[英國]奧古斯丁·比勒爾/Augustine Birrell
奧古斯丁·比勒爾（1850-1933），英國政治家、散文家。曾任教育大臣、愛爾蘭事務大臣。因出版兩部題為《餘論》的散文集而享譽英國文壇。《買書》一文以平和的口吻談及書、藏書，心懷喜悅而又無可奈何地回憶起過去書的物美價廉，其愛書藏書的癡情發人深思。
The most distinguished of living Englishmen, who, great as he is in many directions, is perhaps inherently more a man of letters than anything else, has been overheard mournfully to declare that there were more booksellers'shops in his native town sixty years ago, when he was a boy in it, than are today to be found within its boundaries. And yet the place“all unabashed”now boasts its bookless self a city!
Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to second-hand bookshops. Neither he nor any other sensible man puts himself out about new books. When a new book is published, read an old one, was the advice of a sound though surly critic.
It is one of the boasts of letters to have glorified the term“second-hand”，which other crafts have“soiled to all ignoble use”.But why it has been able to do this is obvious. All the best books are necessarily second-hand. The writers of today need not grumble. Let them“bide a wee.”If their books are worth anything, they, too, one day will be second-hand. If their books are not worth anything there are ancient trades still in full operation amongst us-the pastry cooks and the trunk-makers-who must have paper.
But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books, meaning thereby second-hand books?The late Mark Pattison, who had 16000 volumes, and whose lightest word has therefore weight, once stated that he had been informed, and verily believed, that there were men of his own University of Oxford who, being in uncontrolled possession of annual incomes of not less than500，thought they were doing the thing handsomely if they expended50 a year upon their libraries. But we are not bound to believe this unless we like. There was a touch of moroseness about the late rector of Lincoln which led him to take gloomy views of men, particularly Oxford men.