The Library [14]
the ballad of "Tamlane."
"But had I kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, "A lady wad borrowed thee, I wad ta'en out thy twa gray een, Put in twa een o' tree!
"Had I but kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, "Before ye came frae hame, I wad ta'en out your heart o' flesh, Put in a heart o' stane!"
Above the lintel of his library door, Pixerecourt had this couplet carved -
"Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete, Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate."
M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own daughter. Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little value. Pixerecourt frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto. "Yes," said M. Lacroix, "but I thought that verse applied to every one but me." So Pixerecourt made him a present of the volume.
We cannot all imitate this "immense" but unamiable amateur. Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore not again. The process is futile, but may comfort the heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of Demeter. Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the design of a book-plate; and for such as love and collect rare editions of "Homer," I venture to suggest this motto, which may move the heart of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic -
[Greek text] {3}
Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, "The Enemies of Books" (Trubner), makes no account of the book-thief or biblioklept. "If they injure the owners," says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, "they do no harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them from one set of book-shelves to another." This sentence has naturally caused us to reflect on the ethical character of the biblioklept. He is not always a bad man. In old times, when language had its delicacies, and moralists were not devoid of sensibility, the French did not say "un voleur de livres," but "un chipeur de livres;" as the papers call lady shoplifters "kleptomaniacs." There are distinctions. M. Jules Janin mentions a great Parisian bookseller who had an amiable weakness. He was a bibliokleptomaniac. His first motion when he saw a book within reach was to put it in his pocket. Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price. When he went to a private view of books about to be sold, the officials at the door would ask him, as he was going out, if he did not happen to have an Elzevir Horace or an Aldine Ovid in his pocket. Then he would search those receptacles and exclaim, "Yes, yes, here it is; so much obliged to you; I am so absent." M. Janin mentions an English noble, a "Sir Fitzgerald," who had the same tastes, but who unluckily fell into the hands of the police. Yet M. Janin has a tenderness for the book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover of books. The moral position of the malefactor is so delicate and difficult that we shall attempt to treat of it in the severe, though rococo, manner of Aristotle's "Ethics." Here follows an extract from the lost Aristotelian treatise "Concerning Books":-
"Among the contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books. Now this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess, and its defect. The defect is indifference, and the man who is defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance. Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter- knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,'
"But had I kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, "A lady wad borrowed thee, I wad ta'en out thy twa gray een, Put in twa een o' tree!
"Had I but kenn'd, Tamlane," she says, "Before ye came frae hame, I wad ta'en out your heart o' flesh, Put in a heart o' stane!"
Above the lintel of his library door, Pixerecourt had this couplet carved -
"Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete, Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate."
M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own daughter. Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little value. Pixerecourt frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto. "Yes," said M. Lacroix, "but I thought that verse applied to every one but me." So Pixerecourt made him a present of the volume.
We cannot all imitate this "immense" but unamiable amateur. Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore not again. The process is futile, but may comfort the heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of Demeter. Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the design of a book-plate; and for such as love and collect rare editions of "Homer," I venture to suggest this motto, which may move the heart of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic -
[Greek text] {3}
Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, "The Enemies of Books" (Trubner), makes no account of the book-thief or biblioklept. "If they injure the owners," says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, "they do no harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them from one set of book-shelves to another." This sentence has naturally caused us to reflect on the ethical character of the biblioklept. He is not always a bad man. In old times, when language had its delicacies, and moralists were not devoid of sensibility, the French did not say "un voleur de livres," but "un chipeur de livres;" as the papers call lady shoplifters "kleptomaniacs." There are distinctions. M. Jules Janin mentions a great Parisian bookseller who had an amiable weakness. He was a bibliokleptomaniac. His first motion when he saw a book within reach was to put it in his pocket. Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price. When he went to a private view of books about to be sold, the officials at the door would ask him, as he was going out, if he did not happen to have an Elzevir Horace or an Aldine Ovid in his pocket. Then he would search those receptacles and exclaim, "Yes, yes, here it is; so much obliged to you; I am so absent." M. Janin mentions an English noble, a "Sir Fitzgerald," who had the same tastes, but who unluckily fell into the hands of the police. Yet M. Janin has a tenderness for the book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover of books. The moral position of the malefactor is so delicate and difficult that we shall attempt to treat of it in the severe, though rococo, manner of Aristotle's "Ethics." Here follows an extract from the lost Aristotelian treatise "Concerning Books":-
"Among the contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books. Now this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess, and its defect. The defect is indifference, and the man who is defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance. Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter- knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,'