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TITLE: DE LIBRIS: PROSE AND VERSE
AUTHOR: AUSTIN DOBSON
EBOOK: E05593 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DE LIBRIS PROSE & VERSE

BY AUSTIN DOBSON

Vt Mel Os, sic Cor Melos afficit, & reficit. _Deuteromelia_.

A mixture of a _Song_ doth ever adde Pleasure. BACON (_adapted_).

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908

_Copyright 1908 by The Macmillan Company_

_PROLOGUE_

_LECTOR BENEVOLE!_--FOR SO
THEY USED TO CALL YOU, YEARS AGO,--
I CAN'T PRETEND TO MAKE YOU READ
THE PAGES THAT TO THIS SUCCEED;
NOR COULD I--IF I WOULD--EXCUSE
THE WAYWARD PROMPTINGS OF THE MUSE
AT WHOSE COMMAND I WROTE THEM DOWN.

I HAVE NO HOPE TO "PLEASE THE TOWN."
I DID BUT THINK SOME FRIENDLY SOUL
(NOT ILL-ADVISED, UPON THE WHOLE!)
MIGHT LIKE THEM; AND "TO INTERPOSE
A LITTLE EASE," BETWEEN THE PROSE,
SLIPPED IN THE SCRAPS OF VERSE, THAT THUS
THINGS MIGHT BE LESS MONOTONOUS.

THEN, _LECTOR,_ BE _BENEVOLUS!_

[_The Author desires to express his thanks to Lord Northcliffe, Messrs.
Macmillan and Co., Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. William Heinemann,
and Messrs. Virtue and Co., for kind permission to reprint those pieces
in this volume concerning which no specific arrangements were made on
their first appearance in type._]

CONTENTS

Prologue
On Some Books And Their Associations
An Epistle To An Editor
Bramston's "Man Of Taste"
The Passionate Printer To His Love
M. Rouquet On The Arts
The Friend Of Humanity And The Rhymer
The Parent's Assistant
A Pleasant Invective Against Printing
Two Modern Book Illustrators--I. Kate Greenaway
A Song Of The Greenaway Child
Two Modern Book Illustrators--Ii. Mr. Hugh Thomson
Horatian Ode On The Tercentenary Of "Don Quixote"
The Books Of Samuel Rogers
Pepys' "Diary"
A French Critic On Bath
A Welcome From The "Johnson Club"
Thackeray's "Esmond"
A Miltonic Exercise
Fresh Facts About Fielding
The Happy Printer
Cross Readings--And Caleb Whitefoord
The Last Proof
General Index

_ILLUSTRATIONS_

* THE OTTER HUNT IN THE "COMPLEAT ANGLER." From an unpublished
pen-drawing by Mr. Hugh Thomson _Frontispiece_

*GROUP OF CHILDREN. From the original pen-drawing by Kate Greenaway for
_The Library,_ 1881

*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 1)

*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 2)

*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 3)

*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 4)

THE BROWN BOOK-PLATE. From the original design by Mr. Hugh Thomson in
the possession of Mr. Ernest Brown

*SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY AT THE ASSIZES. From a first rough pencil-sketch,
by the same, for _Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,_ 1886

PEN-SKETCHES, by the same, on the Half-Title of the _Ballad of Beau
Brocade,_ 1892. From the originals in the possession of Mr. A.
T.A. Dobson

*PEN-SKETCH (TRIPLET), by the same, on a Flyleaf of _Peg Woffington,_
1899

EVELINA AND THE BRANGHTONS, by the same. From the Cranford _Evelina,_
1903

LADY CASTLEWOOD AND HER SON, by the same. From the Cranford _Esmond_,
1905

MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY, by the same. From the original pencil-drawing
for _Highways and Byways in Kent_, 1907

_The originals of the illustrations preceded by an asterisk are in the
possession of the Author._

ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS

New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best
deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with
backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be
no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of
yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after,--perhaps
"hunc in annum et plures" But for the time being they have neither part
nor lot in our past of retrospect and suggestion. Of what we were, of
what we like or liked, they know nothing; and we--if that be
possible--know even less of them. Whether familiarity will breed
contempt, or whether they will come home to our business and
bosom,--these are things that lie on the lap of the Fates.

But it is to be observed that the associations of old books, as of new
books, are not always exclusively connected with their text or
format,--are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often
they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity,--even by
their patience under neglect. We may never read them; and yet by reason
of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a
wrench to part with them if the moment of separation--the inevitable
hour--should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a
stained and battered French folio, with patched corners,--Mons. N.
Renouard's translation of the _Metamorphoses d'Ovide_, 1637, "_enrichies
de figures a chacune Fable_" (very odd figures some of them are!) and to
be bought "_chez Pierre Billaine, rue Sainct Iacques, a la Bonne-Foy,
deuant S. Yues_." It has held no honoured place upon the shelves; it has
even resided au rez-de-chaussee,--that is to say, upon the floor; but it
is not less dear,-- not less desirable. For at the back of the
"Dedication to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a
slanting, irregular hand: "_Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et
tres obeissant Serviteur St. Andre._" Between the fourth and fifth word,
some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added "_par_" and
after "St. Andre," the signature "_Vandeuvre_." In these irrelevant (and
unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mlle. de
Mons? As Frederick Locker sings:

  Did She live yesterday or ages back?
  What colour were the eyes when bright and waking?
  And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black,
  Poor little Head! that long has done with aching![1]

"Ages back" she certainly did _not_ live, for the book is dated "1637,"
and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright,--nay, that
they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the
sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am
"confidous"--as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a
foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical
resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful
seventeenth--century French child, to whom the big volume had been
presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted
little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall
folio; and following curiously with her finger the legends under the
copper "figures,"--"Narcisse en fleur," "Ascalaphe en hibou," "Jason
endormant le dragon,"--and so forth, with much the same wonder that the
Sinne-Beelden of Jacob Cats must have stirred in the little Dutchwomen
of Middelburg. There can be no Mlle. de Mons but this,--and for me she
can never grow old!

Note:

[1] This quatrain has the distinction of having been touched upon by
Thackeray. When Mr. Locker's manuscript went to the Cornhill Magazine
in 1860, it ran thus:

  Did she live yesterday, or ages sped?
  What colour were the eyes when bright and waking?
  And were your ringlets fair? Poor little head!
  --Poor little heart! that long has done with aching.

Sometimes it comes to pass that the association is of a more far-fetched
and fanciful kind. In the great Ovid it lies in an inscription: in my
next case it is "another-guess" matter. The folio this time is the
_Sylva Sylvarum_ of the "Right Hon. Francis Lo. Verulam. Viscount St.
Alban," of whom some people still prefer to speak as Lord Bacon. 'Tis
only the "sixt Edition"; but it was to be bought at the Great Turk's
Head, "next to the Mytre Tauerne" (not the modern pretender, be it
observed!), which is in itself a feature of interest. A former
possessor, from his notes, appears to have been largely preoccupied with
that ignoble clinging to life which so exercised Matthew Arnold, for
they relate chiefly to laxative simples for medicine; and he comforts
himself, in April, 1695, by transcribing Bacon's reflection that "a Life
led in _Religion_ and in _Holy Exercises_" conduces to longevity,--an
aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a
rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most
seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of
1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his _Compleat Angler_ of
1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound
under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred.
He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" _History of Life and Death_,

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