THE BIBLIOTAPH
And Other People
BY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEON H. VINCENT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO MY FATHER
THE REV. B. T. VINCENT, D.D.
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS
Dedicated
WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION
Four of these papers—the first Bibliotaph, andthe notes on Keats, Gautier, and Stevenson’s St.Ives—are reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly bythe kind permission of the editor.
I am also indebted to the literary editor of theSpringfield Republican and to the editors of Poet-Lore,respectively, for allowing me to reprint thepaper on Thomas Hardy and the lecture on AnElizabethan Novelist.
CONTENTS
- THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
- THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND ‘BINS’
- LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
- THOMAS HARDY
- A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS
- AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST
- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN
- CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
- STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
- STEVENSON’S ST. IVES
THE BIBLIOTAPH AND OTHER PEOPLE
THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
A popular and fairly orthodox opinion concerningbook-collectors is that their vices aremany, their virtues of a negative sort, and theirways altogether past finding out. Yet the mosthostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternityof bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. Iftheir doings are inscrutable, they are also romantic;if their vices are numerous, the heinousnessof those vices is mitigated by the fact thatit is possible to sin humorously. Regard himhow you will, the sayings and doings of the collectorgive life and color to the pages of thosebooks which treat of books. He is amusingwhen he is purely an imaginary creature. Forexample, there was one Thomas Blinton. Everyone who has ever read the volume called Booksand Bookmen knows about Thomas Blinton.He was a man who wickedly adorned his volumeswith morocco bindings, while his wife...