UC-NRLF 
 
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LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
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UBRARf 
 SCHOOL 
 
BOOKS IN THE HOUSE 
 
BOOKS 
 THE 
 HOUSE 
 
 An Essay on Private Libra- 
 ries and Collections for 
 Young and Old 
 
 By 
 
 ALFRED W. POLLARD 
 
 Published by arrangement with 
 Ralph Fletcher Seymour by 
 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 Indianapolis, U< S. A* 
 
Copyright 1904 
 
 By 
 Ralph Fletcher Seymour 
 
 siifilj t 'J y If UJ 
 
; 
 
 Books in the House 
 by Alfred W. Pollard 
 
 220(539 
 
BOORS IN THE HOUSE 
 
 I. THE BUYING OF BOOKS 
 
 HERE is one sentence, 
 and as far as I remem- 
 ber only one, in all 
 Ruskin's writings which 
 comes nigh to setting my 
 teeth on edge whenever 
 I read it the sentence in 
 Sesame and Lilies, in 
 which he asks, with reference to books, "Will 
 you go and gossip with your housemaid or your 
 stable-boy when you may talk with queens and 
 kings?" It is not merely that the implied slur 
 on the stable-boy, who may be a very instruc- 
 tive person to talk to, is a little ungenerous, nor 
 even that of all the great writers of whom I 
 can think there is none, save, perhaps, those 
 sturdy republicans Milton and Landor, to 
 
whose style the epithet royal seems at all fit- 
 ting, my quarrel with the metaphor is that 
 to talk with kings and queens implies, at least 
 to the imagination, some sense of aloofness and 
 constraint even of embarrassment, and that 
 to conjure up this picture before the eyes of a 
 timid reader is no good service. Books may be 
 brothers and sisters to us, even fathers and 
 mothers; they may be as schoolmasters and 
 priests, as bachelor uncles, or the golden- 
 mouthed traveller to whom we listen at an inn 
 but always, if they are to be of any use, they 
 must be as living friends or acquaintances, and 
 the whole art of forming and keeping a library 
 consists in treating them on this footing, alike 
 mentally and materially. 
 
 It is true that to acquire a new book is not 
 so serious a venture as to seek a new friend. 
 It would be a serious venture, indeed, to say 
 that in buying a book we take on ourselves no 
 responsibilities. On the contrary, we thereby 
 enter into a covenant with all the gods and 
 goddesses of literature, that so long as that 
 book is in our possession it shall be decently 
 used. But save for this, and for what help we 
 can give literature by a wise choice, the respon- 
 sibility is mainly to ourselves, and we can 
 indulge in the luxury of being self-regarding. 
 
 8 
 
If we outgrow the book it will not be morti- 
 fied. If we find we have made a mistake we 
 have but lost our money, though if we allow 
 a bad failure to remain on our shelves, it may 
 sensibly lessen the pleasure we take in a whole 
 bookcase* Yet the ideal of our relations with 
 books remains unaltered, even though the 
 acquisition of a bad book of reference is a less 
 misfortune than the hiring of a bad cook, 
 though an ill-considered treatise on history is 
 more easily changed than an inefficient pro- 
 fessor, and though the novel or poem which 
 was to have given us a new philosophy of life 
 proves easier to shake off than the clever table 
 d'hote talker when his epigrams have begun to 
 pall Mistakes we must surely make, but we 
 do not want to make more than we need, lest 
 we grow discouraged; while worse than almost 
 any mistake is the failure to rise to the con- 
 ception of the possibilities which living friend- 
 ships with books may hold for us. 
 
 To spend even a few pounds a year on 
 books is indeed so great a luxury that to forego 
 it when the money can honestly be spared 
 suggests the existence of asceticism in quarters 
 where it might least be expected. But like 
 other luxuries of refinement, book-buying, to 
 be thoroughly enjoyed, needs not only money, 
 
but some little leisure. To buy a book in a 
 hurry halves the pleasure of the purchase. To 
 buy books by the yard reduces the value to 
 that o the decorative effect of their backs as 
 a substitute for wall-paper. And yet the 
 temptations to buy books by the yard are now 
 very great. As the deacon in Salem Chapel 
 (if any one now knows that delightful book) ex- 
 tolled the attractiveness of a "coorse" above 
 that of the single sermon, so the modern pub- 
 lisher believes in the superior selling-power of 
 the " series" over that of the single book, how- 
 ever good. There are many publishers now- 
 adays, and to too many of them the manufacture 
 of books is as mechanical a business as the 
 production of any other article of merchandise. 
 Like sheep they follow in each other's tracks, 
 and if one firm's "cheap line" in books on sport, 
 or art, or short biographies, or popular re- 
 prints, seems to be selling well, straightway 
 half a dozen others flood the market with sim- 
 ilar wares, trying to give, or to appear to give, 
 just a little more for the same money, or to 
 charge just a little less for the same amount. 
 Not to be able to "list" a series on every sub- 
 ject on which any other publisher has produced 
 one would seem to argue inferiority ; and so 
 our new manufacturers compete with each 
 
 10 
 
other merrily, and the man or woman who 
 can get up a subject quickly, and has a knack 
 for pleasant writing, is more in request than 
 ever before. No doubt from this not too 
 scrupulous competition some good books 
 emerge* Not every contributor to a series 
 writes mainly for the sake of his "pound a 
 thousand/' There are always one or two con- 
 spicuously better than the rest, and it is the 
 business of the book-buyer to find which these 
 are, and to resist the temptation to fill his 
 shelves with long rows of books all in the 
 same jackets. If he is of my way of thinking 
 he will resist this temptation also when it 
 comes to him in the form of the "Collected 
 Edition/' which lately has had so much vogue. 
 Just before his death Robert Louis Stevenson 
 needed money for his Samoan estate, and an 
 ingenious friend raised it for him most suc- 
 cessfully by persuading all the different firms 
 who had published his books to allow them 
 to be printed uniformly, in numerous volumes, 
 in large type, at a price which yielded a hand- 
 some profit to all concerned. Ere the issue 
 was completed came Stevenson's death, and 
 with it a wave of enthusiasm, which sent the 
 collected edition to a considerable premium, 
 and thus started a fashion in such things. That 
 
 ii 
 
it gained money for " R. L. S." covers many 
 sins, and I know good Stevensonians who sub- 
 scribed gladly for these stately and monoto- 
 nous volumes. But not in such as these was 
 it that I first read Virginibus Puerisque, The 
 Travels in the Cevennes, and The Inland Voy- 
 age; and the grandeur and uniformity with 
 which they are invested deprives them of half 
 their flavour and all their friendliness. It is 
 like calling on an old college crony, and after 
 being handed on from flunky to flunky, finding 
 him in a gilded drawing-room, surrounded by 
 an admiring crowd. We might feel assured 
 that the man himself was unaltered, but it 
 would be odd if we gained the pleasure we had 
 anticipated from our chat. To buy a collected 
 edition of a favourite author is to sacrifice so 
 many sovereigns and so many inches of shelv- 
 ing merely to advertise our allegiance. Haply, 
 we may find in it some minor works hitherto 
 unread, but to expect from it a happy renewal 
 of old intimacies is vain indeed. 
 
 I have no love for railing, and will forego 
 an intended tirade against the sumptuous "art" 
 books, with whose splendours those who 
 lightly grow rich beguile themselves at Christ- 
 mas-time. As the collected edition sometimes 
 justifies itself by putting money into the poc- 
 
 12 
 
kets of authors whose early work was scantily 
 paid, so these barbaric volumes occasionally 
 enable a real student to find a publisher for a 
 monograph which would otherwise go un- 
 written. The student may feel rather sadly 
 that his cherished theories will never here meet 
 the eyes of the readers whom he would like 
 to convert and Charles Lamb would certainly 
 have classed these editions among his books 
 that are no books, but we need not quarrel 
 with them too fiercely for all that. It is a 
 pleasanter task to remind those who set apart 
 a few pounds a year for book-buying how much 
 they may do to encourage good literature of 
 their own day. To buy the first editions of 
 modern authors after they have made their rep- 
 utations is an agreeable by-way of book-col- 
 lecting. To have bought them when the 
 reputations were still to make would have 
 given us a share, however small, in the delight 
 of their success. To be on the lookout for new 
 authors and buy their early books may load our 
 shelves with some promises which will never 
 be fulfilled, but unless our judgment be very 
 faulty, in some of our purchases we shall an- 
 ticipate the popular verdict, and even a few 
 hits may console us for some wasted silver. 
 In the matter of praise, young writers nowa- 
 
 13 
 
days receive almost too much encouragement. 
 The much-maligned reviewer is always on the 
 watch for the appearance of a new genius, and 
 eager to proclaim his discovery of it. But the 
 young writer needs patrons who, as Herrick 
 sang of Endymion Porter, will "not only praise, 
 but pay them, too/' and it is extraordinary how 
 few of these patrons there be, even when the 
 patronage desired is no more than the expen- 
 diture of a five-shilling piece or less* Men 
 whose names are well known to all literary 
 people, and gossip about whom good newspa- 
 pers are glad to insert, often receive less than 
 a ten-pound note in royalties on a new book, 
 and it is small wonder if so many of them pass 
 over from the ranks of literature to those of 
 journalism. That many of them should so pass 
 is, no doubt, well. Good journalists are better 
 than second or third rate men of letters. But 
 it is not by any means certain that it is always 
 the third-rate men who go. We upbraid Irish- 
 men sometimes for their lack of energy, their 
 disinclination to help themselves, whereas we 
 should rather wonder that, when for so many 
 generations the bravest and most adventurous 
 have sought their fortunes abroad, so much 
 virtue has still remained in the stock. And from 
 the Green Island of literature it is not the 
 
 14 
 
dreamers who can never realise their dreams, 
 nor the polishers of cherry-stones that go forth 
 each year to the New World of newspapers, 
 it is the men who can at least write clearly and 
 have something to say, and it is deplorable that 
 the difficulty of earning from literature an in- 
 come on which a family can be maintained is 
 so extreme that many promising writers aban- 
 don the attempt altogether, or regard their 
 occasional attempts to write a good book as a 
 luxury for which their children's education has 
 to suffer. If readers were more adventurous 
 and less niggardly we might hope for better 
 things. There is no question here of confining 
 ourselves to what Ruskin called the " talk of 
 kings and queens," or substituting at one 
 effort Marius the Epicurean for The Manx- 
 man. But we enjoy any game of skill most 
 thoroughly when our playmate is strong 
 enough to put us on our mettle, and surely in 
 the noble game of literature we should match 
 ourselves, not with the authors whose plane of 
 thought is no higher than our own, but with 
 those who carry us at least a few yards nearer 
 to the top of the hill. 
 
