That library was the pleasantest room in the house, and it was clearly Haraldsen's favourite, for it had the air of a place cherished and lived in. Its builder had chosen to give it a fine plaster ceiling, with heraldic panels between mouldings of Norland symbols. It was lined everywhere with books, books which had the look of being used, and which consequently made that soft tapestry which no collection of august bindings can ever provide. Upstairs the bedrooms were large and airy, with bare oak floors, and not too much furniture, but with all modern comforts.
What struck me especially was that everything was of the best and probably of high value. It seemed queer to be contemplating a siege in a treasure house.
'The treasures were my father's,' said Haraldsen. 'Myself I do not want possessions. Only my books.'
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Only My Books
John Buchan (1875-1940), The Island of Sheep, chapter XII: