And that lodgd in a Temple truely faire.
How dreadful, too, are many of the works illustrated by Cruikshank and Crowquill, which some profess to set such store by because they are held at such a premium by the book dealers!
Nearly as reprehensible as poor illustrating is pilloring the unfortunate author in the stocks of some atrocious color that must develop a cataract if gazed at long and fixedly. “I have been well-nigh ruined by the binder!” exclaimed one of the bright writers and literarians of the day; and before attempting to read one of his most entertaining volumes I stripped it of its frightful garb and clothed it in becoming attire. Otherwise one might not follow the ideas, the glaring blue and hideous figure of the original cover asserted themselves so strongly.
One should always endeavor to procure a good edition to start with; it is inconvenient to change editions. You come to associate certain favorite passages of a well-conned author with their place upon certain pages, so that you may instantly turn to them. The passages look strange to you in strange types, and you almost require to be introduced anew. With a change of page the mere thought itself remains the same, only it seems to have altered its expression. Let those who will, prate about a thought being a thought wherever it may exist. Some thoughts there are so airy and delicate they require to be read by one’s self—they lose a portion of their fragrance if repeated or obtained second hand. They should be savored by the eye and heard only by the inner ear. “The dark line” of the sun-dial “stealing imperceptibly on—for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by”—is more sharply defined upon the page of The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, the page where I first saw it, than it can ever appear to me upon any other page. Again, many flowers one enjoys most upon the uncut stalk. They may not be plucked and retain the full aroma they distill amid their natural surroundings. So that a quoted sentence from want of connection often loses much of the charm it presents upon the author’s page. And yet, on the other hand, quotation, when judiciously employed, not unfrequently places the author quoted in his most favorable light, while forming equally a pleasing complement to the page of the writer himself. Montaigne’s fleurons of citation, woven from his scholastic and inexhaustible loom, what were the Essays without them?—limpid brooks and springs ever pouring their sparkling waters into the meandering, smooth-flowing river of the text. Merely by the change of type, quotation relieves the monotony of the page, while, with great writers, apt citation lends added emphasis and beauty to the thought, just as the art of damascening enriches a fine blade.
Good editions are everything in reading. Even the fragrant mint of Lamb possesses a heightened pungency to me when gathered along the cool, broad margins of a London imprint. Not only the mind through the personality or charm of the thought expressed, and the ear through the harmony and lucidness of the style with which it is uttered; but equally the eye, in the outward garb with which the thought is clothed, should be gratified in reading a beautiful book. The printer it is who contributes the finishing touches and heightens the reflective surface. Elia’s buoyant, playful graces have, perhaps, received their most exquisite and appropriate setting in the two little volumes of the Temple Library, printed by the Chiswick press, the smaller being preferable to the large-paper edition.
It is pleasant to have some authors both in an early and a late edition. If I desire the notes, the full-page illustrations, and an amplified text, I choose the edition of The Complete Angler illustrated by Stothard and Inskipp and annotated by Sir Harris Nicholas. If I wish to get still nearer Walton—to hear more plainly his birds contending with the echo, to pluck his culverkees and ladysmocks, to smell his primroses, and admire the very “shape and enameled color of the trout it joyed him so to look upon,” I read him in the old spelling and old font of the fac-simile reprint of the first edition. Moreover, for the sake of making comparisons, it is often desirable to have an early as well as a late edition of a favorite author. So subtle, indeed, are the niceties of reading they may scarcely be defined. How delightful the mere cutting of the edges of the book one longs to read, and the occasional dip into the pages as you turn the leaves!
Of a few favorite authors it is desirable to possess two copies, one in an inexpensive form to take when traveling. A trunk-maker is yet to appear who will contrive an apartment that will enable one to pack books so they may receive no possible injury—the one thing Addison’s Trunk-maker of the Upper Gallery neglected. Besides, apart from the friction in its receptacle, a valuable book is liable to other injuries, or loss while traveling. The traveling volume should be small, securely bound, light in the hand, and not too bulky for the pocket.
But an old book of all books for true delight! The pleasure of reading Chaucer or Spenser is doubled by the types and the associations of the past. The foxed and faded pages are like the rust on antique bronzes, the lichens on an old wall.
In the preface to Wheatley’s The Dedication of Books reference is made to this fascination which is conferred by an ancient font upon an ancient page. “There is,” remarks the author, “a delicate flavor of antiquity and a certain quaint charm in the old print of the books from which many of the dedications have been drawn that seems to depart when the same sentences are printed in modern type, and we are apt sometimes to wonder what it was that we originally admired. The bouquet has fled while we were in the act of removing the cork from the bottle.” Present, too, with the charm of the olden page itself is the thought of who may have first turned the pages when the book you are reading was in its fresh and spotless leaf, and whose hand it was that traced the annotations which embroider its margins.
To revert in parentheses to the sun-dial, Mrs. Gatty’s monograph, recently republished and extended,[[18]] contains thousands of mottoes and references to the clock of nature taken from numerous languages, but none equal to Lamb’s apostrophe. So far as references to the passage of time are concerned, there can be none more expressive than Ronsard’s lines: