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v^
BOOKS IN THE HOUSE
BOOK.S m
THE
HOUSE
An Essay on Private Libra-
ries and Collections for
Young and Old
By
ALFRED W. POLLARD
Published by arrangement vyrith

Ralph Fletcher Seymour by

iThe Bobbs-Mcrrill Company
Indianapolis, U. S. A.
 Copyright 1904

J^alph Fletcher Seymour

 Books in the House
by Alfred W. Pollard

i
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/booksinhouseessaOOpollrich
BOORS IN THE HOUSE
I. THE BUYING OF BOOKS
HERE is one sentence,
and as far as I remem-
ber only one, in all
Ruskin s writings which
comes nigh to setting my
teeth on edge whenever
I read —the sentence in
it

„^.^,_^_,_^__^_^^_ Sesame and Lilies, in

which he asks, with reference to books, "Will
you go and gossip with your housemaid or your
stable-boy when you may talk with queens
and
kings?" It is not merely that the implied
slur

on the stable-boy, who may be a very instruc-

nor
tive person to talk to, is a little ungenerous,
even that of all the great writers of whom
I

can think there is none, save, perhaps, those

sturdy republicans Milton and Landor,
to
whose style the epithet royal seems at all fit-

ting, my quarrel with the metaphor is that

to talk with kings and queens implies, at least
to the imagination, some sense of aloofness and
constraint even of embarrassment, and that
to conjure up this picture before the eyes of a
timid reader is no good service. Books may be
brothers and sisters to us, even fathers and
mothers; they may be as schoolmasters and
priests, as bachelor uncles, or the golden-
mouthed traveller to whom we listen at an inn
—but always, if they are to be of any use, they
must be as living friends or acquaintances, and
the whole art of forming and keeping a library
consists in treating them on this footing, alike
mentally and materially.
It is true that to acquire a new book is not
so serious a venture as to seek a new friend.
It would be a serious venture, indeed, to say
that in buying a book we take on ourselves no
responsibilities. On the contrary, we thereby
enter into a covenant with all the gods and
goddesses of literature, that so long as that
book is in our possession it shall be decently
used. But save for this, and for what help we
can give literature by a wise choice, the respon-
sibility mainly to ourselves, and we can
is

indulge in the luxury of being self-regarding.

8
If we outgrow the book it will not be morti-
fied. If we find we have made a mistake we

have but lost our money, though if we allow

a bad failure to remain on our shelves, it may
sensibly lessen the pleasure we take in a whole
bookcase. Yet the our relations with
ideal of
books remains unaltered, even though the
acquisition of a bad book of reference is a less
misfortune than the hiring of a bad cook,
though an ill-considered treatise on history is
more easily changed than an inefficient pro-
fessor, and though the novel or poem which
was to have given us a new philosophy of life
proves easier to shake off than the clever table
d'hote talker when his epigrams have begun to
pall. Mistakes we must surely make, but we
do not want to make more than we need, lest
we grow discouraged; while worse than almost
any mistake is the failure to rise to the con-
ception of the possibilities which living friend-
ships with books may hold for us.
To spend even a few pounds a year on
books is indeed so great a luxury that to forego
it when the money can honestly be spared

suggests the existence of asceticism in quarters

where it might least be expected. But like
other luxuries of refinement, book-buying, to
be thoroughly enjoyed, needs not only money.
but some little leisure. To buy a book in a \

hurry halves the pleasure of the purchase. To

buy books by the yard reduces the value to
that of the decorative effect of their backs as i

a substitute for wall-paper. And yet the

temptations to buy books by the yard are now ,

very great. As the deacon in Salem Chapel \

(if any one now knows that delightful book) ex- |

tolled the attractiveness of a ''coorse" above I

that of the single sermon, so the modern pub- j

lisher believes in the superior selling-power of j

the ''series" over that of the single book, how-

ever good. There are many publishers now-
adays, and to too many of them the manufacture ]

of books is as mechanical a business as the

production of any other article of merchandise.
Like sheep they follow in each other's tracks,
and if one firm's "cheap line'' in books on sport,
or art, or short biographies, or popular re-
prints, seems to be selling well, straightway |

half a dozen others flood the market with sim-

ilar wares, trying to give, or to appear to give, :

just a little more for the same money, or to

charge just a little less for the same amount. :

Not to be able to ''list" a series on every sub- I

ject on which any other publisher has produced

one would seem to argue inferiority ; and so
our new manufacturers compete with each
lO
 other merrily, and the man or woman who
b can get up a subject quickly, and has a knack
for pleasant writing, is more in request than

11
ever before. No doubt from this not too
'
scrupulous competition some good books
emerge. Not every contributor to a series
writes mainly for the sake of his ''pound a
thousand.'' There are always one or two con-
spicuously better than the rest, and it is the
business of the book-buyer to find which these
are, and to resist the temptation to fill his
shelves with long rows of books all in the
same jackets. If he is of my way of thinking
he will resist thistemptation also when it
comes to him in the form of the "Collected
Edition,*' which lately has had so much vogue.
Just before his death Robert Louis Stevenson
needed money for his Samoan estate, and an
ingenious friend raised it for him most suc-
cessfully by persuading all the different firms
who had published his books to allow them
to be printed uniformly, in numerous volumes,
in large type, at a price which yielded a hand-
some profit to all concerned. Ere the issue
was completed came Stevenson's death, and
with it a wave of enthusiasm, which sent the
collected edition to a considerable premium,
and thus started a fashion in such things. That
II
it gained money R. L. S/' covers many
for ''

sins> and I know good Stevensonians who sub-

scribed gladly for these stately and monoto-
nous volumes. But not in such as these was
it that I read Virginibus Puerisque, The
first
Travels in the Cevennes, and The Inland Voy-
age; and the grandeur and uniformity with
which they are invested deprives them of half
their flavour and all their friendliness. It is
like callingon an old college crony, and after
being handed on from flunky to flunky, finding
him in a gilded drawing-room, surrounded by
an admiring crowd. We might feel assured
that the man himself was unaltered, but it
would be odd if we gained the pleasure we had
anticipated from our chat. To buy a collected
edition of a favourite author is to sacrifice so
many sovereigns and so many inches of shelv-
ing merely to advertise our allegiance. Haply,
we may find in it some minor works hitherto
unread, but to expect from it a happy renewal
of old intimacies is vain indeed.
I have no love for and will forego
railing,
an intended tirade against the sumptuous ''art'*
books, with whose splendours those who
lightly grow rich beguile themselves at Christ-
mas-time. As the collected edition sometimes
justifies itself by putting money into the poc-
12
kcts of authors whose early work was scantily
paid, so these barbaric volumes occasionally
enable a real student to find a publisher for a
monograph which would otherwise go un-
written. The student may feel rather sadly
that his cherished theories will never here meet
the eyes of the readers whom he would like
to convert and Charles Lamb would certainly
have classed these editions among his books
that are no books, but we need not quarrel
with them too fiercely for all that* It is a
pleasanter task to remind those who set apart
a few pounds a year for book-buying how much
they may do to encourage good literature of
their own day. To buy the first editions of
modern authors after they have made their rep-
utations is an agreeable by-way of book-col-
lecting. To have bought them when the
reputations were still to make wduld have
given us a share, however small in the delight
of their success. To be on the lookout for new
authors and buy their early books may load our
shelves with some promises which will never
be fulfilled, but unless our judgment be very
faulty, in some of our purchases we shall an-
ticipate the popular verdict, and even a few
hits may console us for some wasted silver.
In the matter of praise, young writers nowa-
13
days receive almost too much encouragement.
The much-maligned reviewer is always on the
watch for the appearance of a new genius, and
eager to proclaim his discovery of it. But the
young writer needs patrons who> as Herrick
sang of Endymion Porter, will ''not only praise,
but pay them, too,'* and it is extraordinary how
few of these patrons there be, even when the
patronage desired is no more than the expen-
diture of a five-shilling piece or less. Men
whose names are well known to all literary
people, and gossip about whom good newspa-
pers are glad to insert, often receive less than
a ten-pound note in royalties on a new book,
and it is small wonder if so many of them pass
over from the ranks of literature to those of
journalism. That many of them should so pass
is, no doubt, well. Good journalists are better
than second or third rate men of letters. But
it is not by any means certain that it is always

the third-rate men who go. We upbraid Irish-

men sometimes for their lack of energy, their
disinclination to help themselves, whereas we
should rather wonder that, when for so many
generations the bravest and most adventurous
have sought their fortunes abroad, so much
virtue has still remained in the stock. And from
the Green Island of literature it is not the

14
dreamers who can never realise their dreams,
nor the polishers of cherry-stones that go forth
each year to the New World of newspapers,
it is the men who can at least write clearly and

have something to say, and it is deplorable that

the difficulty of earning from literature an in-
come on which a family can be maintained is
so extreme that many promising writers aban-
don the attempt altogether, or regard their
occasional attempts to write a good book as a
luxury for which their children's education has
to suffer. If readers were more adventurous

and less niggardly we might hope for better

things. There is no question here of confining
ourselves to what Ruskin called the '' talk of
kings and queens," or substituting at one
effort Marius the Epicurean for The Manx-
man. But we enjoy any game of skill most
thoroughly when our playmate is strong
enough to put us on our mettle, and surely in
the noble game of literature we should match
ourselves, not with the authors whose plane of
thought is no higher than our own, but with
those who carry us at least a few yards nearer
to the top of the hill.

