United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And what a delight in the pursuit of the rarities which the eager book-hunter follows with the scent of a beagle!
He is wonderfully delighted with rarities, and they continue still so to him though he has shown them a thousand times, for every new admirer that gapes upon them sets him a-gaping too.
He then allotted them an apartment, with an allowance of three cakes of bread and a mess of pottage daily; but placed spies over them, fearing lest they might escape. Not long after this, a present of rarities was brought to the sultan, among which were two precious stones; one of them remarkably clear in its water, and the other with a flaw.
In this way, before the days of the clubs, many knowing people multiplied rarities; and at the present day there are reprints by the clubs themselves of much greater pecuniary value than the rare books from which they have been multiplied. No one probably did more to raise the condition of the book clubs than Sir Walter Scott.
And there was hanging from the joists of the said cabinet a great serpent and crocodile, forasmuch as they be rarities and very needful for the due understanding of anatomy. And he had likewise, the said doctor, amid his belongings, the books of the most excellent philosophers of Antiquity and eke the treatises of Hippocrates.
And you light not sooner from your horse then your appetite is ready to entertain what ever comes before you: The good Man in the mean while is contriving at whose house he shall first whet his knife, and where he thinks his poor wearied wife will receive the best entertainment and caresses, to drive out of her imaginations the troubles and wearisomness of her journy; which will the easier be dispensed with, when she walks out to see the rarities of the place, and to visit your Cousins and relations.
In the monastic centres, particularly Mount Athos, there were and are large stores of Greek books, the vast majority of which are theological or liturgical; and the theological authors most in vogue are those of the fourth and later centuries. Copies of primitive Christian authors or classical ones are comparative rarities.
Smith being thus "refurnished," made the tour of Italy, satisfied himself with the rarities of Rome, where he saw Pope Clement the Eighth and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the fair city of Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through the north he came into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and, introduced by an Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice of Baron Kisell, general of artillery, he obtained employment, and went to Vienna with Colonel Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regiment he was to serve.
Some of the general officers would fain have had the plundering of the duke's palace, but the king was too generous. The city paid him 400,000 dollars; and the duke's magazine was there seized, in which was 140 pieces of cannon, and small arms for above 20,000 men. The great chamber of the duke's rarities was preserved, by the king's special order, with a great deal of care.
A collector of Caxtons, a collector of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or because they are distinguished by some obsolete absurdity, will probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the obscure and forgotten literature relating to it.
Word Of The Day