BOOKS OF TO-DAY.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20197, 27 March 1931, Page 13

BOOKS OF TO-DAY.

LORD DARLING'S OPIN lON. (ntOX OtfS OWN COBBESPOXDEHT.)" . LONDON,! .Eebrtiary 12. Lord Darling, at the annual dinner of the International Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, said: ""When I ,find how, few people, read my : own. books, I am ■ convinced what good -hooks . they are. But I suppose I have made as much by my hooks as "Goldsmith made out of ,'The Deserted Village,' or ; the author of 'Rasselas' made out of what he disposed of to pay for his mother's fuiieral;' I have ?made enough to have buried jßCveral modern authors, and if I could have afforded it, I would .have spent my money in that worthy cause. "Old books have their smell of them, their leather bindings, their silver clasps, their vellum, their paper—-which Ruskin called 'honest old rags.' - The trouble to-day is that , the rags are not honest. I like them because they differ so much from modern books, which have a lot of. qualities which I detest. These books have to. go to the British Museum. There, a long time hence, the papyrus of the Pharaohs Will'be-as it-was. • The.book 'o&tp-day will be dust, because it •is printed on wood, not on paper. That, at any rate, must be a consolation to the antiquarian .bookseller."