IN THE TRACK OF THE BOOK-WORM

by Irving Browne: thoughts, fancies and gentle gibes on Collecting and Collectors

by one of them.

DONE INTO A BOOK AT THE ROYCROFT
PRINTING SHOP AT EAST AURORA,
NEW YORK, U. S. A.
MDCCCXCVII

Copyrighted by
The Roycroft Printing Shop
1897

Of this edition but five hundred and ninety copies were printed and types then distributed. Each copy is signed and numbered and this book is number

CHAPTERS.

BALLADS.

The Track of the Book-Worm.

I.

OBJECTS OF COLLECTION.

hilosophers have made various and ingenious but incomplete attempts to form a succinct definition of the animal, Man. At first thought it might seem that a perfect definition would be, an animal who makes collections. But one must remember that the magpie does this. Yet this definition is as good as any, and comes nearer exactness than most

What has not the animal Man collected?

Clocks, watches, snuff-boxes, canes, fans, laces, precious stones, china, coins, paper money, spoons, prints, paintings, tulips, orchids, hens, horses, match-boxes, postal stamps, miniatures, violins, show-bills, play-bills, swords, buttons, shoes, china slippers, spools, birds, butterflies, beetles, saddles, skulls, wigs, lanterns, book-plates, knockers, crystal balls, shells, penny toys, death-masks, tea-pots, autographs, rugs, armour, pipes, arrow heads, locks of hair and key locks, and hats (Jules Verne’s “Tale of a Hat”), these are some of the most prominent subjects in search of which the animal Man runs up and down the earth, and spends time and money without scruple or stint

But all these curious objects of search fall into insignificance when compared with the ancient, noble and useful passion for collecting books. One of the wisest of the human race said, the only earthly immortality is in writing a book; and the desire to accumulate these evidences of earthly immortality needs no defense among cultivated men.

II.

WHO HAVE COLLECTED BOOKS.

he mania for book-collecting is by no means a modern disease, but has existed ever since there were books to gather, and has infected many of the wisest and most potent names in history. Euripides is ridiculed by Aristophanes in “The Frogs” for collecting books. Of the Roman emperor, Gordian, who flourished (or rather did not flourish, because he was slain after a reign of thirty-six days) in the third century, Gibbon says, “twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations.” This combination of uxorious and literary tastes seems to have existed in another monarch of a later period—Henry VIII.—the seeming disproportion of whose expenditure of 10,800 pounds for jewels in three years, during which he spent but 100 pounds for books and binding, is explained by the fact that he was indebted for the contents of his libraries to the plunder of monasteries. Henry printed a few copies of his book against Luther on vellum

Cicero, who possessed a superb library, especially rich in Greek, at his villa in Tusculum, thus describes his favorite acquisitions: “Books to quicken the intelligence of youth, delight age, decorate prosperity, shelter and solace us in adversity, bring enjoyment at home, befriend us out-of-doors, pass the night with us, travel with us, go into the country with us.”

etrarch, who collected books not simply for his own gratification, but aspired to become the founder of a permanent library at Venice, gave his books to the Church of St. Mark; but the greater part of them perished through neglect, and only a small part remains. Boccaccio, anticipating an early death, offered his library to Petrarch, his dear friend, on his own terms, to insure its preservation, and the poet promised to care for the collection in case he survived Boccaccio; but the latter, outliving Petrarch, bequeathed his books to the Augustinians of Florence, and some of them are still shown to visitors in the Laurentinian Library. From Boccaccio’s own account of his collection, one must believe his books quite inappropriate for a monastic library, and the good monks probably instituted an auto da fe for most of them, like that which befell the knightly romances in “Don Quixote.” Perhaps the naughty story-teller intended the donation as a covert satire. The walls of the room which formerly contained Montaigne’s books, and is at this day exhibited to pilgrims, are covered with inscriptions burnt in with branding-irons on the beams and rafters by the eccentric and delightful essayist

The author of “Ivanhoe” adorned his magnificent library with suits of superb armor, and luxuriated in demonology and witchcraft. The caustic Swift was in the habit of annotating his books, and writing on the fly-leaves a summary opinion of the author’s merits; whatever else he had, he owned no Shakespeare, nor can any reference to him be found in the nineteen volumes of Swift’s works. Military men seem always to have had a passion for books. To say nothing of the literary and rhetorical tastes of Cæsar, “the foremost man of all time,” Frederick the Great had libraries at Sans Souci, Potsdam, and Berlin, in which he arranged the volumes by classes without regard to size. Thick volumes he rebound in sections for more convenient use, and his favorite French authors he sometimes caused to be reprinted in compact editions to his taste. The great Conde inherited a valuable library from his father, and enlarged and loved it. Marlborough had twenty-five books on vellum, all earlier than 1496. The hard-fighting Junot had a vellum library which sold in London for 1,400 pounds, while his great master was not too busy in conquering Europe not only to solace himself in his permanent libraries, and in books which he carried with him in his expeditions, but to project and actually commence the printing of a camp library of duodecimo volumes, without margins, and in thin covers, to embrace some three thousand volumes, and which he had designed to complete in six years by employing one hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, at an outlay of about 163,000 pounds

St. Helena destroyed this scheme. It is curious to note that Napoleon despised Voltaire as heartily as Frederick admired him, but gave Fielding and Le Sage places among his traveling companions; while the Bibliomaniac appears in his direction to his librarian: “I will have fine editions and handsome bindings. I am rich enough for that.”

The main thing that shakes one’s confidence in the correctness of his literary taste is that he was fond of “Ossian.” Julius Cæsar also formed a traveling library of forty-four little volumes, contained in an oak case measuring 16 by 11 by 3 inches, covered with leather. The books are bound in white vellum, and consist of history, philosophy, theology, and poetry, in Greek and Latin. The collector was Sir Julius Cæsar, of England, and this exquisite and unique collection is in the British Museum. The books were all printed between 1591 and 1616

outhey brought together fourteen thousand volumes, the most valuable collection which had up to that time been acquired by any man whose means and estate lay, as he once said of himself, in his inkstand. Time fails me to speak of Erasmus, De Thou, Grotius, Goethe, Bodley; Hans Sloane, whose private library of fifty thousand volumes was the beginning of that of the British Museum; the Cardinal Borromeo, who founded the Ambrosian Library at Milan with his own forty thousand volumes, and the other great names entitled to the description of Bibliomaniac. We must not forget Sir Richard Whittington, of feline fame, who gave 400 pounds to found the library of Christ’s Hospital, London

The fair sex, good and bad, have been lovers of books or founders of libraries; witness the distinguished names of Lady Jane Gray, Catherine De Medicis, and Diane de Poictiers.

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.”

III.

