The Atlantic Monthly

‘The Everburning Lamps of Accumulated Wisdom’

IT is said that Edward Fitzgerald was strangely lacking in sentiment regarding a book: that he would rip a handsomely bound volume apart and ravish it of a favorite chapter or illustration without the slightest compunction. Protests from horrified witnesses of the sacrilege evoked only jeers at their supersensitive scruples. Perhaps this was a defiant gesture aimed at that Victorian sentimentalism which flowered to its fullest in the person of the Queen herself with her incredible collection of memorabilia covering the minutest episodes of her long career.

Possibly it is an atavistic emotion dating from the days when a book represented months of devoted monkish labor but to most of us there is an inviolate quality to a good book. We find it difficult to fling a battered volume into the dust heap with quite the objective irresponsibility with which we consign a worn-out tire to its fate.

Call it sentimentalism if you will. At worst it is a defect of a quality. That it is something more than a Simian mania for ‘owning things’ is indicated by the fact that the contents of the book color our emotions in abandoning it. With but a slight pang we relinquish the best seller of twenty years ago while that rickety copy of ‘Sartor Resartus’ may be dropped into the waste basket to be remorsefully retrieved later from the barrel in the cellar.

Men of imagination have always felt the far-reaching implication of a significant book. ‘ Books are embalmed minds.’ said Bovee. ‘The ever-burning lamps of accumulated wisdom,’asserted Curtis. ’In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.’ was Emerson’s verdict. And Carlyle wrote ’All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been — it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.’

To accumulate a private library of worthwhile books is one of life’s most lasting satisfactions: not an ostentatious, impressive aggregation of tomes but an intimate assortment of congenial minds, which reflect one’s genuine interests, one’s authentic aspirations. And what a livable quality they impart to a room: the warm tones of those colorful volumes glowing in the mellow lamplight. It is only through actual ownership of books that one can absorb them and utilize them to the fullest for both pleasure and profit. As Georg Brandes remarks, ‘A man who restricts himself to one reading of a book knows little about it. The books I value I have frequently read more than ten times. One does not really know a book until one knows it almost by heart.’

Doubtless you have noted that the titles advertised in the Atlantic Monthly reflect, naturally enough, the interests and intellectual standards of Atlantic readers. Most of them are books of more than transitory interest: books which one buys with the comfortable sense that they will bear re-reading many times. Publishers realize that the Atlantic Monthly covers a public of critical discernment, and consequently offer their best titles in its pages. ‘A good book, said,’Milton, ‘is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.’ When such books appear one finds them featured in our advertising section.

Booksellers offering titles advertised in the Atlantic, now display the reproduced insignia. You will find their shelves rich in books of permanent significance.

THERE IS A BOOKSELLER IN YOUR TOWN