The Love Affairs Of A Bibliomaniac [15]
life? They and their courtiers are dust and forgotten.
Judge Methuen and I shall in due time pass away, but our courtiers--they who have ever contributed to our delight and solace-- our Horace, our Cervantes, our Shakespeare, and the rest of the innumerable train--these shall never die. And inspired and sustained by this immortal companionship we blithely walk the pathway illumined by its glory, and we sing, in season and out, the song ever dear to us and ever dear to thee, I hope, O gentle reader:
Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke, Eyther in doore or out, With the greene leaves whispering overhead, Or the streete cryes all about; Where I maie reade all at my ease Both of the newe and old, For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke Is better to me than golde!
VI
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA
My bookseller and I came nigh to blows some months ago over an edition of Boccaccio, which my bookseller tried to sell me. This was a copy in the original, published at Antwerp in 1603, prettily rubricated, and elaborately adorned with some forty or fifty copperplates illustrative of the text. I dare say the volume was cheap enough at thirty dollars, but I did not want it.
My reason for not wanting it gave rise to that discussion between my bookseller and myself, which became very heated before it ended. I said very frankly that I did not care for the book in the original, because I had several translations done by the most competent hands. Thereupon my bookseller ventured that aged and hackneyed argument which has for centuries done the book trade such effective service--namely, that in every translation, no matter how good that translation may be, there is certain to be lost a share of the flavor and spirit of the meaning.
``Fiddledeedee!'' said I. ``Do you suppose that these translators who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the art are not competent to interpret the different shades and colors of meaning better than the mere dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again, is not human life too short for the lover of books to spend his precious time digging out the recondite allusions of authors, lexicon in hand? My dear sir, it is a wickedly false economy to expend time and money for that which one can get done much better and at a much smaller expenditure by another hand.''
From my encounter with my bookseller I went straight home and took down my favorite copy of the ``Decameron'' and thumbed it over very tenderly; for you must know that I am particularly attached to that little volume. I can hardly realize that nearly half a century has elapsed since Yseult Hardynge and I parted. She was such a creature as the great novelist himself would have chosen for a heroine; she had the beauty and the wit of those Florentine ladies who flourished in the fourteenth century, and whose graces of body and mind have been immortalized by Boccaccio. Her eyes, as I particularly recall, were specially fine, reflecting from their dark depths every expression of her varying moods.
Why I called her Fiammetta I cannot say, for I do not remember; perhaps from a boyish fancy, merely. At that time Boccaccio and I were famous friends; we were together constantly, and his companionship had such an influence upon me that for the nonce I lived and walked and had my being in that distant, romantic period when all men were gallants and all women were grandes dames and all birds were nightingales.
I bought myself an old Florentine sword at Noseda's in the Strand and hung it on the wall in my modest apartments; under it I placed Boccaccio's portrait and Fiammetta's, and I was wont to drink toasts to these beloved counterfeit presentments in flagons (mind you, genuine antique flagons) of Italian wine. Twice I took Fiammetta boating upon the Thames and once to view the Lord Mayor's pageant; her mother was with us on both occasions, but she might as well have been at the bottom of the sea, for she was a stupid old soul, wholly incapable of sharing or appreciating the poetic
Judge Methuen and I shall in due time pass away, but our courtiers--they who have ever contributed to our delight and solace-- our Horace, our Cervantes, our Shakespeare, and the rest of the innumerable train--these shall never die. And inspired and sustained by this immortal companionship we blithely walk the pathway illumined by its glory, and we sing, in season and out, the song ever dear to us and ever dear to thee, I hope, O gentle reader:
Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke, Eyther in doore or out, With the greene leaves whispering overhead, Or the streete cryes all about; Where I maie reade all at my ease Both of the newe and old, For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke Is better to me than golde!
VI
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA
My bookseller and I came nigh to blows some months ago over an edition of Boccaccio, which my bookseller tried to sell me. This was a copy in the original, published at Antwerp in 1603, prettily rubricated, and elaborately adorned with some forty or fifty copperplates illustrative of the text. I dare say the volume was cheap enough at thirty dollars, but I did not want it.
My reason for not wanting it gave rise to that discussion between my bookseller and myself, which became very heated before it ended. I said very frankly that I did not care for the book in the original, because I had several translations done by the most competent hands. Thereupon my bookseller ventured that aged and hackneyed argument which has for centuries done the book trade such effective service--namely, that in every translation, no matter how good that translation may be, there is certain to be lost a share of the flavor and spirit of the meaning.
``Fiddledeedee!'' said I. ``Do you suppose that these translators who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the art are not competent to interpret the different shades and colors of meaning better than the mere dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again, is not human life too short for the lover of books to spend his precious time digging out the recondite allusions of authors, lexicon in hand? My dear sir, it is a wickedly false economy to expend time and money for that which one can get done much better and at a much smaller expenditure by another hand.''
From my encounter with my bookseller I went straight home and took down my favorite copy of the ``Decameron'' and thumbed it over very tenderly; for you must know that I am particularly attached to that little volume. I can hardly realize that nearly half a century has elapsed since Yseult Hardynge and I parted. She was such a creature as the great novelist himself would have chosen for a heroine; she had the beauty and the wit of those Florentine ladies who flourished in the fourteenth century, and whose graces of body and mind have been immortalized by Boccaccio. Her eyes, as I particularly recall, were specially fine, reflecting from their dark depths every expression of her varying moods.
Why I called her Fiammetta I cannot say, for I do not remember; perhaps from a boyish fancy, merely. At that time Boccaccio and I were famous friends; we were together constantly, and his companionship had such an influence upon me that for the nonce I lived and walked and had my being in that distant, romantic period when all men were gallants and all women were grandes dames and all birds were nightingales.
I bought myself an old Florentine sword at Noseda's in the Strand and hung it on the wall in my modest apartments; under it I placed Boccaccio's portrait and Fiammetta's, and I was wont to drink toasts to these beloved counterfeit presentments in flagons (mind you, genuine antique flagons) of Italian wine. Twice I took Fiammetta boating upon the Thames and once to view the Lord Mayor's pageant; her mother was with us on both occasions, but she might as well have been at the bottom of the sea, for she was a stupid old soul, wholly incapable of sharing or appreciating the poetic