BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

by Ian Maclaren [Pseudonym of the Rev. John Watson]




They cannot be separated any more than sheep and a shepherd, but I am
minded to speak of the bookman rather than of his books, and so it
will be best at the outset to define the tribe.

It does not follow that one is a bookman because he has many books,
for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which
a gentleman's library is not complete. And in the present imperfect
arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books,
since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the
foolishness of his kind to desire a loved author in some becoming
dress, and his fastidiousness to ignore a friend in a fourpence-
halfpenny edition. The bookman, like the poet, and a good many other
people, is born and not made, and my grateful memory retains an
illustration of the difference between a bookowner and a bookman
which I think is apropos. As he was to preside at a lecture I was
delivering he had in his courtesy invited me to dinner, which was
excellent, and as he proposed to take the role that night of a man
who had been successful in business, but yet allowed himself in
leisure moments to trifle with literature, he desired to create an
atmosphere, and so he proposed with a certain imposing air that we
should visit what he called "my library." Across the magnificence of
the hall we went in stately procession, he first, with that kind of
walk by which a surveyor of taxes could have at once assessed his