DIVERSE TASTES.

t is fortunate for the harmony of book-collectors that they do not all desire the same thing, just as it was fortunate for their young State that all the Romans did not want the same Sabine woman. Otherwise the Helenic battle of the books would be fiercer than it is. Thus there are bibliomaniacs who reprint rare books from their own libraries in limited numbers; authors, like Walpole, who print their own works, and whose fame as printers is better deserved than their reputation as writers; like Thackeray, who design the illustrations for their own romances, or, like Astor, who procure a single copy of their novel to be illustrated at lavish expense by artists; amateurs who bind their own books; lunatics who yearn for books wholly engraved, or printed only on one side of the leaf, or Greek books wholly in capitals, or others in the italic letter; or black-letter fanciers; or tall copy men; or rubricists, missal men, or first edition men, or incunabulists

One seeks only ancient books; another limited editions; another those privately printed; a fourth wants nothing but presentation copies; yet another only those that have belonged to famous men, and still another illustrated or illuminated books. There is a perfectly rabid and incurable class, of whom the most harmless are devoted to pamphlets; another, rather more dangerous, to incorrect or suppressed editions; and a third, stark mad, to play-bills and portraits. One patronizes the drama, one poetry, one the fine arts, another books about books and their collectors; and a very recherche class devote themselves to works on playing-cards, angling, magic, or chess, emblems, dances of death, or the jest books and facetiæ

Finally, there are those unhappy beings who run up and down for duplicates, searching for every edition of their favorite authors. In very recent days there has arisen a large class who demand the first editions of popular novelists like Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne, and will pay large prices for these issues which have no value except that of rarity. I can quite understand the enthusiasm of the collector over the beautiful first editions of the Greek and Latin classics, or for the first “Paradise Lost,” or even for the ugly first folio “Shakespeare,”

and why he should prefer the comparatively rude first Walton’s Angler to Pickering’s edition, the handsomest of this century, with its monumental title page. But why a first edition of a popular novel should be more desirable than a late one, which is usually the more elegant, I confess I cannot understand. It is one of those things which, like the mystery of religion, we must take on trust. So when a bookseller tells me that a copy of the first issue of “The Scarlet Letter” has sold for seventy-five dollars, and that a copy of the second, with the same date, but put out six months later, is worth only seventy-five cents, I open my eyes but not my purse, especially when I consider that the second is greatly superior to the first on account of its famous preface of apology, and when I read of some one’s bidding $1875 for a copy of Poe’s worthless “Tamerlane,” I am flattered by the reflection that there is one man in the world whom I believe to be eighteen hundred and seventy-five times as great a fool as I am!

IV.

THE SIZE OF BOOKS.

ere I a despotic ruler of the universe I would make it a serious offense to publish a book larger than royal octavo. Books should be made to read, or at all events to look at, and in this view comfort and ease should be consulted. Any one who has ever undertaken to read a huge quarto or folio will sympathize with this view. The older and lazier the Book-Worm grows the more he longs for little books, which he can hold in one hand without getting a cramp, or at least support with arms in an elbow chair without fatigue. Darwin remorselessly split big books in two. Mr. Slater says in “Book Collecting:” “When the library at Sion College took fire the attendants, at the risk of their lives, rescued a pile of books from the flames, and it is said that the librarian wept when he found that the porters had taken it for granted that the value of a book was in exact proportion to its size.” Few of us, I suspect, ever read our family Bible, and all of us probably groan when we lift out the unabridged dictionary. The “Century Dictionary” is a luxury because it is published in small and convenient parts. I cannot conceive any good in a big book except that the ladies may use it to press flowers or mosses in, or the nurses may put it in a chair to sit the baby on at table. I have heard of a gentleman who inherited a mass of folio volumes and arranged them as shelves for his smaller treasures, and of another who arranged his 12-mos on a stand made up of the seventeen volumes of Pinkerton’s “Voyages” and Denon’s “Egypt” for shelves. What reader would not prefer a dainty little Elzevir to the huge folio, Cæsar’s “Commentaries,” even with the big bull in it, and the wicker idol full of burning human victims? What can be more pleasing than the modern Quantin edition of the classics? Or, to speak of a popular book, take the “Pastels in Prose,” the most exquisite book for the price ever known in the history of printing

The small book ought however to be easily legible. The health and comfort of the human eye should be consulted in the size of the type. Nothing can be worse in this regard than the Pickering diamond classics, if meant to be read; and it seems that there are too many of them to be intended as mere curiosities of printing. Let us approve the exit of the folio and the quarto, and applaud the modern tendency toward little and handy volumes. Large paper however is a worthy distinction when the subject is worth the distinction and the edition is not too large. Nothing raises the gorge of the true Book-Worm more than to see an issue on large paper of a row of histories, for example; and the very worst instance conceivable was a large paper Webster’s “Unabridged Dictionary” issued some years ago. The book thus distinguished ought to be a classic, or peculiar for elegance, never a series, or stereotyped, the first struck off, and the issue ought not to be more than from fifty to one hundred copies; any larger issue is not worth the extra margin bestowed, and no experienced buyer will tolerate it

But if all these conditions are observed, the large paper copies bear the same relation to the small that a proof before letters of a print holds to the other impressions. Large margins are very pleasant in a library as well as in Wall Street, and much more apt to be permanent. There are some favorite books of which the possessor longs in vain for a large copy, as for instance, the Pickering “Walton and Cotton.”

great deal of fun is made of the Book-Worm because of his desire for large paper and of his insistence on uncut edges, but his reasons are sound and his taste is unimpeachable. The tricks of the book-trade to catch the inexperienced with the bait of large paper are very amusing. “Strictly limited” to so many copies for England and so many for America, say a thousand in all, or else the number is not stated, and always described as an edition de luxe, and its looks are always very repulsive. But the bait is eagerly bitten at by a shoal of beings anxious to get one of these rarities—a class to one of whom I once found it necessary to explain that “uncut edges” does not mean leaves not cut open, and that he would not injure the value of his book by being able to read it, and was not bound to peep in surreptitiously like a maid-servant at a door “on the jar.” I once knew a satirical Book-Worm who issued a pamphlet, “one hundred copies on large paper, none on small.” There is no just distinction in an ugly large-paper issue, and sometimes it is not nearly so beautiful as the small, especially when the latter has uncut edges. The independence of the collector who prefers the small in such circumstances is to be commended and imitated.

Too great inequality in uncut edges is also to be shunned as an ugliness. It seems that some French books are printed on paper of two different sizes, the effect of which is very grotesque, and the device is a catering to a very crude and extravagant taste.

V.

