' Three
years, however, works miracles of refinement in any hunger that is at
all capable of culture; and it was evident, when Narcissus did open his
'Gladstone,' that it had taken him by no means so long to attain that
sublimation of taste which may be expressed as 'reading to buy.' Each
volume had that air--of breeding, one might almost say--by which one can
always know a genuine _bouquin_ at a glance; an alluvial richness of
bloom, coming upon one like an aromatic fragrance in so many old things,
in old lawns, in old flowers, old wines, and many another delicious
simile. One could not but feel that each had turned its golden brown,
just as an apple reddens--as, indeed, it had.
I do not propose to solemnly enumerate and laboriously describe these
good things, because I hardly think they would serve to distinguish
Narcissus, except in respect of luck, from other bookmen in the first
furor of bookish enthusiasm. They were such volumes as Mr. Pendennis ran
up accounts for at Oxford. Narcissus had many other points in common
with that gentleman. Such volumes as, morning after morning, sadden
one's breakfast-table in that Tantalus _menu_, the catalogue. Black
letter, early printed, first editions Elizabethan and Victorian, every
poor fly ambered in large paper, etc. etc.; in short, he ran through the
gamut of that craze which takes its turn in due time with marbles,
peg-tops, beetles, and foreign stamps--with probably the two exceptions
of Bewick, for whom he could never batter up an enthusiasm, and
'facetiae.
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