It is an excellent specimen of the smug self-satisfaction, the Chadbandian cant, the affectation of altruism which marked the middle of the nineteenth century, particularly in the regions lying about West Newton. Cheap enough withal it seems to be, for as he could never by any chance become “the possessor of all the autographs in the world”, his expression of preference signifies nothing whatever. The formula is simple enough. Select something which sounds noble and unselfish and then say that you would rather do that thing than to have—all the diamonds, all the pictures, all the Caxtons, all the gold mines, all the puppy-dogs and all the tabby-cats in the universe. It is in contemporaneous vernacular, a safe “bluff”. If he had said that he would rather perform one useful act for his fellow men than to be the owner of a hundred shares of Standard Oil, it would have had some meaning, for one could then measure the precise extent of his devotion to the welfare of mankind. One may naturally inquire, why not have all the autographs in the world and do not one but many useful acts for one’s fellow men? There is no inherent incompatibility between the two ideas.
It may be suggested that the subject of books about books and the gathering of autographs are not cognate; that they have no relation to each other; that they are illegally joined together in defiance of the laws laid down in Day’s Praxis. I knew a dignified New England author, lawyer and soldier who was accustomed, when assailed by a proposition to which he did not assent, but which he was too polite to dispute, to close discussion by the sententious remark, “That indeed”. I never fully understood precisely what it meant, but it seemed to be conclusive for there was no more to be said. It was like some of the cryptic utterances of that model of concise expression, Mr. F’s aunt. But I maintain that the man who truly covets autographs, covets books likewise for the sake of the books themselves, irrespective of style or contents. It may be one of Mr. Crother’s One Hundred Worst Books, but all the more precious for that very reason. My point is easily demonstrated by a logical device not uncommonly adopted by those who manufacture our opinions for us in the public press. The man who—to continue the locution of Mr. Joseph Surface—does not feel a fondness for books of the bookish sort, derives no gratification from the ownership of autographs. I am not referring to the pseudo-collector with his album or to the encourager of profanity who besets the living great with requests for his signature. I allude, sir, as General Cyrus Choke said in regard to the British lion, to him who finds a charm in written words penned by the hand of a warrior, a statesman, or a scholar. It is a charm that may not be defined, for when you venture upon a definition it softly and suddenly vanishes away like the Baker who encountered the Snark that was a Boojum in the Carrollian fable.
I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there is something about the exterior of books which appeals to our warmest affections. We love to sit among them and enjoy the sight of them as many rejoice in the prospect of lake, valley and mountain. Dear old R. Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend had one darling wish, to possess at one time a complete new attire from boots to hat, but he never attained that glorious pinnacle. The late Sultan of Turkey, thirty years or more ago, had an enthusiasm for rifles, bought a lot of them at an enormous cost, and constructed for the storage of these treasures a kind of mausoleum of rifles, a grand edifice in which the muskets were arranged in serried ranks radiating from a centre where, upon a throne, the potentate who called himself Abdul Hamid Khan Sani, Sultan and Sovereign of the Ottoman Empire, was accustomed to sit in solemn and solitary state while he gloated over his acquisitions. In like spirit I would exult if I could have a library room where I could see all the books at once, reviewing the beloved brigades and cheerfully foregoing the reading of them. To marshal the regiments of books, the well-uniformed battalions, the heavy artillery of the folios, the light skirmishers of the duodecimos, would bring a joy akin to that which the pompous and patriotic soldier, the vainest of men, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, used to feel when, sitting on his charger, he reviewed the valiant little army which conquered Mexico over sixty years ago. This recalls to me that in the innocent hours of childhood I supposed that the head which Salome demanded was brought to King Herod on just such a charger as the General bestrode according to the veracious picture which hung over the sofa in the “back parlor”, when I also firmly believed that the baskets in which the fragments were gathered after the miracle were the large, ordinary baskets used in our laundry.
Vain as he was, the old General was a good, sturdy warrior, and no one can read his egotistical memoirs without becoming aware of the fact, in spite of his enormous self conceit. When King Edward VII visited us as Prince of Wales in 1860, I saw the royal youth on the parade-ground at West Point. I remember him well, for as A. Ward observed, “I seldom forgit a person”. But the General was the man I longed to gaze upon, and I regret that a facetious uncle easily persuaded me that the gorgeous drum-major who led the band was the Great Scott himself. The materiality of this reminiscence lies in the fact that a volume of Scott’s Memoirs is usually to be found on the library table, a model of what an autobiography ought not to be. Soldiers in later days learned to write the story of their battles with more good taste and modesty. Perhaps General Benjamin F. Butler was an exception, but he was not a soldier, and his battles were very few; and those of us who loved and honored McClellan regret the publishing of his “Own Story”, a deed he would never have countenanced. A man should never be judged by what he writes to his wife.
It would not be amiss if some fair-minded and competent person would give us a candid and impartial history of some of the men who have been dealt with unjustly by the merciless masses in this country. McClellan is one of these victims, although students of military affairs have begun to comprehend the truth about him; but the great majority still believe that he was a timid, dilatory and inefficient commander who quarrelled with his President without a cause. General Arthur St. Clair, of revolutionary times, was even a greater sufferer, and he has been so long dead that his record may be judged calmly. Aaron Burr has had several defenders, and it is now well established that whatever sins he may have committed, treason was not one of them. Martin Van Buren, sorely maligned by partisan historians, has been ably vindicated by Edward Morse Shepard. James K. Polk, Chief Justice Taney, and Andrew Johnson also deserve to be relieved from many of the aspersions which have been plentifully bestowed upon them. Unfortunately there is a tendency on the part of most men who undertake a work of that character to become advocates rather than judges, and to impair the influence of their arguments by an excess of ardor.
Most of us find that as the number of our years increases we are apt to pass more and more of our time at the library table, within easy reach of the shelves. I have been charged with believing that books are “the chief things in life”; I admit that they are not and ought not to be that, but I see no reason why we should not be allowed to enjoy them as we would any other innocent pleasure, in due moderation. A good many young people might as well be accused of believing that sports were the chief things in human existence; and both in England and in this country I apprehend that sports engross the attention of the multitude to the exclusion of such minor things as books; but I find no fault with them because they choose pleasures different from mine.
Youth is a pleasure in itself, but one may be allowed to have misgivings as to whether its joys are not in some degree overrated. Certainly our young people seem to work very hard to get their fun out of life, and after they have had it they do not appear to be much the better for it. We often sigh for our lost youth, and if we are lucky enough to be able to remember so much of our Horace, we whisper to ourselves “Eheu fugaces” and the rest of it, while if we were confronted by a decree that we must go over it all again, Latin included, we would beg for mercy, or, if we happened to be lawyers, ask for an adjournment. It is “a wise dispensation of Providence”—if one may be permitted to refer to the mandates of Providence in that patronizing way—that the old have their pleasures too and that the boys and girls are not violating any congressional or legislative provisions against trusts by having a monopoly of enjoyment. Most of these pleasures are associated with books. Talleyrand’s sad, wistless old age is of no moment when compared with a sad bookless old age.
The accusation that the lover of books cares more for them than he does about life and its varied problems, is as unjust as the complaint, preferred—semi-jocosely, it must be owned—by that pertinacious bibliophile, Irving Browne, that “the book-worm does not care for nature”. He quotes the animal as saying:
“I feel no need of nature’s flowers,—
Of flowers of rhetoric I have store;