MEN I HAVE PAINTED
bindings that the Grolier Club would have cherished, for the collector had no means for such luxuries; but although the paper may not have been so thick or so fine, or the edges gilt, the printed word was there, and the reader could walk in Greece with Homer, in Rome with Tacitus and Cæsar, in Florence with Dante, in France with Montaigne and Racine and Molière, in England with Chaucer and Shakespeare, and in Germany with Goethe, and commune with them as intimately and freely in humble dress as in fête-day finery. The possession of a few rare books by the great authors would have had all the advantages, without the drawbacks, of the many; but collecting for its own sake was part of the attraction. No sale of books at Thomas and Sons' auction rooms, in South Fourth Street, was ever missed; and here my father came into intercourse with men of like tastes, and competed with them for the possession of coveted volumes. The fascinating habit grew until at last no available space for more volumes could be found.
When the opportunity presented itself, he increased his collection of engravings, contenting himself with prints and proofs after letters of examples of the masters of the engravers' art—Wille, Edelinck, Audran, and Drevet—whose reproductions of the portraits of the period surpass the original paintings.
His love of Art was deeper and greater far than my own, and I may also say blinder, for study and a wider experience made me conscious and critical of defects, or, more accurately speaking, intolerant of all but the highest and noblest, while his more catholic tastes, led somewhat by his books, accepted Art in general as the one thing to be admired. Had he been wealthy, he would have been a princely patron of every form of Art.
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