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Page 40
I recall that upon one occasion, having lost an Elzevir at a book
auction, I was afflicted with melancholia to such a degree that I
had to take to my bed. Upon my physician's arrival he made, as
is his custom, a careful inquiry into my condition and into the
causes inducing it. Finally, ``You are afflicted,'' said Dr.
O'Rell, ``with the megrims, which, fortunately, is at present
confined to the region of the Pacchionian depressions of the
sinister parietal. I shall administer Father Prout's `Rogueries
of Tom Moore' (pronounced More) and Kit North's debate with the
Ettrick Shepherd upon the subject of sawmon. No other remedy
will prove effective.''
The treatment did, in fact, avail me, for within forty-eight
hours I was out of bed, and out of the house; and, what is better
yet, I picked up at a bookstall, for a mere song, a first edition
of ``Special Providences in New England''!
Never, however, have I wholly ceased to regret the loss of the
Elzevir, for an Elzevir is to me one of the most gladdening
sights human eye can rest upon. In his life of the elder Aldus,
Renouard says: ``How few are there of those who esteem and pay
so dearly for these pretty editions who know that the type that
so much please them are the work of Francis Garamond, who cast
them one hundred years before at Paris.''
In his bibliographical notes (a volume seldom met with now) the
learned William Davis records that Louis Elzevir was the first
who observed the distinction between the v consonant and the u
vowel, which distinction, however, had been recommended long
before by Ramus and other writers, but had never been regarded.
There were five of these Elzevirs, viz.: Louis, Bonaventure,
Abraham, Louis, Jr., and Daniel.
A hundred years ago a famous bibliophile remarked: ``The
diminutiveness of a large portion, and the beauty of the whole,
of the classics printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden and Amsterdam
have long rendered them justly celebrated, and the prices they
bear in public sales sufficiently demonstrate the estimation in
which they are at present held.''
The regard for these precious books still obtains, and we meet
with it in curiously out-of-the-way places, as well as in those
libraries where one would naturally expect to find it. My young
friend Irving Way (himself a collector of rare enthusiasm) tells
me that recently during a pilgrimage through the state of Texas
he came upon a gentleman who showed him in his modest home the
most superb collection of Elzevirs he had ever set eyes upon!
How far-reaching is thy grace, O bibliomania! How good and sweet
it is that no distance, no environment, no poverty, no distress
can appall or stay thee. Like that grim spectre we call death,
thou knockest impartially at the palace portal and at the cottage
door. And it seemeth thy especial delight to bring unto the
lonely in desert places the companionship that exalteth humanity!
It makes me groan to think of the number of Elzevirs that are
lost in the libraries of rich parvenus who know nothing of and
care no thing for the treasures about them further than a
certain vulgar vanity which is involved. When Catherine of
Russia wearied of Koritz she took to her affection one Kimsky
Kossakof, a sergeant in the guards. Kimsky was elated by this
sudden acquisition of favor and riches. One of his first orders
was to his bookseller. Said he to that worthy: ``Fit me up a
handsome library; little books above and great ones below.''
It is narrated of a certain British warrior that upon his
retirement from service he bought a library en bloc, and, not
knowing any more about books than a peccary knows of the
harmonies of the heavenly choir, he gave orders for the
arrangement of the volumes in this wise: ``Range me,'' he quoth,
``the grenadiers (folios) at the bottom, the battalion (octavos)
in the middle, and the light-bobs (duodecimos) at the top!''
Samuel Johnson, dancing attendance upon Lord Chesterfield, could
hardly have felt his humiliation more keenly than did the
historian Gibbon when his grace the Duke of Cumberland met him
bringing the third volume of his ``Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire'' to the ducal mansion. This history was originally
printed in quarto; Gibbon was carrying the volume and
anticipating the joy of the duke upon its arrival. What did the
duke say? ``What?'' he cried. ``Ah, another ---- big square
book, eh?''
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