The Book-Collector Part 5

In speaking and thinking of real books, it is necessary again to distinguish between articulate productions of two cla.s.ses--between such a work, for example, as Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ and such an one as Th.o.r.eau's _Walden_, or between Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ and Sir Thomas Browne's _Urn-Burial_. The present is an enterprise directed toward the indication to collectors of different views and tastes of the volumes which they should respectively select for study or purchase. There are millions who have pa.s.sed through life unconsciously without having read a book, although they may have seen, nay, possessed thousands. Those which might have been recommended to them with advantage, and perused with advantage, were too obscure, too dull, too cheap, too unfashionable. It is of no use to read publications with which your acquaintances have no familiarity, and to the merits of which it might be a hard task to convert them. But, as we have said, we want s.p.a.ce to enter into these details, and we can only generalise bibliographically, repeating that literature is broadly cla.s.sifiable into Books and Things in Book-Form--Specimens of Paper, Typography and Binding, or counterfeit illusory distributions of printer's letter into words and sentences and volumes by the pa.s.sing favourites of each succeeding age--what Th.o.r.eau call its "t.i.t-men."

We might readily instance masterpieces of erudition or industry which leave nothing to be desired in the way of information and safe guidance, and which, at the same time, do not distantly realise our conception of Books--real _bona fide_ Books. They may be the best editions by the best binders, or they may be antiquarian periodicals or sets of Learned Transactions, reducing much of the elder lore cherished and credited by our ancestors to waste-paper; we feel that it is a sort of superst.i.tion which influences us in regarding them; but we fail to shake off the prejudice, or whatever it may be, and we hold up, on the contrary, to the gaze of some sceptical acquaintance a humble little volume in plain mellow sheep--say, a first Walton, or Bunyan, or Carew, nay, by possibility a Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde--which a roomful of perfectly gentlemanly books should not buy from us. It may strike the reader as a heresy in taste and judgment to p.r.o.nounce the four Shakespeare folios of secondary interest from the highest point of view, as being posthumous and edited productions. But so it is; yet Caxton's first impression of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, if we were to happen upon it by accident, is a possession which we should not be easily persuaded to coin into sovereigns, and such a prize as the Evelyn copy of Spenser's _Faery Queen_, 1590, with the Diarist's cypher down the back and his note of ownership inside the old calf cover, is worth a library of inarticulate printed matter.

So, again, Aubrey, in his _Miscellanies_, _Remains of Gentilism and Judaism_, _History of Surrey_, and _Natural History of Wiltshire_, presents us with works very imperfect and empirical in their character--even foolish and irritating here and there; but between those undertakings and such as Manning and Bray's or Brayley and Britton's _Surrey_ there is the difference that the latter are literary compilations, and the former personal relics inalienably identified with an individual and an epoch.

It is the same with certain others, ancient as well as modern writers.

Take Herodotus, Athenaeus, and Aulus Gellius on the one hand, and Bishop Kennett's _Parochial Antiquities_, White's _Selborne_, Knox's _Ornithological Rambles in Suss.e.x_, or Lucas's _Studies in Nidderdale_ on the other. All these equally tell you, not what some one else saw or thought, but what they saw or thought themselves, and in a manner which will never cease to charm.

There are works, again, which, without professing to entertain for the authors any strong personal regard, we read and re-peruse, as we admire a fine piece of sculpture or porcelain, an antique bronze or cameo, as masterpieces of art or models of style. We are perfectly conscious, as we proceed, that they are not to be trusted as authorities, and perhaps it is so on the very account which renders them irresistibly attractive.

Some of the most celebrated literary compositions in our language are more or less strongly imbued with the spirit of partisanship or a leaven of const.i.tutional bias; yet we like to have them by us to steal half-an-hour's delight, just as we resort sometimes to alluring but dangerous stimulants. We have in our mind, not volumes of fiction, not even the historical novel, but serious narratives purporting to describe the annals of our country and the lives of our countrymen and countrywomen. We take them up and we lay them down with pleasure, and it is agreeable to feel that they are not far away; and they will not do us greater harm, if we combine an acquaintance with their deficiencies and faults as well as with their beauties, than the fascinating a.s.sociates with whom we exchange civilities in the drawing-room or at the club, and with whose haunts and opinions we are alike unconcerned. Of the romances under the soberer names of history, biography, and criticism, which abound in all the literatures of nearly all times, we are at liberty to credit as much or as little as we choose; but in how many instances we should regret to lose, or not to have inherited, these; and the personal partiality which const.i.tutes the blemish here and there equally const.i.tutes the merit.

What makes us return again and again to certain books in all literatures, forgetful of chronology and biographical dictionaries?