 If by buying a few good books each year we 
 may help to make literature a more possible 
 profession, we may use our shillings also to 
 
 '5 
 
improve the externals of book - production. 
 Book-buyers who do not confine their pur- 
 chases entirely to the fortnight before Christ- 
 mas soon get on friendly terms with their 
 book-sellers, and a refusal to buy a book on 
 the ground that the type is bad or badly printed, 
 or the paper unpleasantly heavy or brittle, will 
 very quickly be reported to the offending pub- 
 lisher's traveller, and conveyed by him to 
 headquarters. The types used in British and 
 American books of the day are, mostly at least, 
 fairly good, but the press-work is often far 
 from satisfactory; and more especially when a 
 book has achieved an unexpected success pub- 
 lishers are tempted to have a cast made from 
 the type after one or more editions have been 
 printed from it, and the later editions printed 
 from this cast present an appearance against 
 which a book-buyer has a right to protest. 
 As for modern paper, between the desire for 
 cheapness and the need of an absolutely 
 smooth surface for printing some of the pro- 
 cess blocks used for the illustrations with 
 which many books are now foolishly over- 
 crowded, it is in a bad way. As good paper is 
 now made as at any previous time, and if it 
 is sufficiently heavily rolled it can take a sur- 
 face from which any block can be printed; 
 
 16 
 
but wood-pulp and esparto grass are much 
 cheaper than rags, and the smooth surface 
 more cheaply obtained by loading the mixture 
 with clay than by rolling, hence the multi- 
 tude of books too heavy to be held in the 
 hand, which it is dangerous to read in bright 
 sunlight, lest the paper turn brown, or whose 
 leaves are so brittle that they can never be 
 properly sewn for binding. Against these evils 
 book-buyers can exercise a perfectly legitimate 
 influence; and they might even help to bring 
 about a revival of the now almost lost art of 
 wood-engraving, if they would but express a 
 little weariness of the meretricious brilliancies 
 of the process block. 
 
 But the books and reprints of to-day are not 
 the only ones to be considered when once we 
 begin book-buying. To acquire the very first 
 editions of famous English books needs a long 
 purse, but a library of editions which the 
 authors themselves, or at least their younger 
 friends, might have handled is a much more 
 modest affair, yet from the literary standpoint 
 almost, if not quite, as interesting. Sometimes 
 they are better printed and on better paper 
 than modern reprints; even where they are not 
 so good they bring with them the Old World 
 flavour, and we feel in closer touch with the 
 
 b , 7 
 
authors. In a copy of the second edition of the 
 Confessions of an English Opium -Eater, 
 which I bought the other day for 55. (its full 
 market value), there are advertisements at the 
 end, of Elia, Carey's Dante, Lamia, Isa- 
 bella, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and 
 other poems by John Keats, author of Endy- 
 mion, Endymion itself, and three books by 
 William Hazlitt To most of the advertise- 
 ments contemporary press notices are ap- 
 pended. As it lies before me in its faded paste- 
 board covers, the book really takes me back to 
 1823, and gives a sense of nearness toDe Quin- 
 cey and Lamb and Keats and Hazlitt which 
 no modern reprint can inspire. Truly there is 
 joy to be found in the old bookshop, and 
 though dealers' catalogues, to one whose busi- 
 ness it is to try to read them all, become a 
 little wearisome, the potentialities of purchase 
 which they offer are very alluring. In buying 
 these old editions book-lovers will do well 
 to think only of their own tastes and means, 
 without attempting to make bargains. If you 
 don't want to read an old book, or if it is not 
 clean and sound enough to be read with pleas- 
 ure, don't buy it because you have heard of 
 other copies selling at a much higher price. 
 Leave it for the collector, or, better still, for a 
 
 18 
 
fellow book -lover whose tastes lie in this 
 direction. If you think only of what a book is 
 worth to you personally there can be no dis- 
 appointments, and in the end you will probably 
 find that some bargains have come your way. 
 In all that has so far been written we have 
 had in view the purchase of books for the 
 buyer's personal pleasure. If the owner of a 
 country house wishes to have a library in it 
 which shall be a pleasure to his visitors as well 
 as to himself, advice is more difficult, and if 
 he has built a new library and placed book- 
 cases all round it, and is in a hurry to fill them, 
 advice is very difficult indeed. Of course he 
 may go to a good bookseller and have his 
 shelves filled for him by the yard, as afore- 
 saidjust as he may go to a good furniture- 
 shop and have his drawing-room furnished in 
 any style which happens to be fashionable. 
 But the library which does not reflect its 
 owner's individuality is but a poor thing, while 
 one which is a generous extension of a col- 
 lection of personal favourites gives a pleasant 
 atmosphere to the whole house. Surely the 
 books should come first, and the bookcases as 
 need arises. Leave spaces round the wall for 
 new bookcases, O library-builder, and take time 
 in filling them. It may be that your desires are 
 
 19 
 
purely altruistic, for it is quite possible to be a 
 good fellow and a good talker and a man of 
 parts, and yet not to get your wit from books, 
 or to care over-much for reading them. In that 
 case think of the friends for whose pleasure 
 you would provide, and ask them to help you 
 in their favourite subjects. Far better is it to 
 seek aid from a friend than from a tradesman. 
 There may be some incongruities in the books 
 thus brought together, but there will be no 
 harm in that, and the library will reflect your 
 individuality through that of your friends. If 
 none of your friends can help, you may then 
 have recourse to the tradesman, or, better still, 
 save your money. For to buy books with the 
 certainty that you have not even a friend who 
 will read them is surely as discourteous to the 
 authors as to ask a musician to play to an audi- 
 ence who will not stop talking to hear him. 
 
II. INHERITED BOOKS AND THEIR 
 VALUES 
 
 F, as was suggested in our 
 last paper, to try to form 
 a library in a hurry leads 
 to disaster, to inherit one 
 ready-made is by no 
 means always a blessing* 
 When the original col- 
 lector has been a man 
 of some literary taste, or a genuine antiquary, 
 the inheritance is likely to be both valuable 
 and (to a worthy descendant) delightful. 
 But the books which have accumulated in 
 the library of a succession of intelligent 
 country gentlemen, or city merchants, who 
 just read and bought the books which their 
 neighbours were reading and buying, but 
 kept them more carefully, are apt, when 
 critically examined, to present a sadly forlorn 
 
 21 
 
appearance, more especially after even a few 
 years of neglect* There will be a general 
 impression of decaying leather and dusty 
 tops, and a first perusal of the book- 
 labels (where they have not fallen off) may re- 
 veal nothing more exciting than volumes of the 
 classics with Latin notes, Langhorne's trans- 
 lation of Plutarch, Johnson's Lives of the 
 Poets, Gibbon's Roman Empire, and some 
 sermons. The books occupy the only room in 
 the house which is available for a library; to 
 mix modern ones with them seems incongru- 
 ous, even if there are spaces on the shelves, and 
 the room looks so dull that no one cares to sit 
 in it. The owner's first impulse may very well 
 be to sell the whole collection as waste paper, 
 but as he looks at the books again he notes that 
 some of them are of dates a good deal earlier 
 than the end of the eighteenth century, and 
 that here and there is a volume printed in old- 
 fashioned types, or, haply, if the owner is an 
 American, bearing local imprints which show 
 that his great-grandfather did not import all 
 his books from England, but encouraged the 
 printer of his own country as well The idea 
 occurs to him that old books are sometimes 
 valuable, occasionally very valuable indeed, 
 and he wonders if any of these are among 
 
 22 
 
them, and how he is to find out. The book- 
 seller with whom he usually deals is a worthy 
 man, but not patently learned. On the other 
 hand, to ask one of the chief bookselling firms 
 of London, New York, or Chicago, to send an 
 expert to examine a collection which may be 
 all rubbish seems rather absurd, and if the 
 examination is to be with a view to purchase, 
 unsatisfactory, while the owner himself is so 
 ignorant of what he is selling. Moreover, some 
 of the books may have some personal links 
 with former members of his family, and as to 
 the regard to be paid to these, a bookseller's 
 advice is not to the point. 
 
 The picture here drawn is by no means im- 
 aginary, and human nature being what it is, 
 there is perhaps no great cause for surprise 
 that owners sometimes resort to strange shifts 
 to obtain some expert advice without paying 
 for it. A plan very commonly pursued is to 
 get some not highly educated person to make 
 a list of the books with their dates, and to ask 
 the nearest librarian of a public library, as a 
 part of the work he may reasonably be ex- 
 pected to do, to look through the list and say 
 if any of the books in it are valuable. This is, 
 no doubt, inexpensive, but not entirely satis- 
 factory. The librarian has an uneasy feeling 
 
that he is preventing some bookseller from 
 earning a fee to which he has a right; he is 
 mostly quite sufficiently occupied with his own 
 work, and he has learnt by frequent experience 
 that should any of the books on the list be 
 desirable acquisitions for his own library, it is 
 practically certain that any other offer will be 
 preferred to his. The owner of a book who 
 asks for gratuitous advice as to its value seems 
 always to think it necessary to represent his in- 
 quiry as a mere matter of curiosity, the book 
 being so dear to him that no price would in- 
 duce him to part with it. The mood is often 
 curiously evanescent, but dignity demands that 
 it should be maintained in the case of the 
 person to whom it is stated, and so the book 
 is sold elsewhere, and the librarian feels an- 
 noyed. For this reason members of the staff of 
 many large libraries are strictly forbidden to 
 give any estimate as to the value of books 
 shown to them, nor is the prohibition un- 
 reasonable. Even when the owner is un- 
 usually frank and confesses to an intention of 
 selling, librarians would far rather that he 
 would take his books in the first instance 
 elsewhere, instead of worrying them into 
 making an offer and using this as a lever to 
 extort more from the trade to whom a libra- 
 
 24 
 
rian's willingness to give a hundred dollars for 
 a book is often a certificate which prompts 
 a sporting offer of a hundred and five* 
 
 After all if books that have long been har- 
 boured in a house are to be sold away from it, 
 piety demands that they should first pass be- 
 neath their owner's eye, nor need the process 
 be very lengthy or unpleasant. An indispensa- 
 ble preliminary is that the books should be 
 dusted, and if they are very dirty it is well to 
 do this in the open air. Their fate will also be 
 much more favourably considered if before the 
 inspection the parched leather of their bind- 
 ings is lightly rubbed with ordinary furniture 
 polish, and then quickly dried with a clean rag, 
 or old silk handkerchief. By this simple process 
 dirt which seemed ingrained is removed, and 
 the old bindings not only recover much of their 
 brilliancy, but are given a new lease of life. 
 
 When the books come up for inspection the 
 owner will not find it difficult to get a rough 
 idea of their value if he keep one or two gen- 
 eral principles in mind. The first of these is 
 that (despite the existence of the word biblio- 
 mania, and the fact that room has always been 
 found for book-buyers in the Ship of Fools) 
 folly and book-buying do not generally go 
 together. Sebastian Brant's Book -Fool was 
 
the man, not who wasted good money on 
 worthless books, but who could not or would 
 not read the good books he bought* In this 
 sense there are plenty of book-fools still 
 among us; but though the price of a rare book 
 may occasionally be driven up to some mon- 
 strous sum by the competition of two million- 
 aires, book prices as a rule are determined by 
 quite reasonable and obvious causes. Of these 
 mere rarity, though under certain circum- 
 stances it plays a very important part, is not one 
 of the most immediate. It would be an interest- 
 ing question, indeed, to determine whether 
 dull books are more likely, or less, to be pre- 
 served than good or lively ones. They run no 
 risk of being thumbed to pieces, but it is to 
 no man's interest to preserve them, and per- 
 haps the one consideration balances the other. 
 Whether it is so or not will never be known, 
 for in the case of really dull books no one is 
 tempted to ascertain whether they are rare or 
 not. Could it be proved beyond dispute that 
 every other copy had perished, the solitary sur- 
 vivor of a whole edition might still remain 
 unsalable. Even books which, far from being 
 dull but which on the contrary possess many 
 points of interest, both historical and literary, 
 have their value only slightly enhanced by 
 
 26 
 
rarity unless they are of a kind which sorts 
 with the fashion of the day among collectors* 
 An extraordinary instance of this may be found 
 in the fact that a well-known London book- 
 seller, Mr. Wilfrid Voynick, has for over a 
 year been offering for $20,000 a collection of 
 over one hundred and sixty books of editions 
 of early date, of not one of which has any one 
 else produced another copy. The books are 
 not only unique ( so far as the word can ever 
 safely be used ), but interesting in all sorts of 
 ways, so that the possession of them would 
 add distinction to any library in the world. 
 Yet apparently in the eyes of the bookmen 
 who are rich enough to back their opinion 
 their extreme rarity does not bring up their 
 selling value to $125 apiece. Age, again, is a 
 much less potent factor in price than is usually 
 believed. As regards English books, it can 
 hardly be said to exercise much influence after 
 1640, or on a generous estimate twenty years 
 later, the date of the Restoration. Possibly the 
 publication of Mr. Arber's reprint of the 
 Term-Catalogues may bring down the limit to 
 the end of the seventeenth century. At pres- 
 ent it is fixed by the fact that the British Mu- 
 seum, the Cambridge University Library, and 
 the John Ryland's Library have all published 
 
 27 
 
catalogues of English books printed before 
 1641. As soon as an idea is formed of a col- 
 lection of all the known books of the period, 
 it becomes interesting to add to this, and hence 
 the dull book printed in 1620 has a distinctly 
 higher value than the equally dull book printed 
 fifty years later* The value, though higher, is 
 not high. If clean and in good condition, an 
 English book printed before 1641 would hardly 
 be marked in any dealer's catalogue at less 
 than five shillings, and this may be taken to 
 be the value conferred by three centuries of 
 antiquity, without any other advantage. When 
 we get back to the sixteenth century the merit 
 of mere age is reinforced by the fact that, for 
 every score of years we recede, we get into a 
 distinctly more interesting period of English 
 printing, so that, taking the value of the dullest 
 conceivable book of 1610 as five shillings, this 
 might fairly be doubled for each twenty years 
 we recede. I do not think any bookseller 
 would ask less than ten shillings for an English 
 book printed in 1590, or than a pound for one 
 of 1570, or the corresponding prices of 2!., 4!,, 
 8L, for books of 1550, 1530, 1510. When we 
 work back to the fifteenth century the rise in 
 value is very marked and rapid* Hardly any 
 English fifteener would fetch less than a 
 
 28 
 
hundred pounds, and there are very few which 
 would fetch so little. Printers abroad having 
 begun earlier, and been far more prolific than 
 those who worked in England, the dullest for- 
 eign books will only fetch about the same 
 prices as English ones of some thirty years 
 later. As for books printed in America, it 
 would be rash for an Englishman to attempt 
 to offer a similarly precise rule of thumb, and 
 it may be doubted indeed whether the mate- 
 rials for it yet exist. Some day, perchance, it 
 will enter into the mind of an American bib- 
 liographer to produce a catalogue similar to the 
 British ones for the period 1476-1640, just 
 mentioned. Whether such a list of "Books 
 printed in the United States of America and 
 books by American authors printed in Eng- 
 land" will take as its limit date the Declara- 
 tion of Independence or the end of the 
 eighteenth century, or even some still later 
 year, remains to be seen, but it may safely 
 be foretold that five years after that cata- 
 logue is published the dullest books printed 
 in the last decade it covers will be worth from 
 fifty cents to a dollar, and that it will be easy 
 from this starting-point to move back con- 
 stantly increasing values as I have ventured to 
 do in the case of English books. 
 
So much for the unaided, or nearly unaided, 
 influences of age and rarity, the two qualities 
 for which it is commonly believed that col- 
 lectors are ready to pay most highly. Of the 
 existence of the three other cardinal elements 
 in book values artistic interest, literary in- 
 terest, historical interest the possession of an 
 average amount of cultivation ought to enable 
 the chance possessor of a book to form some 
 idea, not indeed as to how much a book is 
 worth, but as to whether it is worth anything 
 at all A handsome piece of printing is worth 
 buying at any time* It is natural (though not 
 always wise) to prefer illustrated books to 
 unillustrated ones, and those with borders, 
 initials, or other embellishments to those with- 
 out them. All these things are elements in 
 price. The market value of literary interest need 
 hardly be dwelt on. An interesting book, as 
 was suggested in our last article, becomes more 
 interesting when read in an edition of the au- 
 thor's own date, and first editions of famous 
 works are always prized. There is an interest in 
 subjects, moreover, as well as in authors and lit- 
 erary form. In an essay which is to appear at 
 Chicago it is hardly necessary to say that all 
 early volumes of travel, or descriptions of the 
 world, which contain references to America, 
 
 30 
 
fetch fancy prices. Books on sports and pas- 
 times, on manners and occupations, more 
 especially when they relate to our creature 
 comforts, as in the case of cookery-books, are 
 at one end of the scale, and it is to be feared 
 that old books on theology, unless by famous 
 authors, occupy the other. On the other hand, 
 all prae-Reformation service-books and Bibles, 
 and Prayer-books printed before the sixteenth 
 century reached its fourth quarter, when in 
 good condition, fetch high prices. The fingers 
 of faithful readers have worn out the majority 
 of copies, and the few that survive in the con- 
 dition which collectors appreciate are valued 
 accordingly. As we have said already, rarity by 
 itself counts for little, but rarity as a discrimi- 
 nating quality between one desirable book and 
 another has immense influence. The famous 
 Nuremberg Chronicle, with its countless pic- 
 tures, varies in price, according to condition, 
 from $50 to $200; the Hypnerotomachia Poli- 
 phili, the most famous of Venetian books, 
 fetches at most only about $600; we hold up 
 our hands in amazement when the 1623 folio 
 of Shakespeare's plays is sold for over $8,500. 
 Considering the intrinsic interest of these three 
 books all these prices are relatively small, be- 
 cause, judged by the usual standards of rarity, 
 
these books are relatively common. When 
 there is only one perfect copy of the 1623 
 Shakespeare which can come into the market 
 it should fetch $50,000. It is on this question 
 of rarity that expert advice can hardly be dis- 
 pensed with, though an energetic owner may 
 do much for himself with the aid of some 
 volumes of Mr. Slater's Bookprices Current 
 or Mr. Luther Livingston's companion work 
 on American Book Prices, in which the prices 
 of all (or most) books which have fetched 
 more than $50 at a London or New York 
 salesroom are recorded year by year. But the 
 simple notes here offered should at least en- 
 able the possessor of old books to pick out 
 from his shelves those which have the pri- 
 mary elements of value, and on these any good 
 book-seller will give an opinion at a moderate 
 fee, though he will be found fully able to 
 cope with any of the simple-hearted devices 
 employed to extract that opinion for nothing. 
 As to what should be sold and what kept, 
 the one sovereign test is that of replaceability. 
 An owner who does not care for eighteenth- 
 century history, or politics, or theology, if the 
 volumes containing them differ in no respect 
 from others in the old bookshops, may well 
 set his shelves free for occupants more to his 
 
 3* 
 
taste. To resign one's self to keeping a book 
 permanently without any expectation of be- 
 ing tempted to read it is as little to the world's 
 benefit as the owner's. There should be no 
 mausoleums for books save in the British 
 Museum and the Library of Congress. So 
 long as they are saleable as more than waste 
 paper there must be some one waiting to read 
 them, to whom we are acting dog-in-the- 
 manger. When the waste -paper stage is 
 reached, the book must resign itself to its 
 metempsychosis. 
 
 But if a book be not easily replaceable, then 
 there is surely room for second thought ere it 
 be turned out of its home. A valuable book 
 cannot easily be found on the shelves of an 
 old library without being evidence of some 
 ancestor's foresight literary taste, or as a col- 
 lector, and to banish this evidence from the 
 family archives seems hard measure. Such 
 books, more especially such as bear marks of 
 ownership, if they are once dispersed, though 
 they be replaced by other copies, will never 
 come back again with the same associations; 
 and they should be parted with as reluctantly 
 as any other heirlooms. 
 
 33 
 
III. THE KEEPING OF BOOKS 
 
 IKE human beings, books 
 have two methods of 
 protection against damp 
 and dirt their bindings, 
 or clothes, and the book- 
 cases and library build- 
 ings, which answer to our 
 houses. The relative im- 
 portance of these two defences has varied 
 with changing conditions. In modern Europe 
 specially built libraries date from about the 
 end of the fourteenth century. Before that 
 time cupboards in the stone walls of cloisters 
 housed the majority of books, and even when 
 they were in use, in the hands of monks sit- 
 ting at their cloister "carrills," or in the 
 draughty rooms of private houses, they must 
 have been exposed to many vicissitudes of 
 damp and heat and cold. Hence most early 
 
 35 
 
bindings that have come down to us are 
 notably substantial Metal bindings, it is true, 
 were used chiefly, if not exclusively, for large 
 service-books in the possession of rich churches. 
 But the earliest leather bindings and half-bind- 
 ings have mostly wooden sides, and when 
 wood was superseded by pasteboard the sides 
 were still made thick and strong. Further 
 to protect their contents, it was usual for 
 bindings to have clasps or ties, and in Italy 
 these were often placed not only across the 
 fore-edge, but at the top and bottom as 
 well Thus tightly clasped, the thick paper 
 or vellum of old books was safe against 
 most accidents; and when it is remembered 
 that precious volumes were often carried 
 in a satchel, or case, for additional protec- 
 tion, there is nothing incredible in the stories 
 of books having been dropped in the sea, 
 like the Lindisfarne Gospels, or in a river, 
 as with Queen Margaret's Gospels, without 
 suffering any more serious damage than a 
 stain near the edges. Since the fourteenth 
 century the binding of books has been con- 
 tinually getting lighter, until we have reached 
 the "leatherette," or whatever the material 
 is called, which clothes the modern "pocket 
 edition," but would certainly not clothe it 
 
 36 
 
for long were pocket editions ever carried 
 in the pocket. 
 
 Despite the tendency to lightness, good 
 bindings remain the best protection a book 
 can have, and a few words may be said as to 
 their use and abuse. Perhaps the first warn- 
 ing to be given is that bindings are expensive, 
 and that in more ways than one. One of the 
 charms of a binding is that it is the most 
 obvious means of imposing on a book its 
 owner's individuality, of making his copy 
 differ from every other copy. This, however, 
 tells both ways. If the new jacket which we 
 give to a book only marks our own bad taste, 
 or that of the jobbing bookbinder we employ, 
 the result will naturally be unsatisfactory, more 
 particularly if we have allowed the jobbing 
 binder to shave the margins and thus ruin the 
 appearance of the book and also its market 
 value. The most extreme instance of this 
 cropping I know of is that of a copy of Blake's 
 Songs of Innocence, in the possession of Mr. 
 Locker-Lampson, of which he plaintively re- 
 corded that a previous owner had cut it down 
 to fit into the cover of an old washing-book ; 
 but, in a less degree, the mischief is continually 
 going on. Why binders should be so fond of 
 cropping is hard to see, but in intrusting any 
 
 37 
 
but the very best firms with a book, it is advis- 
 able to give specific directions that the margins 
 are not to be cut at all or to exactly what di- 
 mensions they are to be reduced. In the case 
 of a book of any value it is also advisable to 
 give express directions that it is to be properly 
 sewn, and that its back and its head-band are 
 to be a real back and a real head-band, and not 
 shams. In most trade-bindings the leather 
 back plays a purely ornamental part, and the 
 little ridges which run across it are only make- 
 believe. The true back in these books is a 
 piece of brown paper, and the cords or tapes 
 over which the sewing-threads are twisted, 
 instead of standing out to justify the ridges, 
 are sunk in little trenches sawn in the back of 
 the sheets of the book, much to their detri- 
 ment. These "hollow -backs/' as they are 
 called, were introduced because of the difficulty 
 of making a book printed on stiff paper open 
 easily if properly backed, but a book on bad 
 paper is not worth a pretty binding, and to 
 bind a good book thus is an insult. All the 
 strain in opening and shutting is thrown on 
 the joints, with the result, in a book which is 
 much used, that the back comes off bodily. 
 Sham that is, glued on head -bands are 
 equally objectionable, because when a shelf 
 
 38 
 
is full a book can only be pulled from its place 
 by the head-band, and if this is not properly 
 sewn it comes off, the leather of the back has 
 to be used instead, and this in its turn speedily 
 gets torn away. My pleasure in the posses- 
 sion of the bound volumes of the Oxford 
 English Dictionary is largely spoilt by the 
 straits to which I am reduced every time I use 
 them. These large books have hollow backs, 
 and there is therefore no means of pulling 
 them out from the shelf without risk of tear- 
 ing off the leather. The only way to get at 
 them is by clearing away the books on each 
 side so as to be able to take them by the mid- 
 dle, though even this involves some risk. 
 Volumes as heavy as these really require straps 
 which can be used as handles, a device largely 
 employed at the British Museum in the case 
 of bound volumes of the Times and other 
 newspapers. 
 
 When he has seen that his books have real 
 backs and real head-bands, the book-lover's 
 troubles in the matter of binding are still not 
 at an end. During the last sixty years the old 
 slow processes of tanning leathers have been 
 quickened by the use of sulphuric acid, and 
 various mineral dyes are employed to give 
 brilliancy to the colours of the leathers used 
 
 39 
 
in binding. As long as the leathers are fresh 
 and moist the sulphuric acid is held in solution, 
 but in quite a few years' time the moisture is 
 dried up, and the acid causes the leather to 
 crumble away* The calf bindings of the six- 
 teenth century have lasted wonderfully, but all 
 modern calf is quite useless for permanent 
 binding, and morocco and pigskin are the only 
 leathers now obtainable which possess any 
 durability. Brilliant colours, even in these, 
 should be avoided, and not all of the plain 
 browns and reds are above suspicion. Fortu- 
 nately, since a committee of the Society of 
 Arts "on Leather used for Bookbinding" issued 
 its very useful report (obtainable at the society's 
 rooms, John-street, Adelphi, for a shilling) the 
 tanners have been aroused to the dangers of 
 the situation, and good binders in their turn 
 are making much more serious inquiry than of 
 yore into the quality of the leathers they use. 
 But inasmuch as a large class of buyers still 
 prefer the unsound but showy colours, it is 
 advisable that the book -lover who values 
 durability should make his wishes very clearly 
 understood. As already mentioned in a pre- 
 vious chapter, old bindings may be cleaned and 
 started on a new life by the moisture in them 
 being renewed with a dressing of furniture- 
 
 40 
 
polish, lightly applied and quickly wiped clean. 
 The ideal dressing has not yet been discovered, 
 but any polish which does not dry quickly is 
 likely to be at least a palliative. 
 
 From the evils which have been described 
 most book-buyers are preserved by the mas- 
 terly inactivity which leads them to ignore the 
 binder's art altogether. The policy is unen- 
 terprising, and discourages the followers of a 
 very beautiful and useful art but it must be 
 owned that the publishers' "cases/' with which 
 so many people are content are often charm- 
 ingly pretty, and that those in cloth or in good 
 buckram (cheap buckram soon wears thread- 
 bare) possess a very fair degree of durability. 
 Fancy bindings in white paper or parchment 
 or any other easily soiled material, are very 
 alluring when the shopman takes off their 
 grey paper covers and shows them as they 
 come fresh from the binder's; but unless the 
 paper covers are always to be kept on, which 
 would be absurd, they require to be housed 
 and handled with so much care that they bring 
 with them more anxiety than joy. If I may 
 go back for one moment to leather bindings, I 
 would say that we must beware of the same 
 danger in these also. A binding so dainty 
 that it cannot be stood on a shelf without the 
 
 41 
 
protection of a slip-case or box may well ex- 
 cite the kind of contempt which Hamlet felt 
 for Osric, or which any man who recognises 
 that there is work to do in the world feels for 
 a mere fop. A binding should protect its 
 book, and should not itself need protection. 
 The best French and Italian bindings of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have 
 gained in charm when they have been freely 
 handled by careful owners, and ornament so 
 elaborate or so delicate that it cannot stand 
 this is quite misplaced. Nor should orna- 
 ment ever be so profuse as to cover too large 
 a proportion of the leather, for the texture of 
 a really good piece of leather is so charming 
 in itself that it needs little further decoration. 
 When the leather is bad, or doubtfully leather 
 at all, as in some recent imitations of old 
 bindings, profuse gilding is a merit, since it 
 helps the deception. But with these imita- 
 tion bindings, which vulgarise and degrade old 
 masterpieces, no true lover of books is likely 
 to concern himself. 
 