If by buying a few good books each year we

may help to make literature a more possible
profession, we may use our shillings also to
15
Book-liiiyccs iMio oo not if ^^l^ tnoc

fgdt on fdadtf tenas with theix

a Kfiosal to l»f abookoa

lae p^pcc iwyif V '^ Miiiy DcayyogMmg^wMi

^s luvdkc sid cQovcyedi b]f faini to

^ ^ :_n wnm a
c^pKBuy 1,

a book-fanya ins a B^jjbt to pgotcst *

As fioc mniifiH pa|xc betvpeen the wAiig fine
and the need of an absolutely
ioc poDftii^ some of the po-
bhxks nsed km the illiftlralinns with

abad way. As (ood popeE is

aay faevioBS tirae. and 2 it
mlkd it can take a aiB-
caoe oD^ WWII suf htnrm can be
16
but wood-piil|> aod csfmlo
cfaeq>er than ca^ aod the smooth saiface
inoK cheaply obtaiDed bjr losdiog the
with ci^ than by roliiiii^ htncg the
tode of books too hesnry to be held ia the
handL which it is ujugjtioos to Kjd in Iw'ijg^il
simli^it; lest the paper trnn buownu oc whose
leaves ase so bnitie :r.a: they can nevec be
pwpeily sewn fag binding,
aneaemse a
t; and they migjht even help to bnng

about a sevival of the now afanost lost act of

wood-ei^^EJviug^ tf ^dttj would but ei|Bg%% a
little Wear!r.e^^ -fith0^ m^mitMMmm.lmaiLmMwmm^
of the pec:: : xt
5 5

Bottfaecocif 3rK3K|xmlsof tx>-dayaDenot

me omy n**T^ u^ ^;^ " "T'lF^TTr vvnen ^r wie
-
—
begHi book-buyii^. to ai.t|iiiie the veiy ficst
frtiliniis of tamoos Fj^bJi IwwAs nr eih along
pnise; but a libcacy of nlkkwR winch the
aothoes themselves oc at least
TTipnds have handkd is a
Hiiijgjjil mxh
^ ^^ot; yet from the
3t qnUe; as iitfrfrsling. Sonnetfrn^es
they aie oettec fii^rd and on better nrcr

so good they being with tfiem the Old Weald

flavour and we fad in dosec touch widi the
authors. In a copy of the second edition of the
Confessions of an English Opium- Eater,
which I bought the other day for 5s. (its full
market value), there are advertisements at the
end, of Dante, Lamia, Isa-
Elia, Carey's
bella, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and
other poems by John Keats, author of Endy-
mion, Endymion itself, and three books by
William Hazlitt. To most of the advertise-
ments contemporary press notices are ap-
pended. As it lies before me in its faded paste-
board covers, the book really takes me back to
1823, and gives a sense of nearness to De Quin-
cey and Lamb and Keats and Hazlitt which
no modern reprint can inspire. Truly there is
joy to be found in the old bookshop, and
though dealers' catalogues, to one whose busi-
ness it is to try to read them all, become a
littlewearisome, the potentialities of purchase
which they offer are very alluring. In Buying
these old editions book-lovers will do well
to think only of their own tastes and means,
without attempting to make bargains. If you
don t want to read an old book, or if it is not
clean and sound enough to be read with pleas-
ure, don't buy it because you have heard of
other copies selling at a much higher price.
Leave it for the collector, or, better still, for a
18
fellow book -lover whose tastes lie in this
direction. If you think only of what a book is
worth to you personally there can be no dis-
appointments, and in the end you will probably
find that some bargains have come your way.
In all that has so far been writtenwe have
had inview the purchase of books for the
buyer's personal pleasure. If the owner of a
country house wishes to have a library in it
which shall be a pleasure to his visitors as well
as to himself, advice is more difficult and if
he has built a new library and placed book-
cases all round it and is in a hurry to fill them,
advice is very difficult indeed. Of course he
may go to a good bookseller and have his
shelves filled for him— by the yard, as afore-
said—just as he may go to a good furniture-
shop and have his drawing-room furnished in
any style which happens to be fashionable.
But the library which does not reflect its
owner's individuality is but a poor thing, while
one which is a generous extension of a col-
lection of personal favourites gives a pleasant
atmosphere to the whole house. Surely the
books should come first, and the bookcases as
need arises. Leave spaces round the wall for
O
new bookcases, library-builder, and take time
in filling them. It may be that your desires are

^9
purely altruistic, for it is quite possible to be a
good fellow and a good talker and a man of
parts, and yet not to get your wit from books,
or to care over-much for reading them* In that
case think of the friends for whose pleasure
you would provide, and ask them to help you
in their favourite subjects. Far better is it to
seek aid from a friend than from a tradesman.
There may be some incongruities in the books
thus brought together, but there will be no
harm in that, and the library will reflect your
individuality through that of your friends. If
none of your friends can help, you may then
have recourse to the tradesman, or, better still,
save your money. For to buy books with the
certainty that you have not even a friend who
will read them is surely as discourteous to the
authors as to ask a musician to play to an audi-
ence who will not stop talking to hear him.
IL INHERITED BOOKS AND THEIR
VALUES
F> as was suggested in our
last paper, to try to form
a library in a hurry leads
to disaster, to inherit one
ready-made is by no
means always a blessing.
When the original col-
lector has been a man
of some literary taste, or a genuine antiquary,
the inheritance is likely to be both valuable
and (to a worthy descendant) delightful.
But the books which have accumulated in
the library of a succession of intelligent
country gentlemen, or city merchants, who
just read and bought the books which their
neighbours were reading and buying, but
kept them more carefully, are apt, when
critically examined, to present a sadly forlorn

21
appearance, more especially after even a few
years of neglect. There will be a general
impression of decaying leather and dusty
tops, and a first perusal of the book-
labels (where they have not fallen off) may re-
veal nothing more exciting than volumes of the
classics with Latin notes, Langhorne's trans-
lation of Plutarch, Johnson's Lives of the
Poets, Gibbon s Roman Empire, and some
sermons. The books occupy the only room in
the house which is available for a library; to
mix modern ones with them seems incongru-
ous, even if there are spaces on the shelves, and
the room looks so dull that no one cares to sit
in it. The owner's first impulse may very well
be to sell the whole collection as waste paper,
but as he looks at the books again he notes that
some of them are of dates a good deal earlier
than the end of the eighteenth century, and
that here and there is a volume printed in old-
fashioned types, or, haply, if the owner is an
American, bearing local imprints which show
that his great-grandfather did not import all
his books from England, but encouraged the
printer of his own country as well. The idea
occurs to himthat old books are sometimes
valuable, occasionally very valuable indeed,
and he wonders if any of these are among
%2
them, and how he is to find out. The book-
seller with whom he usually deals is a worthy
man, but not patently learned. On the other
hand, to ask one of the chief bookselling firms
of London, New York, or Chicago, to send an
expert to examine a collection which may be
all rubbish seems rather absurd, and if the
examination is to be with a view to purchase,
unsatisfactory, while the owner himself is so
ignorant of what he is selling. Moreover, some
of the books may have some personal links
with former members of his family, and as to
the regard to be paid to these, a bookseller's
advice is not to the point.
The picture here drawn is by no means im-
aginary, and human nature being what it is,
there is perhaps no great cause for surprise
that owners sometimes resort to strange shifts
to obtain some expert advice without paying
for it. A plan very commonly pursued is to
get some not highly educated person to make
a list of the books with their dates, and to ask
the nearest librarian of a public library, as a
part of the work he may reasonably be ex-
pected to do, to look through the list and say
if any of the books in it are valuable. This is,

no doubt, inexpensive, but not entirely satis-

factory. The librarian has an uneasy feeling

^3
that he is preventing some bookseller from
earning a fee to which he has a right; he is
mostly quite sufficiently occupied with his own
work, and he has learnt by frequent experience
that should any of the books on the list be
desirable acquisitions for his own library, it is
practically certain that any other offer will be
preferred to his. The owner of a book who
asks for gratuitous advice as to its value seems
always to think it necessary to represent his in-
quiry as a mere matter of curiosity, the book
being so dear to him that no price would in-
duce him to part with it. The mood is often
curiously evanescent but dignity demands that
it should be maintained in the case of the

person to whom it is stated, and so the book

is sold elsewhere, and the librarian feels an-

noyed. For this reason members of the staff of

many large libraries are strictly forbidden to
give any estimate as to the value of books
shown to them, nor is the prohibition un-
reasonable. Even when the owner is un-
usually frank and confesses to an intention of
selling, would far rather that he
librarians
would take his books in the first instance
elsewhere, instead of worrying them into
making an offer and using this as a lever to
extort more from the trade to whom a libra-

%4
rian s willingness to give ahundred dollars for
a book is often a certificate which prompts
a sporting offer of a hundred and five^
After all if books that have long been har-
boured in a house are to be sold away from it
piety demands that they should pass be-
first

neath their owner's eye, nor need the process

be very lengthy or unpleasant. An indispensa-
ble preliminary is that the books should be
dusted, and if they are very dirty it is well to
do this in the open air. Their fate will also be
much more favourably considered if before the
inspection the parched leather of their bind-
ings is lightly rubbed with ordinary furniture
polish, and then quickly dried with a clean rag,
or old silk handkerchief. By this simple process
dirt which seemed ingrained is removed, and
the old bindings not only recover much of their
brilliancy, but are given a new lease of life.
When the books come up for inspection the
owner will not find it difficult to get a rough
idea of their value if he keep one or two gen-
eral principles in mind. The first of these is
that (despite the existence of the word biblio-
mania, and the fact that room has always been
found for book-buyers in the Ship of Fools)
folly and book-buying do not generally go
together. Sebastian Brant's Book -Fool was

25
the man, not who wasted good money on
worthless books, but who could not or would
not read the good books he bought. In this
sense there are plenty of book-fools still
among us; but though the price of a rare book
may occasionally be driven up to some mon-
strous sum by the competition of two million-
aires, book prices as a rule are determined by
quite reasonable and obvious causes. Of these
mere rarity, though under certain circum-
stances it plays a very important part, is not one
of the most immediate. It would be an interest-
ing question, indeed, to determine whether
dull books are more likely, or less, to be pre-
served than good or lively ones. They run no
risk of being thumbed to pieces, but it is to
no man s interest to preserve them, and per-
haps the one consideration balances the other.
Whether it is so or not will never be known,
for in the case of really dull books no one is
tempted to ascertain whether they are rare or
not. Could it be proved beyond dispute that
every other copy had perished, the solitary sur-
vivor of a whole edition might still remain
unsalable. Even books which, far from being
dull but which on the contrary possess many
points of interest, both historical and literary,
have their value only slightly enhanced by
26
rarity unless they are of a kind which sorts
with the fashion of the day among collectors.
An extraordinary instance of this may be found
in the fact that a well-known London book-
seller, Mr. Wilfrid Voynick, has for over a
year been offering for $20,000 a collection of
over one hundred and sixty books of editions
of early date, of not one of which has any one
else produced another copy. The books are
not only unique so far as the word can ever
(

safely be used ), but interesting in all sorts of

ways, so that the possession of them would
add distinction to any library in the world.
Yet apparently in the eyes of the bookmen
who are rich enough to back their opinion
their extreme rarity does not bring up their
selling value to $125 apiece. Age, again, is a
much less potent factor in price than is usually
believed. As regards English books, it can
hardly be said to exercise much influence after
1640, or on a generous estimate twenty years
later,the date of the Restoration. Possibly the
publication of Mr. Arber's reprint of the
Term-Catalogues may bring down the limit to
the end of the seventeenth century. At pres-
ent it is fixed by the fact that the British Mu-
seum, the Cambridge University Library, and
the John Ryland's Library have all published

27
catalogues of English books printed before
1641. As soon as an idea is formed of a col-
lection of all the known books of the period, i

itbecomes interesting to add to this, and hence

the dull book printed in 1620 has a distinctly
higher value than the equally dull book printed
fifty years later. The value, though higher, is
not high. If clean and in good condition, an
English book printed before 1641 would hardly
be marked in any dealer's catalogue at less
than five shillings, and this may be taken to
be the value conferred by three centuries of j

antiquity, without any other advantage. When

we get back to the sixteenth century the merit
of mere age is reinforced by the fact that, for
every score of years we recede, we get into a
distinctly more interesting period of English :

printing, so that, taking the value of the dullest

conceivable book of 1610 as five shillings, this i

might fairly be doubled for each twenty years

we recede. I do not think any bookseller
would ask less than ten shillings for an English j

book printed in 1590, or than a pound for one j

of 1570, or the corresponding prices of 2L, 4I., j

8L, for books of 1550, 1530, 1510. When we

work back to the fifteenth century the rise in
value is very marked and rapid. Hardly any
English fifteener would fetch less than a
28 i
hundred pounds, and there are very few which
would fetch so little. Printers abroad having
begun earlier, and been far more prolific than
those who worked in England, the dullest for-
eign books will only fetch about the same
prices as English ones of some thirty years
later. As for books printed in America, it
would be rash for an Englishman to attempt
to offer a similarly precise rule of thumb, and
it may be doubted indeed whether the mate-

rials for it yet exist. Some day, perchance, it

will enter into the mind of an American bib-
liographer to produce a catalogue similar to the
British ones for the period 1476 -1640, just
mentioned. Whether such a list of ''Books
printed in the United States of America and
books by American authors printed in Eng-
land'* will take as its limit date the Declara-
tion of Independence or the end of the
eighteenth century, or even some still later
year, remains to be seen, but it may safely
be foretold that five years after that cata-
logue is published the dullest books printed
in the last decade it covers will be worth from
fifty cents to a dollar, and that it will be easy
from this starting-point to move back con-
stantly increasing values as I have ventured to
do in the case of English books.
 So much for the unaided, or nearly unaided,
influences of age and rarity, the two qualities
for which it is commonly believed that col-
lectors are ready to pay most highly. Of the
existence of the three other cardinal elements
in book values — artistic interest, literary in-
terest, historical interest —the possession of an
average amount of cultivation ought to enable
the chance possessor of a book to form some
idea, not indeed as to how much a book is
worth, but as to whether it is worth anything
at alL A handsome piece of printing is worth
buying at any time. It is natural (though not
always wise) to prefer illustrated books to
unillustrated ones, and those with borders,
initials, or other embellishments to those with-
out them. All these things are elements in
price. The market value of literary interest need
hardly be dwelt on. An interesting book, as
was suggested in our last article, becomes more
interesting when read in an edition of the au-
thor's own date, and first editions of famous
works are always prized. There is an interest in
subjects, moreover, as well as in authors and lit-
erary form. In an essay which is to appear at
Chicago it is hardly necessary to say that all
early volumes of travel, or descriptions of the
world, which contain references to America,

30
 Books on sports and pas-
fetch fancy prices.
times, on manners and occupations, more
especially whenthey relate to our creature
comforts, as in the case of cookery-books, are
at one end of the scale, and it is to be feared
that old books on theology, unless by famous
authors, occupy the other. On the other hand,
all prae-Reformation service-books and Bibles,

and Prayer-books printed before the sixteenth

century reached its fourth quarter, when in
good condition, fetch high prices. The fingers
of faithful readers have worn out the majority
of copies, and the few that survive in the con-
dition which collectors appreciate are valued
accordingly. As we have said already, rarity by
counts for little, but rarity as a discrimi-
itself
nating quality between one desirable book and
another has immense influence. The famous
Nuremberg Chronicle, with its countless pic-
tures, varies in price, according to condition,
from $50 to $200; the Hypnerotomachia Poli-
phili, the most famous of Venetian books,
fetches at most only about $600; we hold up
our hands in amazement when the i6a3 folio
of Shakespeare's plays sold for over $8,500.
is
Considering the intrinsic interest of these three
books these prices are relatively small, be-
all

cause, judged by the usual standards of rarity,

31
these books are relatively common. When
there is only one perfect copy of the 1623
Shakespeare which can come into the market
it should fetch $50,000. It is on this question
of rarity that expert advice can hardly be dis-
pensed with, though an energetic owner may
do much for himself with the aid of some
volumes of Mr. Slater's Bookprices Current
or Mr. Luther Livingston s companion work
on American Book Prices, in which the prices
of all (or most) books which have fetched
more than $50 at a London or New York
salesroom are recorded year by year. But the
simple notes here offered should at least en-
able the possessor of old books to pick out
from his shelves those which have the pri-
mary elements of value, and on these any good
book-seller will give an opinion at a moderate
fee, though he will be found fully able to
cope with any of the simple-hearted devices
employed to extract that opinion for nothing.
As to what should be sold and what kept,
the one sovereign test is that of replaceability.
An owner who does not care for eighteenth-
century history, or politics, or theology, if the
volumes containing them differ in no respect
from others in the old bookshops, may well
set his shelves free for occupants more to his

3a
taste. To resign one's self to keeping a book
permanently without any expectation of be-
ing tempted to read it is as little to the world's
benefit as the owner's. There should be no
mausoleums for books save in the British
Museum and the Library of Congress. So
long as they are saleable as more than waste
paper there must be some one waiting to read
them, to whom we are acting dog-in-the-
manger; When the waste -paper stage is
reached, the book must resign itself to its
metempsychosis.
But if a book be not easily replaceable, then
there is surely room for second thought ere it
be turned out of its home. A valuable book
cannot easily be found on the shelves of an
old library without being evidence of some
ancestor's foresight, literary taste, or as a col-
lector, and to banish this evidence from the
family archives seems hard measure. Such
books, more especially such as bear marks of
ownership, if they are once dispersed, though
they be replaced by other copies, will never
come back again with the same associations;
and they should be parted with as reluctantly
as any other heirlooms.

33
Ill THE KEEPING OF BOOKS
J^IKE human beings, books
have two methods o£
protection against damp
and dirt— their bindings,
or clothes, and the book-
cases and library build-
ings, which answer to our
houses. The relative im-
portance of these two defences has varied
with changing conditions. In modern Europe
specially built libraries date from about the
end of the fourteenth century. Before that
time cupboards in the stone walls of cloisters
housed the majority of books, and even when
they were in use, in the hands of monks sit-
ting at their cloister ''carrills,'' or in the
draughty rooms of private houses, they must
have been exposed to many vicissitudes of
damp and heat and cold. Hence most early
35
bindings that have come down to us are
notably substantial Metal bindings, it is true,
were used chiefly, if not exclusively, for large
service-books in the possession of rich churches.
But the earliest leather bindings and half-bind-
ings have mostly wooden sides, and when
wood was superseded by pasteboard the sides
were still made thick and strong. Further
to protect their contents, it was usual for
bindings to have clasps or ties, and in Italy
these were often placed not only across the
fore-edge, but at the top and bottom as
well. Thus tightly clasped, the thick paper
or vellum of old books was safe against
most accidents; and when it is remembered
that precious volumes were often carried
in a satchel, or case, for additional protec-
tion, there is nothing incredible in the stories
of books having been dropped in the sea,
like the Lindisfarne Gospels, or in a river,
as with Queen Margaret's Gospels, without
suffering any more serious damage than a
stain near the edges. Since the fourteenth
century the binding of books has been con-
tinually getting lighter, until we have reached
the ''leatherette,'* or whatever the material
is called, which clothes the modern ''pocket

edition,'' but would certainly not clothe it

36
for long were pocket editions ever carried
in the pocket.
Despite the tendency to lightness, good
bindings remain the best protection a book
can have, and a few words may be said as to
their use and abuse. Perhaps the first warn-
ing to be given is that bindings are expensive,
and that in more ways than one. One of the
charms of a binding is that it is the most
obvious means of imposing on a book its
owner's individuality, of making his copy
differ from every other copy. This, however,
tells both ways. If the new jacket which we

give to a book only marks our own bad taste,

or that of the jobbing bookbinder we employ,
the result will naturally be unsatisfactory, more
particularly if we have allowed the jobbing
binder to shave the margins and thus ruin the
appearance of the book and also its market
value. The most extreme instance of this
cropping I know
of is that of a copy of Blake's
Songs of Innocence, in the possession of Mr.
Locker-Lampson, of which he plaintively re-
corded that a previous owner had cut it down
to fit into the cover of an old washing-book
but, in a less degree, the mischief is continually
going on. Why binders should be so fond of
cropping is hard to see, but in intrusting any

37
but the very best firms with a book, it is advis-
able to give specific directions that the margins
are not to be cut at all or to exactly what di-
mensions they are to be reduced. In the case
of a book of any value it is also advisable to
give express directions that it is to be properly
sewn, and that its back and its head-band are
to be a real back and a real head-band, and not
shams* In most trade-bindings the leather
back plays a purely ornamental part and the
little ridges which run across it are only make-

believe. The true back in these books is a

piece of brown paper, and the cords or tapes
over which the sewing-threads are twisted,
instead of standing out to justify the ridges,
are sunk in little trenches sawn in the back of
the sheets of the book, much to their detri-
ment. These ''hollow -backs,*' as they are
called, were introduced because of the difficulty
of making a book printed on stiff paper open
easily if properly backed, but a book on bad
paper is not worth a pretty binding, and to
bind a good book thus is an insult. All the
strain in opening and shutting is thrown on
the joints, with the result, in a book which is
much used, that the back comes off bodily.
Sham—that is, glued on—head -bands are
equally objectionable, because when a shelf

38
is fulla book can only be pulled from its place
by the head-band> and if this is not properly
sewn it comes oft the leather of the back has
to be used instead, and this in its turn speedily
gets torn away. My pleasure in the posses-
sion of the bound volumes of the Oxford
English Dictionary is largely spoilt by the
straits to which I am reduced every time I use
them. These large books have hollow backs,
and there is therefore no means of pulling
them out from the shelf without risk of tear-
ing off the leather. The only way to get at
them is by clearing away the books on each
side so as to be able to take them by the mid-
dle, though even this involves some risk.
Volumes as heavy as these really require straps
which can be used as handles, a device largely
employed at the British Museum in the case
of bound volumes of the Times and other
newspapers.
When he has seen that his books have real
backs and real head-bands, the book-lover's
troubles in the matter of binding are still not
at an end. During the last sixty years the old
slow processes of tanning leathers have been
quickened by the use of sulphuric acid, and
various mineral dyes are employed to give
brilliancy to the colours of the leathers used

39
in binding. As long as the leathers are fresh
and moist the sulphuric acid is held in solution,
but in quite a few years' time the moisture is
dried up, and the acid causes the leather to
crumble away. The calf bindings of the six-
teenth century have lasted wonderfully, but all
modern calf is quite useless for permanent
binding, and morocco and pigskin are the only
leathers now obtainable which possess any
durability. Brilliant colours, even in these,
should be avoided, and not all of the plain
browns and reds are above suspicion. Fortu-
nately, since a committee of the Society of
Arts ''on Leather used for Bookbinding'* issued
itsvery useful report (obtainable at the society's
rooms, John-street, Adelphi, for a shilling) the
tanners have been aroused to the dangers of
the situation, and good binders in their turn
are making much more serious inquiry than of
yore into the quality of the leathers they use.
But inasmuch as a large class of buyers still
prefer the unsound but showy colours, it is
advisable that the book -lover who values
durability should make his wishes very clearly
understood. As already mentioned in a pre-
vious chapter, old bindings may be cleaned and
started on a new life by the moisture in them
being renewed with a dressing of furniture-

40
polish, lightly applied and quickly wiped clean.
The ideal dressing has not yet been discovered,
but any polish which does not dry quickly is
likely to be at least a palliative.
From the evils which have been described
most book-buyers are preserved by the mas-
terly inactivity which leads them to ignore the
binder's art altogether* The policy is unen-
terprising, and discourages the followers of a
very beautiful and useful art, but it must be
owned that the publishers' ''cases,'' with which
so many people are content, are often charm-
ingly pretty, and that those in cloth or in good
buckram (cheap buckram soon wears thread-
bare) possess a very fair degree of durability.
Fancy bindings in white paper or parchment,
or any other easily soiled material, are very
alluring when the shopman takes off their
grey paper covers and shows them as they
come fresh from the binder's; but unlfess the
paper covers are always to be kept on, which
would be absurd, they require to be housed
and handled with so much care that they bring
with them more anxiety than joy. If I may
go back for one moment to leather bindings, I
would say that we must beware of the same
danger in these also. Abinding so dainty
that it cannot be stood on a shelf without the

41
protection of a slip-case or box may well ex-
cite the kind of contempt which Hamlet felt
for Osric, or which any man who recognises
that there is work to do in the world feels for
a mere fop. A binding should protect its
book, and should not itself need protection*
The best French and Italian bindings of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have
gained in charm when they have been freely
handled by careful owners, and ornament so
elaborate or so delicate that it cannot stand
this is quite misplaced. Nor should orna-
ment ever be so profuse as to cover too large
a proportion of the leather, for the texture of
a really good piece of leather is so charming
in itself that it needs little further decoration.
When the leather is bad, or doubtfully leather
at all, as in some recent imitations of old
bindings, profuse gilding is a merit, since it
helps the deception. But with these imita-
tion bindings, which vulgarise and degrade old
masterpieces, no true lover of books is likely
to concern himself.
We must turn now from the clothes of
books to their dwelling-rooms, though prac-
say on this subject may
tically all there is to
be summed up in the sentence that in matters
of light, temperature, and ventilation, what is
best for theirowner will mostly be best for
the books. Enough light to keep the air
sweet and clean, enough ventilation to avoid
damp or the dryness of artificially heated
rooms, and a temperature which does not rise
or fall too suddenly, these are all requisites in
a pleasant living-room, and they are all neces-
sary for the proper housing of books. In ask-
ing for light it must be remembered that
books, like most human beings, though they
and not directly
like sunlight, like it diffused
in their eyes* Cloth cases and leather bind-
ings on which the sun is allowed to shine for
even a few hours a day rapidly fade, and the
leather thought not only to fade but to rot
is

as well, as if (though I do not myself believe

this) the actinic rays were directly injurious to
it In the year 1903, in which this essay is
being written, this danger may, of course, be
disregarded, and it is more to the point to con-
sider whether, as a precaution against floods,
all libraries should not be housed on the first

floor. But under normal conditions, even in

England, very serious mischief may be done
by direct sunlight, and I know of one library,
formerly noted for its fine bindings, in which
the reds have been reduced to yellows and the
browns to greys, with patches of their origi-
43
nal colours remaining, where some bar had
shielded the leather, as witnesses of the havoc
the sun has wrought. This is a narrow room
lit by windows in a gallery, through which the

sun could pour down at ten and eleven in the

morning, when nearly at its greatest intensity.
Such an arrangement is not likely to be found
in many houses, but it suggests that broad,
low windows are better in libraries than high
ones, and that where high ones are a necessity,
it may be well (in order to avoid daily manip-

ulation of blinds) to use for the upper panes

pale green or yellow glass, which lessens the
force of the sun s rays. It may be gathered

also that a south aspect is better for a library

than a west one, as even through quite low
windows the afternoon sun will shine directly '

onto the books ranged on the opposite wall.

