But there is an early Episcopal prayer-book in the British Museum before which all the brotherhood right gallantly might bow. It was Lady Jane Grey’s companion in distress; she is said to have taken it with her to the scaffold, where she certainly carried its lessons. In it she wrote her last message to her father: “The Lord comfort Your Grace in this world wherein all creatures are only to be comforted.” Her story is almost too harrowing to recall. This studious young girl, just seventeen, is offered the English crown. Her common sense tells her to decline it. “His Grace,” always harsh, even for his day and generation, forces her to accept. In consequence, after a ten days’ reign, she is imprisoned in the Tower. While she is held there “His Grace” makes another false move; as a result of his idiocy Lady Jane and her young husband are condemned to death.
Could we believe this gentle message on hearsay? We should probably argue, the age was so narrow, the girl was so young, the expression is too condensed, too mature. The rational doubt would blur one of the loveliest pictures in Time’s gallery of fair women. A martyr without the spur, or the blemish of fanaticism! A Queen of ten days but a Defender of the Faith forever. The crown jewels pale before this illuminated prayer-book of Her Most Christian Majesty. This dear little Protestant called forth the one tender letter extant from the highly practical Diana of Poitiers. “I have just been hearing the account of the poor young Queen Jane, and I could not keep myself from weeping at the sweet, resigned words she spoke to them on the scaffold; surely never was such a sweet and accomplished princess.”
Indeed, the best thing in the world of books, as well as in the world of men, “is something out of it,” and it is the appreciation of this “something,” manifest to sympathetic souls, which makes us bibliophiles. If unknown to history a tender touch of hands long dead lurks in an old edition, is it not beyond price?
Although there are priceless books like this little prayer-book of Queen Jane, every good bibliophile is a bit of a speculator; to bet on an author is as loyal an excitement as to bet on a racer; and to feel a beloved volume appreciating upon one’s shelves is like watching the development of a promising child.
Robert Browning, who was brought up in the fold, his father being a collector, writes:
Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss
I’ the air, and catch again, and twirl about
By the crumpled vellum covers,—pure crude fact
Secreted from man’s life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high blooded, ticked two centuries since?
Examine it yourselves! I found this book,
Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just.
Opening lines of
“The Ring and the Book.”
That eightpence has the regular bibliomaniacal ring. Next to giving fifty prices for a book, the genuine collector delights in paying an improperly low one—a tour de force either of wit or of purse.
Just think of getting material for the longest poem of the century for eightpence! and material so unique! with the inspiration of the old tome thrown in!
But now, when books are so cheap they are almost free, when exact reproductions of wonderful editions might flood the market at any day, when venders of old books have become too expert for book hunters, we are assured that bibliophiles, grasping the tangible in the hope of realizing the intangible, are the absurdities of a rational age.
Remember our record in the past and trust us a little in the present. In blind reverence we saved books and inaugurated Christian art. Historians suddenly began to demand documents and they grow more and more insistent on that point. Well, we can come to their aid and they can come to ours; many a pretty bargain has been struck in the exchange. Along with its old books and letters we have especially preserved the gentler, though none too gentle, side of the past.