ere,
For 't were not fair, you know,
That they our heavenly bliss should share
Who vex us here below!
The few are those who have been kind
To husbands such as we:
They knew our fads and didn't mind--
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.

It has never been explained to my satisfaction why women, as a class,
are the enemies of books, and are particularly hostile to bibliomania.
The exceptions met with now and then simply prove the rule. Judge
Methuen declares that bibliophobia is but one phase of jealousy; that
one's wife hates one's books because she fears that her husband is in
love, or is going to be in love, with those companions of his student
hours. If, instead of being folios, quartos, octavos, and the like,
the Judge's books were buxom, blithe maidens, his wife could hardly be
more jealous of the Judge's attentions to them than she is under
existing circumstances. On one occasion, having found the Judge on two
successive afternoons sitting alone in the library with Pliny in his
lap, this spirited lady snatched the insidious volume from her
husband's embraces and locked it up in one of the kitchen pantries; nor
did she release the object of her displeasure until the Judge had
promised solemnly to be more circumspect in the future, and had further
mollified his wife's anger by bringing home a new silk dress and a
bonnet of exceptional loveliness.

Other instances of a similar character have demonstrated that Mrs.
Methuen regards with implacable antipathy the volumes upon which my
learned and ingenious friend would fain lavish the superabundance of
his affection. Many years ago the Judge was compelled to resort to
every kind of artifice in order to sneak new books into his house, and
had he not been imbued with the true afflatus of bibliomania he would
long ago have broken down under the heartless tyranny of his vindictive
spouse.

When I look around me and survey the persecution to which book-lovers
are subjected by their wives, I thank the goddess Fortune that she has
cast my lot among the celibates; indeed, it is still one of the few
serious questions I have not yet solved, viz.: whether a man can at the
same time be true to a wife and to bibliomania. Both are exacting
mistresses, and neither will tolerate a rival.

Dr. O'Rell has a theory that the trouble with most wives is that they
are not caught young enough; he quotes Dr. Johnson's sage remark to the
effect that "much can be m