ROYAL PATRONAGE OF BOOKS
Queen Charlotte, when discussing books with Fanny Burney and Mrs. Delany, during the former's residence at Court at Windsor, praised the work of a writer who had translated a German book into English, saying 'I wish I knew the translator,' to which Miss Burney replied, 'I wish the translator knew that!'
'Oh,' said the Queen,—'it is not—I should not like to give my name, for fear I have judged ill: I picked it up on a stall. Oh, it is amazing what good books there are on stalls.'
'It is amazing to me,' said Mrs. Delany, 'to hear that.'
'Why, I don't pick them up myself; but I have a servant very clever; and if they are not to be had at the bookseller's, they are not for me any more than for another.'—From Madame d'Arblay. Diary.
THE TREASURE
Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare—and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-wards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it)—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak—was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes, which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit—your old corbeau—for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen—or sixteen shillings was it?—a great affair we thought it then—which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.—C. Lamb. Old China.
THE MOST VALUABLE BOOK
We ought not to get books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, and bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book.—J. Ruskin. Political Economy of Art (A Joy for Ever).