Mr. Lowell has recently dwelt on the difference between literature and books: and, accepting this distinction, the editor desires to declare at once that as a whole this collection is devoted rather to books than to literature. The poems in the following pages celebrate the bric-a-brac of the one rather than the masterpieces of the other. The stanzas here garnered into one sheaf sing of books as books, of books valuable and valued for their perfection of type and page and printing,—for their beauty and for their rarity,—or for their association with some famous man or woman of the storied past
Two centuries and a half ago Drummond of Hawthornden prefixed to the 'Varieties' of his friend Persons a braggart distich:—
This book a world is; here, if errors be,
The like, nay worse, in the great world we see.
The present collection of varieties in verse has little or naught to do with the great world and its errors: it has to do chiefly, not to say wholly, with the world of the Bookmen—the little world of the Book-lover, the Bibliophile, the Bibliomaniac—a mad world, my masters, in which there are to be found not a few poets who cherish old wine and old wood, old friends and old books, and who believe that old books are the best of old friends.
Books, books again, and books once more!
These are our theme, which some miscall
Mere madness, setting little store
By copies either short or tall,
But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
We rather write for you that hold
Patched folios dear, and prize "the small
Rare volume, black with burnished gold."
as Mr. Austin Dobson sang on the threshold of Mr. Lang's delightfully discursive little book about the 'Library.'
The editor has much pleasure in thanking the poets who have allowed him to reprint their poems in these pages; and he acknowledges a double debt of gratitude to the friends who have written poems expressly for this collection. Encouraged by their support, and remembering that he is not a contributor to his own pages, the editor ventures to conclude his harmless necessary catalogue of the things contained and not contained within these covers, by quoting Herrick's address to his Book:—
Be bold, my Book, nor be abash'd, or fear,
The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe;
But by the muses swear, all here is good,
If but well read, or ill read, understood.
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
New York, November, 1886.
