is our costume. A Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were
mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no
distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common),
strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the
owner. Thomson's Seasons,2 again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and
dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves,
and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would
not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old 'Circulating Library' Tom
Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield!3 How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that
have turned over their pages with delight!?of the lone sempstress, whom they
may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantuamaker)4 after her long
day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour,
ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup,5 in spelling
out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What
better condition could we desire to see them in? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.
V Fielding, Smollet, Sterne,6 and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive
volumes?Great Nature's Stereotypes7?we see them individually perish with
less regret, because we know the copies of them to be 'eterne.'8 But where a
book is at once both good and rare?where the individual is almost the species,
and when that perishes,
6. Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of 3. Novels by Henry Fielding and Oliver Gold- Population, first published 1798, had by 1822 been smith, published in 1748 and 1766. through several editions and prompted several 4. Milliners were seamstresses specializing in
responses, including ones by Lamb's friends God-bonnet-making; mantua-makers were dressmak
win and Hazlitt. ers. Mary Lamb, a great reader of novels borrowed
7. The early-18th-century dramatists Richard from circulating libraries, was a mantua-maker. Steele and George Farquhar, contrasted with the 5. The waters of the river Lethe, which flowed author of The Wealth of Nations (1776). through Hades, caused forgetfulness.
8. Russia and Morocco are two varieties of leather 6. The novelists Tobias Smollett (1721?177I)and used in book-binding. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768).
9. Paracelsus (1493-1541) and Ramon Lull 7. Refers to the molds that at the start of the 19th (1235?1317), authors with connections to century had begun to be employed in the printing
alchemy?the search for the philosopher's stone, process, considerably enhancing the speed and
which could transmute base metals into gold, and efficiency of book production.
for the elixir of life. 8. Lady Macbeth, suggesting the killing of Banquo
1. Negligent or casual dress. and Fleance; 'in them nature's copy's not eterne' 2. James Thomson's widely read poem of natural (Shakespeare, Macbeth 3.2.39). description, published in 1730.
.
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING / 507
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine?9 such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duch
ess'?no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and
keep safe such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, 2 Milton in his prose-works, Fuller3?of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books?it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, which did.4 I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and 1 like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled.?On the contrary, 1 cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at.5 I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy.6 What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular??The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakespeare,7 which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear?the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a justice