BINDING.

he binding of books for several centuries has held the dignity of a fine art, quite independent of printing. This has been demonstrated by exhibitions in this country and abroad. But every collector ought to observe fitness in the binding which he procures to be executed. True fitness prevails in most old and fine bindings; seldom was a costly garb bestowed on a book unworthy of it. But in many a luxurious library we see a modern binding fit for a unique or rare book given to one that is comparatively worthless or common. Not to speak of bindings that are real works of art, many collectors go astray in dressing lumber in purple and fine linen—putting full levant morocco on blockhead histories and such stuff that perishes in the not using. It is a sad spectacle to behold a unique binding wasted on a book of no more value than a backgammon board. There are of course not a great many of us who can afford unique bindings, but those who cannot should at least observe propriety and fitness in this regard, and draw the line severely between full dress and demi-toilette, and keep a sharp eye to appropriateness of color. I have known several men who bound their books all alike. Nothing could be worse except one who should bind particular subjects in special styles, pace Mr. Ellwanger, who, in “The Story of My House,” advises the Book-Worm to “bind the poets in yellow or orange, books on nature in olive, the philosophers in blue, the French classics in red,” etc. I am curious to know what color this pleasant writer would adopt for the binding of his books by military men, such for example as “Major Walpole’s Anecdotes.” (p. 262)

mbrose Fermin Didot

recommended binding the “Iliad” in red and the “Odyssey” in blue, for the Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the former and a blue one when they recited the latter. The churchmen he would clothe in violet, cardinals in scarlet, philosophers in black

I have imagined

HOW A BIBLIOMANIAC BINDS HIS BOOKS.

’d like my favorite books to bind
So that their outward dress
To every bibliomaniac’s mind
Their contents should express.
Napoleon’s life should glare in red,
John Calvin’s gloom in blue;
Thus they would typify bloodshed
And sour religion’s hue.
The prize-ring record of the past
Must be in blue and black;
While any color that is fast
Would do for Derby track.
The Popes in scarlet well may go;
In jealous green, Othello;
In gray, Old Age of Cicero,
And London Cries in yellow.
My Walton should his gentle art
In Salmon best express,
And Penn and Fox the friendly heart
In quiet drab confess.
Statistics of the lumber trade
Should be embraced in boards,
While muslin for the inspired Maid
A fitting garb affords.
Intestine wars I’d clothe in vellum,
While pig-skin Bacon grasps,
And flat romances, such as “Pelham,”
Should stand in calf with clasps.
Blind-tooled should be blank verse and rhyme
Of Homer and of Milton;
But Newgate Calendar of Crime
I’d lavishly dab gilt on.
The edges of a sculptor’s life
May fitly marbled be,
But sprinkle not, for fear of strife,
A Baptist history.

Crimea’s warlike facts and dates
Of fragrant Russia smell;
The subjugated Barbary States
In crushed Morocco dwell.
But oh! that one I hold so dear
Should be arrayed so cheap
Gives me a qualm; I sadly fear
My Lamb must be half-sheep.

No doubt a Book-Worm so far gone as this could invent stricter analogies and make even the binder fit the book

So we should have

THE BIBLIOMANIAC’S ASSIGNMENT OF BINDERS.

f I could bring the dead to day,
I would your soul with wonder fill
By pointing out a novel way
For bibliopegistic skill.
My Walton, Trautz should take in hand,
Or else I’d give him o’er to Hering;
Matthews should make the Gospels stand
A solemn warning to the erring.
The history of the Inquisition,
With all its diabolic train
Of cruelty and superstition,
Should fitly be arrayed by Payne.
A book of dreams by Bedford clad,
A Papal history by De Rome,
Should make the sense of fitness glad
In every bibliomaniac’s home.
As our first mother’s folly cost
Her sex so dear, and makes men grieve,
So Milton’s plaint of Eden lost
Would be appropriate to Eve.
Hayday would make “One Summer” be
Doubly attractive to the view;
While General Wolfe’s biography
Should be the work of Pasdeloup.
For lives of dwarfs, like Thomas Thumb,
Petit’s the man by nature made,
And when Munchasen strikes us dumb
It is by means of Gascon aid.
Thus would I the great binders blend
In harmony with work before ’em,
And so Riviere I would commend
To Turner’s “Liber Fluviorum.”

After all, whether one can afford a three-hundred or a three-dollar binding, the gentle Elia has said the last word about fitness of bindings when he observed: “To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume; magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished on all kinds of books indiscriminately

“Where we know that a book is at once both good and rare—where the individual is almost the species,

‘We know not where is that Prometian torch
That can its light relumine;’

“Such a book for instance as the ‘Life of the Duke of Newcastle’ by his Duchess—no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe such a jewel

“To view a well arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopœdias (Anglicana or Metropolitanas), set out in an array of Russia and Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios, would renovate Parcelsus himself, and enable old Raymond Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them and warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.”

here spoke the true Book-Worm. What a pity he could not have sold a part of his good sense and fine taste to some of the affluent collectors of this period!

Doubtless an experienced binder could give some amusing examples of mistakes in indorsing books with their names. One remains in my memory. A French binder, entrusted with a French translation of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in two volumes, put “L’Oncle” on both, and numbered them “Tome 1,” “Tome 2.” Charles Cowden-Clarke tells of his having ordered Leigh Hunt’s poems entitled “Foliage” to be bound in green, and how the book came home in blue. That would answer for the “blue grass” region of Kentucky. I have no patience with those disgusting realists who bind books in human or snake skin. In his charming book on the Law Reporters, Mr. Wallace says of Desaussures’ South Carolina Reports: “When these volumes are found in their original binding most persons, I think, are struck with its peculiarity. The cause of it is, I believe, that it was done by negroes.” What the “peculiarity” is he does not disclose. But book-binding seems to be an unwonted occupation for negro slaves. It was not often that they beat skins, although their own skins were frequently beaten.

VI.

PAPER.

t is a serious question whether the art of printing has been improved except in facility. Is not the first printed book still the finest ever printed? But in one point I am certain that the moderns have fallen away, at least in the production of cheap books, and that is in the quality and finish of the paper. Not to speak of injurious devices to make the book heavy, the custom of calendering the paper, or making it smooth and shiny, practised by some important publishers, is bad for the eyes, and the result is not pleasant to look at. It is like the glare of the glass over the framed print. It is said to be necessary to the production of the modern “process” pictures. Even here however there is a just mean, for some of the modern paper is absurdly rough, and very difficult for a good impression of the types. Modern paper however has one advantage: Mr. Blades, in his pleasant “Enemies of Books,” tells us “that the worm will not touch it,” it is so adulterated. One hint I would give the publishers—allow us a few more fly leaves, so that we may paste in newspaper cuttings, and make memoranda and suggestions

It is predicted by some that our nineteenth century books—at least those of the last third—will not last; that the paper and ink are far inferior to those of preceding centuries, and that the destroying tooth of time will work havoc with them. No doubt the modern paper and the modern ink are inferior to those of the earlier ages of printing, when making a book was a fine art and a work of conscience, but whether the modern productions of the press will ultimately fade and crumble is a question to be determined only by a considerable lapse of time, which probably no one living will be qualified to pronounce upon. Take for what they are worth my sentiments respecting

THE FAILING BOOKS.

hey say our books will disappear,
That ink will fade and paper rot—
I sha’n’t be here,
So I don’t care a jot.
The best of them I know by heart,
As for the rest they make me tired;
The viler part
May well be fired.
Oh, what a hypocritic show
Will be the bibliomaniac’s hoard!
Cheat as hollow
As a backgammon board.
Just think of Lamb without his stuffing,
And the iconoclastic Howells,
Who spite of puffing
Is destitute of bowels.

