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Page 52
The same inquirer subsequently asked Dickens how he liked
Wordsworth.
``Like him!'' roared Dickens, ``not at all; he is a dreadful Old
Ass!''
XIX
OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN
Where one has the time and the money to devote to the collection
of missals and illuminated books, the avocation must be a very
delightful one. I never look upon a missal or upon a bit of
antique illumination that I do not invest that object with a
certain poetic romance, and I picture to myself long lines of
monkish men bending over their tasks, and applying themselves
with pious enthusiasm thereto. We should not flatter ourselves
that the enjoyment of the delights of bibliomania was reserved to
one time and generation; a greater than any of us lived many
centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way, gathering
together treasures from every quarter, and diffusing every where
a veneration and love for books.
Richard de Bury was the king, if not the father, of
bibliomaniacs; his immortal work reveals to us that long before
the invention of printing men were tormented and enraptured by
those very same desires, envies, jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms,
and passions which possess and control bibliomaniacs at the
present time. That vanity was sometimes the controlling passion
with the early collectors is evidenced in a passage in Barclay's
satire, ``The Ship of Fools''; there are the stanzas which apply
so neatly to certain people I know that sometimes I actually
suspect that Barclay's prophetic eye must have had these
nineteenth-century charlatans in view.
But yet I have them in great reverence
And honor, saving them from filth and ordure
By often brushing and much diligence.
Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure,
I keep them sure, fearing lest they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.
But if it fortune that any learned man
Within my house fall to disputation,
I draw the curtains to show my books them,
That they of my cunning should make probation;
I love not to fall into altercation,
And while they come, my books I turn and wind,
For all is in them, and nothing in my mind.
Richard de Bury had exceptional opportunities for gratifying his
bibliomaniac passions. He was chancellor and treasurer of Edward
III., and his official position gained him access to public and
private libraries and to the society of literary men. Moreover,
when it became known that he was fond of such things, people from
every quarter sent him and brought him old books; it may be that
they hoped in this wise to court his official favor, or perhaps
they were prompted by the less selfish motive of gladdening the
bibliomaniac soul.
``The flying fame of our love,'' says de Bury, ``had already
spread in all directions, and it was reported not only that we
had a longing desire for books, and especially for old ones, but
that any one could more easily obtain our favors by quartos than
by money. Wherefore, when supported by the bounty of the
aforesaid prince of worthy memory, we were enabled to oppose or
advance, to appoint or to discharge; crazy quartos and tottering
folios, precious however in our sight as in our affections,
flowed in most rapidly from the great and the small, instead of
new year's gifts and remunerations, and instead of presents and
jewels. Then the cabinets of the most noble monasteries were
opened, cases were unlocked, caskets were unclasped, and sleeping
volumes which had slumbered for long ages in their sepulchres
were roused up, and those that lay hid in dark places were
overwhelmed with the rays of a new light. Among these, as time
served, we sat down more voluptuously than the delicate physician
could do amidst his stores of aromatics, and where we found an
object of love we found also an assuagement.''
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