catalogues does he receive by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than to part with them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, ‘just to clear my shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room.’ The only compensation for this is the catalogues themselves. You get them, at least, for nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty pretty reading.
These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us the conviction that there never were so many private libraries in course of growth as there are to-day.
Libraries are not made; they grow. Your first two thousand volumes present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly little money. Given £400 and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with this number of books, all in his own language, and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. But pride is still out of the question. To be proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well be proud of having two top coats. After your first two
thousand difficulty begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about your library the better. Then you may begin to speak.
It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a library left you. The present writer will disclaim no such legacy, but hereby undertakes to accept it, however dusty. But good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. Each volume then, however lightly a stranger’s eye may roam from shelf to shelf, has its own individuality, a history of its own. You remember where you got it, and how much you gave for it; and your word may safely be taken for the first of these facts, but not for the second.
The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence. No other man but he would have made precisely such a combination as his. Had he been in any single respect different from what he is, his library, as it exists, never would have existed. Therefore, surely he may exclaim, as in the gloaming he contemplates the backs of his loved ones, ‘They are mine, and I am theirs.’
But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even through the keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar page, of Shakspeare it may be, and his ‘infinite variety,’ his ‘multitudinous mind,’ suggests some new thought, and as you are wondering over it you think of Lycidas, your friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having his opinion of your discovery the very next time when by the fire you two ‘help waste a sullen day.’ Or it is, perhaps, some quainter, tenderer fancy that engages your solitary attention, something in Sir Philip Sydney or Henry Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, ever the best interpreter of love, human or divine. Alas! the printed page grows hazy beneath a filmy eye as you suddenly remember that Lycidas is dead—‘dead ere his prime’—and that the pale cheek of Phyllis will never again be relumined by the white light of her pure enthusiasm. And then you fall to thinking of the inevitable, and perhaps, in your present mood, not unwelcome hour, when the ‘ancient peace’ of your old friends will be disturbed, when rude hands will dislodge them from their accustomed nooks and break up their goodly company.
‘Death bursts amongst them like a shell,
And strews them over half the town.’
They will form new combinations, lighten other men’s toil, and soothe another’s sorrow. Fool that I was to call anything mine!
Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.