Heat, especially when accentuated by im-
purity in the air caused by much tobacco
smoke, or by that now disappearing enemy,
gas, is very destructive to leather-bound books.
For this reason, as well as for convenience,
bookcases should not be much more than
eight feet high, as the air of a room is always
hottest near the ceiling. In the days of ad-
venturous youth I used to enjoy to the full
the delights of ''open access" at that be-

44
neficent institution with which the foresight
of Thomas Carlyle endowed English literary
folk, the London Library (before it was re-
built), by climbing the long ladders, meant
only for the staff, and roking among the top
shelves. The heat at those top shelves and
the foulness of the air were indescribable, and
the old bindings certainly showed the effect
of these conditions. The ugliest of book-
stacks is better than shelving carried to the
top of a lofty room.
Excessive sunlight and heat are injurious
chiefly to bindings, damp on the other hand
is destructive to the books themselves as well

as to their jackets, foxing the plates and de-

priving the paper of the size which keeps it
hard and strong. Damp is also a more subtle
enemy since it more often attacks from be-
hind than frontally, and glazing may only
accentuate the harm. If books smell musty

when the glass doors are opened it is time to

make sure that damp is not coming through
the wall. At all times it is important to see
that a glazed bookcase is adequately venti-
lated. Otherwise, when the temperature falls,
moisture collects on the inner side of the
glass, and this may be quite sufficient to do
harm.

45
 As to the advantages and disadvantages of
glass fronts much might be written. They
are almost a necessity when
valuable books
have to be housed, merely as a signal to igno-
rant persons that they really are valuable.
But precisely because glass has this deterrent
effect, it destroys the homeliness and friendli-
ness of a library, and in the country, where
dirt is so much less poisonous than in large
cities, it should be dispensed with as much as
possible. Of course, a country house has a
if

library chimney which smokes, then glass is as

needful as in London, Manchester, or any
English or American manufacturing town, but
a library chimney ought not to be allowed to
smoke. Ordinary dry country dust, unless
books are allowed to stand gaping on the
shelves, does very little harm. Still, it is well

to have no more of it than is unavoidable,

and the library floor should never be carpeted
all over, but should be polished and covered,
where necessary, with rugs that can be taken
away and cleaned and put down again without
any dust being sent flying all over the room.
As regards bookshelves, the most impor-
tant recommendation that can be made is that
they should be easily adjustable to any sizes
of books they may have to hold. No matter
46
how carefully dimensions are calculated fixed
shelves are a constant source of annoyance,
and nothing looks uglier than a bookcase in
which rows of small books are standing on
shelves much too tall for them, while else-
where large volumes are laid on their sides or
their fore edges because they have not space
to stand upright* Where the books fit well
with the height of the shelves allotted to them
there is no need to use ''falls/' which often
get torn, and in the case of small books some-
times hide the lettering. In place of falls
some owners lay strips of brown paper
careful
or cloth along the tops of their books, which
can be taken off and cleaned as often as neces-
sary. They certainly save the tops of the
books from dust, but ifthey are to look tidy
either the top level of the books must be
uniform all along the shelf, or else the cloth
must be weighted with shot so as to follow
the level of the books and keep its position.
It need hardly be said that the shelves of a
bookcase should never be either painted or
varnished, as it is impossible to prevent a book
which is at all heavy, or which stands for any
time in the same place, from sticking to the
shelf if the shelf offers it the smallest encour-
agement to do so.

47
 Lastly, the best means of keeping a book is

to read it. Mr. Locker- Lampson, who first

introduced me to the charm of old books, used
to tell a story of how, for some small imper-
fection, he once took back a rare book to a
famous binder, and how the old man exam-
ined the faulty cover, and then, looking at the
complainant over his spectacles, exclaimed re-
proachfully, ''Why, Mr. Locker, youVe been
reading itf It was a good story, but not to

the old binder's credit, for careful use is as

good for a book as moderate exercise for a
man s body. To be held in a healthy human
hand will postpone the need of furniture polish,
the dust is flicked off, the damp dispelled, and
every book on the shelf is the better for the
slight stir caused if only a single volume is taken
out and replaced. Only it must be remembered
that the most forgiving book will reap but
little profit from its jaunt if it be held in front

of the fire, laid down on its face in order that

the reader's ''place'' may not be lost, dogs-
eared with the same intent, devoured in con-
junction with buttered toast, or submitted to
the last and worst indignity of having its leaves
turned with a wetted finger. This trick is so
disgusting that an apology seems required for
even mentioning it, but one who watches
48
many readers knows that though dying out it

is not yet extinct and that more especially it

clings to the man who has risen in the world,
when every other trace o£ a bad education has
been overcome. All such disrespectful tricks
should be cured early. We sometimes treat
books too superstitiously, as if the words of a
silly person became any wiser by a printer's
time having been wasted over them. But the
worst and most foolish of books does share so
far in the divinity of the noblest that until the
day comes for it to be pulped, its outward form
should be held sacred.

49
IV. ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE
COLLECTOR
*—''^^N an earlier chapter we
have incidentally vindi-
cated book-collectors
from the charge of folly
which the existence of
the silly word ''biblioma-
nia/' and misunderstand-
ing of Sebastian Branf s
meaning in his Narrenschiff, have caused to
be brought against them* Incidentally, also,
we have looked at the effects of age, rarity,
and some other causes on the prices of old
books. But up to this point we have been
concerned exclusively with the book-buyer
who buys to read, and our excursions into the
theory of collecting have been caused only by
our having to consider the case of the reader
of modern literature who finds himself pos-

5^

/
sessed of a library of old books which he does
not know what to do with* It seems worth
while now to devote a few pages to a talk
about collecting, which in itself is quite a dif-
ferent thing from the formation of a library,
though it is from this that it has developed.
That the development is a natural one may be
argued from the fact that it has occurred more
than once. There were collectors very much
of the modern kind in the days of the Roman
Empire, men who prided themselves not so
much on the number of their books as on their
beauty and fine condition. Despite the fact
that he loved ''plenty/' this, indeed, was the
attitude of Sebastian Brant's book-fool, though
his folly consisted, not in the fact that he col-
lected, but in his confession, ''What they
mean do I not understand." "But yet,*' he
says—

" But yet I have them in great reverence

And honour, saving them from filth and
ordure.
By often brushing and much diligence.
Full goodly bound, in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure,
Ikeep them sure, fearing they should be lost
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.
5^
But i£ it fortune that any learned men
Within my house fall to disputation,
Idraw the curtains to show my bookes then
That they of my cunning should make proba-
tion;
Ikeepe not to fall in altercation;
And while they commune, my books I turn
and wind.
For all is in them, and nothing in my mind/'

In this second stanza we have in the best

verse that Alexander Barclay, Brant's trans-
lator, could write, the common gibe of schol-
ars at the rich man whobuys books which
they would like themselves, but cannot afford.
Let it be granted that the gibe is not unnat-
ural. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
it was very natural indeed. Despite the in-
vention of printing, books were still scarce
and expensive, and one great scholar, Isaac
Casaubon, is even said to have taken to him-
self a wife in order to obtain access to his
father-in-law's library, a manoeuvre which met
with no more success than it deserved. Even
to-day the grievance of the poor student is
not quite extinct. I have been trying myself

for several years to obtain any kind of a

copy, no matter how imperfect, of the 1598

53
edition of Sidney's Arcadia, But they are all
in collector's libraries, save a few in public
ownership, and not even a large fragment is
obtainable. Nevertheless on any fair balance
the debt of the literary student to the antiqua-
rian collector is beyond all calculation. But
for him, for his extravagance in buying and
care in keeping, whole sections of literature
would have gone out of existence altogether,
or have been preserved in a more imperfect
and mutilated form than is the case. Students
of literature, and still more perhaps the pro-
fessors of it, being human, are as subject to
the influence of fashion and taste as the most
casual subscribers to a circulating^ibrary, and
though in our own day we may well imagine
that there is no period of literature whose least
worthy products some one will not be ready
to admire and exalt, it yet remains probable
that our eyes are still shut to some beauties
which our successors will be able to perceive
if only Time be not allowed to sweep the

books away ere the generation which can ad-

mire them is born. It is in thus resisting the
ravages of Time, in gleaning where he seems
to have done his worst, that the collector jus-
tifies his existence, and in our light-hearted
talk of literary immortality we often forget