’Twould make me laugh to see the stare
Of mousing bibliomaniac fond
At pages bare
As Overreach’s bond.
Those empty titles will displease
The earnest student seeking knowledge,—
Barren degrees,
Like these of Western College.
That common stuff, “Excelsior,”
In poetry so lacking,
I care not for—
’Tis only fit for packing.

It has occurred to me that publishers might appeal to bibliomaniacal tastes by paying a little more attention to their paper, and I have thrown a few suggestions on this point into rhyme, so that they may be readily committed to memory:

SUITING PAPER TO SUBJECT.

rinters the paper should adapt
Unto the subject of the book,
Thus making buyers wonder-rapt
Before they at the contents look.
Thus Beerbohm’s learned book on Eggs
On a laid paper he should print,
But Motley’s “Dutch Republic” begs
Rice paper should its matter hint.

That curious problem of what Man
Inhabited the Iron Mask
Than Whatman paper never can
A more suggestive medium ask.
The “Book of Dates,” by Mr. Haydon,
Should be on paper calendered;
That Swift on Servants be arrayed on
A hand-made paper is inferred.
Though angling-books have never been
Accustomed widely to appear
On fly-paper, ’twould be no sin
To have them wormed from front to rear.
The good that authors thus may reap
I’ll not pursue to tedium,
But hint, for books on raising sheep
Buckram is just the medium.

VII.

WOMEN AS COLLECTORS.

omen collect all sorts of

things except books. To them the book-sense seems to be denied, and it is difficult for them to appreciate its existence in men. To be sure, there have been a few celebrated book-collectors among the fair sex, but they have usually been rather reprehensible ladies, like Diane de Poictiers and Madame Pompadour. Probably Aspasia was a collector of MSS. Lady Jane Grey seems to have been a virtuous exception, and she was cruelly “cropped.” I am told that there are a few women now-a-days who collect books, and only a few weeks ago a lady read, before a woman’s club in Chicago, a paper on the Collection and Adornment of Books, for which occasion a fair member of the club solicited me to write her something appropriate to read, which of course I was glad to do. But this was in Chicago, where the women go in for culture. In thirty years’ haunting of the book-shops and print-shops of New York, I have never seen a woman catching a cold in her head by turning over the large prints, nor soiling her dainty gloves by handling the dirty old books. Women have been depicted in literature in many different occupations, situations and pleasures, but in all the literature that I have read I can recall only one instance in which she is imagined a book-buyer. This is in “The Sentimental Journey,” and in celebrating the unique instance let me rise to a nobler strain and sing a song of

THE SENTIMENTAL CHAMBERMAID.

hen you’re in Paris, do not fail
To seek the Quai de Conti,
Where in the roguish Parson’s tale,
Upon the river front he
Bespoke the pretty chambermaid
Too innocent to be afraid.
On this book-seller’s mouldy stall,
Crammed full of volumes musty,
I made a bibliophilic call
And saw, in garments rusty,
The ancient vender, queer to view,
In breeches, buckles, and a queue.
And while to find that famous book,
“Les Egaremens du Cœur,”
I dilligently undertook,
I suddenly met her;
She held a small green satin purse,
And spite of Time looked none the worse.
I told her she was known to Fame
Through ministerial Mentor,
And though I had not heard her name,
That this should not prevent her
From listening to the homage due
To one to Sentiment so true.

She blushed; I bowed in courtly fashion;
In pockets of my trousers
Then sought a crown to vouch my passion,
Without intent to rouse hers;
But I had left my purse ’twould seem—
And then I woke—’twas but a dream!
The heart will wander, never doubt,
Though waking faith it keep;
That is exceptionally stout
Which strays but in its sleep;
And hearts must always turn to her
Who loved, “Les Egaremens du Cœur.”

M. Uzanne, in “The Book-Hunter in Paris,” avers that “the woman of fashion never goes book-hunting,” and he puts the aphorism in italics. He also says that the occasional woman at the book-stalls, “if by chance she wants a book, tries to bargain for it as if it were a lobster or a fowl.” Also that the book-stall keepers are always watchful of the woman with an ulster, a water-proof, or a muff. These garments are not always impervious to books, it seems.

he imitative efforts of women at “extra-illustrating” are usually

limited to buying a set of photographs at Rome and sticking them into the cracks of “The Marble Faun,” and giving it away to a friend as a marked favor

Poor Hawthorne! he would wriggle in his grave if he could see his fair admirers doing this. Mr. Blades certainly ought to have included women among the enemies of books. They generally regard the husband’s or father’s expenditure on books as so much spoil of their gowns and jewels. We book-men are up to all the tricks of getting the books into the house without their knowing it

What joy and glee when we successfully smuggle in a parcel from the express, right under our wife’s nose, while she is busy talking scandal to another woman in the drawing-room! The good creatures make us positively dishonest and endanger our eternal welfare. How we “hustle around” in their absence, when the embargo is temporarily raised; and when the new purchases are detected, how we pretend that they are old, and wonder that they have not seen them before, and rattle away in a fevered, embarrassed manner about the scarcity and value of the surreptitious purchases, and how meanly conscious we are all the time that the pretense is unavailing and the fair despots see right through us

God has given them an instinct that is more than a match for our acknowledged superior intellect. And the good wife smiles quietly but satirically, and says, in the form in that case made and provided, “My dear, you’ll certainly ruin yourself buying books!” with a sigh that agitates a very costly diamond necklace reposing on her shapely bosom; or she archly shakes at us a warning finger all aglow with ruby and sapphire, which she has bought on installments out of the house allowance. Fortunate for us if the library is not condemned to be cleaned twice a year. These beloved objects ought to deny themselves a ring, or a horse, or a gown, or a ball now and then, to atone for their mankind’s debauchery in books; but do they? They ought to encourage the Bibliomania, for it keeps their husbands out of mischief, away from “that horrid club,” and safe at home of evenings. The Book-Worm is always a blameless being. He never has to hie to Canada as a refuge. He is “absolutely pure,” like all the baking powders

The gentle Addison, in “The Spectator,” thus described a woman’s library: “The very sound of a lady’s library gave me a great curiosity to see it; and as it was some time before the lady came to me, I had an opportunity of turning over a great many of her books, which were ranged together in a very beautiful order. At the end of the folios (which were finely bound and gilt) were great jars of china placed one above another in a very noble piece of architecture. The quartos were separated from the octavos by a pile of smaller vessels, which rose in a delightful pyramid

The octavos were bounded by tea-dishes of all shapes, colors, and sizes, which were so disposed on a wooden frame that they looked like one continued pillar indented with the finest strokes of sculpture, and stained with the greatest variety of dyes. That part of the library which was designed for the reception of plays and pamphlets, and other loose papers, was inclosed in a kind of square, consisting of one of the prettiest grotesque works that I ever saw, and made up of scaramouches, lions, mandarins, monkeys, trees, shells, and a thousand other odd figures in china ware. In the midst of the room was a little Japan table with a quire of gilt paper upon it, and on the paper a silver snuff-box made in shape of a little book. I found there were several other counterfeit books upon the upper shelves, which were carved in wood, and served only to fill up the number, like fagots in the muster of a regiment. I was wonderfully pleased with such a mixed kind of furniture as seemed very suitable both to the lady and the scholar, and did not know at first whether I should fancy myself in a grotto or in a library”

If so great a favorite with the fair sex could say such satirical things of them, I may be permitted to have my own idea of

A WOMAN’S IDEA OF A LIBRARY.

do not care so much for books,
But Libraries are all the style,
With fine “editions de luxe”
One’s formal callers to beguile;
With neat dwarf cases round the walls,
And china teapots on the top,
The empty shelves concealed by falls
Of India silk that graceful drop.
A few rare etchings greet the view,
Like “Harmony” and “Harvest Moon;”
An artist’s proof on satin too
By what’s-his-name is quite a boon.
My print called “Jupiter and Jo”
Is very rarely seen, but then
Another copy I can show
Inscribed with “Jupiter and 10.”
A fisher boy in marble stoops
On pedestal in window placed,
And one of Rogers’ lovely groups
Is through the long lace curtains traced.
And then I make a painting lean
Upon a white and gilded easel,
Illustrating that famous scene
Of Joseph Andrews and Lady Teazle.
Of course my shelves the works reveal
Of Plutarch, Rollin, and of Tupper,
While Bowdler’s Shakespeare and “Lucille”
Quite soothe one’s spirits after supper.
And when I visited dear Rome
I bought a lot of photographs,
And had them mounted here at home,
And though my dreadful husband laughs,
I’ve put them in “The Marble Faun,”
And envious women vainly seek
At Scribner’s shop, from early dawn,
To find a volume so unique.
And monthly here, in deep surmise,
Minerva’s bust above us frowning,
A club of women analyze
The works of Ibsen and of Browning.

n the charming romance, “Realmah,” the noble African prince prescribes monogamy to his subjects, but he allows himself three wives; one is a State wife, to sit by his side on the throne, help him receive embassadors, and preside at court dinners; another a household wife, to rule the kitchen and the homely affairs of the palace; the third is a love-wife, to be cherished in his heart and bear him children. Why would it not be fair to the Book-Worm to concede him a Book-wife, who should understand and sympathize with him in his eccentricity, and who should care more for rare and beautiful books than for diamonds, laces, Easter bonnets and ten-button gloves?

In regard to women’s book-clubs, a recent writer, Mr. Edward Sanford Martin, in “Windfalls of Observation,” observes: “If a man wants to read a book he buys it, and if he likes it he buys six more copies and gives (not all the same day, of course) to six women whose intelligence he respects. But if a club of fifteen girls determine to read a book, do they buy fifteen copies? No. Do they buy five copies? No. Do they buy—No, they don’t buy at all; they borrow a copy. It doesn’t lie in womankind to spend money for books unless they are meant to be a gift for some man.” Mr. Martin is a little too hard here, for I have been told of such clubs which sometimes bought one copy. To be sure they always bully the bookseller into letting them have it at cost on account of the probable benefit to his trade. But it is true that no normally organized woman will forego a dollar’s worth of ribbon or gloves for a dollar’s worth of book

I have sometimes read aloud to a number of women while they were sewing, but I do it no more, for just as I got to a point where you ought to be able to hear a pin drop, I always have heard some woman whisper, “Lend me your eighty cotton.” A story was told me of the first meeting of a Browning Club in a large city in Ohio. My informant was a young lady from the East, who was present, and my readers can safely rely on the correctness of the narration. The club was composed of young ladies from sixteen to twenty-five years of age, all of the “first families.” It was thought best to take an easy poem for the first meeting, and so one of them read aloud, “The Last Ride Together”

After the reading there was a moment’s silence, and then one observed that she would like to know whether they took that ride on horseback or in a “buggy.” Another silence, and then an artless young bud ventured the remark that she thought it must have been in a buggy, because if it was on horseback he could not have got his arm around her. I once thought of sending this anecdote to Mr. Browning, but was warned that he was destitute of the sense of humor, especially at his own expense, and so desisted

“Ah, that our wives could only see
How well the money is invested
In these old books, which seem to be
By them, alas! so much detested.”

But the wives are not always unwise in their opposition to their husband’s book-buying. There is nothing more pitiful than to see the widow of a poor clergyman or lawyer trying to sell his library, and to witness her disappointment at the

shrinkage of value which she had been taught and accustomed to regard as so great. A woman who has a true and wise sympathy with her husband’s book-buying is an adored object. I recollect one such, who at her own suggestion gave up the largest and best room in her house to her husband’s books, and received her callers and guests in a smaller one—she also received her husband’s blessing.

VIII.

THE ILLUSTRATOR.

he popular notion of the Illustrator, as the term is used by the Book-Worm, is that he buys many valuable books containing pictures and spoils them by tearing the pictures out, and from them constructs another valuable book with pictures. We smile to read this in the newspapers. If it were strictly true it would be a very reprehensible practice. But generally the books compelled to surrender their prints to the Illustrator are good for nothing else. To lament over them is as foolish as to grieve over the grape-skins out of which has been pressed the luscious Johannisburger, or to mourn over the unsightly holes which the porcelain-potter has made in the clay-bank. Even among Book-Worms the Illustrator, or the “Grangerite,” as the term of reproach is, has come in for many hard knocks in recent years. John Hill Burton set the tune by his merry satire in “The Book-Hunter,” in which he portrays the Grangerite illustrating the pious Watts’ stanzas, beginning, “How doth the little busy bee.” In his first edition Mr. Burton mentioned among “great writers on bees,” whose portrait would be desirable, Aristarchus,

meaning probably Aristomachus. This mistake is not corrected in the last edition, but the name is omitted altogether

Mr. Beverly Chew “drops into poetry” on the subject, and thus apostrophises the Grangerite:

“Ah, ruthless wight,
Think of the books you’ve turned to waste,
With patient skill.”

r. Henri Pere Du Bois thus describes the ordinary result: “Of one hundred books extended by the insertion of prints which were not made for them, ninety-nine are ruined;

the hundredth book is no longer a book; it is a museum. An imperfect book, built with the spoils of a thousand books; a crazy quilt made of patches out of gowns of queens and scullions.” So Burton compares the Grangerite to Genghis Kahn. Mr. Lang declares the Grangerites are “book ghouls, and brood, like the obscene demons of Arabian superstition, over the fragments of the mighty dead.” I would like to show Mr. Lang how I have treated his “Letters to Dead Authors” and “Old Friends” by illustration. He would probably feel, with Æsop’s lawyer, that “circumstances alter cases,” although he says “no book deserves the honor”

So a reviewer in “The Nation” stigmatises Grangerism as “a vampire art, maiming when it does not murder” (I did not know that vampires “maim” their victims) “and incapable of rising beyond canibalism” (not that they feed on one another, but when critics get excited their metaphors are apt to become mixed)

“G. W. S.,” of the New York “Tribune,” speaks of the achievement of the Illustrators as “colossal vulgarities.” Mr. Percy Fitzgerald observes: “The pitiless Grangerite slaughters a book for a few pictures, just as an epicure has had a sheep killed for the sweetbread”

hese are very choice hard words. There is much extravagance, but some justice in all this criticism. As a question of economics I do not find any great difference between a Book-worm who spends thousands of dollars in constructing one attractive book from several not attractive, and one who spends a thousand dollars in binding a book, or for an example of a famous old binder. If there is any difference it is in favor of the Grangerite, who improves the volume for the intelligent purposes of the reader, as against the other who merely caters to “the lust of the eye”

I am willing to concede that the Grangerite is sometimes guilty of some gross offenses against good taste and good sense. The worst of these is when he extends the text of the volume itself to a larger page in order to embrace large prints. This is grotesque, for it spoils the very book. He is also blamable when he squanders valuable prints and time and patience on mere book lumber, such as long rows of histories; and when he stuffs and crams his book; and when his pictures are not of the era of the events or of the time of life of the persons described; and when they are too large or too small to be in just proportion to the printed page; and when the book is so heavy and cumbersome that no one can handle it with comfort or convenience. Above all he is blamable, in my estimation, when he entrusts the selection of prints to an agent. Such agency is frequently very unsatisfactory, and at all events the Illustrator misses the sport of the hunt. Few men would entrust the furnishing or decorating of a house, the purchase of a horse, or the selection of a wife to a third person, and the delicate matter of choosing prints for a book is essentially one to be transacted in person. The danger of any other procedure in the case of a wife was illustrated by Cromwell’s agency for Henry Eighth in the affair of Anne of Cleves, the “Flanders mare.”

ut when it is properly done, it seems to me that the very best thing the Book-Worm ever does is to illustrate his books, because this insures his reading them, at least with his fingers. Not always, for a certain chronicler of collections of privately illustrated books in this country narrates, how “relying upon the index” of a book, which he illustrated, he inserted a portrait of Sam Johnson, the famous, whereas “the text called for Sam Johnson, an eccentric dramatic writer,” etc. His binder, he says, laughed at him for being ignorant that there “two Sam Johnsons” (there are four in the biographical dictionaries, one of whom was an early president of King’s College in New York). But if done personally and conscientiously it is a means of valuable culture. As one of the oldest survivors of the genus Illustrator in this country, I have thus assumed to offer an apology and defense for my much berated kind. And now let me make a few suggestions as to what seems to me the most suitable mode of the pursuit.

n illustrating there seem to be two methods, which may be described as the literal or realistic, and imaginative. The first consists simply in the insertion of portraits, views and scenes appropriate to the text. A pleasing variety may be imparted to this method by substituting for a mere portrait a scene in the life of the celebrity in question

For example, if Charles V. and Titian are mentioned together, it would be interesting to insert a picture representing the historical incident of the emperor picking up and handing the artist a brush which he had dropped—and one will have an interesting hunt to find it. But I am more an adherent of the romantic school, which finds excellent play in the illustration of poetry. For example, in the poem, “Ennui,” in “The Croakers,” for the line, “The fiend, the fiend is on me still,” I found, after a search of some years, a picture of an imp sitting on the breast of a man in bed with the gout. In the same stanza are the lines, “Like a cruel cat, that sucks a child to death,” and for this I have a print from a children’s magazine, of a cat squatting on the breast of a child in a cradle. Now I would like “a Madagascar bat,” which rhymes to “cat” in the poem. “And like a tom-cat dies by inches,” is illustrated by a picture of a cat caught by the paw in a steel trap. “Simon” was “a gentleman of color,” the favorite pastry cook and caterer of New York half a century ago—before the days of Mr. Ward McAllister. “The Croaker” advises him to “buy an eye-glass and become a dandy and a gentleman.” This is illustrated by a rare and fine print of a colored gentleman, dressed in breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled shirt, scanning an overdressed lady of African descent through an eye-glass. “The ups and downs of politics” is illustrated by a Cruikshank print, the upper part of which shows a party making an ascension in a balloon and the lower part a party making a descent in a diving-bell, and entitled “the ups and downs of life.” To illustrate the phrase, “seeing the elephant,” take the print of Pyrrhus trying to frighten his captive, Fabricus, by suddenly drawing the curtains of his tent and showing him an elephant with his trunk raised in a baggage-smashing attitude. For “The Croakers” there are apt illustrations also of the following queer subjects: Korah, Dathan and Abiram; Miss Atropos, shut up your Scissors; Albany’s two Steeples high in Air, Reading Cobbett’s Register, Bony in His Prison Isle, Giant Wife, Beauty and The Beast, Fly Market, Tammany Hall, The Dove from Noah’s Ark, Rome Saved by Geese, Cæsar Offered a Crown, Cæsar Crossing the Rubicon, Dick Ricker’s Bust, Sancho in His Island Reigning, The Wisest of Wild Fowl, Reynold’ Beer House, A Mummy, A Chimney Sweep, The Arab’s Wind, Pygmalion, Danae, Highland Chieftain with His Tail On, Nightmare, Shaking Quakers, Polony’s Crazy Daughter, Bubble-Blowing, First Pair of Breeches, Banquo’s Ghost, Press Gang, Fair Lady With the Bandaged Eye, A Warrior Leaning on His Sword, A Warrior’s Tomb, A Duel, and A Street Flirtation.

s the charm of illustrating consists in the hunt for the prints, so the latter method is the more engrossing because the game is the more difficult to run down. Portraits, views and scenes are plenty, but to find them properly adaptable is frequently difficult. Some things which one would suppose readily procurable are really hard to find. For example, it was a weary chase to get a treadmill, and so of a drum-major, although the latter is now not uncommon: and although I know it exists, I have not attained unto a bastinado. Sirens and mermaids are rather retiring, and when Vedder depicted the Sea-Serpent he conferred a boon on Illustrators. “God’s Scales,” in which the mendicant weighs down the rich man, is a rarity. Milton leaving his card on Galileo in prison is among my wants, although I have seen it

As to scarce portraits, let me sing a song of

THE SHY PORTRAITS.

h, why do you elude me so—
Ye portraits that so long I’ve sought?
That somewhere ye exist, I know—
Indifferent, good, and good for naught.
Lucrezia, of the poisoned cup,
Why do you shrink away by stealth?
To view your “mug” with you I’d sup,
And even dare to drink your health.
Oh! why so coy, Godiva fair?
You’re covered by your shining tresses,
And I would promise not to stare
At sheerest of go-diving dresses.
Come out, old Bluebeard; don’t be shy!
You’re not so bad as Froude’s great hero;
Xantippe, fear no law gone by
When scolds were ducked in ponds at zero.
Not mealy-mouthed was Mrs. Behn,
And prudish was satiric Jane,
But equally they both shun men,
As if they bore the mark of Cain.
George Barrington, you may return
To country which you “left for good;”
Psalmanazar, I would not spurn
Your language when ’twas understood.
Jean Grolier, you left many books—
They come so dear I must ignore ’em—
But there’s no evidence of your looks
For us surviving “amicorum.”
This country’s overrun by grangers—
I’m ignorant of their christian names
But my afflicted eyes are strangers
To one I want whom men call James.
There’s Heber, man of many books—
You’re far more modest than the Bishop;
I’m curious to learn your looks,
And care for nothing shown at his shop.
And oh! that wondrous, pattern child!
His truthfulness, no one can match it;
Dear little George! I’m almost wild
To find a wood-cut of his hatchet.
Show forth your face, Anonymous,
Whose name is in the books I con
Most frequently; so famous thus,
Will you not come to me anon?

y way of jest I have inserted an anonymous portrait opposite an anonymous poem, and was once gravely asked by an absent-minded friend if it really was the portrait of the author. One however will probably look in vain for portraits of “Quatorze” and “Quinze,” for which a print seller of New York once had an inquiry, and I have been told of a collector who returned Arlington because of the cut on his nose, and Ogle because of his damaged eye. But there is more sport in hunting for a dodo than a rabbit

It is also a pleasant thing to lay a picture occasionally in a book without setting out to illustrate it regularly, so that it may break upon one as a surprise when he takes up the book years afterward. It is a grateful surprise to find in Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” a casual print from Roger’s “Italy,” and in Hamerton’s books some sporadic etchings by Rembrandt or Hayden. It is like discovering an unexpected “quarter” in the pocket of an old waistcoat. For example, in “With Thackeray in America,” Mr. Eyre Crowe tells how the second number of the first edition of “The Newcomes” came to the author when he was in Paris, and how he found fault with Doyle’s illustration of the games of the Charterhouse boys. He says: “The peccant accessory which roused the wrath of the writer was the group of two boys playing at marbles on the left of the spectator. ‘Why,’ said the irate author, ‘they would as soon thought of cutting off their heads as play marbles at the Charterhouse!’ This woodcut was, I noticed, suppressed altogether in subsequent editions.” Now in my copy—not being the possessor of the first edition—I have made a reference to Mr. Crowe’s passage, and supplied the suppressed cut from an early American copy which cost me twenty-five cents. How many of the first edition men know of the interesting fact narrated by Mr. Crowe? The Illustrator ought always at least to insert the portrait of the author whenever it has been omitted by the publisher

Second: What to illustrate. The Illustrator should not be an imitator or follower, but should strive after an unhackneyed subject. A man is not apt to marry the woman who flings herself at his head; he loves the excitement of courting; and so there is not much amusement in utilizing common pictures, but the charm consists in hunting for scarce ones. It is very natural to tread in others’ tracks, and easy, because the market affords plenty of material for the common subjects. Shakespeare and Walton and Boswell’s Johnson, and a few other things of that sort, have been done to death, and there is fairer scope in something else. Biographies of Painters, Elia’s Essays, Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici” and “Urn Burial,” “Childe Harold,” Horace, Virgil, the Life of Bayard, or of Vittoria Colonna, or Philip Sidney, and Sappho are charming subjects, and not too common. A ponderous or voluminous work lends itself less conveniently to the purpose than a small book in one or two volumes. Great quartos and folios are mere mausoleums or repositories for expensive prints, too huge to handle, and too extensive for any one ever to look through, and therefore they afford little pleasure to the owners or their guests. An illustrated Shakespeare in thirty volumes is theoretically a very grand object, but I should never have the heart to open it, and as for histories, I should as soon think of illustrating a dictionary. Walton is a lovely subject, but I would adopt a small copy and keep it within two or three volumes. After all there is nothing so charming as a single little illustrated volume, like “Ballads of Books,” compiled by Brander Matthews; Andrew Lang’s “Letters to Dead Authors,” or “Old Friends,” Friswell’s “Varia,” the “Book of Death,” “Melodies and Madrigals,” “The Book of Rubies,” Winter’s “Shakespeare’s England.”

gentleman who published, a good many years ago, a monograph of privately illustrated books in this country, spoke of the work that I had done in this field, and criticised me for my “apparent want of method,” “eccentricity,” “madness,” “vagaries,” “omnivorousness,” and “lack of speciality or system,” and finally, although he blamed me for having illustrated pretty much everything, he also blamed me for not having illustrated any “biographical works.” This criticism seems not only inconsistent, but without basis, for one man may not dictate to another what he shall prefer to illustrate for his own amusement, any more than what sort of a house or pictures he shall buy or what complexion or stature his wife shall have. The author also did me the honor to spell my name wrong, and did the famous Greek amatory poet the honor of mentioning among my illustrated work, “Odes to Anacreon.” Would that I could find that book!

I offer these suggestions with diffidence, and with no intention to impose my taste upon others

If the Illustrator can get or make something absolutely unique he is a fortunate man. For example, I know one, stigmatized as eccentric, who has illustrated a printed catalogue of his own library with portraits of the authors, copies of prints in the books, and duplicates of engraved title-pages; also one who has illustrated a collection in print or in manuscript of his own poems; also one who has illustrated a Life of Hercules, written by himself, printed by one of his own family, and adorned with prints from antique gems and other subjects; and even a lawyer who has illustrated a law book written by himself, in which he has found place for prints so diverse and apparently out of keeping as Jonah and the whale, John Brown, a man pacing the floor in a nightgown with a crying baby, a “darkey” shot in a melon-patch, an elephant on the rampage, Cupid, Hudibras writing a letter, Joanna Southcote, Launce and his dog, a dog catching a boy going over a wall, Dr. Watts, Robinson Crusoe, Barnum in the form of a hum-bug, Jacob Hall the rope dancer, Lord Mayor’s procession, Raphael discoursing to Adam, gathering sea-weed, Artemus Ward, a whale ashore, a barber-shop, Gilpin’s ride, King Lear, St. Lawrence on his gridiron, Charles Lamb, Terpsichore, and a child tumbling into a well. The owner of such a book may be sure that it is unique, as the man was certain his coat of arms was genuine, because he made it himself

Third: the Illustrator should not be in a hurry.

here are three singular things about the hunt for pictures. One is, the moment you have your book bound, no matter how many years you may have waited, some rare picture you wanted is sure to turn up. Hence the reluctance of the Illustrator to commit himself to binding, a reluctance only paralleled by that of the lover to marry the woman he had courted for ten years, because then he would have no place to spend his evenings. (I have had books “in hand” for twenty years).

nother is, when you have found your rare picture you are pretty certain to find one or two duplicates. Prints, like accidents or crimes, seem to come in cycles and schools. I have known a man to search in vain in thirty print-shops in London, and coming home find what he wanted in a New York print-shop, and two copies at that. The third is, that you are continually coming very near the object without quite attaining it. Thus one may get Lady Godiva alone, and the effigy of Peeping Tom on the corner of an old house at Coventry, but to procure the whole scene is, so far as I know, out of the question. It would seem that Mr. Anthony Comstock has put his ban on it. So one will find it difficult to get “God’s scales,” in which wealth and poverty are weighed against each other, but I have had other scales thrust at me, such as those in which the emblems of love are weighed against those of religion, and a king against a beggar, but even the latter is not the precise thing, for in these days there are poor kings and rich beggars

