their minds. The case is the same even with contemporary authors. One likes to have Mr. Tennyson’s “Poems, chiefly Lyrical” (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830). It is fifty years old, this little book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a stately tree. In half a century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his “Mariana” is a masterpiece. “Mariana” is in all the collections, but pieces of which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the old volume of 1830. In the same way “The Strayed Reveller, and other poems, by A.” (London: B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much that Mr. Matthew Arnold has altered, and this volume, like the suppressed “Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A.” (1852), appeals more to the collector than do the new editions which all the world may possess. There are verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough’s “Ambarvalia” (1849), which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which “repay perusal.” These minutiæ of literary history become infinitely more important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of critical science. The preservation of rare books, and the collection of materials for criticism, are the useful functions, then, of book-collecting. But it is not to be denied that the sentimental side of the pursuit gives it most of its charm. Old books are often literary relics, and as dear and sacred to the lover of literature as are relics of another sort to the religious devotee. The amateur likes to see the book in its form as the author knew it. He takes a pious pleasure in the first edition of “Les Précieuses Ridicules,” (M.DC.LX.) just as Molière saw it, when he was fresh in the business of authorship, and wrote “Mon Dieu, qu’un Autheur est neuf, la première fois qu’on l’imprime.” All editions published during a great man’s life have this attraction, and seem to bring us closer to his spirit. Other volumes are relics, as we shall see later, of some famed collector, and there is a certain piety in the care we give to books once dear to Longepierre, or Harley, or d’Hoym, or Buckle, to Madame de Maintenon, or Walpole, to Grolier, or Askew, or De Thou, or Heber. Such copies should be handed down from worthy owners to owners not unworthy; such servants of literature should never have careless masters. A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good clear reprint. M. Charpentier’s “Montaigne” serves the turn, but it is natural to treasure more “Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne,” that were printed by Francoise le Febre, of Lyon, in 1595. It is not a beautiful book; the type is small, and rather blunt, but William Drummond of Hawthornden has written on the title-page his name and his device, Cipresso e Palma. There are a dozen modern editions of Molière more easily read than the four little volumes of Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698), but these contain reduced copies of the original illustrations, and here you see Arnolphe and Agnes in their habits as they lived, Molière and Mdlle. de Brie as the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred years ago. Suckling’s “Fragmenta Aurea” contain a good deal of dross, and most of the gold has been gathered into Miscellanies, but the original edition of 1646, “after his own copies,” with the portrait of the jolly cavalier who died ætatis suae 28, has its own allurement. Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth’s edition, or Ziegler’s; but that which Zacharias Calliergi printed in Rome (1516), with an excommunication from Leo X. against infringement of copyright, will always be a beautiful and desirable book, especially when bound by Derome. The gist of the pious Prince Conti’s strictures on the wickedness of comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is natural to like his “Traité de la Comedie selon la tradition de l’Eglise, Tirée des Conciles et des saints Pères,” published by Lovys Billaine in 1660, especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous black morocco.
These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little library, a “twopenny treasure-house,” but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the nature of the collector’s passion, – the character of his innocent pleasures. He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more personal character than mere first editions. A lucky collector lately bought Shelley’s copy of Ossian, with the poet’s signature on the title-page, in Booksellers’ Row. Another possesses a copy of Foppens’s rare edition of Petrarch’s “Le Sage Resolu contre l’une et l’autre Fortune,” which once belonged to Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon, and may have fortified, by its stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew the extremes of either fortune, the captive of St. Helena. But the best example of a book, which is also a relic, is the “Imitatio Christi,” which belonged to J. J. Rousseau. Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the happy owner of this possession, tell his own story of his treasure: It was in 1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre. Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the “Imitatio Christi.” M. de Latour, like other bibliophiles, was not in the habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of the “Imitatio,” a book which brings considerable prices. However, by some lucky chance, some Socratic dæmon whispering, may be, in his ear, he picked up the little dingy volume of the last century. It was of a Paris edition, 1751, but what was the name on the fly-leaf. M. de Latour read à J. J. Rousseau. There was no mistake about it, the good bibliophile knew Rousseau’s handwriting perfectly well; to make still more sure he paid his seventy-five centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont des Arts, to his bookbinder’s, where he had a copy of Rousseau’s works, with a facsimile of his handwriting. As he walked, M. de Latour read in his book, and found notes of Rousseau’s on the margin. The facsimile proved that the inscription was genuine. The happy de Latour now made for the public office in which he was a functionary, and rushed into the bureau of his friend the Marquis de V. The Marquis, a man of great strength of character, recognised the signature of Rousseau with but little display of emotion. M. de Latour now noticed some withered flowers among the sacred pages; but it was reserved for a friend to discover in the faded petals Rousseau’s favourite flower, the periwinkle. Like a true Frenchman, like Rousseau himself in his younger days, M. de Latour had not recognised the periwinkle when he saw it. That night, so excited was M. de Latour, he never closed an eye! What puzzled him was that he could not remember, in all Rousseau’s works, a single allusion to the “Imitatio Christi.” Time went on, the old book was not rebound, but kept piously in a case of Russia leather. M. de Latour did not suppose that “dans ce bas monde it fût permis aux joies du bibliophile d’aller encore plus loin.” He imagined that the delights of the amateur could only go further, in heaven. It chanced, however, one day that he was turning over the “Oeuvres Inédites” of Rousseau, when he found a letter, in which Jean Jacques, writing in 1763, asked Motiers-Travers to send him the “Imitatio Christi.” Now the date 1764 is memorable, in Rousseau’s “Confessions,” for a burst of sentiment over a periwinkle, the first he had noticed particularly since his residence at Les Charmettes, where the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens. Thus M. Tenant de Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle, which caused the tear of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau. But M. de Latour was an enthusiast, and this little anecdote of his explains the sentimental side of the bibliophile’s pursuit. Yes, it is sentiment that makes us feel a lively affection for the books that seem to connect us with great poets and students long ago dead. Their hands grasp ours across the ages. I never see the first edition of Homer, that monument of typography and of enthusiasm for letters, printed at Florence (1488) at the expense of young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli, and of their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli, but I feel moved to cry with Heyne, “salvete juvenes, nobiles et generosi; χαίρετέ μοι καὶ ἐιν Άΐδαο δόμοισι.”
Such is our apology for book-collecting. But the best defence of the taste would be a list of the names of great collectors, a “vision of mighty book-hunters.” Let us say nothing of Seth and Noah, for their reputation as amateurs is only based on the authority of the tract De Bibliothecis Antediluvianis. The library of Assurbanipal I pass over, for its volumes were made, as Pliny says, of coctiles laterculi, of baked tiles, which have been deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith. Philosophers as well as immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on our side. It was objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap scribblers of to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred
