If that is wanting, then one might as well play music to the deaf,
or walk round the Academy with the colour-blind, as appeal to the
book-sense of an unfortunate who has it not.
There is this old brown volume in the corner. How it got there I
cannot imagine, for it is one of those which I bought for threepence
out of the remnant box in Edinburgh, and its weather-beaten comrades
are up yonder in the back gallery, while this one has elbowed its
way among the quality in the stalls. But it is worth a word or two.
Take it out and handle it! See how swarthy it is, how squat, with
how bullet-proof a cover of scaling leather. Now open the fly-leaf
"Ex libris Guilielmi Whyte. 1672" in faded yellow ink. I wonder who
William Whyte may have been, and what he did upon earth in the reign
of the merry monarch. A pragmatical seventeenth-century lawyer, I
should judge, by that hard, angular writing. The date of issue is
1642, so it was printed just about the time when the Pilgrim Fathers
were settling down into their new American home, and the first
Charles's head was still firm upon his shoulders, though a little
puzzled, no doubt, at what was going on around it. The book is in
Latin--though Cicero might not have admitted it--and it treats of
the laws of warfare.
I picture some pedantic Dugald Dalgetty bearing it about under his
buff coat, or down in his holster, and turning up the reference for
every fresh emergency which occurred. "Hullo! here's a well!" says
he.
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