CHAPTER VI.

THE BOOKWORM.

 THERE is a sort of busy worm
 That will the fairest books deform,
     By gnawing holes throughout them;
 Alike, through every leaf they go,
 Yet of its merits naught they know,
     Nor care they aught about them.

 Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint
 The Poet, Patriot, Sage or Saint,
     Not sparing wit nor learning. 
 Now, if you’d know the reason why,
 The best of reasons I’ll supply;
     ’Tis bread to the poor vermin.

 Of pepper, snuff, or ’bacca smoke,
 And Russia-calf they make a joke. 
     Yet, why should sons of science
 These puny rankling reptiles dread? 
 ’Tis but to let their books be read,
     And bid the worms defiance.” 
                         J. DORASTON.

A most destructive Enemy of books has been the bookworm.  I say “has been,” because, fortunately, his ravages in all civilised countries have been greatly restricted during the last fifty years.  This is due partly to the increased reverence for antiquity which has been universally developed—­more still to the feeling of cupidity, which has caused all owners to take care of volumes which year by year have become more valuable—­and, to some considerable extent, to the falling off in the production of edible books.

The monks, who were the chief makers as well as the custodians of books, through the long ages we call “dark,” because so little is known of them, had no fear of the bookworm before their eyes, for, ravenous as he is and was, he loves not parchment, and at that time paper was not.  Whether at a still earlier period he attacked the papyrus, the paper of the Egyptians, I know not—­probably he did, as it was a purely vegetable substance; and if so, it is quite possible that the worm of to-day, in such evil repute with us, is the lineal descendant of ravenous ancestors who plagued the sacred Priests of On in the time of Joseph’s Pharaoh, by destroying their title deeds and their books of Science.

Rare things and precious, as manuscripts were before the invention of typography, are well preserved, but when the printing press was invented and paper books were multiplied in the earth; when libraries increased and readers were many, then familiarity bred contempt; books were packed in out-of-the-way places and neglected, and the oft-quoted, though seldom seen, bookworm became an acknowledged tenant of the library, and the mortal enemy of the bibliophile.

Anathemas have been hurled against this pest in nearly every European language, old and new, and classical scholars of bye-gone centuries have thrown their spondees and dactyls at him.  Pierre Petit, in 1683, devoted a long Latin poem to his dis-praise, and Parnell’s charming Ode is well known.  Hear the poet lament:—­

 “Pene tu mihi passerem Catulli,
 Pene tu mihi Lesbiam abstulisti.”