IMiMlMfpW 
 
(QorntU UnlarrBity Clbcary 
 
 Jtfeata. Htm lurk 
 
 BENNO LOEWY UBRARY 
 
 COLt^CTtO BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 ias4.i0i9 
 
 •«OUI*TMto TOCONNCLL UMIVmCITV 
 
Cornell University Library 
 Z992 .B97 1900 
 
 Book hunter / by John Hill Burton. 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 545 856 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029545856 
 
THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 HE Author, in again laying his 
 little book before the public, has 
 taken, ' advantage of some sug- 
 gestions kindly contributed by the critics 
 who reviewed the previous edition, and he 
 has thus been enabled to correct a few 
 inaccuracies which they have courteously 
 characterised as mere errors of the press. 
 Productions of this indefinite kind are apt 
 to grow in the hands of an author ; and in 
 the course of his revision he was unable to 
 
vi Adtfertisemcnt. 
 
 resist the temptation to throw in a few 
 additional touches here and there, as to 
 which he can oaly hope that they will not 
 deteriorate the volume in the eyes of those 
 who thought well of it in its old shape. 
 
 1863. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Part I.— ?^ig Nature. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY, 
 
 A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS, . . 
 
 REMINISCENCES, 
 
 CLASSIFICATION, 
 
 THE PROWLER AND THE AUCTION-HAUNTER, 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 14 
 
 59 
 62 
 
 ilart IE— ?^tB JFuntttona, 
 
 THE HOBBY lOI 
 
 THE DESULTORY READER OR BOHEMIAN OF LITERATURE, . 108 
 
 THE COLLECTOR AND THE SCHOLAR H5 
 
 THE GLEANER AND HIS HARVEST I24 
 
 PRETENDERS, 161 
 
 HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CREATION OF LIBRARIES, . 168 
 
 THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE 20S 
 
 LIBRARIANS '. 227 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHIES . . 233 
 
VIU 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Part ]EH.— P|is dnb. 
 
 CLUK IN GEKEKAt, 
 
 THB STkDCTUU OF THK BOOK CLUli>, 
 
 THE KOXBCKCHC CLDB, 
 
 SOME aOOK-CLCB MEN 
 
 FACt 
 
 -5' 
 
 205 
 
 Part EU.— Boofc.CItiii l,(ttTatUT^ 
 
 orNrRAiinu, 
 
 JOHN trAlMNC, . 
 
 tOBCRT WODROW, 
 
 TIIE EARLY N.>Kl|irKN SAINTS, 
 
 •■I KM.NS IM STOKES, . 
 
 3" 
 
 338 
 
 3Sa 
 404 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 419 
 
THE BOOK-HUNTER. 
 
 PART I.— HIS NATURE. 
 
 Entroiiuctorg. 
 
 F the Title under which the contents 
 of the following pages are ranged 
 I have no better justification to offer 
 than that it appeared to suit their 
 discursive tenor. If they laid any 
 claim to a scientific character, or professed to con- 
 tain an exposition of any established department of 
 knowledge, it might have been their privilege to 
 appear under a title of Greek derivation, with all the 
 dignities and immunities conceded by immemorial 
 deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not 
 only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of 
 such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other 
 
 A 
 
2 His Nature. 
 
 productions which might appear to have a more 
 appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflec- 
 tions and wonderful facilities for decomposition and 
 reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of 
 scientific precision, and the use of a dead language 
 saves your nomenclature from being confounded 
 with your common talk. The use of a Greek deriv- 
 ative gives notice that you are scientific. If you 
 speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you 
 are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting 
 or boiling merits ; and if you make an allusion to 
 monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be 
 supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster 
 sauce. 
 
 Like many other meritorious things, however, 
 Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very 
 reverence it is held in^the strong disinclination on 
 the part of the public to question the accuracy of 
 anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name, 
 or to doubt the infallibility of the man who does 
 it — makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent 
 protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an in- 
 strument for silencing inquiry and handing over 
 the judgment to implicit belief Get the passive 
 student ' once into palaeozoology, and he takes your 
 other hard names — ^your ichthyodorulite, trogon- 
 therium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron — for 
 granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind 
 of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a 
 
Introductory. 3 
 
 question whether a term is categorematic, or is of a 
 quite opposite description, and ought to be described 
 as jMwcategorematic,; one may take up a very abso- 
 lute positive position without finding many people 
 prepared to assail it. 
 