What draws us irresistibly for the twentieth time to works of such different origin and character as Herodotus, Caesar, Aulus Gellius, Browne's _Urn-Burial_ and _Religio Medici_, Pepys's _Diary_, Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_, Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, and a handful of authors nearer to our own day? Is it not their breadth, catholicism, and sincerity? Is it not precisely those qualities which no sublunar systems of computing time can affect or delimit? If we take successively in hand the _Odyssey_, the _Arabian Nights_, the _Canterbury Tales_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas de Santillane_, and _Robinson Crusoe_, do we without some reflection realise that between the first and the last in order of production thousands of years intervened? Most of the romances of chivalry and the _Faery Queen_ strike us as more antiquated than Homer, a.s.suredly more so than Chaucer. The secret and the charm seems to lie in the fact that all great books are pictures of human nature, which is and has been always the same; and we are able to account in a similar manner for the stupendous popularity of such works as the _Imitatio Christi_ and the _Pilgrim's Progress_. Above all things, they are strictly _bona fide_. They are no catch-pennies.

We find ourselves with hundreds, nay, thousands of other books at our elbow or at our command, living in communion with half-a-dozen minds.

We read our favourite books, and when we have reached the end of our tether, we recommence as if we were in the Scilly Islands, and there were no more obtainable or permissible. We never wax tired of conning over Bayle St. John's _Montaigne the Essayist_, Th.o.r.eau's _Walden_, Howell's _Venetian Life_ and _Italian Journeys_. _Cuique suum._ We have known those who never let the sun set without dipping into Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, or who have some pet volume with which they renew their intimacy every year, as Francis Douce did with _Reynard the Fox_. There must usually be an unconscious sympathy in these cases, a pleasing revelation of extended ident.i.ty, as if these other productions were what we should have liked to claim as our own, and as if we felt we should have said the same things and thought the same thoughts, if they had been ours.

It is the same with some parts of some writers' labours, to be had separately, as _Hamlet_, _As You Like It_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Macbeth_, and the _Merchant of Venice_; and with a few detached or select compositions to which one has to thread one's way in a larger volume: a few songs scattered through the early dramatists and lyrists; Gray's _Elegy_; Tennyson's _May Queen_ (without the sequel), and _Locksley Hall_ and _In Memoriam_ (missing the tags).

In the present aspect of our inquiry, _Famous Books_ and the _Best_ are by no means convertible terms. There are such, it is true, as fall under both categories: the Hebrew Scriptures, Homer, Herodotus, _Arabian Nights_, _Canterbury Tales_, Montaigne's _Essays_, Shakespeare, Gibbon. Famous literary compositions at different levels or in their various cla.s.ses are Boccaccio's _Decameron_, Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, Aretino, Spenser's _Faery Queen_, Rabelais, _Pilgrim's Progress_, La Fontaine's _Tales_, Rousseau's _Confessions_, _Tristram Shandy_, _Candide_, _Don Juan_; and even among these how fair a proportion depends for its value and fruitfulness on the student? And, again, on his training. For we are aware of readers who prefer Bunyan to Spenser, others who place Sterne, Voltaire, and Byron before both, and not a few who have emerged with profit and without pollution from the perusal of the labours of Rabelais and Aretino.

There is a literal deluge of moral and colourless works, on the contrary, from which even the average modern reader comes away only with an uncomfortable sense of waste of time and eyesight.

Of printed matter in book-shape there is no end. The ma.s.s grows day by day, almost hour by hour. Yet the successful candidates for admission to our inner circle of publications of all ages and countries, which so far meet on common ground in being provided with a pa.s.sport to succeeding times requiring and recognising no critical _vise_, increase in numbers slowly, O so slowly! It would be presumptuous and unsafe to attempt to discount the ultimate verdict on many now popular names; but it is to be apprehended that, looking at the much more numerous body of writers, the calls to immortality will hereafter be in a relatively diminishing ratio. The influences and agencies by which certain schools of thought and work are artificially forced to the front are too often temporary, and their life is apt to be, Hamadryad-like, conterminous with that of their foster-parents. It has been my lot to witness the rise, decline, and evanescence of groups of authors and artists, whom it was almost sacrilegious to mention even with qualification. Adverse criticism was out of the question for any one valuing his own repute.

How various all the afore-mentioned standard or permanent books are, and still in one respect how similar! Similar, inasmuch as they or their subject-matter are surrounded by an atmosphere which preserves them as in embalmed cerements. In strict truth, there may be some among the number which are far indeed from being individually important or costly, while others in a critical sense have long been entirely obsolete, or perhaps never possessed any critical rank. It does not signify. Their testimonials are independent of such considerations. Many, most of them, are on ever-living topics; many, again, in their essence and material properties are sanctified and odorous.

