An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres, Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?
So with many another book on the thronged shelves.To take them down is to recall, how vividly, a struggle and a triumph.In those days money represented nothing to me, nothing I cared to think about, but the acquisition of books.There were books of which Ihad passionate need, books more necessary to me than bodily nourishment.I could see them, of course, at the British Museum, but that was not at all the same thing as having and holding them, my own property, on my own shelf.Now and then I have bought a volume of the raggedest and wretchedest aspect, dishonoured with foolish scribbling, torn, blotted--no matter, I liked better to read out of that than out of a copy that was not mine.But I was guilty at times of mere self-indulgence; a book tempted me, a book which was not one of those for which I really craved, a luxury which prudence might bid me forego.As, for instance, my Jung-Stilling.
It caught my eye in Holywell Street; the name was familiar to me in Wahrheit und Dichtung, and curiosity grew as I glanced over the pages.But that day I resisted; in truth, I could not afford the eighteen-pence, which means that just then I was poor indeed.Twice again did I pass, each time assuring myself that Jung-Stilling had found no purchaser.There came a day when I was in funds.I see myself hastening to Holywell Street (in those days my habitual pace was five miles an hour), I see the little grey old man with whom Itransacted my business--what was his name?--the bookseller who had been, I believe, a Catholic priest, and still had a certain priestly dignity about him.He took the volume, opened it, mused for a moment, then, with a glance at me, said, as if thinking aloud:
"Yes, I wish I had time to read it."
Sometimes I added the labour of a porter to my fasting endured for the sake of books.At the little shop near Portland Road Station Icame upon a first edition of Gibbon, the price an absurdity--I think it was a shilling a volume.To possess those clean-paged quartos Iwould have sold my coat.As it happened, I had not money enough with me, but sufficient at home.I was living at Islington.Having spoken with the bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked back again, and--carried the tomes from the west end of Euston Road to a street in Islington far beyond the Angel.I did it in two journeys--this being the only time in my life when I thought of Gibbon in avoirdupois.Twice--three times, reckoning the walk for the money--did I descend Euston Road and climb Pentonville on that occasion.Of the season and the weather I have no recollection; my joy in the purchase I had made drove out every other thought.
Except, indeed, of the weight.I had infinite energy, but not much muscular strength, and the end of the last journey saw me upon a chair, perspiring, flaccid, aching--exultant!
The well-to-do person would hear this story with astonishment.Why did I not get the bookseller to send me the volumes? Or, if I could not wait, was there no omnibus along that London highway? How could I make the well-to-do person understand that I did not feel able to afford, that day, one penny more than I had spent on the book? No, no, such labour-saving expenditure did not come within my scope;whatever I enjoyed I earned it, literally, by the sweat of my brow.
In those days I hardly knew what it was to travel by omnibus.Ihave walked London streets for twelve and fifteen hours together without ever a thought of saving my legs, or my time, by paying for waftage.Being poor as poor can be, there were certain things I had to renounce, and this was one of them.
Years after, I sold my first edition of Gibbon for even less than it cost me; it went with a great many other fine books in folio and quarto, which I could not drag about with me in my constant removals; the man who bought them spoke of them as "tomb-stones."Why has Gibbon no market value? Often has my heart ached with regret for those quartos.The joy of reading the Decline and Fall in that fine type! The page was appropriate to the dignity of the subject; the mere sight of it tuned one's mind.I suppose I could easily get another copy now; but it would not be to me what that other was, with its memory of dust and toil.