 Antiquarianism, which used to bean easy-gping 
 slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful 
 protection, and called itself Archaeology. An oblit- 
 erated manuscript written over again. is called a 
 palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read 
 it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the 
 moor, which has hitherto defied, all learning to find 
 the faintest trace of the age in which it was, erected, 
 its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems 
 as it were to be rescued from the heathen darkness 
 in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the 
 community of scientific truth, by being christened a 
 monolith. If it be large and shapeless, it may take 
 rank as an amorphous megalith ; and it is on record 
 that the owner of some muirla^d acres, finding 
 them described in a learned work as " richly, mega- 
 lithic," became! suddenly excited by hopes which 
 were qiiickly extinguished when jthe inipprt; of the 
 term was, fully explained to him. Should there be 
 any remains of sculpture on such a stone, it .becomes 
 a lithoglyph or ahiei;oglyph:; and if the nature aiid 
 end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to 
 the adepts,' they, may term it, a, cryptoglyph, and 
 thus dignify, by a sort of title of hopour, the abso- 
 
4 His Nature. 
 
 luteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any- 
 more ingenious man should afterwards find a key- 
 to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the 
 established nomenclature. 
 
 The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics 
 are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature, 
 and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or 
 other to supply them with the article. A sort 
 of shaving soap used frequerjtly to be advertised 
 under a title which was as complexly adjusted a 
 piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the 
 conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the 
 confidence in the protective power of Greek de- 
 signations lately reached its climax, in an attempt 
 to save thieves from punishment by calling them 
 kleptomaniacs. 
 
 It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify 
 the class of men to whom the following sketches are 
 devoted by an appropriate scientific title, a difficulty 
 would start up at the very beginning. As the 
 reader will perhaps see, from the tenor of my dis- 
 course, I would find it difficult to say whether I 
 should give them a good name or a bad — to speak 
 more scientifically, and of course more clearly, 
 whether I should characterise them by a predicate 
 eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole, 
 I am content with my first idea, and continue to 
 stick to the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all 
 the more assurance that it has been tolerated, and 
 
Introductory. 5 
 
 even liked, by readers of the kind I am most 
 ambitious of pleasing.^ 
 
 Few wiser things have ever been said than that 
 remark of Byron's, that "man is an unfortunate 
 fellow, and ever will be." Perhaps the originality 
 of the fundamental idea it expresses may be ques- 
 tioned, on the ground that the same warning has 
 been enounced in far more solemn language, and 
 from a far more august authority. But there is 
 originality in the vulgar everyday - world way of 
 
 ^ To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a 
 glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets 
 of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following defini- 
 tions, as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux 
 Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avis& of Jean Joseph Rive :— 
 
 "A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing, in title-pages 
 and colophons, and in editions ; the place and year when printed ; 
 the.,presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book." — "A 
 bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements." — 
 "A bibliomane is an indiscriminate, accumulator, who blunders faster 
 than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy." — " A bibliophile, the 
 lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears, to read them 
 for his own pleasure." — "A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping 
 them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases." 
 
 The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with 
 high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is , seized in his 
 supplementary volume with a. misgiving in the matter of the biblio- 
 taphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, 
 and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to 
 by Rive, is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as 
 a destroyer of books ; bibliologue, one who discourses about books ; 
 bibliotacte, a classifier of books ; and bibliop^e, " Fart d'krire ou de 
 composer des livres," or, as the unlearned would say, thes function of 
 an author. Of the dignity with which . this writer can invest the 
 objects of his nomenclature, take the following specimen from his 
 description of the bibliographe : — 
 
6 His Nature. 
 
 putting the idea, and this makes it suit the present 
 purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be 
 dealt with, there is no intention to be either devout 
 or philosophical about it, but to treat it in a 
 thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in this 
 temper to judge of its place among the defects and 
 ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, 
 if we human creatures sometimes did this, and dis- 
 cussed our common frailties as each himself partak- 
 ing of them, than that we should mount, as we are 
 so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics, 
 
 "Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and 
 nothing more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it. 
 
