The Diversions of a Book-Lover

nNlVFHSlTY 01 r.AliFORNlA SAN Oiff.O 3 1822 01230 2931 i'MlMM iliiil il'VJl V \\\mm life r I Digitized by the Internet Arcliive °^^ in 2008 with funding f rom .^^^^fSii,^///^ IVIicrosoft Corporation. b-.<^wiiNiiiiiiiii,:^ ^^oanvo^^ • IIJikM ' 'L1F0>^ V^y M/lliillll;,-^. ' O '"' ' '«' ' 'hlp://wwwImhiV6:'(Sr^tltafte/div6rtloridMbfe)0joli.^.v. THE DIVERSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER by ADRIAN H. JOLINE AUTHOR OF " MBDITATIONS OF AN AUTOGRAPH COLLECTOR " "Now Iiavi7ig made thee, seelie book. And brought thee to this frame. Full loath am I to publish thee Lest thou impair my ?iame." -Philip Stubbes, " The Anatomie of Abuses," 1583 NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1903 Copyright, 1903, by Harpkr & Bkothers. Alt rights r€senied. Published October, 1903. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOB I . Of books about books ; and incidentally of critics and of poetical quotations 3 II. Of gas-logs and the private library; with some facts about collectors and collecting ... 24 III. Of back rows and the reading of books; with some reflections concerning Catalogitis and bindings 3P IV. Concerning some books of small importance . 59 V. Of the buying of books; with remarks about novels and about literary association. 81 VI. Of American novelists and of Robert Louis Stevenson; with some remarks about criticism 106 VII. Of old magazines, and some thoughts concerning the " Star - Spangled Banner" and the omniscience of writers 127 VIII. Of truthful books; and also of humor, American and otherwise 144 IX. De Omnibus Rebus et Quibusdam Aliis . 164 X. Of Grangerizing, or extra-illustration . 191 XL Of authors at work; their blunders and their confidences; with some reflections about style 205 iii Contents CHAPTER PAOE XII. Of Walter Pater, book-shops, Wordsworth, Gil- bert and Sullivan, Marie Corelli, and kindred topics 233 XIII. County histories; the binding of old books; Lamb and De Quincey 247 XIV. Theatrical literature . ., 261 XV. Of editions de luxe, old booksellers, quotations, and indexes 276 XVI. Of changes in fashion; privately printed books; Dibdin; the honor of books 290 INDEX 311 PREFACE BOOK must have an index, a title-page, A and a preface. Such is the unwritten law, but no one pays much attention to a preface un- less it is short. Barry Cornwall said: "Always read the preface to a book. It places you on vantage-ground and enables you to survey more completely the book itself. You frequently also discern the character of the author from the preface." More than a century ago the ingenious Mr. John Home Tooke published the first volume of The Diversions of Purley, but he made his philol- ogy subordinate to his peculiar philosophy. " Di- versions," I understand, are those things which turn or draw the mind from care, business, or study, and thus rest and amuse. In these dis- cursive papers I have aimed to keep within the definition. They must not be regarded too seri- ously, and those who may feel disposed to read them will remember that they are meant to be taken up and to be laid aside at odd moments, the confidences of one who claims to share with V Preface many thousands of his countrymen a love of books for their own sake. The putting of trifles into type is surely not al- together reprehensible, considering the number of printed words produced every year. But I am making no apologies. They are usually odious. If anybody dislikes this sort of thing, he is welcome to say so; and while I may not agree with him in his disapproval, I will not argue the matter. Adrian Hoffman Joline. New York, 1903. THE DIVERSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER THE DIVERSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER Of books about books ; and incidentally of critics and of poetical quotations. AT the outset let us concede, to avoid un- ^ necessary discussion, that there is no oc- casion for another dissertation about books, for there are already too many of them. Expert bibliographers, bibliophiles, bibliomaniacs, and other things beginning with " bib " have given us all sorts and conditions of essays, treatises, and discourses, learned, profound, gossipy, historical, descriptive, and critical, some of them deHghtful to the enthusiast, and others so dull that even the ardent lover of books is compelled to lay them aside sadly. But the field is almost H- limitable. Every day a new book -fancier ap- pears, and he diflers in some respects from every other member of his enormous family. The business of buying books is steadily progressive. I am not referring to the sale of books over the 3 The Diuersions of a Book-looer counter, as one may express it, the purchasing and the vending of books at "department stores" and at the news-stands which abound in the busy