United States or Rwanda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Why not book-collecting or the simple pleasure of reminiscence so dear to aged egotists? Metchnikoff never faces that question. And again, what of the man who is challenged to die for right at the age of thirty? What does the prolongation of life do for him? But in his peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure religiosity.
Such an incident must needs win pardon for Garrick's churlishness in defending his possessions. "The history of book-collecting," says a caustic critic, "is a history relieved but rarely by acts of pure and undiluted unselfishness." This is true, but are there not virtues so heroic that plain human nature can ill aspire to compass them?
It may be cited as a signal instance of the freaks of book-collecting, that of all men in the world Junot, the hard-fighting soldier, had a vellum library but so it was. It was sold in London for about £1400. "The crown octavos," says Dibdin, "especially of ancient classics, and a few favourite English authors, brought from four to six guineas.
There is no space to sketch the ancient libraries, so scantily commemorated, of Greece. Through Aristotle's enthusiasm for learning, as it is believed, the Ptolemies were fired with the zeal of book-collecting, and their capital of Alexandria became the seat of extensive libraries, stored in the Brucheion and the Serapeum.
Even in reporting the contents of public and private libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to contain about 120,000 volumes.
For the "Rise and Fall," in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar.
The one room in my College which I always enter with a certain sense of desolation and sadness is the College library. There used to be a story in my days at Cambridge of a book-collecting Don who was fond of discoursing in public of the various crosses he had to bear. He was lamenting one day in Hall the unwieldy size of his library.
The age of learned and curious merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized stranger, have no need to be ashamed. Especially rich is this great library in Americana, and America suggests multi-millionaires.
No doubt, a man may ruin himself by purchasing costly books, as by indulgence in any other costly luxury, but the chances of calamity are comparatively small in this pursuit. A thousand pounds will go a great way in book-collecting, if the collector be true to the traditions of his pursuit, such as they are to be hereafter expounded.
It keeps the mind healthy to have some interest of the kind outside of one's business. I may take to book-collecting or numismatics or raising orchids. Perhaps I may become an authority on ancient armor; time enough for that by and by. And then I can cut over to Europe every summer if I like, and no one to interfere with my down-sittings or my up-risings, my goings-out or my comings-in.
Word Of The Day