 We must turn now from the clothes of 
 books to their dwelling-rooms, though prac- 
 tically all there is to say on this subject may 
 be summed up in the sentence that in matters 
 of light, temperature, and ventilation, what is 
 
 42 
 
best for their owner will mostly be best for 
 the books. Enough light to keep the air 
 sweet and clean, enough ventilation to avoid 
 damp or the dryness of artificially heated 
 rooms, and a temperature which does not rise 
 or fall too suddenly, these are all requisites in 
 a pleasant living-room, and they are all neces- 
 sary for the proper housing of books. In ask- 
 ing for light it must be remembered that 
 books, like most human beings, though they 
 like sunlight, like it diffused and not directly 
 in their eyes. Cloth cases and leather bind- 
 ings on which the sun is allowed to shine for 
 even a few hours a day rapidly fade, and the 
 leather is thought not only to fade but to rot 
 as well, as if (though I do not myself believe 
 this) the actinic rays were directly injurious to 
 it. In the year 1903, in which this essay is 
 being written, this danger may, of course, be 
 disregarded, and it is more to the point to con- 
 sider whether, as a precaution against floods, 
 all libraries should not be housed on the first 
 floor. But under normal conditions, even in 
 England, very serious mischief may be done 
 by direct sunlight, and I know of one library, 
 formerly noted for its fine bindings, in which 
 the reds have been reduced to yellows and the 
 browns to greys, with patches of their origi- 
 
 43 
 
nal colours remaining, where some bar had 
 shielded the leather, as witnesses of the havoc 
 the sun has wrought. This is a narrow room 
 lit by windows in a gallery, through which the 
 sun could pour down at ten and eleven in the 
 morning, when nearly at its greatest intensity. 
 Such an arrangement is not likely to be found 
 in many houses, but it suggests that broad, 
 low windows are better in libraries than high 
 ones, and that where high ones are a necessity, 
 it may be well (in order to avoid daily manip- 
 ulation of blinds) to use for the upper panes 
 pale green or yellow glass, which lessens the 
 force of the sun's rays. It may be gathered 
 also that a south aspect is better for a library 
 than a west one, as even through quite low 
 windows the afternoon sun will shine directly 
 onto the books ranged on the opposite wall. 
 
 Heat, especially when accentuated by im- 
 purity in the air caused by much tobacco 
 smoke, or by that now disappearing enemy, 
 gas, is very destructive to leather-bound books. 
 For this reason, as well as for convenience, 
 bookcases should not be much more than 
 eight feet high, as the air of a room is always 
 hottest near the ceiling. In the days of ad- 
 venturous youth I used to enjoy to the full 
 the delights of "open access" at that be- 
 
 44 
 
neficent institution with which the foresight 
 of Thomas Carlyle endowed English literary 
 folk, the London Library (before it was re- 
 built), by climbing the long ladders, meant 
 only for the staff, and roking among the top 
 shelves. The heat at those top shelves and 
 the foulness of the air were indescribable, and 
 the old bindings certainly showed the effect 
 of these conditions. The ugliest of book- 
 stacks is better than shelving carried to the 
 top of a lofty room. 
 
 Excessive sunlight and heat are injurious 
 chiefly to bindings, damp on the other hand 
 is destructive to the books themselves as well 
 as to their jackets, foxing the plates and de- 
 priving the paper of the size which keeps it 
 hard and strong. Damp is also a more subtle 
 enemy since it more often attacks from be- 
 hind than frontally, and glazing may only 
 accentuate the harm. If books smell musty 
 when the glass doors are opened it is time to 
 make sure that damp is not coming through 
 the wall. At all times it is important to see 
 that a glazed bookcase is adequately venti- 
 lated. Otherwise, when the temperature falls, 
 moisture collects on the inner side of the 
 glass, and this may be quite sufficient to do 
 harm. 
 
 45 
 
As to the advantages and disadvantages of 
 glass fronts much might be written. They 
 are almost a necessity when valuable books 
 have to be housed, merely as a signal to igno- 
 rant persons that they really are valuable. 
 But precisely because glass has this deterrent 
 effect it destroys the homeliness and friendli- 
 ness of a library, and in the country, where 
 dirt is so much less poisonous than in large 
 cities, it should be dispensed with as much as 
 possible. Of course, if a country house has a 
 library chimney which smokes, then glass is as 
 needful as in London, Manchester, or any 
 English or American manufacturing town, but 
 a library chimney ought not to be allowed to 
 smoke. Ordinary dry country dust, unless 
 books are allowed to stand gaping on the 
 shelves, does very little harm. Still, it is well 
 to have no more of it than is unavoidable, 
 and the library floor should never be carpeted 
 all over, but should be polished and covered, 
 where necessary, with rugs that can be taken 
 away and cleaned and put down again without 
 any dust being sent flying all over the room. 
 
 As regards bookshelves, the most impor- 
 tant recommendation that can be made is that 
 they should be easily adjustable to any sizes 
 of books they may have to hold. No matter 
 
how carefully dimensions are calculated, fixed 
 shelves are a constant source of annoyance, 
 and nothing looks uglier than a bookcase in 
 which rows of small books are standing on 
 shelves much too tall for them, while else- 
 where large volumes are laid on their sides or 
 their fore edges because they have not space 
 to stand upright* Where the books fit well 
 with the height of the shelves allotted to them 
 there is no need to use "falls/* which often 
 get torn, and in the case of small books some- 
 times hide the lettering. In place of falls 
 some careful owners lay strips of brown paper 
 or cloth along the tops of their books, which 
 can be taken off and cleaned as often as neces- 
 sary. They certainly save the tops of the 
 books from dust, but if they are to look tidy 
 either the top level of the books must be 
 uniform all along the shelf, or else the cloth 
 must be weighted with shot so as to follow 
 the level of the books and keep its position. 
 It need hardly be said that the shelves of a 
 bookcase should never be either painted or 
 varnished, as it is impossible to prevent a book 
 which is at all heavy, or which stands for any 
 time in the same place, from sticking to the 
 shelf if the shelf offers it the smallest encour- 
 agement to do so. 
 
 47 
 
Lastly, the best means of keeping a book is 
 to read it. Mr. Locker-Lampson, who first 
 introduced me to the charm of old books, used 
 to tell a story of how, for some small imper- 
 fection, he once took back a rare book to a 
 famous binder, and how the old man exam- 
 ined the faulty cover, and then, looking at the 
 complainant over his spectacles, exclaimed re- 
 proachfully, "Why, Mr. Locker, you've been 
 reading it!" It was a good story, but not to 
 the old binder's credit, for careful use is as 
 good for a book as moderate exercise for a 
 man's body. To be held in a healthy human 
 hand will postpone the need of furniture polish, 
 the dust is flicked off, the damp dispelled, and 
 every book on the shelf is the better for the 
 slight stir caused if only a single volume is taken 
 out and replaced. Only it must be remembered 
 that the most forgiving book will reap but 
 little profit from its jaunt if it be held in front 
 of the fire, laid down on its face in order that 
 the reader's "place" may not be lost, dogs- 
 eared with the same intent, devoured in con- 
 junction with buttered toast, or submitted to 
 the last and worst indignity of having its leaves 
 turned with a wetted finger. This trick is so 
 disgusting that an apology seems required for 
 even mentioning it, but one who watches 
 
many readers knows that though dying out it 
 is not yet extinct and that more especially it 
 clings to the man who has risen in the world, 
 when every other trace of a bad education has 
 been overcome. All such disrespectful tricks 
 should be cured early. We sometimes treat 
 books too superstitiously, as if the words of a 
 silly person became any wiser by a printer's 
 time having been wasted over them. But the 
 worst and most foolish of books does share so 
 far in the divinity of the noblest that until the 
 day comes for it to be pulped, its outward form 
 should be held sacred. 
 
 49 
 
IV. ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE 
 COLLECTOR 
 
 N an earlier chapter we 
 have incidentally vindi- 
 cated book-collectors 
 from the charge of folly 
 which the existence of 
 the silly word "biblioma- 
 nia," and misunderstand- 
 ing of Sebastian Brant's 
 meaning in his Narrenschiff, have caused to 
 be brought against them. Incidentally, also, 
 we have looked at the effects of age, rarity, 
 and some other causes on the prices of old 
 books. But up to this point we have been 
 concerned exclusively with the book-buyer 
 who buys to read, and our excursions into the 
 theory of collecting have been caused only by 
 our having to consider the case of the reader 
 of modern literature who finds himself pos- 
 
 5' 
 
sessed of a library of old books which he does 
 not know what to do with. It seems worth 
 while now to devote a few pages to a talk 
 about collecting, which in itself is quite a dif- 
 ferent thing from the formation of a library, 
 though it is from this that it has developed. 
 That the development is a natural one may be 
 argued from the fact that it has occurred more 
 than once. There were collectors very much 
 of the modern kind in the days of the Roman 
 Empire, men who prided themselves not so 
 much on the number of their books as on their 
 beauty and fine condition. Despite the fact 
 that he loved "plenty," this, indeed, was the 
 attitude of Sebastian Brant's book-fool, though 
 his folly consisted, not in the fact that he col- 
 lected, but in his confession, "What they 
 mean do I not understand." "But yet," he 
 says 
 
 " But yet I have them in great reverence 
 And honour, saving them from filth and 
 
 ordure, 
 
 By often brushing and much diligence. 
 Full goodly bound, in pleasant coverture 
 Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure, 
 I keep them sure, fearing they should be lost 
 For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast. 
 
 5* 
 
But if it fortune that any learned men 
 Within my house fall to disputation, 
 I draw the curtains to show my bookes then 
 That they of my cunning should make proba- 
 tion; 
 
 I keepe not to fall in altercation; 
 And while they commune, my books I turn 
 
 and wind. 
 For all is in them, and nothing in my mind/' 
 
 In this second stanza we have in the best 
 verse that Alexander Barclay, Brant's trans- 
 lator, could write, the common gibe of schol- 
 ars at the rich man who buys books which 
 they would like themselves, but cannot afford. 
 Let it be granted that the gibe is not unnat- 
 ural. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 it was very natural indeed. Despite the in- 
 vention of printing, books were still scarce 
 and expensive, and one great scholar, Isaac 
 Casaubon, is even said to have taken to him- 
 self a wife in order to obtain access to his 
 father-in-law's library, a manoeuvre which met 
 with no more success than it deserved. Even 
 to-day the grievance of the poor student is 
 not quite extinct. I have been trying myself 
 for several years to obtain any kind of a 
 copy, no matter how imperfect, of the 1598 
 
 53 
 
edition of Sidney's Arcadia. But they are all 
 in collector's libraries, save a few in public 
 ownership, and not even a large fragment is 
 obtainable. Nevertheless on any fair balance 
 the debt of the literary student to the antiqua- 
 rian collector is beyond all calculation. But 
 for him, for his extravagance in buying and 
 care in keeping, whole sections of literature 
 would have gone out of existence altogether, 
 or have been preserved in a more imperfect 
 and mutilated form than is the case. Students 
 of literature, and still more perhaps the pro- 
 fessors of it, being human, are as subject to 
 the influence of fashion and taste as the most 
 casual subscribers to a circulating-library, and 
 though in our own day we may well imagine 
 that there is no period of literature whose least 
 worthy products some one will not be ready 
 to admire and exalt, it yet remains probable 
 that our eyes are still shut to some beauties 
 which our successors will be able to perceive 
 if only Time be not allowed to sweep the 
 books away ere the generation which can ad- 
 mire them is born. It is in thus resisting the 
 ravages of Time, in gleaning where he seems 
 to have done his worst, that the collector jus- 
 tifies his existence, and in our light-hearted 
 talk of literary immortality we often forget 
 
 54 
 
how largely this immortality depends on the 
 good will of antiquarian collectors. 
 
