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The Library By: Andrew Lang (1844-1912) |
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Contents: PREFATORY NOTE
AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK HUNTER
THE LIBRARY
THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Books, books again, and books once more!
These are our theme, which some miscall
Mere madness, setting little store
By copies either short or tall.
But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
We rather write for you that hold
Patched folios dear, and prize "the small,
Rare volume, black with tarnished gold."
A. D. PREFATORY NOTE The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the
exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de
Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has
also written on early printed books (pp. 94 95). The pages on the
Biblioklept (pp. 46 56) are reprinted, with the Editor's kind
permission, from the Saturday Review; and a few remarks on the moral
lessons of bookstalls are taken from an essay in the same journal. Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub
Librarian of the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs
of chapters I., II., and III., and suggested some alterations. Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls
College, for two plates from his "Book bindings in All Souls
Library" (printed for private circulation), which he has been good
enough to lend me. The plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by
Dr. J. J. Wild. Messrs. George Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury,
Agnew, & Co., and Messrs. Chatto & Windus, must be thanked for the
use of some of the woodcuts which illustrate the concluding chapter.
A. L. AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK HUNTER "All men," says Dr. Dibdin, "like to be their own librarians." A
writer on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the
books that even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to
collect. There are books which no lover of literature can afford to
be without; classics, ancient and modern, on which the world has
pronounced its verdict. These works, in whatever shape we may be
able to possess them, are the necessary foundations of even the
smallest collections. Homer, Dante and Milton Shakespeare and
Sophocles, Aristophanes and Moliere, Thucydides, Tacitus, and
Gibbon, Swift and Scott, these every lover of letters will desire
to possess in the original languages or in translations. The list
of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the
tastes of men begin to differ very widely. An assortment of
broadsheet ballads and scrap books, bought in boyhood, was the
nucleus of Scott's library, rich in the works of poets and
magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists. A childish liking for
coloured prints of stage characters, may be the germ of a theatrical
collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin. People who
are studying any past period of human history, or any old phase or
expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little contemporary
volumes which seem trash to other amateurs. For example, to a
student of Moliere, it is a happy chance to come across "La Carte du
Royaume des Pretieuses" (The map of the kingdom of the
"Precieuses") written the year before the comedian brought out his
famous play "Les Precieuses Ridicules." This geographical tract
appeared in the very "Recueil des Pieces Choisies," whose authors
Magdelon, in the play, was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille
made his appearance. There is a faculty which Horace Walpole named
"serendipity," the luck of falling on just the literary document
which one wants at the moment. All collectors of out of the way
books know the pleasure of the exercise of serendipity, but they
enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home hugging a volume
of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which
would have distended the pockets even of the wide great coat made
for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a
book hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the
plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne... Continue reading book >>
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