Mmm, old books

I'm experiencing that most painful of pleasures: inspecting somebody else's books, knowing that I'll be leaving them behind. There's a degree of upheaval at home, and my grandfathers collection is lying around, together with that of an old and long-deceased family friend: a Welsh testament from 1830 published by the Clarendon Press in assocation with Tros y Bibl Cymdeithas Brutanaidd a Thramor (British and Foreign Bible Society) printed in Rhydychain (Oxford), Gaelic (i.e. the Scots dialect of Irish) dictionaries, loads of 19th-century Catholic moral tales, missals and breviaries, beautiful gardening handbooks from the 50s and a few ancient bits and pieces.

For you drinkers, I recommend The Poetical Works of John Philips, who was a near contemporary of Milton popular in his time but who hasn't lasted: I'm looking at a 1786 edition of his comic verse, which includes epic poem 'Cider' and a long Latin one in praise of tobacco. It was awarded as a prize to William Simpson in 1788 for 'excelling his Schoolfellows in Repetitions and for other judicious exercises in English and Latin', by Father Blick. Clearly cider, wine and tobacco were recommended by teachers to their students.

There's a Spanish New Testament from 1820 bound in thick leather, printed by del Dorca on thick, striated paper, a 1791 Scelta Di Novelle di Giovanni Boccaccio (Selected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio) printed in London, which you can see here (stunning typography), an ancient and battered copy of Isaac Watts Logic; or, the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With A Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life as well as in the Sciences: he was a dissenter, hymn writer and theologian, and his philosophy is clearly influenced by Locke and the Empiricists.

Finally, there's a posh 1847 copy (gilt leaves, marbled endpapers) of The Old English Gentleman or The Fields and the Woods by John Mills, which seems to be a novel of hunting and romance amongst the country aristocracy, with the occasional bout of fisticuffs with the lower orders thrown in. I think I'll read it at some point. People keep saying 'Dem'd bad, sir', which is always a mark of rollocking quality.

Ho hum, back to paper writing.