 Perhaps the arrogance of the literary critic 
 was never more strikingly exemplified than in 
 a remark of the late Mr. H. D. Traill in one of 
 the early numbers of " Literature/' a weekly 
 paper begun with much flourishing of trum- 
 pets, but which, despite Mr. Traill's possession 
 of most of the gifts of a literary editor, never 
 thrived. There had been talk, with only too 
 much reason, of the badness of modern paper, 
 and Mr. Traill, in impulsive contradiction, la- 
 mented that any paper should be made which 
 could last more than a century. If during a 
 hundred years no one cared to reprint a book, 
 it was clearly not wanted, and that libraries, 
 public or private, should be blocked with un- 
 read books was purely a misfortune. 
 
 So in the mood of the moment wrote Mr. 
 Traill who could well afford to make a mis- 
 take, and the mistake was indeed worth making, 
 because of the curious results of an examina- 
 tion into how his rule would have worked 
 had it been made retrospective. Of the poets 
 who died before Charles I. was king, I think 
 only Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare would 
 have survived. All the rest would have suc- 
 cumbed during the century and a half of in- 
 
 55 
 
difference and neglect which separates Herrick's 
 Hesperides and Noble Numbers from the Lyri- 
 cal Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 
 Herrick himself reappeared in 1825. Surrey 
 and Wyatt were edited by Dr. Nott in 1815, 
 Gower's Confessio Amantis by Pauli in 1857. 
 Sidney's Astrophel and Stella was brought to 
 life with his other shorter works in 1829. ^ s 
 Arcadia, which retained its popularity for a 
 century and a hall has not been reprinted in 
 its entirety since 1739, though an abridgment 
 was published by Hain Friswell in 1867, and a 
 fac-simile of the incomplete first edition was 
 edited by Dr. H. Oskar Sommer a few years 
 ago. The length of the Arcadia, of course, 
 has stood in its way, and it is only recently 
 that modern publishers have plucked up heart 
 to attack some of the longer masterpieces. 
 The translation of Frossart by Lord Berners, 
 which by Mr. Traill's rule would have per- 
 ished twice over between Middleton's edition 
 in the sixteenth century and the reprint of 
 1812, would have had another narrow escape, 
 since eighty-nine years elapsed between this 
 last and Professor Ker's edition in 1901. Hol- 
 inshed has never been reprinted in full since 
 1587. Hakluyt has fared better, and even 
 Perclas's Pilgrims are now to reappear. 
 
Raleigh's History of the World is not likely 
 to find a new publisher, and even Camden's 
 (though a far more manageable work) has 
 lacked one since 1635. Thanks to Dodsley's 
 Old Plays, etc., Elizabethan dramatists would 
 have survived the application of Mr. Traill's 
 rule in single specimens, but no new collected 
 editions were published till the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century. As to the smaller 
 men, such as Nash, Greene, Lodge, Breton, 
 Churchyard, and many others, though their 
 names are enshrined in histories of literature, 
 had it not been for collectors their works would 
 have perished utterly. 
 
 The truth which has been illustrated in this 
 haphazard way for some of the masterpieces 
 of English literature holds equally for those of 
 any other country. We are familiar with the 
 long sleep of the classical Greek writers, and 
 the ravages wrought during it with their works, 
 but we hardly realize, perhaps, how much of 
 Latin literature survived the Middle Ages by 
 the "skin of its teeth/' Some authors now 
 neglected were then widely read. Seneca, for 
 instance, and Statius. Others, such as Virgil 
 and Ovid have enjoyed continuous vogue. 
 But Lucretius and Catullus very nearly perished. 
 Much of Livy, we know, has gone, and the 
 
 57 
 
Annals of Tacitus only survived under circum- 
 stances which caused the finder of them to be 
 branded as a forger. The list might be much 
 extended, and it is a striking commentary on 
 the narrowness of .modern classical scholarship 
 that many minor Greek and Latin authors can 
 still only be obtained in sixteenth-century 
 editions, zeal in reprinting being almost en- 
 tirely confined to Germany. In so far, then, 
 as the lives of books depend upon the care of 
 the professional guardians of literature, it is 
 evident that they have fared badly in the past, 
 nor can we, despite our modern activity, feel 
 any certainty that they will fare superlatively 
 well in the future. The nineteenth century re- 
 discovered Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, 
 and rejoiced to reprint it, with much won- 
 derment at the neglect into which it had fallen. 
 Possibly, before it has run its course, the 
 twentieth century may rediscover the eigh- 
 teenth, and reprint its minor poetry with as 
 much self-congratulation as we have felt at 
 the recovery of Campion and the other song- 
 writers of his day. Meanwhile it is the function 
 of the collector, by surveying books from a 
 different standpoint, to lessen the risks of their 
 going out of existence before they have had 
 their second chance. It may be granted that, 
 
 58 
 
if large funds are at their disposal, this function 
 will be performed still better by great libraries* 
 But the modern conception, so excellent in 
 itself, of a library as a literary workshop is 
 not likely to encourage in the future those an- 
 tiquarian tendencies, which, while often making 
 librarians of the old school churlish to their 
 daily visitors, yet helped them greatly in build- 
 ing up the collections which are now our 
 delight* The librarians of those days were in 
 fact themselves collectors, nor must it be for- 
 gotten that it is to the bequests of individual 
 book-hunters that the great historic libraries 
 now owe some of their chief attractions* The 
 Bodleian Library, which, by its founder's wish, 
 paid little attention to the "light literature of 
 the great period amid which it grew up, and 
 which turned out the Shakespeare Folio of 
 1623 when it obtained a later edition, would 
 be in a far less enviable position were it not 
 for the splendid bequests of Rawlinson, Tanner, 
 Malone and Donee. Without the privately 
 formed collections of George III. and Thomas 
 Grenville, even the 10,000 a year which the 
 British Museum for half a century had to 
 spend on books would have been unavailing 
 to supply its gaps. The private collector does 
 indeed reach his apotheosis when he thus 
 
 59 
 
gives to the community the results, not only 
 of his expenditure, but of the skill and judg- 
 ment by which it has been guided* But even 
 if he shows no such liberality, he is still a most 
 useful factor in the preservation of books. 
 For him agents traverse Europe in search of 
 neglected volumes; it is the memories of the 
 high prices he is willing to give that stays the 
 destroyers' hands; it is by his care that soiled, 
 fragile, and torn leaves are cleaned, and sized, 
 and mended. He has committed many crimes 
 in the past. He commits some even at the 
 present day, despite all attempts at guidance. 
 To please his pride, his Dogberry -like deter- 
 mination to have everything handsome about 
 him, countless old bindings have been ripped 
 off to be replaced by new morocco bearing 
 the owner's arms. The inoffensive stains of 
 age have been cleaned away, though ink and 
 paper both suffer in the process. The old ar- 
 rangements of the sheets are ignored in resew- 
 ing, and two or more slightly imperfect copies 
 are used to make one, so-called, perfect one, 
 though these made-up copies smell of the 
 hospital, and can give no pleasure to any justly 
 fastidious taste. Yet with all the faults for 
 which collectors can be held responsible, they 
 are a most useful race, the more useful, per- 
 
 60 
 
haps, in proportion as the books they collect 
 are more remote from popular tastes* A libra- 
 rian who has done splendid service in spread- 
 ing the "workshop" ideal among his fellows 
 complained the other day that we know more 
 about the books of the fifteenth century, and 
 the printers of them, than about those of our 
 own day. It was a splendid testimonial to the 
 antiquarian zeal of collectors and students of 
 this branch of bibliography. For the ordinary 
 book-buyer to keep books which he never has 
 read and never will read is useless and waste- 
 ful. They cumber his shelves and help to give 
 him a distaste for reading altogether. But to 
 have the same books regarded from another 
 standpoint by a collector who can form friend- 
 ships with them on other grounds, this is a 
 real advantage to the community, and one that 
 excuses many occasional errors and extrava- 
 gances. 
 
 61 
 
V. HOW TO COLLECT 
 
 NY one who finds him- 
 self buying a book, new 
 or old, for any other rea- 
 son than a desire to read 
 it will do well to ask 
 himself, as speedily as 
 possible, what aim he has 
 in view. To buy books 
 except for the sake of reading them constitutes 
 the buyer, though by a single instance, a col- 
 lector, and to collect aimlessly is a mere waste 
 of money, and possibly also of time. Col- 
 lecting may begin in the humblest and 
 most insidious of ways. If I buy a book, of 
 which I already possess a reasonably good 
 edition, merely because it is prettily printed, I 
 have to confess to myself that I do it because 
 I am tempted to become a collector of speci- 
 mens of fine printing. As it is a little danger- 
 
 63 
 
ous for literary folk with children to educate 
 to collect anything at all I try to compromise 
 by getting rid of the less attractive edition 
 every time I buy a prettier one* But this is 
 only a ruse which would not even deceive the 
 lady who shares the educational responsibility 
 aforesaid, did she require deceiving* Her own 
 temptations lie in the not very expensive di- 
 rection of all the editions of Jane Austen's 
 novels that have ever been printed* This is a 
 rather common form of introduction to book- 
 collecting, and only becomes dangerous when 
 the writer selected began inconveniently early* 
 The late Mr* R. C* Christie, a genuine scholar 
 and collector, had a special fondness for 
 Horace, and brought together over eight hun- 
 dred different editions* Another book-lover, 
 Mr, Waterton, collected all the editions of the 
 Imitatio Christi which he could acquire, and 
 at the time of his death, if I remember rightly, 
 possessed over thirteen hundred of them* 
 All of these not already on its shelves were 
 purchased by the British Museum, and the 
 fact that the whole of the Museum collection, 
 thus reinforced, passed through my hands 
 during the process of recataloguing did not 
 diminish the distaste I have always felt for 
 this particular form of collecting. In it, as a 
 
rule, the individual books become mere ciphers, 
 interesting not for their own sake, but as 
 proving the comparative popularity of the 
 work in different countries and at different 
 times, and this only in a rough and ready 
 fashion, since the number of editions is a poor 
 guide unless we also know the size of them. 
 In any case, a list of the edition tells the tale 
 as well as, or better than, the books them- 
 selves, and the collector's mission sinks to that 
 of providing the raw material for the bibli- 
 ographer. Where the author of a book has 
 not lived so inconveniently early as S. Thomas 
 a Kempis, or where only editions printed 
 within his century are collected, the task is 
 less burdensome, and more remunerative* 
 Thus Mr. Wise, Mr. Buxton Foreman, Mr. 
 Gosse, and others have done excellent work in 
 bringing to light the stray printing of various 
 English writers of the nineteenth century, 
 though they have also all yielded to the temp- 
 tation to create artificial rarities by obtaining 
 leave to print various small pieces in private 
 editions, an amusement which recalls some of 
 the special-stamp issues of insignificant gov- 
 ernments. 
 