 "Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all 
 sciences, it virould appear that all subjects should come under the 
 consideration bf the bibliographe ; languages, logic, criticism, philo- 
 sophy, eloquence, mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are 
 no strahgjers to him ; the history of printing and of celebrated printers 
 is familiar to him, as well as all the operations of the typographic 
 art. He is continually occupied with the works of the ancients and 
 the moderns ; he mates it his business to know books useful, rare, 
 and curious, not only> by their titles and form, but by their contents ; 
 he spends his life in analysing,, classifying, and describing them. He 
 seeks out those tvhich are recommended by talented authors ; he 
 runs through libraries and cabinets to increase the sum of his know- 
 ledge ; he studies authors who have treated of the science of books, 
 he poihts out their errors ; he chooses from among new productions 
 those which bear the stamp of genius, and which will live in men's 
 memories ; he ransacks periodicals to kedp himself well up to the 
 discoveries of his age, and compare theni with those of ages past ; he 
 is greedy of all works which treat of libraries; particularly catalogues, 
 when they are well constructed and well arranged, and their price 
 adds to their value. Such is the genuine Bibliografhe" This re-> 
 minds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly defined their own 
 science as the knowledge of things human and divine. 
 
Introductory. 7 
 
 according as our temperament and training are of 
 the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there 
 are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim 
 themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no 
 better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest 
 of criminals. But such has been my own unfortun- 
 ate experience in life, that whenever I find a man 
 coming forward with these self-denjanciations on his 
 lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance, 
 spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all un- 
 charitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who 
 has floundered a little out of the straight path, and 
 being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared 
 to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms 
 which come so readily to the lips of the censors, 
 who at heart believe themselves spotless.r^just as 
 complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this 
 and that, come from the fat lips^ef the millionaire, 
 when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, 
 and his forcing-frames. 
 
 No ; it is hard to choose between the two. The 
 man who has no defect or crack in his character — 
 no tinge of even the minor immoralities — no fan- 
 tastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet- 
 no preposterous hobby — such a man, walking straight 
 along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle, 
 is a very dangerous character, no doubt ; of such all 
 children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that 
 have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel 
 
8 His Nature. 
 
 an innate loathing. And yet it is questionable if 
 your perfectionised Sir Charles Grandison is quite 
 so dangerous a character as your "miserable sinner," 
 vociferously conscious that he is the frailest of the 
 frail, and that he can do no good thing of himself 
 And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of 
 these two characteristics have been known so to 
 alternate in one disposition as to render it evident 
 that each is but the same moral nature under a 
 different external aspect, — the mask, cowl, varnish, 
 crust, or whatever yOu like to call it, having been 
 adapted to the external conditions of the man — that 
 is, to the society he mixes in, the set he belongs to, 
 the habits of the age, and the way in which he pro- 
 poses to get on in life. It is when the occasion 
 arises for the mask being thrown aside, or when 
 the internal passions burst like a volcano through 
 the crust, that terrible events take place, and the 
 world throbs with the excitement of some wonder- 
 ful criminal trial.^ 
 
 ^ It has often been observed that it is among the Society of Friends, 
 who Jceep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that these 
 make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey, 
 in one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man 
 of great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded 
 by insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the 
 system of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, Which 
 I am not prepared either to support or contradict. After describing 
 the system of restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is 
 not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision 
 with; two forces at once — the force of passion and of youth — not 
 unfrequently records its own injurious ' tendencies, and publishes the 
 
Introductory. 9 
 
 The present, however, is not an inquiry into the 
 first principles either of ethics or of physiology. 
 The object of this rambling preamble is to win from 
 the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards 
 
 rebellious movements of nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. 
 And, further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority, 
 that these diseases — strange and elaborate affections of the nervous 
 system — are found exclusively among the young men and women of 
 the Quaker Society ; that they are known and understood exclusively 
 amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large 
 Quaker population, such as Birmingham ; that they assume a new 
 type and a more inveterate character in the second or third genera- 
 tion, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted ; and, finally, 
 that if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much 
 as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community 
 itself — the Quaker body — does not increase, but, on the contrary, is 
 rather on the wane." 
 
