t only remains to speak of the great opium-eater, who was a sort of literary ghoul, famed for borrowing books and never returning them, and whose library was thus made up of the enforced contributions of friends—for who would have dared refuse the loan of a book to Thomas de Quincey? The name of the unhappy man would have descended to us with that of the incendiary of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. But the great Thomas was recklessly careless and slovenly in his use of books; and Burton, in the “Book-hunter,” tells us that “he once gave in copy written on the edges of a tall octavo ‘Somnium Scipionis,’ and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the letter-press Latin and the manuscript English.”
I seriously fear that with him must be ranked the gentle Elia, who said: “A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us that we know the topography of its blots and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum.” And yet a great degree of slovenliness may be excused in Charles because, according to Leigh Hunt, he once gave a kiss to an old folio Chapman’s “Homer,” and when asked how he knew his books one from the other, for hardly any were lettered, he answered: “How does a shepherd know his sheep?”
The love of books displayed by the sensual Henry and the pugnacious Junot is not more remarkable than that of the epicurean and sumptuous Lucullus, to whom Pompey, when sick, having been directed by his physician to eat a thrush for dinner, and learning from his servants that in summer-time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus’ fattening coops, refused to be indebted for his meal, observing: “So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not lived.” Of him the veracious Plutarch says: “His furnishing a library, however, deserved praise and record, for he collected very many and choice manuscripts; and the use they were put to was even more magnificent than the purchase, the library being always open, and the walks and reading rooms about it free to all Greeks, whose delight it was to leave their other occupations and hasten thither as to the habitation of the Muses.”
It is not recorded that Socrates collected books—his wife probably objected—but we have his word for it that he loved them. He did not love the country, and the only thing that could tempt him thither was a book. Acknowledging this to Phædrus he says:
“Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world. And now having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best.”