 If in this one direction a form of book- 
 collecting which starts from the collector's 
 
own literary tastes may lead to doubtful re- 
 sults, the fact remains that it is by following 
 their own tastes that collectors are most 
 likely to promote the cause of learning and 
 literature. The student possessed of a wide, 
 or even a moderate, knowledge of his own 
 special subject, by turning his attention to the 
 books illustrating the history of its develop- 
 ment may do work which no librarian and no 
 bibliographer as such can possibly emulate. 
 The philological works brought together by 
 Prince Lucien Bonaparte, the library of polit- 
 ical economy amassed by Professor Foxwell, 
 are two examples that have attracted notice 
 of recent years, of the admirable results at- 
 tained by this expert collecting of this kind. 
 It is only fair, however, to add that its pecu- 
 niary results are exceptionally hazardous. Un- 
 less a fund can be raised to buy the collection 
 for presentation to some new institution it is 
 almost impossible to dispose of, even at a sac- 
 rifice, without division, and this though it does 
 not really diminish its usefulness, is a sad 
 alternative as seeming to deprive the collector 
 of the legitimate monument of his skill. 
 
 On a small scale, and for collectors who will 
 not allow themselves to pay too heavily in the 
 struggle towards the completeness which can 
 
 66 
 
never be attained, subject-collecting is the 
 easiest, the cheapest, and the most obviously 
 rational form the pleasure can take. It is also 
 probably the most popular, as witness the 
 great rise in the prices of old books on gar- 
 dening, sport, costume, cookery, and other sub- 
 jects in which interest is widely diffused. The 
 newcomer who wishes to walk along these 
 paths will need a fairly long purse, but the 
 variety of subjects is endless, and there are 
 still plenty in which books may be bought 
 cheaply enough. 
 
 When we pass from collecting books for 
 their subjects to collecting them for their out- 
 ward form we pass into a much more limited 
 hunting-ground, and yet one which has been 
 worked with a curious lack of system. Am- 
 ateurs of the historical side of printing have, 
 indeed, been systematic enough in searching 
 some small corners of the field, as is testified 
 by the complaint already quoted, that the his- 
 tory of the presses of the fifteenth century is 
 better known than that of those of our own 
 day. But the later history of printing is almost 
 entirely neglected, to the distinct disadvantage 
 of learning, since as long as printers are inter- 
 mediaries between authors and readers a 
 knowledge of their ways in each generation 
 
may at any moment be of use in deciding lit- 
 erary problems. 
 
 On its aesthetic side also the collection of 
 specimens of printing, as such, has been too 
 much confined to very early books. Good 
 work was proportionally more plentiful in the 
 fifteenth century than it has been since, but 
 there was plenty also of bad even in those 
 days, and at least some good in almost every 
 generation from then till now. Mr. R. G 
 Christie, whose Horace collection I have al- 
 ready mentioned, turned his attention also to 
 the output of the Lyonnese presses of the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, and Owens 
 College, Manchester, has been enriched by a 
 very charming collection as a result of his 
 hobby. It is astonishing to me that no English 
 or American book-lover has set himself to 
 acquire the books printed by the Chiswick 
 Press, which would illustrate the history of 
 nineteenth- century printing at its best, and 
 form a most amusing and interesting series. 
 That any printer or publisher can abstain 
 from seeking representative specimens of fine 
 book-making at different periods seems to me 
 curiously foolish. The experiments of his 
 predecessors must surely be not only of inter- 
 est, but of commercial value, and his own 
 
 68 
 
possession of some expert knowledge ought to 
 enable him to expend to the best advantage a 
 couple of hundred pounds in acquiring half 
 as many representative specimens. The sum 
 named may seem surprisingly small but when 
 literary value and rarity are set aside, good 
 printing of itself is not at present excessively 
 priced in the book-market and bargains may 
 still be made. 
 
 When we turn from the printing of books 
 to their illustration we find the same excessive 
 competition for the earliest specimens, in which 
 it must be confessed, though they are my own 
 particular hobby, that the cuts are often more 
 quaint than beautiful Later work is com- 
 paratively neglected, and offers a fine opportu- 
 nity for a collector blessed with good taste to 
 bring together a charming series of specimens 
 at a cost not exceeding what he might have to 
 pay for even two or three masterpieces of the 
 fifteenth century. The books with illustra- 
 tions on copper, set in with the text, though 
 of course by a separate impression, which 
 ousted the old woodcuts from popular favor 
 during the second half of the sixteenth century, 
 may be recommended to the judicious pur- 
 chaser, and good English work of the succeed- 
 ing century, unless in the form of frontispieces 
 
to literary rarities, does not yet command an 
 excessive price. The French illustrated books 
 of the eighteenth century are much more ex- 
 pensive, since they have long been prized by 
 collectors, who have carried the fashion of 
 extra -illustrating with proof impressions or 
 suppressed plates, to extreme lengths. It must 
 be said, also, that many of these livres a vi- 
 gnettes are more fit for the top shelf or the 
 locked cabinet than for the drawing-room ta- 
 ble, and reflect more credit on the skill of the 
 artist than on his sense of decency or that of 
 his employers. The English barons of this 
 period, often illustrated by French artists, are 
 free from this defect, but have less artistic 
 merit, while the custom of "hot-pressing" then 
 prevalent in England has frequently caused 
 "foxing," a calamity easily evaded by the rich 
 collector who can pick his copies, but which 
 produces great disappointment to less wealthy 
 book-hunters. To these copper engravings 
 succeeded the woodcuts and illustrations of the 
 school of Bewick, and then the wonderful steel- 
 plate engravings after designs by Turner and 
 other artists. Collectors who turn their atten- 
 tion to any of these, though they raise prices, 
 will yet confer genuine benefits on the histo- 
 rians of English book-work, since for lack of 
 
 70 
 
eager purchasers it is to be feared that many 
 of the books are going out of existence, and in 
 a short time no proper record of them will be 
 obtainable. 
 
 During recent years a steady effort has been 
 made to interest collectors in the books illus- 
 trated by English artists in the '6o's, but fine 
 as the woodcuts often are in design, and some- 
 times also in execution, no great success has 
 attended their attempts, because the print, pa- 
 per, and ornaments by which the pictures are 
 accompanied are so wretchedly poor as to spoil 
 the pleasure a book-lover would naturally take 
 in the pictures themselves. 
 
 Books remarkable for excellence in their 
 ornamental borders and initials form another 
 group which invite the attention of judicious 
 collectors. There is a great tendency now to im- 
 itate to the point of weariness a few fifteenth- 
 century border-pieces and initial letters to 
 which attention has been drawn. It would be 
 better if our book-artists tried to work with ori- 
 ginality on the same lines as the old craftsmen, 
 instead of slavishly copying their work. But if 
 old work is to be imitated, a wider knowledge 
 of it must be desired, and collectors might help 
 this by gathering representative specimens and 
 giving little exhibitions at their clubs. 
 
 7 1 
 
One special class of initial letter, though by 
 no means to be imitated, cries aloud for a col- 
 lector on account of its curiosity. About 
 1540, or perhaps a little earlier, some Vene- 
 tian publishers began to ornament their books 
 with initials designed on the plan of the 
 rhymes, "A was an Archer who shot at a 
 frog, B was a Butcher who had a great dog/' 
 so dear to our childhood. In books on sacred 
 subjects, A might show Abraham sacrificing 
 his son, B Balaam and his ass, C Cain, and 
 so on. These designs are mostly fairly easily 
 explained, though it is sometimes necessary to 
 remember that the forms of scripture names 
 prevalent in Italy in the sixteenth century dif- 
 fer from those with which we are familiar. 
 The mythological sets are much more diffi- 
 cult, and I have often thought of reproducing 
 a dozen of them and offering a prize for the 
 best guesses. The books in which these in- 
 itials occur are mostly quite cheap, and a col- 
 lection of them would be very amusing. 
 
 Such are some of the forms which col- 
 lecting might profitably take in the hands of 
 amateurs of the outward form of books, who 
 have sufficient good taste to distinguish good 
 work from bad, or sufficient interest in the 
 history of printing to care to epitomize it in a 
 
 72 
 
collection in which the bad work of each cen- 
 tury should be represented as well as the good. 
 Other accidents in the lives of books have 
 sometimes attracted special students. There 
 are those who have collected books that have 
 been condemned by the Inquisition or other 
 censors, books written in prison, books dedi- 
 cated to famous persons, or books printed 
 (mostly until recent days very badly) at pri- 
 vate presses. To enumerate all the possible 
 characteristics which have allured collectors is 
 no part of our task. Practically all collecting 
 is good if it have a definite aim, which leads 
 the collector to rescue books from destruction, 
 and add to knowledge by classifying and cata- 
 loguing them. The positive results may not 
 always be great, even relatively; may some- 
 times seem small indeed; but the joy of the 
 hunt is perennial, and this is the collector's 
 chief reward. 
 
