To Philip Dodsworth, Esq., New York.
Dear Dodsworth,—Let me congratulate you
on having joined the army of book-hunters. “Everywhere
have I sought peace and found it nowhere,” says
the blessed Thomas a Kempis, “save in a corner
with a book.” Whether that good monk wrote
the “De Imitatione Christi” or not, one
always likes him for his love of books. Perhaps
he was the only book-hunter that ever wrought a miracle.
“Other signs and miracles which he was wont
to tell as having happened at the prayer of an unnamed
person, are believed to have been granted to his own,
such as the sudden reappearance of a lost book in
his cell.” Ah, if Faith, that moveth mountains,
could only bring back the books we have lost, the
books that have been borrowed from us! But we
are a faithless generation.
From a collector so much older and better experienced
in misfortune than yourself, you ask for some advice
on the sport of book-hunting. Well, I will give
it; but you will not take it. No; you will hunt
wild, like young pointers before they are properly
broken.
Let me suppose that you are “to middle fortune
born,” and that you cannot stroll into the great
book-marts and give your orders freely for all that
is rich and rare. You are obliged to wait and
watch an opportunity, to practise that maxim of the
Stoic’s, “Endure and abstain.”
Then abstain from rushing at every volume, however
out of the line of your literary interests, which
seems to be a bargain. Probably it is not even
a bargain; it can seldom be cheap to you, if you do
not need it, and do not mean to read it.
Not that any collector reads all his books.
I may have, and indeed do possess, an Aldine Homer
and Caliergus his Theocritus; but I prefer to study
the authors in a cheap German edition. The old
editions we buy mainly for their beauty, and the sentiment
of their antiquity and their associations.
But I don’t take my own advice. The shelves
are crowded with books quite out of my line—a
whole small library of tomes on the pastime of curling,
and I don’t curl; and “God’s Revenge
against Murther,” though (so far) I am not an
assassin. Probably it was for love of Sir Walter
Scott, and his mention of this truculent treatise,
that I purchased it. The full title of it is
“The Triumphs of God’s Revenge against
the Crying and Execrable Sinne of (willful and premeditated)
Murther.” Or rather there is nearly a
column more of title, which I spare you. But
the pictures are so bad as to be nearly worth the
price. Do not waste your money, like your foolish
adviser, on books like that, or on “Les Sept
Visions de Don Francisco de Quevedo,” published
at Cologne, in 1682.
Why in the world did I purchase this, with the title-page
showing Quevedo asleep, and all his seven visions
floating round him in little circles like soap-bubbles?
Probably because the book was published by Clement
Malassis, and perhaps he was a forefather of that whimsical
Frenchman, Poulet Malassis, who published for Banville,
and Baudelaire, and Charles Asselineau. It was
a bad reason. More likely the mere cheapness
attracted me.
