It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I could.
But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the life.
As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer’s shambles. I will, my beloved,—old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
In size, it is what the booksellers call an _18mo;_ it is bound in green morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and falling air-castles? Ah, no!—these are all part and parcel of the precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile sonnets, I might write under this horse, _“Drawn at the age of three years,”_ and under this autograph, _“Executed at the age of eight.”_
Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of Dibdin’s? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin’s ditty are mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.