 There exist many good stories which have for their point the 
 passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this per- 
 suasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of 
 these is a north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in 
 his Description of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the 
 first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and 
 the pugilist. He was a colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen 
 wild work in his day ; but in his old age a change came over him, 
 and, becoming a follower of George Fox, he retired to spend his 
 latter days on his ancestral estate in Kincardineshire. Here it came 
 to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily 
 done, and began to encroach upon his marches. ^ Barclay, a strong 
 man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still 
 burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim 
 smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest that I have become a 
 man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art 
 endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou 
 believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot binder 
 thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist ; for shouldst 
 thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he may 
 prove too strong, not only for me, but for thee." There was no use 
 of attempting to answer such an argument. 
 
lo His Nature. 
 
 the human frailty which I propose to examine and 
 lay bare before him, trusting that he will treat it 
 neither with the haughty disdain of the immaculate, 
 nor the grim charity of the " miserable sinner : " that 
 he may even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet 
 kindly remember that, in comparison with many 
 others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's side. It 
 will not demand that breadth of charity which"even 
 rather rigid fathers are permitted to exercise by the 
 licence of the • existing school of French fiction.^ 
 Neither will it exact such extensive toleration as 
 that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her 
 sister lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conver- 
 sation with broad descriptions of the abominable 
 
 ^ la the renowned Dame aux Camelias, the respectable, rigid, and 
 rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous 
 ayez une maltressg, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un 
 galant homme doit payer I'amour d'une fiUe entretenue, c'est on ne 
 peut mieux ; mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour 
 elle, que vous permettiez que la bruit de votre vie scandaleuse arrive 
 jusqu'au fond de ma province, et jette I'ombre d'une tache sur le nom 
 honorable que je vous ai donne — voil4 ce qui ne peut etre, voila ce 
 qui ne sera pas.." 
 
 So even the French novelists draw the line "somewhere," and in 
 other departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than 
 many good uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one 
 very popular novel the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming- 
 table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having 
 committed forgery, plots with the Mephistqpheles of the story to buy 
 his own safety at the price of his wife's honour. This might seem 
 bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper, 
 by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason 
 to suspect his, maStei''of h(iying indulged, once at least, if not qftener, 
 in brandy-and-water ! 
 
Iniroduciory. 1 1 
 
 vices of their several spouses, said her own "was 
 just a gueed, weel- tempered, couthy, queat, inno- 
 cent, daedlin, drucken body — wi' nae ill practices 
 aboot him ava ! " But all things in their own time 
 and place. To understand the due weight and bear- 
 ing of this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to 
 remember that its happy owner had probably Spent 
 her youth in that golden age when it was deemed 
 churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest iilled 
 his stoup at the fountain of the flowing hogshead ; 
 and if the darker days of dear claret came upon her 
 times, there was still to fall back upon the silver 
 age of smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a 
 really hospitable country -house were an anker of 
 whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on 
 the bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar 
 with a spade in it, — all for the manufacture of 
 toddy. 
 
 The habits of that age have passed away, and 
 with them the drunken laird and the widely tolerant 
 wife. The advancing civilisation which has nearly 
 extinguished this class of frailties among those who 
 have the amplest means of indulgence in them, is, 
 no doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at 
 last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admir- 
 ing and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened 
 posterity. There are people, howfever, too impatient 
 to wait for such results from the mellowing influ- 
 ence of progressive civilisation. Such a edhsidera- 
 