places, but to the traffic which is carried on by the experts whose names are known all over the world, and who understand how to appeal to the hundreds occupying them- selves in what is called "forming a library." These hundreds in our land are rapidly becoming thousands. They do not always imagine them- selves to be collectors, but from their ranks collectors are recruited in the course of time, by a process of evolution. There are technical books about books, full of information, but mostly dry and dreary, which book-lovers pretend to be fond of, but I am not certain whether this professed liking for them is wholly sincere. Most of these mono- logues about rare books are tiresome and de- pressing, although I have striven in vain to enjoy them and to fancy that I have derived great benefit from the study of their sawdusty contents. A book of logarithms, a treatise on engineering, or an essay on the Greek aorist, may be enchanting to a specialist, but they do not fascinate me. If anybody expects by reading these pages to gain any knowledge about the choice prizes of the book -world, he will find himself mistaken. Abundant materials may 4 The Diocrsions of a Book-loocr be found in the- storehouses laboriously con- structed by learned men, out of which a gloomy but stately building might be erected without very great labor; but I do not intend to appeal to any readers except to those casual and unscientific persons who belong to my own class and who believe, with Frederick Locker-Lamp- son, that "it is a good thing to read books, and it need not be a bad thing to write them, but it is a pious thing to preserve those that have been sometime written." What has been written here will be scorned by the scholar, the man of overpowering book-wis- dom, the personage who is always appallingly solemn in his attitude towards books, for it is absolutely devoid of utility. Things without utility relieve that strenuousness of life which is really a strain upon the vital forces. By this confession I am protecting myself, I hope, against hostile criticism ; for mine adversary, whether or not he may write a book, can do no worse than to agree with me. I address myself only to people with a fairly good education, conscious of an affection for books, who have a secret, bashful fondness—often afraid to confess it—for the fruitless, nugatory, and unprofitable; who like to browse aimlessly about in libraries without the presence of a censor ; who love a book merely because it is a book, the octavo or duodecimo 5 The Dicersions of a Book-louer expression of somebody's ideas, no matter how trifling or how feebly unimportant those ideas may be. There are people of that sort, and I am not ashamed to be one of their number; people who do not disdain what our just-quoted friend. Locker-Lampson, calls "a sneeze of the mind," or what might perhaps be more appropriately styled a yawn of the intellect. Few care to spend time over mental yawns or sternutations, and it is to the few that I offer, with ostentatious modesty, these random reflections. I do not as- sert, be it understood, that the few are pre-em- inently important merely because they are not numerous, for the same might be said of men who have two thumbs on one hand, and of the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. Luckily, no one is obliged to read any book which does not please him, except, perhaps, the unfortunates who write book-notices for the newspapers. These patient workers have my sincere sympathy. They must, perforce, peruse and criticise a multitude of printed things, sen- sible and nonsensible, and their task is tedious. In the course of time it must grow to a magnifi- cence of boredom comparable only to that of preparing the daily shipping reports or the obit- uary notices of departed worthies. If any of these much-enduring toilers take up this volume, some will say that it is slight and others will say 6 The Dioersions of a Book-loDer that it is heavy, and that it contains nothing new. I grant all these things in advance, with only a gleam of hope that all will not find it heavy. I am sure that it is not replete with wis- dom, and I believe there is not a single element of novelty in it from beginning to end. After toiling over some of the serious and erudite pro- ductions of our time, it may be a relief to a few kindred spirits to encounter something which does not pretend to be authoritative, erudite, or original. An editor lately lamented the lack of deserv- ing material for magazines, and with a slightly disparaging reference to the "leisurely" style of the writers who flourished half a century ago, intimated that this vigorous and practical age demanded something more clear, strong, con- cise, and spirited than that which pleased our fathers.

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