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libertangoI was reading Charles Lamb (as you do), specifically the essay, "DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING." Snickering at the sideswipes:
"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment."
Then came this passage, about the bindings of books:
"In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes--Great Nature's Stereotypes--we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare--where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine--
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess--no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel."
So you know what I had to do, right?
$13.00 later at ABEBooks, and a copy of the Duchess' book is on its way to me. Everyman's Library, from 1915.
"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment."
Then came this passage, about the bindings of books:
"In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes--Great Nature's Stereotypes--we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare--where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine--
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess--no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel."
So you know what I had to do, right?
$13.00 later at ABEBooks, and a copy of the Duchess' book is on its way to me. Everyman's Library, from 1915.