12 His Nature. 
 
 tion suggests to me that I may be treading on dan- 
 gerous ground — dangerous, I mean, to the frail but 
 amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted. 
 Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call 
 attention to a special type of human frailty, since the 
 world is full of people who will be prepared to deal 
 with and cure it, provided only that they are to have 
 their own way with the disease and the patient, 
 and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of 
 locking him up, dieting him, and taking possession 
 of his worldly goods and interests, as one who, by 
 his irrational habits, or his outrages on the laws 
 of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other 
 neology, has satisfactorily established his utter in- 
 capacity to take charge of his own affairs. No ! 
 This is not a cruel age ; the rack, the wheel, the 
 boot, the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks, 
 have disappeared ; death -punishment is dwindling 
 away ; and if convicts have not their full rations of 
 cooked meat, or get damaged coifee or sour milk, 
 or are inadequately supplied with flannels and 
 clean linen, there will be an outcry and an inquiry, 
 and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage 
 of his influence, and learn to look better after the 
 administration of patronage. But, at the same time, 
 the area of punishment — or of " treatment," as it is 
 mildly termed- — becomes alarmingly widened, and 
 people require to look sharply into themselves lest 
 they should be tainted with any little frailty or 
 
Introductory. 1 3 
 
 peculiarity which may transfer them from the class 
 of free self-regulators to that of persons under "treat- 
 ment." In Owen's parallelograms there were to be 
 no prisons : he admitted no power in one man to 
 inflict punishment upon another for merely obeying 
 the dictates of natural propensities which could not 
 be resisted. But, at the same time, there were to 
 be "hospitals" in which not only the physically 
 diseased, but also the mentally and morally diseased, 
 were to be detained until they were cured ; and when 
 we reflect that the laws of the parallelogram were 
 very stringent and minute, and required to be abso- 
 lutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole 
 machinery of society would come to pieces, like a 
 watch with a broken spring, — it is clear that these 
 hospitals would have contained a very large propor- 
 tion of the unrationalised population. 
 
 There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of 
 communism now among us, and it is therefore with 
 some little misgiving that one sets down anything 
 that may betray a brother's weakness, and lay bare 
 the diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeedj the bad 
 name that proverbially hangs the dog has already 
 been given to the one under consideration, for bib- 
 liomania is older in the technology of this kind of 
 nosology than dipsomania, which is now understood 
 to be an almost established ground for seclusion, and 
 deprivation of the management of one's own affairs. 
 There is one ground of consolation, however, — the 
 
14 His Nature, 
 
 people who, being all right themselves, have under- 
 - taken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the 
 world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford 
 time for idle reading. There is a good chance, there- 
 fore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed, 
 and the harmless class, on whose peculiar frailties 
 the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle 
 and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go 
 at large. 
 
 So having spoken, I now propose to make the 
 reader acquainted with some characteristic speci- 
 mens of the class. 
 
 a Fiston cf iWtflJitg B0ofe=?|untera. 
 
 S the first case, let us summon from the 
 shades -my' venerable friend Archdea- 
 con Meadow, as he was in the body. 
 You see him now^tall, straight, and 
 meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which 
 warms into benignity as, he inspects a pretty little 
 clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding 
 his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar 
 grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an 
 important announcement. This is no doubt one 
 of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still 
 a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its 
 parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 15 
 
 of by their wiser neighbours is only too close and 
 awful ; for have not sometimes the female members 
 of his household been known on occasion of some 
 domestic emergency — or, it may be, for mere sake of 
 keeping the lost man out of mischief — to have been 
 searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, 
 just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other 
 lost men hunt them through their favourite taverns 
 or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget 
 that occasion of his going to London to be examined 
 by a committee of the House of Commons, when 
 he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his 
 pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a 
 waggon containing 372 copies of ra,re editions of 
 the Bible? All were fish that came to his net. At 
 one time you might find him securing a minnow for 
 sixpence at a stall — and presently afterwards he 
 outbids some princely collector, and secures with 
 frantic impetuosity, " at any price," a great fish he 
 has been patiently watching year after year. His 
 hunting-grounds were wide and distant, and there 
 were mysterious rumours about the numbers of 
 copies, all identically the same in edition and minor 
 individualities, which he possessed of certain books. 
 I have known him, indeed, when beaten at an 
 auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so 
 be it — but I daresay I have ten or twelve, copies 
 at home, if I could lay hands on them." 
 
