CORRESPONDENCE.
A COMMENTARY IN AN EASY-CHAIR :
THE ADVANTAGES OF SOMETHING TO DO-MR. GLADSTONE
IN HIS LIBRARY-THE RIGHT PLACE FOR BOOKS. THERE have been many wonderful exhibitions of the vigour of old age in English life. There is scarcely, indeed, a circle in which there is not one example or more of age as bright, as potent, as full of energy and the impulse and enjoyment of existence, as are any of the graduating scales of being which lead to that climax. I do not mean to resume the controversy as to the happiness or unhappiness of the old, but only to note in passing how far from un- common it is to find such examples. What is their secret, one wonders, among all the nostrums of the time ? One generally finds, indeed, that they have none ; that they have lived upon no rule, and are as unlike each other as healthful human creatures generally are, with that variety and incon- sistency and irregularity which form the charm of the race. I wonder if the secret might be that they have all, at -their odd moments, found something to do, and so kept out the devil of self-observation, self-care, and those self- assiduities which run every headache and heartache into a corner, to question it from whence it came. If I were to gratify my own belief, I should say that they must all have read persistently, everything that came into their hands from six to fourscore,—that is, in the intervals of other occupation. Bat I regretfully relinquish this faith, in the face of evidence that just as there are old men who have been consistent drunkards, so there may be aged persons, still lively and life- like, who have not cared for books. It is not reading any more than it is sobriety. It is more likely the particular blessing of having something to do. I do not mean having a trade, for that is what we all have, even Kings (and a very hard trade is that of the monarch). It is a trade within a trade, a something to fall back upon when we are not working for our living, or because we are required to work—which is the saving grace. Not being early to bed and early to rise; not having a bad heart or no heart, and a good digestion ; not even the old banker-poet's panacea, " Don't fret,"—but the delightful advantage of having an amateur occupation on the top of the one inevitable, and thus having always something to do.
Mr. Gladstone, in his wonderful career, has served as an example of most things at one time or another. And of nothing is he a more brilliant and forcible example than of this. To think that while he has been fighting in the House of Commons for a motley crew that are not worthy to unbutton his gaiters, striving his utmost to make the worse appear the better cause, and, harder still, to make-believe that the country is
excited about a discussion which lulls honourable Members to sleep,—he should have been at the same moment prelecting placidly in print about his book-cases, and recommending his
invention—if it is his invention—to the consideration of other bibliophiles ! What a happy man ; a man that need never die ! For there is no more delightful trade than that of a librarian. To see a born member of that order in the home of his soul is a pleasure to make any morning bright, even when we do not ourselves share the instinct and calm delight.
He looks at his shelves as the painter looks at his pictures, not often taking anything down, except to look at and replace it for pure love, as one lays one's hand on the
head of a child. Sometimes, when he belongs to the stricter order, he is even a little jealous of the vulgar use of reading, for' which common editions and cheap reprints are good enough : but brightens with a gleam of eagerness at the sight of any addition, and saddens at the thought that the time will come, if it has not now come, when it will be necessary to get rid of some as well as to acquire more, and that presently the state of repletion which St. John foresaw, when the world itself could not contain the books that should be written, would become the actual state of affairs. To plan how he is to find room for more and more, is one of the delights of such an amateur,—for amateur he will always be, in the true sense of the word, even though books may be his trade. And here, of all people in the world, comes the busiest of politicians, the most universal of statesmen, the head of a party, the god (it is scarcely too strong a word) of a section of the nation, to show him how to do it ! Thus we see the working of a beneficent principle, and how it is possible to grow old and live for ever. Mr. Gladstone in the House is not always an edifying spectacle. Mr. Gladstone in the country, except when he is exercising his other unprofessional trade of woodcutting, gives the spectator many a pang. But Mr. Gladstone in the library is a delightful companion ; and this is the best view of his omnipresent individuality which he has given to the world.
