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    Books and Bookmen
    Books and Bookmen
    Books and Bookmen
    Ebook50 pages41 minutes

    Books and Bookmen

    By Ian Maclaren

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 1, 2009
    Books and Bookmen

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      Book preview

      Books and Bookmen - Ian Maclaren

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, Books and Bookmen, by Ian Maclaren

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Books and Bookmen

      Author: Ian Maclaren

      Release Date: March 3, 2013  [eBook #3256]

      [This file was first posted on February 27, 2001]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***

      Transcribed from the 1912 James Nisbet & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

      BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

      BY

      IAN MACLAREN

      London

      JAMES NISBET & CO. LIMITED

      22 BERNERS STREET, W.

      1912

      BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

      They cannot be separated any more than sheep and a shepherd, but I am minded to speak of the bookman rather than of his books, and so it will be best at the outset to define the tribe.

      It does not follow that one is a bookman because he has many books, for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which a gentleman’s library is not complete.  And in the present imperfect arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them.  It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved author in some becoming dress, and his fastidiousness to ignore a friend in a fourpence-halfpenny edition.  The bookman, like the poet, and a good many other people, is born and not made, and my grateful memory retains an illustration of the difference between a bookowner and a bookman which I think is apropos.  As he was to preside at a lecture I was delivering he had in his courtesy invited me to dinner, which was excellent, and as he proposed to take the rôle that night of a man who had been successful in business, but yet allowed himself in leisure moments to trifle with literature, he desired to create an atmosphere, and so he proposed with a certain imposing air that we should visit what he called my library.  Across the magnificence of the hall we went in stately procession, he first, with that kind of walk by which a surveyor of taxes could have at once assessed his income, and I, the humblest of the bookman tribe, following in the rear, trembling like a skiff in the wake of an ocean liner.  There, he said, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, what do you think of that? And that was without question a very large and ornate and costly mahogany bookcase with glass doors.  Before I saw the doors I had no doubt about my host, but they were a seal upon my faith, for although a bookman is obliged to have one bit of glass in his garden for certain rare plants from Russia and Morocco, to say nothing of the gold and white vellum lily upon which the air must not be allowed to blow, especially when charged with gas and rich in dust, yet he hates this conservatory, just as much as he loves its contents.  His contentment is to have the flowers laid out in open beds, where he can pluck a blossom at will.  As often as one sees the books behind doors, and most of

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