--Both, sir, both,--the Master answered.When Providence throws a good book in my way, I bow to its decree and purchase it as an act of piety, if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap.I adopt a certain number of books every year, out of a love for the foundlings and stray children of other people's brains that nobody seems to care for.Look here.
He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in calf, and spread it open.
Do you see that Hedericus ? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare, but I saw that noble quarto lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult to scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade of AEschylus.I paid the mean price asked for it, and I wanted to double it, but I suppose it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to sentiment: I love that book for its looks and behavior.None of your "half-calf " economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures before you.From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on.No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose.A book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this book would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his pupils the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey.
The Master was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was the plan on which he had formed his library.So I brought him back to the point by asking him the question in so many words.
Yes,--he said,--I have a kind of notion of the way in which a library ought to be put together--no, I don't mean that, I mean ought to grow.I don't pretend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my turn well enough, and it represents me pretty accurately.A scholar must shape his own shell, secrete it one might almost say, for secretion is only separation, you know, of certain elements derived from the materials of the world about us.And a scholar's study, with the books lining its walls, is his shell.It is n't a mollusk's shell, either; it 's a caddice-worm's shell.You know about the caddice-worm?
--More or less; less rather than more,--was my humble reply.
Well, sir, the caddice-worm is the larva of a fly, and he makes a case for himself out of all sorts of bits of everything that happen to suit his particular fancy, dead or alive, sticks and stones and small shells with their owners in 'em, living as comfortable as ever.
Every one of these caddice-worms has his special fancy as to what he will pick up and glue together, with a kind of natural cement he provides himself, to make his case out of.In it he lives, sticking his head and shoulders out once in a while, that is all.Don't you see that a student in his library is a caddice-worm in his case?
I've told you that I take an interest in pretty much everything, and don't mean to fence out any human interests from the private grounds of my intelligence.Then, again, there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want to exhaust, to know to the very bottom.And besides, of course I must have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my moments of leisure and pleasure,--my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part.
Don't you see I have given you a key to the way my library is made up, so that you can apriorize the plan according to which I have filled my bookcases? I will tell you how it is carried out.
In the first place, you see, I have four extensive cyclopaedias.Out of these I can get information enough to serve my immediate purpose on almost any subject.These, of course, are supplemented by geographical, biographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, including of course lexicons to all the languages I ever meddle with.
Next to these come the works relating to my one or two specialties, and these collections I make as perfect as I can.Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only on the history of pin-heads.I don't mean that I buy all the trashy compilations on my special subjects, but I try to have all the works of any real importance relating to them, old as well as new.In the following compartment you will find the great authors in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and Hesiod downward to the last great English name.
This division, you see, you can make almost as extensive or as limited as you choose.You can crowd the great representative writers into a small compass; or you can make a library consisting only of the different editions of Horace, if you have space and money enough.Then comes the Harem, the shelf or the bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it, and would bag in case of fire before all the rest, just as Mr.Townley took the Clytie to his carriage when the anti-Catholic mob threatened his house in 1780.As for the foundlings like my Hedericus, they go among their peers; it is a pleasure to take them, from the dusty stall where they were elbowed by plebeian school-books and battered odd volumes, and give them Alduses and Elzevirs for companions.
Nothing remains but the Infirmary.The most painful subjects are the unfortunates that have lost a cover.Bound a hundred years ago, perhaps, and one of the rich old browned covers gone--what a pity!
