Transcribed from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition byDavid Price,

BOOKS
AND
BOOKMEN

BY
ANDREW LANG

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1887

All rights reserved

p.vTo
THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY.

Madame, it is nomodish thing,
The bookman’s tribute that I bring;
A talk of antiquaries grey,
Dust unto dust this many a day,
Gossip of texts and bindings old,
Of faded type, and tarnish’d gold!

Can ladies care for this to-do
With Payne, Derome, and Padeloup?
Can they resign the rout, the ball,
For lonely joys of shelf and stall?

The critic thus, serenely wise;
But you can read with other eyes,
Whose books and bindings treasured are
’Midst mingled spoils of peace and war;
Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost,
And trinkets from the Golden Coast,
And many things divinely done
By Chippendale and Sheraton,
p. viAndtrophies of Egyptian deeds,
And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads,
Pomander boxes, assegais,
And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro’s days.

In this pell-mell of old and new,
Of war and peace, my essays, too,
For long in serials tempest-tost,
Are landed now, and are not lost:
Nay, on your shelf secure they lie,
As in the amber sleeps the fly.
’Tis true, they are not “rich nor rare;”
Enough, for me, that they are—there!

A. L

p.viiPREFACE.

The essays in this volume have, forthe most part, already appeared in an American edition (Combes,New York, 1886).  The Essays on ‘Old FrenchTitle-Pages’ and ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ take theplace of ‘Book Binding’ and ‘Bookmen atRome;’ ‘Elzevirs’ and ‘Some JapaneseBogie-Books’ are reprinted, with permission of Messrs.Cassell, from the Magazine of Art; ‘Curiosities of ParishRegisters’ from the Guardian; ‘LiteraryForgeries’ from the Contemporary Review; ‘LadyBook-Lovers’ from the Fortnightly Review; ‘ABookman’s Purgatory’ and two of the pieces of versefrom Longman’s Magazine—with the courteous permissionof the various editors.  All the chapters have been revised,and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for his kind care in readingthe proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P., for a similarservice to the Essay on ‘Parish Registers.’

p.ixCONTENTS.