Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book-hunter bent beneath the load of old works gathered from stall and shed, and about to be re-sold according to the price exacted from all literary gallants who affect to unite the fine gentleman with the profound scholar. While such were the inmates of the anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the salon and its occupant?
Gosse's recent volume, Gossip in a Library, is a very pleasing example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us about some of the books on his shelves.
Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets. I could not get the squatter to let me have 'Kenilworth, though I offered him three sheep for it. Dull old fellow, that Dr. Johnson, I suspect, so much the better, the book will last all the longer. And here's a Sydney paper, too, only two months old!" Pisistratus. "You must have ridden thirty miles at the least. To think of your turning book-hunter, Guy!"
He "had a word for every one," as poor people say, and a word to the point, for he was as much at home with the shepherd on the hills, or with the angler between Hollylea and Clovenfords, as with the dusty book-hunter, or the doggy young Border yeoman, or the child who asked him to "draw her a picture," or the friend of genius famous through all the world, Thackeray, when he "spoke, as he seldom did, of divine things."
Tales there are, fitted to make the blood run cold in the veins of the most sanguine book-hunter, about the devastations committed by those who are given over to this special pursuit. It is generally understood that they received the impulse which has rendered them an important sect, from the publication of Granger's Biographical History hence their name of Grangerites.
He has now brought down the average price of his numerous copies of this more agreeable than accurate work to three shillings and twopence, and hopes in another year to get below the three shillings. Neither is the rich man who purchases fine and dear books by deputy to be admitted within the category of the genuine book-hunter.
In the several phases of the book-hunter, he whose peculiar glory it is to have his books illustrated the Grangerite, as he is technically termed must not be omitted. "Illustrating" a volume consists in inserting in or binding up with it portraits, landscapes, and other works of art bearing a reference to its contents.
Even rare books are picked up in this way, no copies of which can be had by order, because long since "out of print." The stock in these shops is constantly changing, thus adding a piquant and sometimes exciting element to the book-hunter, who is wise in proportion as he seizes quickly upon all opportunities of new "finds" by frequent visits.
Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book-hunter bent beneath the load of old works gathered from stall and shed, and about to be re-sold according to the price exacted from all literary gallants who affect to unite the fine gentleman with the profound scholar. While such were the inmates of the anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the /salon/ and its occupant?
Word Of The Day
Others Looking