54
how largely this immortality depends on the
good will of antiquarian collectors.
Perhaps the arrogance of the literary critic

was never more strikingly exemplified than in

a remark of the late Mr. H. D. Traill in one of
the early numbers of " Literature," a weekly
paper begun with much flourishing of trum-
pets, but which, despite Mr. Traill's possession
of most of the gifts of a literary editor, never
thrived. There had been talk, with only too
much reason, of the badness of modern paper,
and Mr. Traill, in impulsive contradiction, la-
mented that any paper should be made which
could last more than a century. If during a

hundred years no one cared to reprint a book,

it was clearly not wanted, and that libraries,

public or private, should be blocked with un-

read books was purely a misfortune.
So in the mood of the moment wrote Mr.
Traill who could well afford to make a mis-
take, and the mistake was indeed worth making,
because of the curious results of an examina-
tion into how his rule would have worked
had it been made retrospective. Of
the poets
who died before Charles I. was king, I think
only Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare would
have survived. All the rest would have suc-
cumbed during the century and a half of in-
55
differenceand neglect which separates Herrick's
Hesperides and Noble Numbers from the Lyri-
cal Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Herrick himself reappeared in 1825. Surrey
and Wyatt were edited by Dr. Nott in 1815,
Gower's Confessio Amantis by Pauli in 1857.
Sidney's Astrophel and Stella was brought to
life with his other shorter works in 1829. ^^^
Arcadia, which retained its popularity for a
century and a halt has not been reprinted in
its though an abridgment
entirety since lysg,
was published by Hain Friswell in 1867, and a
fac-simile of the incomplete first edition was
edited by Dr. H. Oskar Sommer a few years
ago. Thelength of the Arcadia, of course,
has stood in its way, and it is only recently
that modern publishers have plucked up heart
to attack some of the longer masterpieces.
The translation of Frossart by Lord Berners,
which by Mr. Traill's rule would have per-
ished twice over between Middleton s edition
in the sixteenth century and the reprint of
i8ia, would have had another narrow escape,
since eighty-nine years elapsed between this
last and Professor Ker's edition in 1901. Hol-
inshed has never been reprinted in full since
1587. Hakluyt has fared better, and even
Perclas's Pilgrims are now to reappear.

56
Raleigh's History of the World is not likely
to find a new publisher, and even Camden's
(though a far more manageable work) has
lacked one since i635» Thanks to Dodsley's
Old Plays, etc., Elizabethan dramatists would
have survived the application of Mr* Traill's
rule in single specimens, but no new collected
editions were published till the beginning of
the nineteenth century. As to the smaller
men, such as Nash, Greene, Lodge, Breton,
Churchyard, and many others, though their
names are enshrined in histories of literature,
had it not been for collectors their works would
have perished utterly.
The truth which has been illustrated in this
haphazard way for some of the masterpieces
of English literature holds equally for those of
any other country. We are familiar with the
long sleep of the classical Greek writers, and
the ravages wrought during it with their works,
but we hardly realize, perhaps, how much of
Latin literature survived the Middle Ages by
the ''skin of its teeth." Some authors now
neglected were then widely read. Seneca, for
instance, and Statius. Others, such as Virgil
and Ovid have enjoyed continuous vogue.
But Lucretius and Catullus very nearly perished.
Much of Livy, we know, has gone, and the
57
Annals o£ Tacitus only survived under circum-
stances which caused the finder of them to be
branded as a forger. The list might be much
extended, and it is a striking commentary on
the narrowness of modern classical scholarship
that many minor Greek and Latin authors can
still only be obtained in sixteenth-century
editions, zeal in reprinting being almost en-
tirelyconfined to Germany. In so far, then,
as the lives of books depend upon the care of
the professional guardians of literature, it is
evident that they have fared badly in the past,
nor can we, despite our modern activity, feel
any certainty that they will fare superlatively
well in the future. The nineteenth century re-
discovered Elizabethan and Jacobean literature,
and rejoiced to reprint it, with much won-
derment at the neglect into which it had fallen.
Possibly, before it has run its course, the
twentieth century may rediscover the eigh-
teenth, and reprint its minor poetry with as
much self-congratulation as we have felt at
the recovery of Campion and the other song-
writers of his day. Meanwhile it is the function
of the collector, by surveying books from a
different standpoint, to lessen the risks of their
going out of existence before they have had
their second chance. It may be granted that.
if large funds are at their disposal this function
will be performed still better by great libraries.
But the modern conception, so excellent in
itself,of a library as a literary workshop is
not likely to encourage in the future those an-
tiquarian tendencies, which, while often making
librarians of the old school churlish to their
daily visitors, yet helped them greatly in build-
ing up the collections which are now our
delight* The librarians of those days were in
factthemselves collectors, nor must it be for-
gotten that it is to the bequests of individual
book-hunters that the great historic libraries
now owe some of their chief attractions. The
Bodleian Library, which, by its founder's wish,
paid little attention to the ''light literature" of
the great period amid which it grew up, and
which turned out the Shakespeare Folio of
i6a3 when it obtained a later edition, would
be in a far less enviable position were it not
for the splendid bequests of Rawlinson, Tanner,
Malone and Donee. Without the privately
formed collections of George III. and Thomas
Grenville, even the £10,000 a year which the
British Museum for half a century had to
spend on books would have been unavailing
to supply its gaps. The private collector does
indeed reach his apotheosis when he thus

59
gives to the community the results, not only i

o£ his expenditure, but o£ the skill and judg- i

ment by which it has been guided. But even

if he shows no such liberality, he is still a most j

useful factor in thepreservation of books. |

For him agents traverse Europe in search of

neglected volumes; it is the memories of the
high prices he is willing to give that stays the
destroyers' hands; it is by his care that soiled, |

and torn leaves are cleaned, and sized,

fragile, ;

and mended. He has committed many crimes

in the past. He commits some even at the
present day, despite all attempts at guidance.
To please his pride, his Dogberry -like deter-
mination to have everything handsome about
him, countless old bindings have been ripped
off to be replaced by new morocco bearing
the owner's arms. The inoffensive stains of
age have been cleaned away, though ink and
paper both suffer in the process. The old ar-
rangements of the sheets are ignored in resew-
ing, and two or more slightly imperfect copies
are used to make one, so-called, perfect one, ]

though these made-up copies smell of the |

hospital, and can give no pleasure to any justly I

fastidious taste. Yet with all the faults for

which collectors can be held responsible, they |

are a most useful race, the more useful, per-

haps, in proportion as the books they collect
are more remote from popular tastes. A libra-
rian whohas done splendid service in spread-
ing the ''workshop" ideal among his fellows
complained the other day that we know more
about the books of the fifteenth century, and
the printers of them, than about those of our
own day* It was a splendid testimonial to the
antiquarian zeal of collectors and students of
this branch of bibliography. For the ordinary
book-buyer to keep books which he never has
read and never will read is useless and waste-
ful. They cumber and help to give
his shelves
him a distaste for reading altogether. But to
have the same books regarded from another
standpoint by a collector who can form friend-
ships with them on other grounds, this is a
real advantage to the community, and one that
excuses many occasional errors and extrava-
gances.
id
V- HOW TO COLLECT
NY one who finds him-
self buying a book, new
or old, for any other rea-
son than a desire to read
it will do well to ask
himself, as speedily as
possible, what aim he has
in view. To buy books
except for the sake of reading them constitutes
the buyer, though by a single instance, a col-
lector, and to collect aimlessly is a mere waste
of money, and possibly also of time. Col-
lecting may begin in the humblest and
most insidious of ways. If I buy a book, of
which I already possess a reasonably good
edition, merely because it is prettily printed, I
have to confess to myself that I do it because
I am tempted to become a collector of speci-

mens of fine printing. As it is a little danger-

63
ous for literary folkwith children to educate
to collect anything at all I try to compromise
by getting rid of the less attractive edition
every time I buy a prettier one* But this is
only a ruse which would not even deceive the
lady who shares the educational responsibility
aforesaid, did she require deceiving. Her own
temptations lie in the not very expensive di-
rection of all the editions of Jane Austen s
novels that have ever been printed. This is a
rather common form of introduction to book-
collecting, and only becomes dangerous when
the writer selected began inconveniently early.
The late Mr. R. C. Christie, a genuine scholar
and collector, had a special fondness for
Horace, and brought together over eight hun-
dred different editions. Another book-lover,
Mr. Waterton, collected all the editions of the
Imitatio Christi which he could acquire, and
at the time of his death, if I remember rightly,
possessed over thirteen hundred of them.
All of these not already on its shelves were
purchased by the British Museum, and the
fact that the whole of the Museum collection,
thus reinforced, passed through my hands
during the process of recataloguing did not
diminish the distaste I have always felt for
this particular form of collecting. In it, as a

