WHO HAVE COLLECTED BOOKS.

The mania for book-collecting is by no means a modern disease, but has existed ever since there were books to gather, and has infected many of the wisest and most potent names in history. Euripides is ridiculed by Aristophanes in “The Frogs” for collecting books. Of the Roman emperor, Gordian, who flourished (or rather did not flourish, because he was slain after a reign of thirty-six days) in the third century, Gibbon says, “twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations.” This combination of uxorious and literary tastes seems to have existed in another monarch of a later period—Henry VIII.—the seeming disproportion of whose expenditure of 10,800 pounds for jewels in three years, during which he spent but 100 pounds for books and binding, is explained by the fact that he was indebted for the contents of his libraries to the plunder of monasteries. Henry printed a few copies of his book against Luther on vellum Cicero, who possessed a superb library, especially rich in Greek, at his villa in Tusculum, thus describes his favorite acquisitions: “Books to quicken the intelligence of youth, delight age, decorate prosperity, shelter and solace us in adversity, bring enjoyment at home, befriend us out-of-doors, pass the night with us, travel with us, go into the country with us.”

Petrarch, who collected books not simply for his own gratification, but aspired to become the founder of a permanent library at Venice, gave his books to the Church of St. Mark; but the greater part of them perished through neglect, and only a small part remains. Boccaccio, anticipating an early death, offered his library to Petrarch, his dear friend, on his own terms, to insure its preservation, and the poet promised to care for the collection in case he survived Boccaccio; but the latter, outliving Petrarch, bequeathed his books to the Augustinians of Florence, and some of them are still shown to visitors in the Laurentinian Library. From Boccaccio’s own account of his collection, one must believe his books quite inappropriate for a monastic library, and the good monks probably instituted an auto da fe for most of them, like that which befell the knightly romances in “Don Quixote.” Perhaps the naughty story-teller intended the donation as a covert satire. The walls of the room which formerly contained Montaigne’s books, and is at this day exhibited to pilgrims, are covered with inscriptions burnt in with branding-irons on the beams and rafters by the eccentric and delightful essayist The author of “Ivanhoe” adorned his magnificent library with suits of superb armor, and luxuriated in demonology and witchcraft. The caustic Swift was in the habit of annotating his books, and writing on the fly-leaves a summary opinion of the author’s merits; whatever else he had, he owned no Shakespeare, nor can any reference to him be found in the nineteen volumes of Swift’s works. Military men seem always to have had a passion for books. To say nothing of the literary and rhetorical tastes of CÆsar, “the foremost man of all time,” Frederick the Great had libraries at Sans Souci, Potsdam, and Berlin, in which he arranged the volumes by classes without regard to size. Thick volumes he rebound in sections for more convenient use, and his favorite French authors he sometimes caused to be reprinted in compact editions to his taste. The great Conde inherited a valuable library from his father, and enlarged and loved it. Marlborough had twenty-five books on vellum, all earlier than 1496. The hard-fighting Junot had a vellum library which sold in London for 1,400 pounds, while his great master was not too busy in conquering Europe not only to solace himself in his permanent libraries, and in books which he carried with him in his expeditions, but to project and actually commence the printing of a camp library of duodecimo volumes, without margins, and in thin covers, to embrace some three thousand volumes, and which he had designed to complete in six years by employing one hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, at an outlay of about 163,000 pounds St. Helena destroyed this scheme. It is curious to note that Napoleon despised Voltaire as heartily as Frederick admired him, but gave Fielding and Le Sage places among his traveling companions; while the Bibliomaniac appears in his direction to his librarian: “I will have fine editions and handsome bindings. I am rich enough for that.” The main thing that shakes one’s confidence in the correctness of his literary taste is that he was fond of “Ossian.” Julius CÆsar also formed a traveling library of forty-four little volumes, contained in an oak case measuring 16 by 11 by 3 inches, covered with leather. The books are bound in white vellum, and consist of history, philosophy, theology, and poetry, in Greek and Latin. The collector was Sir Julius CÆsar, of England, and this exquisite and unique collection is in the British Museum. The books were all printed between 1591 and 1616

Southey brought together fourteen thousand volumes, the most valuable collection which had up to that time been acquired by any man whose means and estate lay, as he once said of himself, in his inkstand. Time fails me to speak of Erasmus, De Thou, Grotius, Goethe, Bodley; Hans Sloane, whose private library of fifty thousand volumes was the beginning of that of the British Museum; the Cardinal Borromeo, who founded the Ambrosian Library at Milan with his own forty thousand volumes, and the other great names entitled to the description of Bibliomaniac. We must not forget Sir Richard Whittington, of feline fame, who gave 400 pounds to found the library of Christ’s Hospital, London

The fair sex, good and bad, have been lovers of books or founders of libraries; witness the distinguished names of Lady Jane Gray, Catherine De Medicis, and Diane de Poictiers.

It only remains to speak of the great opium-eater, who was a sort of literary ghoul, famed for borrowing books and never returning them, and whose library was thus made up of the enforced contributions of friends—for who would have dared refuse the loan of a book to Thomas de Quincey? The name of the unhappy man would have descended to us with that of the incendiary of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. But the great Thomas was recklessly careless and slovenly in his use of books; and Burton, in the “Book-hunter,” tells us that “he once gave in copy written on the edges of a tall octavo ‘Somnium Scipionis,’ and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the letter-press Latin and the manuscript English.” I seriously fear that with him must be ranked the gentle Elia, who said: “A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us that we know the topography of its blots and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum.” And yet a great degree of slovenliness may be excused in Charles because, according to Leigh Hunt, he once gave a kiss to an old folio Chapman’s “Homer,” and when asked how he knew his books one from the other, for hardly any were lettered, he answered: “How does a shepherd know his sheep?”

The love of books displayed by the sensual Henry and the pugnacious Junot is not more remarkable than that of the epicurean and sumptuous Lucullus, to whom Pompey, when sick, having been directed by his physician to eat a thrush for dinner, and learning from his servants that in summer-time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus’ fattening coops, refused to be indebted for his meal, observing: “So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not lived.” Of him the veracious Plutarch says: “His furnishing a library, however, deserved praise and record, for he collected very many and choice manuscripts; and the use they were put to was even more magnificent than the purchase, the library being always open, and the walks and reading rooms about it free to all Greeks, whose delight it was to leave their other occupations and hasten thither as to the habitation of the Muses.”

IIt is not recorded that Socrates collected books—his wife probably objected—but we have his word for it that he loved them. He did not love the country, and the only thing that could tempt him thither was a book. Acknowledging this to PhÆdrus he says: “Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world. And now having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best.”