 73 
 
VL THE CHILD'S BOOKSHELF 
 
 N essay on Books in the 
 home would be very in- 
 complete without a few 
 words on those often rag- 
 ged, mostly untidy, shelves 
 on which boys and girls, 
 as soon as they have 
 learned to read, begin to 
 place their poor literary treasures. If educa- 
 tion means anything, this foot or two of shelv- 
 ing is just the most important thing in the 
 whole house, for on it more than on anything 
 else depends what will be the child's tastes in 
 after life. Yet in this matter parents often 
 show a most strange and culpable indiffer- 
 ence. Books, we said at the outset of this 
 little essay, must be our friends. No other 
 relation between us and them (save in the 
 case of mere works of reference) can be per- 
 
 75 
 
manently profitable. Now, when we are 
 grown up the right to choose our own friends 
 is one of the most precious of human prerog- 
 atives. But while we are still young if our 
 child's library is to wait until the stream of 
 folly has run dry it may wait long indeed. 
 Taking things as they are, two suggestions may 
 be offered which will perhaps prove useful. 
 In the first place, let donors of books be very 
 slow indeed to put inscriptions in them; and 
 secondly let there be in each house a general 
 children's library, in addition to the bookshelf 
 which each child regards as peculiarly its own. 
 The thread which links these two suggestions 
 is the idea put in the forefront of this article, 
 that any library worthy of the name must be the 
 result of individual choice, and that the exercise 
 of this power of choice cannot be begun too 
 early. Now, to the free exercise of choice, 
 more especially in the case of an affectionate 
 child, inscriptions offer a great obstacle. I 
 have books on my own shelves now which I 
 have never read and never shall read, but 
 which I cannot bear to part with, because they 
 carry on their fly-leaves the names of dearly 
 loved doners who made these mistakes in their 
 Christmas or birthday presents. The books 
 they gave me which I really liked are, alas ! 
 
 76 
 
mostly gone, thumbed to pieces with a child's 
 carelessness. Only these indigestible pieces 
 remain, and I would gladly burn them if I 
 could do so reverently. But no one who has 
 not tried to burn a book can have any idea of 
 how difficult a feat it is, and to do it rever- 
 ently is impossible, except in a crematorium. 
 Our remote forefathers used to burn or bury 
 with the dead the possessions which they had 
 held dear in life. From a different motive I 
 should like these poor relics to perish with me. 
 To expect my children to house them for the 
 reasons that I do would be exacting; but that 
 they should appear in the Fourpenny Box with 
 their inscriptions erased or torn out seems an 
 impiety. Let the book-giver have a thought 
 for these difficulties. "If you like the book 
 very much, a year hence I will write your 
 name in it; if not, do what you like with it." 
 Surely this would be a wise saying. The un- 
 favoured books might remain awhile in the 
 general stock and then be weeded out. If it 
 can be done in honest good will, they should 
 be passed on to other children; if not, there is 
 always the paper-maker to give them a fresh 
 chance of usefulness. 
 
 The general library in the nursery or school- 
 room should 'not be confined to these experi- 
 
 77 
 
mental presents. Into it the wise parent will 
 place from time to time, without much com- 
 ment, plenty of miscellaneous books on which 
 young readers may browse with advantage, 
 and when a book has been read and honestly 
 liked, the reader may well be allowed to ap- 
 propriate it. In this way and with the sur- 
 vival of the fittest among the gift-books the 
 child's private bookshelf will gradually become 
 tenanted. Yet these two sources of increase 
 may well be supplemented by a third. From 
 among the books read aloud to them by their 
 elders, from those they meet with in the 
 houses of friends, from those recommended 
 by really careful guides with a knowledge of 
 individual tastes and capacities, there must be 
 some which a boy or girl will feel a real desire 
 to buy, and as they reach years of what may 
 be called "minor discretion/' at ten, twelve, or 
 fourteen, according to their development, to 
 give the boy or girl a dollar every three months 
 specifically to buy books with, is the best pos- 
 sible educational investment. The choice may 
 be very gently criticised, but it should be left 
 as free as possible, or the value of the experi- 
 ence will be half destroyed. 
 
 It is inevitable that our friends should to 
 some extent be chosen for us, or rather that 
 
 78 
 
our power of choice should be limited to se- 
 lection from among companions presented to 
 us by authority* Unfortunately in the matter 
 of book-friends authority is very lightly as- 
 sumed and very carelessly exercised. If an 
 uncle or aunt or any other well-meaning per- 
 son sent boys or girls to play with our children 
 with all the forms of a personal recommenda- 
 tion, but really without taking any trouble to 
 find out what their influence would be likely 
 to be, we should strongly resent it. Yet 
 Christmas after Christmas books are sent to 
 children, with inscriptions expressive of love 
 and affection, the donors having never read a 
 chapter of them, but having chosen them 
 solely on the ground of a taking title or pretty 
 pictures. The mischief thus wrought is really 
 great. We wonder at the force of tradition 
 in schools, and yet what boy goes to school 
 without having had books given him to read 
 in which schoolmasters are treated as his 
 natural enemies, often as "cads" or "sneaks," 
 and the piggishness of the dormitory supper is 
 held up as the height of bliss? Or, again, 
 how much nonsense is put into girls' heads 
 by love-stories with heorines of sixteen, or by 
 weakly religious tales exhibiting a combina- 
 tion of theoretical humility with gross spiritual 
 
 79 
 
self-consciousness, which is only too easily 
 imitated? If donors will not take the trouble 
 to read the books they give away they might 
 minimise their risks by choosing those which 
 other people have read and approved. There 
 are plenty of bad books which reach second 
 editions, but books which appear a second and 
 third year upon the market are not likely to be 
 among the worst and if anything can be done 
 to lessen the craze for novelty it will be some- 
 thing to the good. George Henty had no 
 small gifts as a story-teller, but to make an 
 income he had to turn out his three books 
 every year, and even then could have made 
 but a poor one had not the boys and girls of 
 America reinforced his English readers. What 
 wonder that his plots became mechanical and 
 his style ragged? Lazy book-buyers have no 
 right to be adventurous. They should leave 
 the newest books to donors who will take 
 some trouble, and who are rich enough, if they 
 find they have made a mistake, to put a bad 
 book in the fire instead of giving it away. It 
 may be said in passing that there would sel- 
 dom be need to take such a course if reviewers 
 of Christmas books were decently consci- 
 entious and courageous enough to exact a 
 reasonably high standard. Here again the 
 
 80 
 
craze for novelty is disastrous. The crowd o 
 new books is so great that a dozen have to be 
 noticed in a column. To read a book of 400 
 pages carefully enough to give an honest ver- 
 dict on it to compress this verdict into ten or 
 twelve lines which have, if possible, to be 
 made amusing, and then to receive three or 
 four shillings as your wage, is very poor busi- 
 ness. Yet these are the conditions under 
 which the bulk of Christmas books are re- 
 viewed in the very best newspapers, and the 
 fault does not rest with editors, but must be 
 shared between the public and the publishers 
 who both are crazy for novelties. 
 
 There remains the material question given 
 the child's library or bookshelf, where is it to 
 be placed? The answer to this is unluckily 
 rather difficult. If it is in the same room as 
 the general stock, the two are certain to get 
 mixed, and with the invasion of the private 
 shelf by alien volumes all pride and pleasure in 
 it are like to disappear. On the other hand, 
 to books in bedrooms, until the age of measles, 
 mumps, and chicken-pox is passed, there are 
 very strong objections. In some houses a land- 
 ing outside the bedroom may offer a safe, if 
 rather cold and unindividual, site for a simple 
 bookcase. In other homes a nook may be 
 
 81 
 
found for it in a morning-room, or any place 
 to which the owner may have free access. 
 Only the nook, if in a frequented room, should 
 be as inconspicuous as possible, lest the shelf 
 attract too much attention and a habit of mind 
 be cultivated which might lead to the acquisi- 
 tion of the Best Hundred Books. Where ex- 
 pense forms no great obstacle the glazed single 
 shelves, which can be built up, as more are 
 acquired, into a fairly handsome bookcase, have 
 many advantages. But the housing must never 
 be allowed to be more important than the books, 
 and any ostentation should be quietly discour- 
 aged. 
 
 With a little care, a little watchfulness, and 
 at the same time a little self-denial on the part 
 of would-be advisers too much inclined to force 
 a child's taste instead of allowing it to develop 
 naturally, the bookshelf thus formed in early 
 days will become the forerunner of many 
 others, and the habit of bookbuying begun un- 
 der these conditions will probably remain 
 through life. After all, it is a good habit. 
 Even when it becomes unusually pronounced 
 it may coexist, as in the classic case of Arthur 
 Pendennis, with other expensive tastes, but 
 more often it takes the place of them, and the 
 number of people who have ruined themselves 
 
 82 
 
by bookbuying is probably even smaller than 
 that of the few, of whom we sometimes hear 
 too much, who have found it, pecuniarily, a 
 good investment. Nor surely was the need of 
 a love of literature, and all that literature car- 
 ries with it, ever more urgent than in the 
 present day, when enormous wealth is so lightly 
 acquired, and the man who has the money- 
 making instinct may find himself at middle age 
 possessed of a power compared to which that 
 of the medieval baron, with his private gallows, 
 was but a trifle. In the early days of "Popular 
 Educators" reading was advertised as a panacea 
 against poverty; there is as much need of it 
 nowadays as a guide to the right use of wealth, 
 nor is it possible too early or too earnestly to 
 take thought that a child shall be led to the 
 best culture to which, by natural development, 
 boy or girl can attain. 
 
This edition of " Books in the House" con- 
 sists of 500 copies on hand-made paper 8$ 10 
 on Imperial Japan Parchment. 
 
 Designed by 6i printed under the supervis- 
 ion of Ralph Fletcher Seymour at the press of 
 R. R. Donnelley 65 Sons Co., in Chicago, for 
 the publishers, 
 
 The Bobbs- Merrill Company, 
 Indianapolis, Ind., U. S. A. 
 
U N [ \ . A