64
rule, the individual books become mere ciphers,
interestingnot for their own sake, but as
proving the comparative popularity of the
work and at different
in different countries
times, and this only in a rough and ready
fashion, since the number of editions is a poor
guide unless we also know the size of them.
In any case, a list of the edition tells the tale
as well as, or better than, the books them-
selves, and the collector's mission sinks to that
of providing the raw material for the bibli-
ographer. Where the author of a book has
not lived so inconveniently early as S. Thomas
a Kempis, or where only editions printed
within his century are collected, the task is
less burdensome, and more remunerative.
Thus Mr. Wise, Mr. Buxton Foreman, Mr.
Gosse, and others have done excellent workin
bringing to light the stray printing of various
English writers of the nineteenth century,
though they have also all yielded to the temp-
tation to create artificial rarities by obtaining
leave to print various small pieces in private
editions, an amusement which recalls some of
the special-stamp issues of insignificant gov-
ernments.
If in this one direction a form of book-

collecting which starts from the collector's

65
own literary tastes may lead to doubtful re-
sults, the fact remains that it is by following
their own tastes that collectors are most
likely to promote the cause of learning and
literature* The student possessed of a wide,
or even a moderate, knowledge of his own
special subject, by turning his attention to the
books illustrating the history of its develop-
ment may do work which no librarian and no
bibliographer as such can possibly emulate.
The philological works brought together by
Prince Lucien Bonaparte, the library of polit-
ical economy amassed by Professor Foxwell,
are two examples that have attracted notice
of recent years, of the admirable results at-
tained by this expert collecting of this kind.
It is only fair, however, to add that its pecu-
niary results are exceptionally hazardous. Un-
less a fund can be raised to buy the collection
for presentation to some new institution it is
almost impossible to dispose of, even at a sac-
rifice, without division, and this though it does

not really diminish its usefulness, is a sad

alternative as seeming to deprive the collector
of the legitimate monument of his skill.

On a small scale, and for collectors who will

not allow themselves to pay too heavily in the
struggle towards the completeness which can
66
never be attained, subject-collecting is the
easiest, the cheapest, and the most obviously
rational form the pleasure can take. It is also

probably the most popular, as witness the

great rise in the prices of old books on gar-
dening, sport, costume, cookery, and other sub-
jects in which widely diffused. The
interest is

newcomer who wishes to walk along these

paths will need a fairly long purse, but the
variety of subjects is and there are
endless,
still plenty in which books may be bought
cheaply enough.
When we pass from collecting books for
their subjects to collecting them for their out-
ward form we pass into a much more limited
hunting-ground, and yet one which has been
worked with a curious lack of system. Am-
ateurs of the historical side of printing have,
indeed, been systematic enough in searching
some small corners of the field, as is testified
by the complaint already quoted, that the his-
tory of the presses of the fifteenth century is
better known than that of those of our own
day. But the later history of printing is almost
entirely neglected, to the distinct disadvantage
of learning, since as long as printers are inter-
mediaries between authors and readers a
knowledge of their ways in each generation
67
may at any moment be of use in deciding lit-
erary problems.
On its aesthetic side also the collection of
specimens of printing, as such, has been too
much confined to very early books. Good
work was proportionally more plentiful in the
fifteenth century has been since, but
than it

there was plenty also of bad even in those

days, and at least some good in almost every
generation from then till now. Mr. R. C.
Christie, whose Horace collection I have al-
ready mentioned, turned his attention also to
the output of the Lyonnese presses of the
middle of the sixteenth century, and Owens
College, Manchester, has been enriched by a
very charming collection as a result of his
hobby. It is astonishing to me that no English
or American book-lover has set himself to
acquire the books printed by the Chiswick
Press, which would illustrate the history of
nineteenth- century printing at its best, and
form a most amusing and interesting series.
That any printer or publisher can abstain
from seeking representative specimens of fine
book-making at different periods seems to me
curiously foolish. The experiments of his
predecessors must surely be not only of inter-
est, but of commercial value, and his own

68
possession of some expert knowledge ought to
enable him to expend to the best advantage a
couple of hundred pounds in acquiring half
as many representative specimens. The sum
named may seem surprisingly small but when
literary value and rarity are set aside, good
printing of itself is not at present excessively
priced in the book-market and bargains may
still be made.
When we turn from the printing of books
to their illustration we find the same excessive
competition for the earliest specimens, in which
it must be confessed, though they are my own

particular hobby, that the cuts are often more

quaint than beautiful. Later work is com-
paratively neglected, and offers a fine opportu-
nity for a collector blessed with good taste to
bring together a charming series of specimens
at a cost not exceeding what he might have to
pay for even two or three masterpieces of the
fifteenth century. The books with illustra-
tionson copper, set in with the text, though
of course by a separate impression, which
ousted the old woodcuts from popular favor
during the second half of the sixteenth century,
may be recommended to the judicious pur-
chaser, and good English work of the succeed-
ing century, unless in the form of frontispieces

69
to literary rarities, does not yet command an
excessive price. The French illustrated books
of the eighteenth century are much more ex-
pensive, since they have long been prized by
collectors, who have carried the fashion of
extra -illustrating with proof impressions or
suppressed plates, to extreme lengths. It must
be said, also, that many of these livres a vi-
gnettes are more fit for the top shelf or the
locked cabinet than for the drawing-room ta-
ble, and reflect more credit on the skill of the
artist than on his sense of decency or that of
his employers. The English barons of this
period, often illustrated by French artists, are
free from this defect, but have less artistic
merit, while the custom of ''hot-pressing" then
prevalent in England has frequently caused
''foxing," a calamity easily evaded by the rich
collector who can pick his copies, but which
produces great disappointment to less wealthy
book-hunters. To these copper engravings
succeeded the woodcuts and illustrations of the
school of Bewick, and then the wonderful steel-
plate engravings after designs by Turner and
other artists. Collectors who turn their atten-
tion to any of these, though they raise prices,
will yet confer genuine benefits on the histo-
rians of English book-work, since for lack of

n
eager purchasers it is to be feared that many
of the books are going out of existence, and in
a short time no proper record of them will be
obtainable.
During recent years a steady effort has been
made to interest collectors in the books illus-
trated by English artists in the '6o's, but fine
as the woodcuts often are in design, and some-
times also in execution, no great success has
attended their attempts, because the print, pa-
per, and ornaments by which the pictures are
accompanied are so wretchedly poor as to spoil
the pleasure a book-lover would naturally take
in the pictures themselves.
Books remarkable for excellence in their
ornamental borders and initials form another
group which invite the attention of judicious
collectors. There is a great tendency now to im-
itate to the point of weariness a few fifteenth-
century border-pieces and initial letters to
which attention has been drawn. It would be
better if our book-artists tried to work with ori-
ginality on the same lines as the old craftsmen,
instead of slavishly copying their work. But if

old work is to be imitated, a wider knowledge

of it must be desired, and collectors might help

this by gathering representative specimens and

giving little exhibitions at their clubs.

7^
 One special class of initial letter, though by
no means to be imitated cries aloud for a col-
lector on account of its curiosity. About
1540, or perhaps a little earlier, some Vene-
tian publishers began to ornament their books
with initials designed on the plan of the
rhymes, ''A was an Archer who shot at a
frog, B was a Butcher who had a great dog,"
so dear to our childhood. In books on sacred
subjects, A might show Abraham sacrificing
his son, B Balaam and his ass, C Cain, and
so on. These designs are mostly fairly easily
explained, though it is sometimes necessary to
remember that the forms of scripture names
prevalent in Italy in the sixteenth century dif-
fer from those with which we are familiar.
The mythological sets are much more diffi-
cult, and I have often thought of reproducing
a dozen of them and offering a prize for the
best guesses. The books in which these in-
itials occur are mostly quite cheap, and a col-
lection of them would be very amusing.
Such are some of the forms which col-
lecting might profitably take in the hands of
amateurs of the outward form of books, who
have sufficient good taste to distinguish good
work from bad, or sufficient interest in the
history of printing to care to epitomize it in a

7%
collection in which the bad work of each cen-
tury should be represented as well as the good.
Other accidents in the lives of books have
sometimes attracted special students. There
are those who have collected books that have
been condemned by the Inquisition or other
censors, books written in prison, books dedi-
cated to famous persons, or books printed
(mostly until recent days very badly) at pri-
vate presses. To enumerate all the possible
characteristics which have allured collectors is
no part of our task. Practically all collecting
is good if it have a which leads
definite aim,
the collector to rescue books from destruction,
and add to knowledge by classifying and cata-
loguing them. The positive results may not
always be great, even relatively; may some-
times seem small indeed; but the joy of the
hunt is perennial, and this is the collector's
chief reward.

