By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary SubjectsAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary Subjects
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
English literature -- History and criticism
Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has sung to us of the man who 'book-hunts while
the loungers fly,' who 'book-hunts though December freeze,' for whom
'Each tract that flutters in the breeze
Is charged with hopes and fears,'
while
'In mouldy novels fancy sees
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.'
There are periodicals which cater solely for old-book adorers; and while
on the one hand your enthusiast will publish his 'Pleasures' and
'Diversions,' on the other a contemporary will devote a volume to the
subjects which attract and interest 'the Book Fancier.'
Meanwhile, is there nothing to be said of, or by, the admirer of new
books--the man or woman who rejoices in the pleasant act of turning over
new leaves? At a time when volumes are issuing by the dozen from the
publishers' counters, shall not something be chronicled of the happiness
which lies in the contemplation, the perusal, of the literary product
which comes hot from the press? For, to begin with, the new books have
at least this great advantage over the old--that they are clean. It is
not everybody who can wax dithyrambic over the 'dusty' and the 'mouldy.'
It is possible for a volume to be too 'second-hand.' Your devotee, to be
sure, thinks fondly of the many hands, dead and gone, through which his
'find' has passed; he loves to imagine that it may have been held
between the fingers of some person or persons of distinction; he is in
the seventh heaven of exaltation if he can be quite certain it has had
that honour. But suppose this factitious charm is really wanting?
Suppose a volume is dirty, and ignobly so? Must one necessarily delight
in dogs' ears, bask in the shadow of beer-stains, and 'chortle' at the
sign of cheese-marks? Surely it is one of the merits of new leaves that
they come direct from the printer and the binder, though they, alas!
may have left occasional impressions of an inky thumb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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