The Circassian slave-dealer does not care whether his girls can talk sense or not, and too many men buy books with a similar disregard to their capacity for instructing or entertaining. It seems to me that a man who buys books which he does not read, and especially such as he cannot read, merely on account of their value as merchandise, degrades the noble passion of bibliomania to the level of a trade
When I go through such a library I think of what Christ said to the traders in the Temple. Another fault is his lack of independence and his tendency to imitate the recognized leaders. He is too prone to buy certain books simply because another has them, and thus even rare collections are apt to fall into a tiresome routine
The collector who has a hobby and independence to ride it is admirable. Let him addict himself to some particular subject or era or “ana,” and try to exhaust it, and before he is conscious he will have accumulated a collection precious for its very singularity. It strikes me that the best example of this idea that I have ever heard of is the attempt, in which two collectors in this country are engaged, to acquire the first or at least one specimen of every one of the five hundred fifteenth century printers. If this should ever succeed, the great libraries of all the world would be eager for it, and the undertaking is sufficiently arduous to last a lifetime.
ometimes out of this fault, sometimes independently of it, arises the fault by which book collecting degenerates into mere rivalry—the vulgar desire of display and ambition for a larger or rarer or costlier accumulation than one’s neighbor has
The determination not to be outdone does not lend dignity or worth to the pursuit which would otherwise be commendable. During the late civil war in this country the chaplain of a regiment informed his colonel, who was not a godly person, that there was a hopeful revival of religion going on in a neighboring and rival regiment, and that forty men had been converted and baptized. “Dashed if I will submit to that,” said the swearing colonel: “Adjutant, detail fifty men for baptism instantly!” So Mr. Roe, hearing that Mr. Doe has acquired a Caxton or other rarity of a certain height, and absolutely flawless except that the corners of the last leaf have been skillfully mended and that six leaves are slightly foxed, cannot rest night or day for envy, but is like the troubled sea until he can find a copy a sixteenth of an inch taller, the corners of whose leaves are in their pristine integrity, and over whose brilliant surface the smudge of the fox has not been cast, and then how high is his exaltation! Not that he cares anything for the book intrinsically, but he glories in having beaten Doe