73
t"^
VL THE CHILD'S BOOKSHELF
N essay on Books in the
home would be very in-
complete without a few
words on those often rag-
ged, mostly untidy, shelves
i>: on which boys and girls,

_ as soon as they have

^ learned to read, begin to
place their poor literary treasures. If educa-

tion means anything, this foot or two of shelv-

ing is just the most important thing in the
whole house, for on it more than on anything
else depends what will be the child's tastes in
after life. Yet in this matter parents often
show a most strange and culpable indiffer-
ence. Books, we said at the outset of this
little essay, must be our friends. No other
relation between us and them (save in the
case of mere works of reference) can be per-

75
manently Now, when we are
profitable*
grown up the right to choose our own friends
is one of the most precious of human prerog-

atives. But while we are still young if our

child's library is to wait until the stream of
folly has run dry it may wait long indeed.
Taking things as they are/ two suggestions may
be offered which will perhaps prove useful.
In the first place, let donors of books be very
slow indeed to put inscriptions in them; and
secondly let there be in each house a general
children's library, in addition to the bookshelf
which each child regards as peculiarly its own.
The thread which links these two suggestions
is the idea put in the forefront of this article,

that any library worthy of the name must be the

result of individual choice, and that the exercise
of this power of choice cannot be begun too
early. Now, to the free exercise of choice,
more especially in the case of an affectionate
child, inscriptions offer a great obstacle. I

have books on my own shelves now which I

have never read and never shall read, but
which I cannot bear to part with, because they
carry on their fly-leaves the names of dearly
loved doners who made these mistakes in their
Christmas or birthday presents. The books
they gave me which I really liked are, alas

76
mostly gone, thumbed to pieces with a child's
carelessness. Only these indigestible pieces
remain, and I would gladly burn them i£ I
could do so reverently. But no one who has
not tried to burn a book can have any idea o£
how difficult a feat it is, and to do it rever-
ently is impossible, except in a crematorium.
Our remote forefathers used toburn or bury
with the dead the possessions which they had
held dear in life. From a different motive I
should like these poor relics to perish with me*
To expect my children to house them for the
reasons that I do would be exacting; but that
they should appear in the Fourpenny Box with
their inscriptions erased or torn out seems an
impiety. Let the book-giver have a thought
for these difficulties. ''If you like the book

very much, a year hence I will write your

name in it; if not, do what you like with it.''
Surely this would be a wise saying. The un-
favoured books might remain awhile in the
general stock and then be weeded out. If it

can be done in honest good will, they should

be passed on to other children; if not, there is
always the paper-maker to give them a fresh
chance of usefulness.
The general library in the nursery or school-
room should not be confined to these experi-

77
mental presents* Into it the wise parent will
place from time to time, without much com-
ment plenty of miscellaneous books on which
young readers may browse with advantage,
and when a book has been read and honestly
liked, the reader may well be allowed to ap-
propriate it. In this way and with the sur-
vival of the fittest among the gift-books the
child's private bookshelf will gradually become
tenanted. Yet these two sources of increase
may well be supplemented by a third. From
among the books read aloud to them by their
elders, from those they meet with in the
houses of friends, from those recommended
by really careful guides with a knowledge of
individual tastes and capacities, there must be
some which a boy or girl will feel a real desire
to buy, and as they reach years of what may
be called ''minor discretion,'' at ten, twelve, or
fourteen, according to their development, to
give the boy or girl a dollar every three months
specifically to buy books with, is the best pos-
sible educational investment. The choice may
be very gently criticised, but it should be left
as free as possible, or the value of the experi-
ence will be half destroyed.
It is inevitable that our friends should to

some extent be chosen for us, or rather that

78
our power of choice should be limited to se-
lection from among companions presented to
us by authority. Unfortunately in the matter
of book-friends authority is very lightly as-
sumed and very carelessly exercised. If an
uncle or aunt or any other well-meaning per-
son sent boys or girls to play with our children
with all the forms of a personal recommenda-
tion, but really without taking any trouble to
find out what their influence would be likely
to be, we should strongly resent it. Yet
Christmas after Christmas books are sent to
children, with inscriptions expressive of love
and affection, the donors having never read a
chapter of them, but having chosen them
solely on the ground of a taking title or pretty
pictures. The mischief thus wrought is really
great. We wonder at the force of tradition
in schools, and yet what boy goes to school
without having had books given him to read
in which schoolmasters are treated as his
natural enemies, often as ''cads'' or ''sneaks,"
and the piggishness of the dormitory supper is
held up as the height of bliss? Or, again,
how much nonsense is put into girls' heads
by love-stories with heorines of sixteen, or by
weakly religious tales exhibiting a combina-
tion of theoretical humility with gross spiritual

79
self-consciousness, which isonly too easily
imitated? If donors will not take the trouble

to read the books they give away they might

minimise their risks by choosing those which
other people have read and approved. There
are plenty of bad books which reach second
editions, but books which appear a second and
third year upon the market are not likely to be
among the worst and if anything can be done
to lessen the craze for novelty it will be some-
thing to the good. George Henty had no
small gifts as a story-teller, but to make an
income he had to turn out his three books
every year, and even then could have made
but a poor one had not the boys and girls of
America reinforced his English readers. What
wonder that his plots became mechanical and
his style ragged? Lazy book-buyers have no
right to be adventurous. They should leave
the newest books to donors who will take
some trouble, and who are rich enough, if they
find they have made a mistake, to put a bad
book in the fire instead of giving it away. It
may be said in passing that there would sel-
dom be need to take such a course if reviewers
of Christmas books were decently consci-
entious and courageous enough to exact a
reasonably high standard. Here again the
craze for novelty is disastrous. The crowd of
new books is so great that a dozen have to be
noticed in a column. To read a book of 400
pages carefully enough to give an honest ver-
dict on it to compress this verdict into ten or
twelve lines which have, if possible, to be
made amusing, and then to receive three or
four shillings as your wage, is very poor busi-
ness. Yet these are the conditions under
which the bulk of Christmas books are re-
viewed in the very best newspapers, and the
fault does not rest with editors, but must be
shared between the public and the publishers
who both are crazy for novelties.
There remains the material question— given
the child's library or bookshelf, where is it to
be placed? The answer to this is unluckily
rather difficult. If it is in the same room as

the general stock, the two are certain to get

mixed, and with the invasion of the private
shelf by alien volumes all pride and pleasure in
it are like to disappear. On the other hand,
to books in bedrooms, until the age of measles,
mumps, and chicken-pox is passed, there are
very strong objections. In some houses a land-
ing outside the bedroom may offer a safe, if
rather cold and unindividual, site for a simple
bookcase. In other homes a nook may be

81
found for it morning-room, or any place
in a
to which the owner may have free access.
Only the nook, if in a frequented room, should
be as inconspicuous as possible, lest the shelf
attract too much attention and a habit of mind
be cultivated which might lead to the acquisi-
tion of the Best Hundred Books. Where ex-
pense forms no great obstacle the glazed single
shelves, which can be built up, as more are
handsome bookcase, have
acquired, into a fairly
many advantages. But the housing must never
be allowed to be more important than the books,
and any ostentation should be quietly discour-
aged.
With a little care, a watchfulness, and
little

at the same time a little self-denial on the part

of would-be advisers too much inclined to force
a child's taste instead of allowing it to develop
naturally, the bookshelf thus formed in early
days will become the forerunner of many
others,and the habit of bookbuying begun un-
der these conditions will probably remain
through life. After all, it is a good habit.
Even when it becomes unusually pronounced
it may coexist, as in the classic case of Arthur

Pendennis, with other expensive tastes, but

more often it takes the place of them, and the
number of people who have ruined themselves
8a
by bookbuying is probably even smaller than
that of the few, of whom we sometimes hear
too much, who have found it pecuniarily, a
good investment. Nor surely was the need of
a love of literature, and all that literature car-
ries with it, ever more urgent than in the
present day, when enormous wealth is so lightly
acquired, and the man who has the money-
making instinct may find himself at middle age
possessed of a power compared to which that
of the medieval baron, with his private gallows,
was but a trifle. In the early days of ''Popular
Educators'' reading was advertised as a panacea
against poverty; there is as much need of it
nowadays as a guide to the right use of wealth,
nor is it possible too early or too earnestly to
take thought that a child shall be led to the
best culture to which, by natural development,
boy or girl can attain.

83
 This edition of Books in the House'' con-
**

sists of 500 copies on hand-made paper 65 10

on Imperial Japan Parchment*
Designed by 65 printed under the supervis-
ion of Ralph Fletcher Seymour at the press of
R. R. Donnelley 65 Sons Co., in Chicago, for
the publishers.
The Bobbs- Merrill Company,
Indianapolis, Ind., U. S* A.