A laborious youth had given him great stores of
scholarship, and Lewis's books were a curious if chaotic collection. On
the fly-leaf of a little duodecimo was an inscription from the author of
Waverley, who had often made Etterick his hunting-ground. A Dunbar had
Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the
handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others
had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves
had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special
books-college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and
a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic
interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced
his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping,
browsing, reading a score of lines.
"What a nice taste you have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi,
Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the _Corpus
Boreale_, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above
them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French _Memoires_, a Dante, a
Homer, and a badly printed German text of Schopenhauer! Three different
copies of Rabelais, a De Thou, a Horace, and-bless my soul!--about
twenty books of fairy tales! Lewie, you must have a mind like a
lumber-room.
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