One opinion in which all illustrators agree seems sound, and that is, that photographs are not to be tolerated. Photography is the most misrepresentative of arts. But an exception may be indulged in the case of those few celebrities who are too modest to allow themselves to be engraved, and of whom photography furnishes the only portraiture

A photographic copy of a rare portrait in oil is also admissible. Some also exclude wood-cuts. I am not such a purist as that. They are frequently the only means of illustrating a subject, and small and fine wood-cuts form charming head and tail pieces and marginal adornments. One who eschews wood-cuts must forego such interesting little subjects as Washington and his little hatchet, God’s scales, the skeleton in the closet, and many of those which I have particularized

I flatter myself that I have made the margins of a good many books very interesting by means of small wood-cuts, of which our modern magazines provide an abundant and exquisite supply. These furnish a copious source of specific illustration.

ith their zeal illustrators are sometimes apt to be anachronistic. Every book ought to be illustrated in the spirit and costume of its time. The book should not be stuffed too full of prints; let a better proportion be preserved between the text and the illustrations than Falstaff observed between his bread and his sack. The prints should not be so numerous as to cause the text to be forgotten, as in the case of a tedious sermon

Probably nearly every collector expects that his treasures will be dispersed at his death, if not sooner. But it is a serious question to the illustrator, what will become of these precious objects upon which he has spent so much time, thought and labor, and for which he has expended so much money. He never cares and rarely knows, and if he knows he never tells, how much they have cost, but he may always be certain that they will never fetch their cost. Let us not indulge in any false dreams on this subject. The time may have been when prints were cheap and when the illustrator may have been able to make himself whole or even reap a profit, but that day I believe has gone by

One can hardly expect that his family will care for these things; the son generally thinks the Book-Worm a bore, and the wife of one’s bosom and the daughter of one’s heart usually affect more interest than they feel, and if they kept such objects would do so from a sense of duty alone, as the ancient Romans preserved the cinerary urns of their ancestors. For myself, I have often imagined my grandson listlessly turning over one of my favorite illustrated volumes, and saying, “What a funny old duffer grandad must have been!” Such a book-club, as the “Grolier,” of New York, is a fortunate avenue of escape from these evils. There one might deposit at least some of his peculiar treasures, certain that they would receive good care, be regarded with permanent interest, and keep alive his memory.

o augment his books by inserting prints is ordinarily just the one thing which the Book-Worm can do to render them in a deeper sense his own, and to gain for himself a peculiar proprietorship in them. Generally he cannot himself bind them, but by this means he may render himself a coadjutor of the author, and place himself on equal terms with the printer and the binder

After he has illustrated a favorite book once, it is an enjoyable occupation for the Book-Worm to do it over again, in a different spirit and with different pictures. “Second thoughts are best,” it has been said, and I have more than once improved my subject by a second treatment

There is another form of illustration, of which I have not spoken, and that is the insertion of clippings from magazines and newspapers in the fly leaves. Sometimes these are of intense interest. My own Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne, in particular have their porticoes and posterms plentifully supplied with material of this sort

The latest contribution of this kind is to “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and consists in the information that a western American “land-shark” has recently swindled people by selling them swamp-lots, attractively depicted on a map and named Eden

In my Pepys I have laid Mr. Lang’s recent letter to the diarist. So on a fly leaf of Hawthorne’s Life it is pleasing to see a cut of his little red house at Lenox, now destroyed by fire.

IX.

BOOK-PLATES.

rather modern form of book-spoliation has arisen in the collection of book-plates. These are literally derived “ex libris,” and the business cannot be indulged, as a general thing, without in some sense despoiling books. It cannot be denied that it is a fascinating pursuit. So undoubtedly is the taking of watches or rings or other “articles of bigotry or virtue,” on the highway

But somehow there is something so essentially personal in a book-plate, that it is hard to understand why other persons than the owners should become possessed by a passion for it. Many years ago when Burton, the great comedian, was in his prime, he used to act in a farce called “Toodles”—at all events, that was his name in the play—and he was afflicted with a wife who had a mania for attending auctions and buying all kinds of things, useful or useless, provided that they only seemed cheap. One day she came home with a door-plate, inscribed, “Thompson”—“Thompson with a p,” as Toodles wrathfully described it; and this was more than Toodles could stand. He could not see what possible use there could ever be in that door-plate for the Toodles family. In those same days, there used to be displayed on the door of a modest house, on the east side of Broadway, in the city of New York, somewhere about Eighth Street, a silver door-plate inscribed, “Mr. Astor.” This appertained to the original John Jacob

In those days I frequently remarked it, and thought what a prize it would be to Mrs. Toodles or some collector of door-plates. Now I can understand why one might acquire a taste for collecting book-plates of distinguished men or famous book-collectors, just as one collects autographs; but why collect hundreds and thousands of book-plates of undistinguished and even unknown persons, frequently consisting of nothing more than family coats-of-arms, or mere family names? I must confess that I share to a certain extent in Mr. Lang’s antipathy to this species of collecting, and am disposed to call down on these collectors Shakespeare’s curse on him who should move his bones. But I cannot go with Mr. Lang when he calls these well-meaning and by no means mischevious persons some hard names.

n some localities it is quite the vogue to take off the coffin-plate from the coffin—all the other silver “trimmings,” too, for that matter—and preserve it, and even have it framed and hung up in the home of the late lamented. There may be a sense of proprietorship in the mourners, who have bought and paid for it, and see no good reason for burying it, that will justify this practice. At all events it is a family matter. The coffin plate reminds the desolate survivors of the person designated, who is shelved forever in the dust. But what would be said of the sense or sanity of one who should go about collecting and framing coffin-plates, cataloguing them, and even exchanging them?

ook-worms penetrate to different distances in books. Some go no further than the title page; others dig into the preface or bore into the table of contents; a few begin excavations at the close, to see “how it comes out.” But that Worm is most easily satisfied who never goes beyond the inside of the front cover, and passes his time in prying off the book-plates

I think I have heard of persons who collect colophons. These go to work in the reverse direction, and are even more reprehensible than the accumulators of book-plates, because they inevitably ruin the book

A book-plate is appropriate, sometimes ornamental, even beautiful, in its intended place in the proprietor’s book. Out of that, with rare exceptions, it strikes one like the coffin-plate, framed and hanging on the wall

It gives additional value and attractiveness to a book which one buys, but it ought to remain there

If one purchases books once owned by A, B and C—undistinguished persons, or even distinguished—containing their autographs, he does not cut them out to form a collection of autographs

If the name is not celebrated, the autograph has no interest or value; if famous, it has still greater interest and value by remaining in the book. So it seems to me it should be in respect to book-plates