The kind that keep your books, of course.
"To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon: I mean our borrowers of books--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes....That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eyetooth knocked out -- (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!)....The slight vacuum in the left-hand case -- two shelves from the ceiling....Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. -- In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate...."
Charles Lamb, "The Two Races of Men," Essays of Elia
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment