Books

THE most distinguished of living Englishmen,
who, great as he is in many directions, is per-
haps inherently more a man of letters than any-
thing else, has been overheard mournfully to
declare that there were more booksellers' shops
in his native town sixty years ago, when he was
a boy in it, than are to-day to be found within its
boundaries. And yet the place 'all unabashed'
now boasts its bookless self a city !
     Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to
second-hand bookshops. Neither he nor any
other sensible man puts himself out about new
books. When a new book is published, read
an old one, was the advice of a sound though
surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters to
have glorified the term 'second-hand', which
other crafts have 'soiled to all ignoble use'. But
why it has been able to do this is obvious. All
the best books are necessarily second-hand.
     .............And then you fall to
thinking of the inevitable, and perhaps, in your
present mood, not unwelcome hour, when the
'ancient peace' of your old friends will be dis-
turbed, when rude hands will dislodge them
from their accustomed nooks and break up their
goodly company.

TO
ARTHUR WAUGH
1890-1917

I have a copy of the Wetstein "Marot" myself,
not a bad copy, though murderously bound in
that ecclesiastical sort of brown calf antique,
which goes well with hymn books, and reminds
one of cakes of chocolate. But my copy is only
some 128 millimetres in height, whereas the
uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the
great Pixerecourt) was at least 130 millimetres
high. Beside the uncut example mine looks like
Cinderella's plain sister beside the beauty of the
family.

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