II.
WHO HAVE COLLECTED BOOKS.
he mania for book-collecting is by no means a modern disease, but has existed ever since there were books to gather, and has infected many of the wisest and most potent names in history. Euripides is ridiculed by Aristophanes in “The Frogs” for collecting books. Of the Roman emperor, Gordian, who flourished (or rather did not flourish, because he was slain after a reign of thirty-six days) in the third century, Gibbon says, “twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations.” This combination of uxorious and literary tastes seems to have existed in another monarch of a later period—Henry VIII.—the seeming disproportion of whose expenditure of 10,800 pounds for jewels in three years, during which he spent but 100 pounds for books and binding, is explained by the fact that he was indebted for the contents of his libraries to the plunder of monasteries. Henry printed a few copies of his book against Luther on vellum
Cicero, who possessed a superb library, especially rich in Greek, at his villa in Tusculum, thus describes his favorite acquisitions: “Books to quicken the intelligence of youth, delight age, decorate prosperity, shelter and solace us in adversity, bring enjoyment at home, befriend us out-of-doors, pass the night with us, travel with us, go into the country with us.”
etrarch, who collected books not simply for his own gratification, but aspired to become the founder of a permanent library at Venice, gave his books to the Church of St. Mark; but the greater part of them perished through neglect, and only a small part remains. Boccaccio, anticipating an early death, offered his library to Petrarch, his dear friend, on his own terms, to insure its preservation, and the poet promised to care for the collection in case he survived Boccaccio; but the latter, outliving Petrarch, bequeathed his books to the Augustinians of Florence, and some of them are still shown to visitors in the Laurentinian Library. From Boccaccio’s own account of his collection, one must believe his books quite inappropriate for a monastic library, and the good monks probably instituted an auto da fe for most of them, like that which befell the knightly romances in “Don Quixote.” Perhaps the naughty story-teller intended the donation as a covert satire. The walls of the room which formerly contained Montaigne’s books, and is at this day exhibited to pilgrims, are covered with inscriptions burnt in with branding-irons on the beams and rafters by the eccentric and delightful essayist
The author of “Ivanhoe” adorned his magnificent library with suits of superb armor, and luxuriated in demonology and witchcraft. The caustic Swift was in the habit of annotating his books, and writing on the fly-leaves a summary opinion of the author’s merits; whatever else he had, he owned no Shakespeare, nor can any reference to him be found in the nineteen volumes of Swift’s works. Military men seem always to have had a passion for books. To say nothing of the literary and rhetorical tastes of Cæsar, “the foremost man of all time,” Frederick the Great had libraries at Sans Souci, Potsdam, and Berlin, in which he arranged the volumes by classes without regard to size. Thick volumes he rebound in sections for more convenient use, and his favorite French authors he sometimes caused to be reprinted in compact editions to his taste. The great Conde inherited a valuable library from his father, and enlarged and loved it. Marlborough had twenty-five books on vellum, all earlier than 1496. The hard-fighting Junot had a vellum library which sold in London for 1,400 pounds, while his great master was not too busy in conquering Europe not only to solace himself in his permanent libraries, and in books which he carried with him in his expeditions, but to project and actually commence the printing of a camp library of duodecimo volumes, without margins, and in thin covers, to embrace some three thousand volumes, and which he had designed to complete in six years by employing one hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, at an outlay of about 163,000 pounds