I have had a number of letters about last week's article on Bookless Homes," and take the first opportunity of thanking my correspondents—for such letters, even if they are austerely critical, are the best compliments a weekly sayist can hope to receive, (writes Mr. E. B. Osburn in the ''Morning Post."). And I am_ especially grateful to one reader who sends me a large photograph of his own ished library and invites me to visit it when in his corner of the quiet English countryside, where new, true books grow by moonlight like the olive-trees.
My gratitude to another courteous correspondent, who confesses his booklessness and explains og the result of a wandering life ('that's no excuse," he very handsomely admits), is dashed' by a sense of perplexity, for he asks me the inevitable, but very awkward question: "How should I set about making a Home, Library?" A very difficult question indeed for one whose own store of books, partly inherited and partly i ed in the practice of reviewing, and partly the outcome of spas-medic buying, has been not unjustly described by a friend literary dust heap. My hooks have never been catalogued and ranged neatly in book-shelves according to their subjects, and until I have two or three months leisure—in that "then" write a "never"—and can afford to take a long lease of a sufficiently commodious house, T shall never have a Library in the true, sense of the term. I could not even tell you how many books own—for even the inventory made by Abraham van der Dort of the hooks presented by Ann of Denmark to her son Charles, of which this is a typical entry—
Im'pris 19 books in crimson vel vet. whereof 18 are bound 4te. and ye 9th in folio. adorned with some Silver guilplate, and ye two claspes is a non-existent aid to computation in my case. Often when I am d with that fine old rage for ye rifying references, without which one cannot be a scholar or even quite a gentleman, hours are wasted searching for some evasive work in huge piles of books. It is a labour-saving plan, I find, to look up a quotation in some human encyclopedia or concordance; for example, I have a friend who has all Wordsworth's works by heart, and at heart, and can always tell me the exact wording of a_half-remembered line. Moreover, I confess to a distaste for the carefully-catalogued libraries in which hooks are not allowed to gratify their natural affinities, as an American vers-libriste explains:
Thus in that matter of Mrs. Browning izabeth Barrett, that was), lie, sweet and lovely wife of history, Ta classed with English poets, But her husband (and goodness knows, none was more devoted) Stands dignified and_ stately Upon a shelf far off.
He has a number all his own, Mrs. B. with trembling curls Solaces herselié in the company Burns and Byron On one side, With the two Arnolds crowding her on the other.
They were good men, hut the Church of England separations. on, and Words worth Come between this lady and her hus band.
It is a cruel business.
But library "Rules ar They are a cold lot, With no thought for sentiment.* The great thing is to own your books, not to be owned by them. Too many booklovers are so oppressed by their accumulations as to degenerate into mere collectors or librarians. It would be a noble and dignified business, no doubt, to own a world of well-arranged books like Cardinal Mazarin's Library, concerning the dispersion of which Naudé, who created it, tragically remarked: "This mine will be more carefully ma ed in all Histories and Calendars than the taking and sacking of Constantinople." But it more human to own a book-mine from which half-forgotten treasures are constantly coming to light (when the book you are looking for refuses to appear) and friends may help themselves at need. feeling the gratitude expressd in Scott's lines to Bober Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight. amusement, science, art.
To every and eye impart.
Prixciptes oF Book Bryne.
It will be seen that my advice on making a Home Library is likely te be a bit impracticable. Still, I am conversant with certain principles that are well worth acting upon. First of all, do not be misled into buying books, which you do not intend to read, in order to out a fine figure in the eyes of book-loving friends. To do so isa form of snobbishness, and they will find you out in the end and class you with the woureaur riches who order assortments of books in bindings to match their wallpapers and carpets. There are libraries of this kind containing all the fine books, "without which no gentleman's library is complete"—only the gentleman is wanting to it all:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.