I find myself possessed by a theory, possibly a weak and erroneous one, in favour of such a book, for instance, as Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, as Johnson published it, with all its imperfections, with the full consciousness that improved editions exist. For the original output represents a genuine aspect of the author's mind, prejudices inclusive; and I am not sure that, had he lived to bring out a revised and enlarged impression, I should have looked upon it as so characteristic and spontaneous; and the same criticism applies to a number of other productions, dependent for their appreciation by us not upon their substantial, so much as on their sentimental, value.

What is not unapt to strike an average mind is that, with such a caseful of volumes as my cursory and incomplete inventory represents and enumerates, how much, or perhaps rather how little, remains behind of solid, intrinsic worth, and what a preponderance of the unnamed printed matter resolves itself into _bric-a-brac_, unless it amounts to such publications, past and present, as one is content to procure on loan from the circulating library or inspect in the show-cases of our museums.

Happy the men who lived before literary societies, book-clubs, and cheap editions, which have between them so multiplied the aggregate stock or material from which the collector has to make his choice!

There are occasional instances where co-operation is useful, and even necessary; but the movement has perhaps been carried too far, as such movements usually are. Our forefathers could not have divined what an unknown future was to yield to us in the form of printed matter of all sorts and degrees. But they already had their great authors, their favourite books, their rarities, in sufficient abundance. It was a narrower field, but a less perplexing one; and from the seeing-point of the amateur, pure and simple, our gain is not unequivocal.

I shall now proceed to draw up an experimental catalogue of works which appear to possess a solid and permanent claim to respect and attention for their own sakes, apart from any critical, textual, or other secondary elements. Others without number might be added as examples of learning, utility, and curiosity; but they do not fall within this exceedingly select category:--

aesop's _Fables_.

# In a form as near as may be to the original work.

Antoninus, _Itinerary_.

_Arabian Nights._ _Arthur of Little Britain._ Ashmole's _Theatrum Chemic.u.m_.

Athenaeus.

Aulus Gellius.

Bacon's _Sylva Sylvarum_.

Bacon's _Essays_.

Bayle's _Dictionary_, in English.

Bidpai or Pilpay [so called], _Fables_ of.

# A genuine English text.

Boccaccio's _Decameron_.

Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ and _Tour in the Hebrides_.

Bradbury's _Nature-printed Ferns and Seaweeds_.

Brand's _Popular Antiquities_.

# Latest recension, _not_ Ellis's.

Browne's _Religio Medici_.

Browne's _Urn-Burial_.

# The latter reminds us of Lamb's style, allowing for difference of time.

Browne's _Vulgar Errors_.

Browning's _Early Poems_.

# A moderate volume would hold all worth perpetuation.

Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.

Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_.

# A book of academical cast, abounding in quaint conceits and curious extracts; full of false philosophy and morality.

Butler's _Hudibras_.

Byron's _Scotish Bards_.

Byron's _Childe Harold_.

Byron's _Don Juan_.

Caesaris _Commentarii_.

Carew, Thomas, _Poems_.

Cervantes' _Don Quixote_, by Jervis, 2 vols. 4to.

Chappell's _Popular Music_.

Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_.

Chronicles (English) Series of.

# Including Froissart and Monstrelet, with the original illuminated ill.u.s.trations to former.

Cicero, _De Senectute et De Amicitia_.

# In the original Latin.

Cobbett's _Rural Rides_.

Coleridge's _Table-Talk_.

Cotgrave's _French Dictionary_.

Couch's _British Fishes_.

Coventry, Chester, Towneley, and York Mysteries.

Cunningham's _London_, by H. B. Wheatley.

Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_.

Delany, _Diary and Correspondence_.

Diogenes Laertius.

Dodsley's _Old Plays_.

Douce's _Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare_, 2 vols.

Dunlop's _History of Fiction_.

Sir H. Ellis's _Original Letters_, three series.

George Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Romances_.

Elton's _Specimens of the Cla.s.sic Poets_, 3 vols. 1814.

# Elton's versions of portions of Homer appear to be superior to Chapman, and to make it regrettable that he did not complete the work.

_Epinal Glossary_, by Sweet.

# For the earliest English extant.

Evelyn's _Diary_.

Evelyn's _Sylva_.

Fairholt's _Costume_, 1860.

Fielding's _Tom Jones_.

Fox's _Book of Martyrs_.

Fournier's _Vieux-Neuf_, 1877.

Gayton's _Festivous Notes on Don Quixote_.

_Gesta Romanorum_, in English.

Gilchrist's _Blake_.