BALLADE OF A POOR BOOK-LOVER
I
Though in its stern vagaries Fate
A poor book-lover me decreed,
Perchance mine is a happy state—
The books I buy I like to read:
To me dear friends they are indeed,
But, howe’er enviously I sigh,
Of others take I little heed—
The books I read I like to buy.
II
My depth of purse is not so great
Nor yet my bibliophilic greed,
That merely buying doth elate:
The books I buy I like to read:
Still e’en when dawdling in a mead,
Beneath a cloudless summer sky,
By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed,
The books I read—I like to buy.
III
Some books tho’ tooled in style ornate,
Yet worms upon their contents feed,
Some men about their bindings prate—
The books I buy I like to read:
Yet some day may my fancy breed
My ruin—it may now be nigh—
They reap, we know, who sow the seed:
The books I read I like to buy.
ENVOY
Tho’ frequently to stall I speed,
The books I buy I like to read;
Yet wealth to me will never hie—
The books I read I like to buy.
Two things there are which go to make the price of a book—first the book itself, its scarcity, together with the urgency of the demand for it (a book may be unique and yet practically valueless, because of the fact that no one much cares to have it); and second, the plentifulness of money, or the ease with which its owner may have acquired his fortune. No one will suppose that, at the famous auction in London something over a hundred years ago, when Earl Spencer bid two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds for the famous Boccaccio, and the Marquis of Blandford added, imperturbedly, “ten,” and secured the prize—no one will suppose that either of the gentlemen had a scanty rent-roll.