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BALLADS OF BOOKS

BALLADS OF BOOKS

CHOSEN BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1900

TO FREDERICK LOCKER

POET AND LOVER OF BOOKS

The poets have ever been lovers of books; indeed, one might ask how should a man be a poet who did not admire a treasure as precious and as beautiful as a book may be. With evident enjoyment, Keats describes

A viol, bowstrings torn, cross-wise upon A glorious folio of Anacreon;

and it was a glorious folio of Beaumont and Fletcher which another English poet "dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden," and to pacify his conscience for the purchase of which he kept to his overworn suit of clothes for four or five weeks longer than he ought. Charles Lamb was a true bibliophile, in the earlier and more exact sense of the term; he loved his ragged volumes as he loved his fellow-men, and he was as intolerant of books that are not books as he was of men who were not manly. He conferred the dukedom of his library on Coleridge, who was no respecter of books, though he could not but enrich them with his marginal notes. Southey and Lord Houghton and Mr. Locker are English poets with libraries of their own, more orderly and far richer than the fortuitous congregation of printed atoms, a mere medley of unrelated tomes, which often masquerades as The Library in the mansions of the noble and the wealthy. Shelley said that he thought Southey had a secret in every one of his books which he was afraid the stranger might discover: but this was probably no more, and no other, than the secret of comfort, consolation, refreshment, and happiness to be found in any library by him who shall bring with him the golden key that unlocks its silent door.

Mr. Lowell has recently dwelt on the difference between literature and books: and, accepting this distinction, the editor desires to declare at once that as a whole this collection is devoted rather to books than to literature. The poems in the following pages celebrate the bric-a-brac of the one rather than the masterpieces of the other. The stanzas here garnered into one sheaf sing of books as books, of books valuable and valued for their perfection of type and page and printing,--for their beauty and for their rarity,--or for their association with some famous man or woman of the storied past

Two centuries and a half ago Drummond of Hawthornden prefixed to the 'Varieties' of his friend Persons a braggart distich:--

This book a world is; here, if errors be, The like, nay worse, in the great world we see.

The present collection of varieties in verse has little or naught to do with the great world and its errors: it has to do chiefly, not to say wholly, with the world of the Bookmen--the little world of the Book-lover, the Bibliophile, the Bibliomaniac--a mad world, my masters, in which there are to be found not a few poets who cherish old wine and old wood, old friends and old books, and who believe that old books are the best of old friends.

as Mr. Austin Dobson sang on the threshold of Mr. Lang's delightfully discursive little book about the 'Library.'

The editor has much pleasure in thanking the poets who have allowed him to reprint their poems in these pages; and he acknowledges a double debt of gratitude to the friends who have written poems expressly for this collection. Encouraged by their support, and remembering that he is not a contributor to his own pages, the editor ventures to conclude his harmless necessary catalogue of the things contained and not contained within these covers, by quoting Herrick's address to his Book:--

Be bold, my Book, nor be abash'd, or fear, The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe; But by the muses swear, all here is good, If but well read, or ill read, understood.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

PAGE

The poems thus marked were written or translated for the present collection.

BALLADS OF BOOKS.

THE BABY IN THE LIBRARY.

Within these solemn, book-lined walls, Did mortal ever see A critic so unprejudiced, So full of mirthful glee?

Just watch her at that lower shelf: See, there she's thumped her nose Against the place where Webster stands In dignified repose.

Such heavy books she scorns; and she Considers Vapereau, And Beeton, too, though full of life, Quite stupid, dull, and slow.

She wants to take a higher flight, Aspiring little elf! And on her mother's arm at length She gains a higher shelf.

But, oh! what liberties she takes With those grave, learn?d men; Historians, and scientists, And even "Rare old Ben!"

At times she takes a spiteful turn, And pommels, with her fists, De Quincey, Jeffrey, and Carlyle, And other essayists.

And, when her wrath is fully roused, And she's disposed for strife, It almost looks as if she'd like To take Macaulay's 'Life.'

Again, in sympathetic mood, She gayly smiles at Gay, And punches Punch, and frowns at Sterne In quite a dreadful way.

In vain the Sermons shake their heads: She does not care for these; But catches, with intense delight, At all the Tales she sees.

Where authors chance to meet her views, Just praise they never lack; To comfort and encourage them, She pats them on the back.

MY BOOKS.

I love my books as drinkers love their wine; The more I drink, the more they seem divine; With joy elate my soul in love runs o'er, And each fresh draught is sweeter than before. Books bring me friends where'er on earth I be,-- Solace of solitude,--bonds of society!

I love my books! they are companions dear, Sterling in worth, in friendship most sincere; Here talk I with the wise in ages gone, And with the nobly gifted of our own. If love, joy, laughter, sorrow please my mind, Love, joy, grief, laughter in my books I find.

THE ART OF BOOK-KEEPING.

How hard, when those who do not wish To lend, that's lose, their books, Are snared by anglers--folks that fish With literary hooks;

Behold the bookshelf of a dunce Who borrows--never lends: Yon work, in twenty volumes, once Belonged to twenty friends.

New tales and novels you may shut From view--'tis all in vain; They're gone--and though the leaves are "cut" They never "come again."

For pamphlets lent I look around, For tracts my tears are spilt; But when they take a book that's bound, 'Tis surely extra-gilt.

A circulating library Is mine--my birds are flown; There's one odd volume left to be Like all the rest, a-lone.

I, of my Spenser quite bereft, Last winter sore was shaken; Of Lamb I've but a quarter left, Nor could I save my Bacon.

My Hall and Hill were levelled flat, But Moore was still the cry; And then, although I threw them Sprat, They swallowed up my Pye.

O'er everything, however slight, They seized some airy trammel; They snatched my Hogg and Fox one night, And pocketed my Campbell.

And then I saw my Crabbe at last, Like Hamlet's, backward go; And, as my tide was ebbing fast, Of course I lost my Rowe.

I wondered into what balloon My books their course had bent; And yet, with all my marvelling, soon I found my Marvell went.

My Mallet served to knock me down, Which makes me thus a talker; And once, while I was out of town, My Johnson proved a Walker.

While studying o'er the fire one day My Hobbes amidst the smoke, They bore my Colman clean away, And carried off my Coke.

They picked my Locke, to me far more Than Bramah's patent's worth; And now my losses I deplore Without a Home on earth.

If once a book you let them lift, Another they conceal; For though I caught them stealing Swift, As swiftly went my Steele.

Hope is not now upon my shelf, Where late he stood elated; But, what is strange, my Pope himself Is excommunicated.

My little Suckling in the grave Is sunk to swell the ravage; And what 'twas Crusoe's fate to save 'Twas mine to lose--a Savage.

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