THE BOOK-WORM’S FAULTS.

This is not a case of “Snakes in Iceland,” for the Book-Worm has faults. One of his faults is his proneness to regard books as mere merchandise and not as vehicles of intellectual profit, that is to say, to be read. Too many collectors buy books simply for their rarity and with too little regard to the value of their contents The Circassian slave-dealer does not care whether his girls can talk sense or not, and too many men buy books with a similar disregard to their capacity for instructing or entertaining. It seems to me that a man who buys books which he does not read, and especially such as he cannot read, merely on account of their value as merchandise, degrades the noble passion of bibliomania to the level of a trade When I go through such a library I think of what Christ said to the traders in the Temple. Another fault is his lack of independence and his tendency to imitate the recognized leaders. He is too prone to buy certain books simply because another has them, and thus even rare collections are apt to fall into a tiresome routine The collector who has a hobby and independence to ride it is admirable. Let him addict himself to some particular subject or era or “ana,” and try to exhaust it, and before he is conscious he will have accumulated a collection precious for its very singularity. It strikes me that the best example of this idea that I have ever heard of is the attempt, in which two collectors in this country are engaged, to acquire the first or at least one specimen of every one of the five hundred fifteenth century printers. If this should ever succeed, the great libraries of all the world would be eager for it, and the undertaking is sufficiently arduous to last a lifetime.

Sometimes out of this fault, sometimes independently of it, arises the fault by which book collecting degenerates into mere rivalry—the vulgar desire of display and ambition for a larger or rarer or costlier accumulation than one’s neighbor has The determination not to be outdone does not lend dignity or worth to the pursuit which would otherwise be commendable. During the late civil war in this country the chaplain of a regiment informed his colonel, who was not a godly person, that there was a hopeful revival of religion going on in a neighboring and rival regiment, and that forty men had been converted and baptized. “Dashed if I will submit to that,” said the swearing colonel: “Adjutant, detail fifty men for baptism instantly!” So Mr. Roe, hearing that Mr. Doe has acquired a Caxton or other rarity of a certain height, and absolutely flawless except that the corners of the last leaf have been skillfully mended and that six leaves are slightly foxed, cannot rest night or day for envy, but is like the troubled sea until he can find a copy a sixteenth of an inch taller, the corners of whose leaves are in their pristine integrity, and over whose brilliant surface the smudge of the fox has not been cast, and then how high is his exaltation! Not that he cares anything for the book intrinsically, but he glories in having beaten Doe Now if any speaks to him of Doe’s remarkable copy, he can draw out his own and create a surprise in the bosom of Doe’s adherent. The laurels of Miltiades no longer deprive him of rest. He has overcome in this trivial and childish strife concerning size and condition, and he holds the champion’s belt for the present. He not only feels big himself but he has succeeded in making Doe feel small, which is still better. I don’t know whether there will be any book-collecting in Mr. Bellamy’s Utopia, but if there is, it will not be disfigured by such meanness, but collectors will go about striving to induce others to accept their superior copies and everything will be as lovely as in Heine’s heaven, where geese fly around ready cooked, and if one treads on your corn it conveys a sensation of exquisite delight.

It has been several times remarked by moralists that human nature is selfish. One of course does not expect another to relinquish to him his place in a “queue” at a box-office or his turn at a barber’s shop, but in the noble and elegant pursuit of book-collecting it would be well to emulate the politeness of the French at Fontenoy, and hat in hand offer our antagonist the first shot But I believe the only place where the Book-Worm ever does that is the auction room.

The modern Book-Worm is not the simple and absent-minded creature who went by this name a century ago or more. He is no mere antiquarian, Dryasdust or Dominie Sampson, but he is a sharp merchant, or a relentless broker, or a professional railroad wrecker, or a keen lawyer, or a busy physician, or a great manufacturer—a wide awake man of affairs, quite devoid of the conventional innocency and credulity which formerly made the name of Book-Worm suggestive of a necessity for a guardian or a committee in lunacy No longer does he inquire, as Becatello inquired of Alphonso, King of Naples, which had done the better—Poggius, who sold a Livy, fairly writ in his own hand, to buy a country home near Florence, or he, who to buy a Livy had sold a piece of land? No longer is the scale turned in the negotiation of a treaty between princes by the weight of a rare book, as when Cosimo dei Medici persuaded King Alphonso of Naples to a peace by sending him a codex of Livy. No longer does the Book-Worm sit in his modest book-room, absorbed in his adored volumes, heedless of the waning lamp and the setting star, of hunger and thirst, unmindful of the scent of the clover wafted in at the window, deaf to the hum of the bees and the low of the kine, blind to the glow of sunsets and the soft contour of the blue hills, and the billowy swaying of the wheat field before the gentle breath of the south No longer can it be said that

The modern Book-Worm deals in sums of six figures; he keeps an agent “on the other side;” he cables his demands and his decisions; his name flutters the dovecotes in the auction-room; to him is proffered the first chance at a rarity worth a King’s ransom; too busy to potter in person with such a trifle as the purchase of a Mazarine Bible, he hires others to do the hunting and he merely receives the game; the tiger skin and the elephant’s tusk are laid at his feet to order, but he misses all the joy and ardor of the hunt. How different is all this from Sir Thomas Urquhart’s account of his own library, of which he says: “There were not three works therein which were not of mine own purchase, and all of them together, in the order wherein I had ranked them, compiled like to a complete nosegay of flowers, which in my travels I had gathered out of the gardens of sixteen several kingdoms.”

Another fault of the Book-Worm is the affectation of collecting books on subjects in which he takes no practical interest, simply because it is the fashion or the books are intrinsically beautiful. Many a man has a fine collection on Angling, for example, who hardly knows how to put a worm on a hook, much less attach a fly I fear I am one of these hypocritical creatures, for this is