XVII. THE MOST BOOKFUL OF LAUREATES XVIII. "W. M. T." AS BALLAD-MONGER. XIX. THE LAUREATE'S "THREE-DECKER" PAGE IT has sometimes seemed to me that the owners of the "proud libraries" which Walt Whitman begged should not be shut against his poems know nothing of the keenest pleasure that comes to the book-lover among his books. As one who has long been an Autolycus of the bookstalls, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles from the twopenny box, I can say that among the finest delights of book acquisition has been the aimless hunting with which I have turned over the piled-up treasures of the bookstalls, either ranged along the kerbstone in the poorer districts, or among the gregarious stores of old Booksellers' Row (call it not Holywell Street!) and of that newer Booksellers' Row which has sprung up in Charing Cross Road. There is, no doubt, a real delight in bookhunting as the term is generally understood, in having a "subject," and seeking everywhere for anything bearing in any way upon it. The instinct of the hunting animal is brought into play and diverted-the seeker after big game, instead of tracking the tiger in the jungles of Bengal, or the grizzly in his fastnesses in the Rockies, hunts, say, Aldines and Elzevirs in the highways and byeways where civilised men most do congregate. Such find a pleasure in their chase, no doubt, and are acquainted with the keen thrill of satisfaction which attends the acquisition of a rarity, but greater, as it seems to me, is the delight of Autolycus; with a ready appreciation of a hundred subjects, with a taste most catholic, he finds his pleasure in every street that boasts a bookshop; he is liker to your poet than to your hunter, finding inspiration in surroundings seemingly most adverse. Such an Autolycus-I may speak, I hope, as one of a large family, numbering Charles Lamb among the most glorious of its ancestors-could not always render a reason for the purchase of a certain book, any more than the poet could explain to the understanding of the Utilitarian why it was that he paused to drink in the beauty of the flower which arrested his attention. Standing among my books after some twenty years of Autolycusising, and glancing over the ever-growing shelves, I am struck by the way in which such a collection is divisible into four or five sharply-defined classes, according to the manner in which they have been acquired. The books bought as mood, governed by price, has dictated during long hauntings of metropolitan bookstalls form a class by themselves; secondly, there are the presentation copies from authorfriends; next come the copies obtained during some years as reviewer of miscellaneous literature; and then those books-which-are-no-books -as Lamb happily expressed it-the mere tools of the literary craftsman in works of reference, guides, annuals, et hoc genus omne. Such classification is, of course, not final; it does not allow for inevitable overlappings. There are presentation copies which we might have obtained by purchase if we had not known the authors thereof; |