"Jean Joseph Rive will have that a bibliophile is one who reads for pleasure;
but he is opposed by Locker-Lampson, who maintains that 'your true
bibliophile rarely reads anything: he contemplates, he examines bindings,
criticizes illustrations, and scrutinizes title-pages or pagination.'
Others, as G.H.Powell, have dilated upon the difference between reading and
'the refined curiosities of the bibliophile,' and Gleeson White, in express
words, affirms that your book-lover must gaze at books 'mutely, with a
satisfied joy in being near enough to caress or abstain.' A book need not
even be 'in a particular language, nor on a particular subject, to be the
book of a book-lover.' You love a book first because it is a book, however
much you may particularize afterwards: 'He loved a book because it was a
book; he loved its odour, its form, its title.' You love it inwardly and
outwardly, soul and body..."
"'It does not follow at all that a person devoted to reading is fond of books.
It is often the other way: the most learned men, the most gluttonous of readers,
may not have the smallest love for books.' They know nothing of their value or
how to treat them; using them for their 'selfish purpose' and casting them aside
as useless: 'Ten people care for a book--but they are apostles. A thousand
enjoy another book, but when they have sucked it on a hot afternoon, they
have finished.'"
--The Book About Books,
The Anatomy of Bibliomania
Holbrook Jackson
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