'Do These Things Go Out With Life?'

I pick up stray, interesting-looking volumes by Dr. Johnson, Swift, Robert Burton, Sterne, Beerbohm and a few other writers whose books I already own. Permit me a sentimental  indulgence. I’m not by nature acquisitive but such books seem like talismans, a quality not normally high on my list of bookish virtues. This is foolish, I recognize, but since childhood I’ve personified favorite books as friends. I like to keep them near and bring them with me when I travel. I take good care of them and they, in turn, help me feel secure, never bored and buffered against the elements.

Also on that embarrassing list is the work of Charles Lamb. I count twelve volumes by the essayist on my shelves, with much overlapping. The centerpiece is the three-volume Letters, edited by E.V. Lucas and published in 1934 on the centenary of Lamb’s death. On the same shelf, though much humbler, is the Modern Library’s Complete Works and Letters of Charles Lamb (1935), with an introduction by Saxe Commins, one of Faulkner’s editors. I bought the volume in Seattle about ten years ago. The front end-paper is signed Lewis H. Johnson, with his address in LaGrange, Ill.

Otherwise, the only markings in the book are three underlinings in pencil in one of the Essays of Elia – “New Year’s Eve.” Mr. Johnson or some other reader had good taste in prose. First, this:  

“I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces, new years,—from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective.”

And two pages later:

“I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here.”

And finally:

“Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself—do these things go out with life?”