorum. ”

“ The four walls of his library must, I fancy, have peculiar knowledge of ‘the dainties that are bred in books.’ They are his only audience. When friends are with him, it is they who must do the reading, whilst he plays the better part.
How many a tale such as this might be told! How full of eccentricities is the lover of books, aye, and how full, too, of whims and fads and fancies! Each one is for a particular type of binding. In no two cases can you find tastes exactly alike. One is for plain cloth, plainly lettered, another is for calf or russia, another for parchment. ”

“ There is no aspect or phase of the human mind with which he is unacquainted; and it is a knowledge that books alone can impart.
Yet our true book-lover is not of those whose very religion is the preservation of the pristine appearance of their books, who deem it sacrilege to destroy one jot of the contemporary leather in which their treasures are clothed: liking rather to glue, varnish, and patch, preferring even a grotesque effect rather than sacrifice an inch of decayed calf. ”

“ The present collection of varieties in verse has little or naught to do with the great world and its errors: it has to do chiefly, not to say wholly, with the world of the Bookmen—the little world of the Book-lover, the Bibliophile, the Bibliomaniac—a mad world, my masters, in which there are to be found not a few poets who cherish old wine and old wood, old friends and old books, and who believe that old books are the best of old friends. ”

“ But he, be it remembered, has passed through deep sorrow, has lost friends, home, wealth—all that men hold most dear. Without his books and all they have taught him his lot would be that of a wanderer in a wilderness. ‘My books,’ he says, ‘are my inseparable comforters—my friends, companions, teachers, consolers, [Pg 22] creators, amusers.’ But he makes no claim to being a student, or an authority on books. He does not burn the proverbial midnight oil. There is nothing of the book-worm about him. He is simply a book-lover, and being such, enjoys the very best that books can give. ”

“ Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!—a message to us from the dead,—from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of22 miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. We ought to reverence books, to look at them as useful and mighty things. ”

“ Who has not felt that he might improve a text-book? Who has not longed, in reading a glorious book, for similar brilliance? What lover of books is unmoved to an occasional effort at emulation, even if he afterwards destroy it? ”

“ How natural, however, if the lover of books should at times overlook the greatest of figures in a company so vast! He will do well if he but keeps a warm corner or two in his heart for old friends and an open place for new ones. And if meanwhile he can manage to keep his mind fresh and active, ready to receive new ideas and eager for fresh knowledge, he may surely rest content. Happily for the makers of books we have not all the same taste. ”

“ A wise man will select his book with the utmost care. ‘He will not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends.’ For my own part, I confess that I like to turn at times to authors of ‘humbler sorts.’ I like to dip into the volumes which booksellers label ‘Remainders.’ How frequently one finds in such books the very features that captivate—the style and matter that immediately touch a responsive chord in one’s temperament! ”

“ He is not, I venture to assert, a book-lover. I fancy he should be called an antiquarian. Certainly his liking for antiquities is greater than his love for the contents of books. Books to him are rather furniture for rooms than for minds. Show him an example of skilfully ‘tooled’ calf, and you will [Pg 41] please him better than if you had voiced an inspiring thought. But wait! I must hold my pen. Who can say to what depths of thought and feeling my friend is moved by the sight of his well-filled shelves? Has it not been said that there is inspiration in a mere glance at old volumes ”

“ The book-lovers who like to feel the humanity of an author must surely form a vast and ever-increasing company.
You know how it fares with the superior individual who bears himself as though unmoved by feelings common to the average mortal. He does [Pg 51] not inspire friendship, or admiration, or, for that matter, any feeling worth the having. Knowing the frailty of human nature, we suspect him of playing a double part. And so it is, surely, with the author who addresses us in the manner of one who is a stranger to the feelings that mould this mortal clay. We know better. ”

“ Is it not true that ‘the books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards’? What a time for reading is that period when the blood runs warm and strong, and the mind is vigorous—one’s whole nature keen and impressionable! Ah! youth is the time to meet a maiden in a book, to feel—just as the author, no doubt, felt himself—that she is wonderfully fair to look upon, charming alike in manners, voice, and looks. One may venture to suspect that many a young man has lost his heart to the maidens who flit so gracefully through the pages of books. ”

