civilisation enables a vast number of impecunious scholars, by pursuing that fascinating chase known as book-hunting, to enjoy in their measure all the transports that shake the soul of a millionaire bibliophile, such as the late Baron James de Rothschild, on whose shelves repose the choicest MSS. of Quaritch, the oldest monuments of the printing press which could be brought together by the diligent quest of a little army of agents from the dingy book-stalls of France and Germany. If book-collecting were useful for nothing else but to add to the sense of human happiness, this later development of the science, which brings its joys within the reach of all, is highly to be commended. "What an immense amount of calm renovation and mental enjoyment do those who are not book-lovers miss! Even a millionaire will add a hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile, while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled with the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and every book is a personal friend." 1 Turning once more to the room in which these choicest spoils of time are to rest, minute directions for its size and aspect are to be found by those who care for such details. We frankly confess ourselves of the number who love to see a fine collection of books suitably housed. And yet the subterranean library of the late Duke of Portland at Welbeck is not much to our mind, albeit 236 feet in length. Here a man could literally be buried in books. With Lord Bacon, our library should form part of a "princely palace," wherein would be a fair court, with turrets, stately galleries, "three or five fine cupolas," "fine coloured windows of several works," and "all three sides a double house, with thorough lights on the sides," that there may be rooms from the sun, both for forenoon and afternoon. "At both corners of the further side, by way of return, let there be two delicate or rich cabinets, daintily paved, richly hanged, glazed with crystalline glass, and a rich cupola in the midst, and all other elegancy that can be thought upon." 2 Somewhere amid this veritable Palace of Art, room should be found for the Library, with "inbowed windows, pretty retiring places for conferences, and which keep off both wind and sun." In it, according to one of our poets as fond of a library as was Southey "2 Blades, The Enemies of Books, p. 10. Selected shelves shall claim thy studious hours, In accordance with the above platform of a princely library, may be mentioned that at Newstead, which (if memory serves aright), looks, as here indicated, upon a fair court with a fountain in the centre. It is itself a long low room, well lit with "inbowed windows," where reading tables are placed, and in which perfect privacy can be found, while the great and good of the past are arranged in shelves all round, running up to the height of six feet from the floor. Busts and paintings fill up the space reaching to the ceiling, or at least should do so in our ideal library, while a few arms, a Japanese cabinet, an old English oak chest, and the like, will give homeliness and comfort, which may be still further secured by Persian rugs and the skins of feline monsters thrown on the polished oak floor, with abundance of candles, and writing materials disposed aptly in the deep windowspaces. Your bed-chamber, and also your library, says Vitruvius, should have an eastern aspect; usus enim matutinum postulat lumen. Not so the picture gallery, which requires a north light, uti colores in ope, propter constantiam luminis, immutata permaneant qualitate." 2 Mr. Lang, indeed, thinks 3 directions about the aspect of a library antiquated, seeing that its owner now requires, or rather keeps, few but select books. To us, however, whether the apartment be small or large, a proper care for the greater preservation and more convenient use of its contents appears anything but useless. We do not agree, therefore, with him when he writes-"the adviser who would offer suggestions to the amateur, need scarcely write with Naudé and the old authorities about the size and due position of the library. He need hardly warn the builder to make the salle face the east, 'because the eastern winds, being warm and dry of their nature, greatly temper the air, fortify the senses, make subtle the humours, 1 Rogers, An Epistle to a Friend. He quotes on the last two lines above : "Postea vero quam Tyrannis mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis adibus."--CICERO. *Rogers, ut supra. See The Library, p. 32. Macmillan, 1881. In a review of this book in the pages of Notes and Queries (6th S. iii. p. 499) the writer proceeds, "a library," Mr. Lang says, "may look east, west, or south"; we are tempted to add, "but it ought to look north." H 2 purify the spirits, preserve a healthy disposition of the whole body, and, to say all in one word, are most wholesome and salubrious.'" Nor are we minded to laugh at the counsels of Isidorus, quoted by the same writer, about the introduction of panels of green marble in order to refresh the eye. No minutiæ are below the notice of the scholar who is to spend most of his time in the library. Among libraries interesting from associations, Abbotsford holds a high place, and yet, in spite of its valuable contents and the good work which its constructor did in it, it always strikes us as too circumscribed and gloomy. There should be room for fancy and invention to expand in a library, although straitness may better befit that inmost core, the working-room or cabinet, where its owner does most of his real literary work. We have lately seen a charming library built by the greatest architect of the day for a country house, whose owner is certainly not insensible to the delights of books. It stands on a broad terrace overlooking a flower garden, and so suffering the eye to glide over a fair expanse of meadow to a hill rising opposite, topped with a few bent pines; and it looks towards the sunset, which is after all perhaps the best English translation of the librarian of Mazarin's precise directions about the virtues of the east. These are calculated for another meridian than the bleak eastern outlook in England. The room itself is seventy feet long by twenty-five, and twenty-five feet to the wall-plate. It is lit by three huge criel windows. A light cast-iron gallery runs round the other three sides, and gives admittance at the back to a delightful sanctum sanctorum, lighted with one small window, in which is inserted some fine old stained glass picked up on the Continent. When the books which are to fill this model room are in their places, and the railing of the gallery is furnished with moveable desks on which to rest books of reference, the ideal exemplar of a goodly library will have been translated into a reality, so far as relates to the shell which encloses so goodly a kernel. Dismissing the books, which will vary infinitely according as the owner of such a princely room collects black-letter copies, tall folios, topography, classics, or simply rare and curious volumes, a few words may be devoted to the subject of binding. Here, as in everything else, the practice of the ancients will furnish a hint. The umbilici of their papyri were painted or ornamented with carving; the titles of these books written in ink of a red colour, and the rolls of papyrus kept in parchment cases stained of a yellow or purple colour. Gilding and colour are, we hold, essential to the back of a well-bound book. What style of binding is more useful and at the same time more chaste than the dark yellow calf and gilt backs so dear to our grandfathers? Uniformity, however, we deprecate. Let here a cheerful glow of crimson morocco and gold brighten the backs of a favourite Plato, while Jeremy Taylor reposes next him in sombre theological calf. Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus deserves a coat of white vellum with red edges, while a few incunabula may be suffered to reign in proud state in their own dusky calf. We quite agree with M. Ambrose Firmin Didot, who would clothe the Iliad in a full suit of red morocco and the Odyssey in one of blue, because the old Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the Wrath of Achilles, a blue one when they sang the Return of Ulysses.' Here we should desiderate two or three such Groliers as delighted Cracherode-say for choice that special first edition of Homer which had belonged to Thuanus-while the neighbour shelf should rejoice, like another Atlas, to upbear the world of tasteful ornament which Roger Payne had bestowed upon a handful of choice volumes. These varying colours and styles of binding have each of them a history dear to their owner. He does not merely learn wisdom in an austere fashion by reading the insides of his books, but their outsides greet him as old friends; this one acquired at a celebrated auction, that one picked up on the quais of Paris, and yet another rescued from a marine store at Wapping; and all invite him by their grateful looks to enter upon closer companionship. He is no true lover of books who suffers his volumes to remain in yellow paper and blue boards. Would he like to see his wife, the very apple of his eye, go about a dowdy? And do not his books lie very near the heart of the true book-lover? For the same reason, he would think that he richly deserved the six months' hard labour which London magistrates deal out to brutal husbands who kick and jump upon their wives, could he bring himself to double up the backs of his books, set the leg of his chair upon their open pages to keep his place, tear out the fly-leaves to light his pipe, or simply throw them in a corner to save the trouble of putting them orderly on their shelves. The book-thief himself is a fine character compared with the detestable morals of such monsters. Yet how many men have to look sadly at some treasure thus maltreated by Grangerite, book-ghoul, or book-plate stealer! "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in 1 Lang, The Library, p. 68. the eye. "1 Let the collector's books then be both well dressed and well treated, that they may smile pleasantly from their several nooks at their master as he enters his library. Every book-lover possesses some gem dear above his other treasures. Thus, her Most Gracious Majesty's library at Windsor contains the Mentz Psalter, the first book printed with a date, and that of 1457; the Althorpe library enshrines the celebrated Boccaccio, the object of such competition at the Roxburghe sale; and the like. Conceive the felicity of Steevens, who owned the Second Folio of Shakespeare, with autograph notes and alterations in the scenes made by Charles II. ; or (to come nearer our own day) the satisfaction of David Laing when he acquired Queen Mary's Psalter! These are some of the raptures only known to lovers of a library. Against the foes who would by secret or violent means rob such book-lovers of their choicest possessions, Mr. Blades has written his amusing little volume "The Enemies of Books." Right craftily does he warn his readers of the wiles of book-worms and moths, the injuries wrought by damp and fire, and—worst, perhaps, of all-the thefts of housemaids. So strongly does he insist on the careful preservation of books from the destructive propensities of these harpies, that we had opined no maligner of the unappreciative race of womankind could exceed his invectives. Due regard to truth, however, compels us to declare that Mr. Lang is still more plain-spoken with regard to the sex, and in our opinion is amply justified in his diatribes, ungallant though they be. It is sadly true that too many women value a book solely for its binding. A worthless novel in a gaudy red cover, begilt with sprawling roses, far outweighs the sacredness of some small but stout treatise of the 17th century in that ragged leather covering so dear to the collector. We have known such precious little tomes dismissed to back settlements, burnt, sold for an old song, ruthlessly mangled, torn up and flung aside as useless frippery with all manner of contumely and insult by the womankind of some unsuspecting book-lover who had not placed his library under lock and key when that miserable craze for cleaning infatuates most women at the spring full moons. Then they rage worse than Mænads and Bacchantes among a scholar's books and papers. Dust and spiders are trifles compared with the invasion of housemaids' buckets and brushes. We would infinitely rather see these fell foes of books aided by book-worms to boot in our shelves than have the books they contain turned over to the tender mercies of cleaning. "Broadly speaking," says Mr. Lang,2 1 Milton, Areopagitica. 2 The Library, p. 61 |