There was once a certain bishop who used continually to collect useless luxuries. The Emperor Charlemagne, perceiving this, ordered a merchant who traded in rare and costly objects to paint a common mouse with different colours and to offer it to the bishop, as being a rare and curious animal which he had just brought from Palestine. The bishop is transported with delight at the sight of it, and immediately offers the merchant three silver pounds for such a treasure. But the merchant, acting on his instructions, bargains with the bishop, saying that he would rather throw it into the sea than sell it for so little. Finally the bishop offers twenty pounds for it. The merchant, wrapping up the 'ridiculus mus' in precious silk, is going away when the collector, unable to bear the thought of losing so great a curio, calls him back and says that he will give him a bushel of silver for it. This the merchant accepts: the money is paid; and the merchant returns to the Emperor to give him an account of the transaction.
Then Charlemagne convokes the bishops and priests of all the province, and placing before them the money which the mouse has fetched, reads them a homely lesson on the foolishness of collecting profitless trifles. Sternly he enjoins them in future to use their money in administering to the wants of the poor rather than to throw it away on such unprofitable baubles as a painted mouse. The guilty bishop, now become the laughing-stock of the province, is permitted to depart without punishment.
Doubtless the great majority of book-collectors are not specialists. They may set greater store by a certain class of works which appeals to them from some whimsical reason, but until they have grown middle-aged in their pursuit most of them are but dilettanti.
'Yes,' I can hear you exclaim, 'but if your collecting propensities are to be curbed and countless books passed by, books which your very instinct urges you to acquire, surely you will lose most of the charm of collecting? How dull to be obliged to purchase only those works to which you have vowed to confine yourself.'
Dull! No. I can assure you from my own experience that this restraint will but serve to redouble your eagerness, to sharpen an appetite in danger of becoming blunted by a plethora of desiderata and a shrinkage of your purse. So that whereas before, a short stroll about the book-shops would discover to you abundance, or at least plenty, of books that you would like casually to possess, now that you have become a specialist you must go further afield. Often you will return empty-handed from your rambles, and your sanctum (to the delight of the housemaid) will not be invaded quite so often by stacks of 'dirty old books.' Order will come out of chaos; many works bought upon impulse because they appealed to you at the moment will be weeded out and discarded. Moreover the shillings which this process yields will enable you to send that priceless gem, the chef d'œuvre of your collection, to the binder's, that its extrinsic appearance may be fashioned in keeping with its intrinsic worth.
More important still, you will become a known man. The booksellers will remember you, and one day when you reach home from a long and barren ramble, you will find a postcard awaiting you, announcing the discovery of some book for which you have long sought.
'Sir,—I have found a copy of the Vitruvius fo. Venice, 1535, that you asked me for some time ago. You can have it for 10s. (vellum, clean copy). Shall I send it?—Yours respectfully, John Brown.'
Your ramble may have been on a cold winter's afternoon, it may have been raining and muddy underfoot, but will not this cheer you up and warm you better than any cup of tea? And what will be your sensations as you undo the parcel, take out the treasure (which you once saw in Johnson's catalogue for £3), turn eagerly to its title-page, and collate it as gently as though you were handling some priceless work of art? Don't tell me! The specialist gets a thousand times more pleasure out of his hobby than ever did casual buyer. Besides, what rapture will be his whenever he chance upon some book for which he has long been searching, or upon some work on his very subject and yet unknown to him; for book-collecting is full of surprises.
Some of the booksellers will ask you for a list of your wants. You may safely supply them with one, and it is not necessary to state the maximum price which you are prepared to pay for each. Should you do so, probably it will be taken to indicate that you are prepared to pay the price named, and the book when found will be offered to you at that price (or a few shillings less to give the idea of a bargain) when you might have had it at a considerably lower figure. Remember also that the very fact of a book being sought for enhances its price. Suppose that a country bookseller sees an advertisement in the trade journal asking for a copy of a certain obscure sixteenth-century work, and that he recollects he has a copy somewhere in stock. He finds it among his shelves marked, possibly, five shillings. When he answers the advertisement it is more than likely that he will ask a pound or even two for it. At the same time, however, you must consider whether or not the book is worth as much to you. It may be a little known and, to the world at large, a valueless book, and you may have to wait some years before you are able to secure a copy; whereas by advertising for it you may procure a copy almost immediately. Do you prefer to take the chance of having to wait years for a book which you urgently want, or to pay a longish price and possess it at once?
There is another point to be considered. Should you ever part with your collection en bloc, or should your executors dispose of it, this volume will be an item of the collection of works in which you specialise. As such it will be much more likely to realise the larger than the smaller price, especially as the disposal of a collection of books upon a definite subject attracts to the rostrum other collectors of a like class of works.