“ And when it comes to the question of fiction, I confess that my own liking is for books that introduce pleasing characters. I have no desire to meet again in novels the type of individual who glares at me from the ‘police columns’ of the daily press. Murderers, thieves, and adulterers are not to my mind less unpleasant because they happened to occupy a ‘romantic platform.’ Give me, I pray, congenial company. And if, as some declare, we must needs have all types represented, then let the artist who draws them employ the touch that convinces and yet spares. ”

“ But the shunning of bad books is only one of the problems presented to us in the choice of our reading. In the great multitude of really good and valuable books, how shall we choose those which are of the most vital importance to us to know? The universal habit of desultory reading—reading simply to be entertained—is a habit not to be indulged in, nor encouraged, by scholars or by those who aspire to the station of teachers. There are perhaps a score of books which should be read and studied by every one who claims the title of reader ”

“ The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches; and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a Lover of Books. ”

“ From this list are purposely omitted books printed upon vellum, Books of Hours of the Virgin Mary, and illuminated books; for these are rarities within reach of the wealthy only. Nor is 'bindings' included, for the man who collects these is no book-lover in the truest sense of the word, and his hobby does not fall properly within the category of book-collecting, being classed rather under the heading Art and Vertu, Bric-à-Brac, or what you will. ”

“ The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing-birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. And when we have got our little library we may look proudly at Shakspeare and Bacon and Bunyan, as they stand in our bookcase with other noble spirits, and one or two of whom the world knows nothing, but whose worth we have often tested. ”

“ A very few books will do, if they are of the right kind; and they must be yours. A borrowed book is but a cheap pleasure, an unappreciated and unsatisfactory tool. To know the true value of books, and to derive any satisfactory benefit from them, you must first feel the sweet delight of buying them,—you must know the preciousness of possession. ”

“ But an ingenious reader will learn, also, that a certain number of books were written by a supremely noble kind of people; not a very great number of books, but still a number fit to occupy all your reading industry, do adhere more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men’s souls, divided into sheep and goats. Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward ”

“ Where is the true book-lover who could not give a list of such? ‘Their very odour,’ he will tell you, ‘is beyond Russia.’ How sacred their well-preserved pages! Your up-to-date reprints, with their fanciful covers, are no company for such. Their gaiety is shamed by stately calf-bound volumes.
Yes, there is a grave and sober dignity about old well-preserved books. It matters not whether they be bound in morocco, calf, or russia. The [Pg 40] sacred associations of old age are theirs. If we do not love them, at least we reverence them. ‘What a place to be in is an old library! ”

“ Every lover of children and of truth will be interested in this charming book; every house in the land should have a copy; it will entertain and instruct more truly and more sensibly than any other book. ”

“ I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of the old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grow amid the happy orchard.’
Yes, to many the old ‘moth-scented’ volumes are the books that tempt. I have a friend who has placed a standing order with a bookseller to supply him with all old calf-bound volumes to be procured at a certain sum. ”

“ For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader? In arithmetic, geometry, perspective, optics, astronomy, architecture, sculptura, pictura, of which so many and such elaborate treatises are of late written; in mechanics and their mysteries, military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardening, planting, etc.... What so sure, what so pleasant? What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose! ”

“ It is a fault of which the present writer is guilty. With shame he confesses it.
But wait! Why should I speak with blushes of my admiration for the brave armorial designs which adorn the calf-bound volumes of my friend H——? Well may he be proud of his family attributes, and well may [Pg 86] I admire the manner in which some skilful designer, long departed, has incorporated arms and family motto with the familiar words Ex Libris. I know not, by the way, how any book-lover can bring himself to ignore information so absolutely clear. ”

“ Nine tenths of our current literature has no other end but to inveigle a thaler or two out of the public pocket, for which purpose author, publisher, and printer are leagued together.... Of bad books we can never read too little ”

“ I am, therefore, willing enough to confess that the books that captivated me in early life are the books that captivate me still. We ‘grown-ups’ make a brave outward show, but at the back of it there is still the old craving for a friendly hand, a kindly word, a sympathetic friend. ”