The women-folk are few up there, 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.
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