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Page 14
Just as a man who takes pleasure in the conquest of feminine
hearts invariably finds himself at last ensnared by the very
passion which he has been using simply for the gratification of
his vanity, I am inclined to think that the element of vanity
enters, to a degree, into every phase of book collecting; vanity
is, I take it, one of the essentials to a well-balanced
character--not a prodigious vanity, but a prudent, well-governed
one. But for vanity there would be no competition in the world;
without competition there would be no progress.
In these later days I often hear this man or that sneered at
because, forsooth, he collects books without knowing what the
books are about. But for my part, I say that that man bids fair
to be all right; he has made a proper start in the right
direction, and the likelihood is that, other things being equal,
he will eventually become a lover, as well as a buyer, of books.
Indeed, I care not what the beginning is, so long as it be a
beginning. There are different ways of reaching the goal. Some
folk go horseback via the royal road, but very many others are
compelled to adopt the more tedious processes, involving rocky
pathways and torn shoon and sore feet.
So subtile and so infectious is this grand passion that one is
hardly aware of its presence before it has complete possession of
him; and I have known instances of men who, after having
associated one evening with Judge Methuen and me, have waked up
the next morning filled with the incurable enthusiasm of
bibliomania. But the development of the passion is not always
marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles,
it is slow and obstinate about ``coming out,'' and in such cases
applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting
the malady from the vitals; otherwise serious results may ensue.
Indeed, my learned friend Dr. O'Rell has met with several cases
(as he informs me) in which suppressed bibliomania has resulted
fatally. Many of these cases have been reported in that
excellent publication, the ``Journal of the American Medical
Association,'' which periodical, by the way, is edited by
ex-Surgeon-General Hamilton, a famous collector of the literature
of ornament and dress.
To make short of a long story, the medical faculty is nearly a
unit upon the proposition that wherever suppressed bibliomania is
suspected immediate steps should be taken to bring out the
disease. It is true that an Ohio physician, named Woodbury, has
written much in defence of the theory that bibliomania can be
aborted; but a very large majority of his profession are of the
opinion that the actual malady must needs run a regular course,
and they insist that the cases quoted as cured by Woodbury were
not genuine, but were bastard or false phases, of the same class
as the chickenpox and the German measles.
My mania exhibited itself first in an affectation for old books;
it mattered not what the book itself was--so long as it bore an
ancient date upon its title-page or in its colophon I pined to
possess it. This was not only a vanity, but a very silly one.
In a month's time I had got together a large number of these old
tomes, many of them folios, and nearly all badly worm-eaten, and
sadly shaken.
One day I entered a shop kept by a man named Stibbs, and asked if
I could procure any volumes of sixteenth-century print.
``Yes,'' said Mr. Stibbs, ``we have a cellarful of them, and we
sell them by the ton or by the cord.''
That very day I dispersed my hoard of antiques, retaining only my
Prynne's ``Histrio-Mastix'' and my Opera Quinti Horatii Flacci
(8vo, Aldus, Venetiis, 1501). And then I became interested in
British balladry--a noble subject, for which I have always had a
veneration and love, as the well-kept and profusely annotated
volumes in cases 3, 6, and 9 in the front room are ready to prove
to you at any time you choose to visit my quiet, pleasant home.
V
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