"Books require no eulogy from me," says our instructor, with a modest conviction that most things would be the better of a eulogy from him; " none could be permitted me when they already draw their testimonials from Cicero and Macaulay." This is a quaint sentence, and one which will probably tempt the reader to a smile. As if books—the great world within a world of literature, the things which make our kind known to us, and the earth we live on, and the sky that shines over us, and the mysteries of the human heart, more wonderful still— should need testimonials from any man, or could be set up for themselves and introduced to notice either by Cicero or Macaulay ! Yet this is but a slip of sense for which we forgive the genial cicerone who permits us to make the tour of those wonderful book-cases, standing out round the walls of his library—where the beloved books smile at us from either side of a score of projecting arms like the divisions of an old-fashioned coffee-house, forming so many little bays of tranquillity in which the student may place himself—and pro- viding lodging for hundreds of volumes additional to those with which the walls could be lined were the cases placed flat against them. Naturally every inch of wall between is lined with shelves between the projections, and no space is lost except for the necessary windows which enlighten the whole. When our shores were first opened to cheap clarets, Mr. Gladstone's name was given to one—and, indeed, it might have been given to something better, for the Gladstone claret is not choice. And we have little doubt that we shall soon see Gladstone book-cases, carrying out, or at least per- mitting lovers of books to carry out, his plan, which is a very promising one, and ought to afford a great increase of space when properly managed. But what cabinet-maker, of the nature of the gods, Mr. Gladstone can find to make these shelves, so that the lodging of the books should cost no more than one penny a volume, we should like to know. That amiable artificer must be a devoted member of the Gladstonian sect, or he must be suborned by some friendly millionaire : for assuredly otherwise he is not of ordinary flesh and blood.
All of us, however, although we may love books, are not in the blissful condition in which we can appropriate a room forty feet long by twenty wide to the uses of a library. Southey, who lined the little house at Keswick Bridge with shelves, and filled them with all kinds of volumes in dressing-gowns, so to speak, fabricated by his daughters, is an instance of much less dignified but still more delightful housing of books. You could not go into a passage or up a bit of old-fashioned stair- way in that house without finding them all around you, packed close and warm, the most delightful lining of the modest walls. It is probable that Mr. Gladstone's discourse will be read by many more persons who could copy Southey, than who possess a library forty feet by twenty, although that is not a large library, as everybody will allow. To such, his suggestions, perhaps, will not be very fruitful ; but they are always stimulating and sympathetic, and our pleasure in our few shelves thrust into every corner is as genuine, and probably quite as pleasurable, as the larger invention. There is one advan- tage in not confining books to one room, that the necessity of overflowing everywhere makes a more interesting and a more entertaining house. I have been turned into a bedroom without a book in it, in a great house where the library was splendid, and had to be taken care of by a special and learned official of its own. Imagine a room in which you were expected to spend a certain portion of every day, and especially that hour somewhere about midnight which is the most con- versable either with men or books, and not a volume to be found ! —nothing but your own railway-book that you had brought with you, unless you happened to be of so provident a nature as to carry about a stock of books. No wealth stored up in the library, no projections of book-cases, could make up for this ; and there is reason to fear that it is a not uncommon neglect. I have heard a story, one of a thousand, of the famous head of a distinguished College in Oxford who, finding that one of his young guests had but a dubious knowledge of what was meant by the Hegira, sent him up all the approved works on the subject of Mahomet to his room for his night's reading, whici perhaps might be said to be an excess of hospitality. And then there was the visitor• who, finding a row of books upon his table carefully arranged by the dear lady who was his hostess in consideration of his tastes, read them all through, with a greed which was quite unjustifiable, before he came down to dinner ! These are extreme cases ; but I consider it inhuman to put an intelligent being into a room in which there are no books.
And as for burying the superfluity in catacombs, or any other name by which we may qualify the fact of the grave, while there are probably a hundred corners in the house empty, even if there may be no vacancies so criminal as this, it is a cruel suggestion. Happily, Mr. Gladstone does not cremate ; but I have a friend who does, and who talks with fiendish glee of the red and glowing block, diffusing a kindly glow, into which a bad book turns when it is put into the fire. Save us from such murderous ways ! I have a corner which is called the Bad Poetry Shelf (nay, it is plural); but rather than burn even one of the hapless, neglected crowd which lurks there, I would consent to be crowded out to the very stairs and closets. A man who loves books will not lay violent hands upon them, even in extremity. One of the worst features in that American book-swindling which is so grievous a subject to us all, is the beggarly guise in which we are presented to the Transatlantic reader. No wonder he thinks us not worth paying for : an unbound broadsheet, fit only to be torn up for curl-papers, or• to light fires with, when it has been carelessly run over, a book which is no book, in a different sense from Charles Lamb's— which can never• be put in a book-case, never show a lettered back to the world—what can it produce but contempt, which must react upon the popular sentiment even to the length of making the most extensive community of readers the least respectful towards literature in the world ?
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