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"Poor old Murray!" Ford wrote to Borrow, "We shall never see his like again. He . . . was a fine fellow in every respect." In another letter he refers to him as "that Prince of Bibliophiles, poor, dear, old Murray." Borrow's own relations with John Murray had always been most cordial.
One of his books belonged to the late Baron Jérôme Pichon, the head of the French Société des Bibliophiles, and it is admitted that nothing even in Grolier's library could excel it in delicacy of execution. His son, Claude Gouffier, created Duc de Rouannais, was a collector of an essentially modern type.
Heber's generosity has been nobly praised by Scott, who contrasts the hard-heartedness of other bibliophiles, those "gripple niggards" who preferred holding on to their treasures, with his friend's careless liberality. "Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight, amusement, science, art, To every ear and eye impart. Yet who, of all who thus employ them, Can, like the owner's self, enjoy them?"
She was a most learned lady as well as a collector of exquisite books. No branch of science, sacred or profane, came amiss to the 'Reine Margot. She may be regarded as the Queen of the 'Femmes Bibliophiles' who occupied so important a position in the history of the Court of France.
And so it has come about that her work has been literally translated back into French and is accepted as a textbook of Positivism, while the original books of the philosopher are merely collected by museums and bibliophiles as curiosities.
The re-introduction of Roman characters about 1500 was due to the famous house of the Estiennes, whose admirable editions of the Latin and Greek classics are the delight of bibliophiles. Robert Estienne was wont to hang proof sheets of his Greek and Latin classics outside his shop, offering a reward to any passer-by who pointed out a misprint or corrupt reading.
A popular and fairly orthodox opinion concerning book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque.
To press my nose against the sources of the English smell, so different for young bibliophiles from any American, was to adopt that sweetness as the sign of my "atmosphere"; roundabout might be the course to take, but one was in motion from the first and one never lost sight of the goal.
Henry James told me long afterwards a comical tale of how, being left to browse in Mimes's library one afternoon, he strayed into an alcove of pretty and inviting volumes, in sweet bindings, mellowed by age, and was presently terrified by the discovery that he was enmeshed in the toils of what bibliophiles term, I think, "Facetiae" of which Milnes had a collection unmatched among private book-owners.
Even people who are not bibliophiles, nay, who class bibliophiles with "blue-and-white young men," know that a book in several volumes loses an unfair proportion of its usefulness, and almost all its value, when one or more of the volumes are gone. Grote's works, or Mill's, Carlyle's, or Milman's, seem nothing when they are incomplete.
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