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Updated: June 1, 2025
Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of Boswell's Johnson, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of books and bookishness.
What would be thought of a book-collector who took to standing inkstands or pepperboxes on the tops of his tallest volumes by way of adornment? Yet domes on business buildings are every bit as appropriate. A choice collection of those monstrosities graces Park Row, one much-gilded offender varying the monotony by looking like a yellow stopper in a high-shouldered bottle!
No one, so far as I know, ever told him that in becoming a book-collector he had deprived the world of a great musician; for he was like Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally inclined to harmony but organically incapable of a tune. Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not possible for him to hold even a neutral attitude in the presence of anything in which other people delighted.
'Did you think I collected postage-stamps? the husband retorted. 'No, I'm not a book-collector, but our doctor is. He has a few books, if you like. Still, I wouldn't swop him; he's much too fond of fashionable novels. 'You know you're always up his place, said the wife; 'and I wonder what I should do if it wasn't for the doctor's novels! The doctor was evidently a favourite of hers.
Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores to another.
To my astonishment it was none other than my strange old book-collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame of white hair, and his precious volumes, a dozen of them at least, wedged under his right arm. "You're surprised to see me, sir," said he, in a strange, croaking voice. I acknowledged that I was.
Paul Girardot de Préfond was a timber-merchant who fell into an apathetic state on retiring from active business. His physician, Hyacinthe Baron, was an eminent book-collector, and he advised the patient to take up the task of forming a library.
It'll be here tomorrow at least the first part will. Mrs Brindley affected to fall back dying in her chair. 'Quite mad! she complained to me. 'Quite mad. It's a hopeless case. But obviously she was very proud of the incurable lunatic. 'But you're a book-collector! I exclaimed, so struck by these feats of extravagance in a modest house that I did not conceal my amazement.
I take no account here of obsolete styles as ivory, wood, brass, silver and other metals, nor of velvet, satin, and other occasional luxuries of the binder's art. These belong to the domain of the amateur, the antiquary, or the book-fancier not to that of the librarian or the ordinary book-collector.
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