_Thirdly._ Longevity of private tyrants. We have not room under this head
to do more--nor, if we had all room, could we do better--than to quote a
short paragraph from George Eliot's immortal Mrs. Poyser: "It seems as if
them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th'
other world."
Margin.
Wide-margined pages please us at first sight. We do not stop to ask why.
It has passed into an accepted rule that all elegant books must have
broad, clear margins to their pages. We as much recognize such margins
among the indications of promise in a book, as we do fineness of paper,
clearness of type, and beauty of binding. All three of these last, even in
perfection, could not make any book beautiful, or sightly, whose pages had
been left narrow-margined and crowded. This is no arbitrary decree of
custom, no chance preference of an accredited authority. It would be
dangerous to set limit to the power of fashion in any thing; and yet it
seems almost safe to say that not even fashion itself can ever make a
narrow-margined page look other than shabby and mean. This inalienable
right of the broad margin to our esteem is significant. It lies deep. The
broad margin means something which is not measured by inches, has nothing
to do with fashions of shape. It means room for notes, queries, added by
any man's hand who reads. Meaning this, it means also much more than
this,--far more than the mere letter of "right of way." It is a fine
courtesy of recognition that no one page shall ever say the whole of its
own message; be exhaustive, or ultimate, even of its own topic; determine
or enforce its own opinion, to the shutting out of others. No matter if
the book live and grow old, without so much as an interrogation point or a
line of enthusiastic admiration drawn in it by human hand, still the
gracious import and suggestion of its broad white spaces are the same.
Each thought invites its neighbor, stands fairly to right or left of its
opponent, and wooes its friend.
Thinking on this, we presently discover that margin means a species of
freedom. No wonder the word, and the thing it represents, wherever we find
them, delight us.
We use the word constantly in senses which, speaking carelessly, we should
have called secondary and borrowed. Now we see that its application to
pages, or pictures, or decorations, and so forth, was the borrowed and
secondary use; and that primarily its meaning is spiritual.
We must have margin, or be uncomfortable in every thing in life. Our plan
for a day, for a week, for our lifetime, must have it,--margin for change
of purpose, margin for interruption, margin for accident. Making no
allowance for these, we are fettered, we are disturbed, we are thwarted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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