POVERTY AS A MEANS OF ENJOYMENT IN COLLECTING.
oor collectors are not only not at a disadvantage in enjoyment, but they have a positive advantage over affluent rivals. If I were rich, probably I should not throw my money away just to experience this superiority, but it nevertheless exists. I do not envy, but I commiserate my brother collector who has plenty of money. He who only has to draw his check to obtain his desire fails to reach the keenest bliss of the pursuit. If diamonds were as common as cobble stones there would be no delight in picking them up
To constitute a bibliomaniac in the true sense, the love of books must combine with a certain limitation of means for the gratification of the appetite
The consciousness of some extravagance must be always present in his mind; there must be a sense of sacrifice in the attainment; in a rich man the disease cannot exist; he cannot enter the kingdom of the Bibliomaniac’s heaven. There is the same difference of sensation between the acquirement of books by a wealthy man and by him of slender purse, that there is between the taking of fish in a net and the successful result of a long angling pursuit after one especially fat and evasive trout. When a prince kills his preserved game, with keepers to raise it for him and to hand him guns ready loaded, so that all he has to do is to squint and pull the trigger, this is not hunting; it is mere vulgar butchery
What knows he of the joys of the tramper in the forest, who stalks the deer, or scares up smaller game, singly, and has to work hard for his bag? We read in Dibdin’s sumptuous pages of the celebrated contest between the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of Blandford for the possession of the Valdarfar Decameron; we read with admiration, but we also read of the immortal battle of Elia with the little squab-keeper of the old book-stall in Ninety-four alley, over the ownership of a ragged duodecimo for a sixpence; we read with affection