 It is a matter of extreme anxieity to his friends, 
 
1 6 His Nature. 
 
 and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad mis- 
 giving to himself, when the collector buys his first 
 duplicate. It is like the first secret dram swallowed 
 in the forenoon — the first pawning of the silver 
 spoons — or any other terrible first step downwards 
 you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for 
 the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of 
 decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which 
 he has been deceiving his friends, and partially 
 deceiving himself,' into the belief that his previous 
 purchases were necessary, or, at all events, service- 
 able for professional and literary purposes. He now 
 becomes shameless and hardened ; and it is observ- 
 able in the career of this class of unfortunates, that 
 the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by 
 an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandon- 
 ment to its propensities. The Archdeacon had long 
 passed this stage ere he crossed my path, and had 
 become thoroughly hardened. He was not remark- 
 able for local attachment ; and in moving from 
 place to place, his spoil, packed in innumerable 
 great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain un- 
 released during the whole period of his tarrying in 
 his new abode, so that they were removed to the 
 next stage of his journey through life with modified 
 inconvenience. 
 
 Cruel as it may seem, I must yet notice another 
 and a peculiar vagary of his malady. He had re- 
 solved, at least once in his life, to part with a 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 17 
 
 considerable proportion of his collection — better to 
 suffer the anguish of such an act than endure the 
 fretting of continued restraint There was a won- 
 drous sale by auction accordingly ; it was something 
 like what may have occurred on the dissolution of 
 the monasteries at the Reformation, or when the 
 contents of some time-honoured public library were 
 realised at the period of the French Revolution. Be- 
 fore the affair was over, the Archdeacon himself made 
 his appearance in the midst of the miscellaneous 
 self-invited guests who were making free with his 
 treasures, — he pretended, honest man, to be a mere 
 casual spectator, who, having seen, in passing, the 
 announcement of a sale by auction, stepped in like 
 the rest of the public. By degrees he got excited, 
 gasped once or twice as if mastering some desperate 
 impulse, and at length fairly bade. He could not 
 brazen out the effect of this escapade, however, an4 
 disappeared from the scene. It was remarked by 
 the observant, that an unusual number of lots were 
 afterwards knocked down to a military gentleman, 
 who seemed to have left portentously large orders 
 with the auctioneer. Some curious suspicions began 
 to arise, which were settled by that presiding genius 
 bending over his rostrum, and explaining in a con- 
 fidential whisper that the military hero was in reality 
 a pillar of the Church so disguised. 
 
 The Archdeacon lay under what, among a portion 
 of the victims of his malady, was deemed a heavy 
 
 B 
 
1 8 His Naturie. 
 
 scandal. He was suspected of reading his own 
 books — that is to say, when he could get at them ; 
 for there are those who may still remember his 
 rather shamefaced apparition of an evening, peti- 
 tioning, somewhat in the tone with which an old 
 schoolfellow down in the world requests your assist- 
 ance to help him to go to York to get an appoint- 
 ment — petitioning for the loan of a volume of which 
 he could not deny. that he possessed numberless 
 copies lurking in divers parts of his vast collection. 
 This reputation of reading the books in his collec- 
 tion, which should be sacred to external inspection 
 solely, is, with a certain school of book-collectors, a 
 scandal, such as it would be among a hunting set to 
 hint that a man had killed a fox. In the dialogues, 
 not always the most entertaining, of Dibdin's Biblio- 
 mania, there is this short passage : " ' I will frankly 
 Confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant 
 bibliomaniac — that I love books dearly — that the 
 
 very sight, touch, and mere perusal ' ' Hold, 
 
 my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon ; ' you have 
 renounced your profession — you talk of reading 
 books — do bibliomaniacs ever read books?'" 
 
 Yes, the Archdeacon read books — he devoured 
 them ; arid he did so to full prolific purpose. His 
 was a mind enriched with vfiried learning, which he 
 gave forth with full, strong, easy flow, like an inex- 
 haustible perennial spring coming from inner reser- 
 voirs, never dry, yet too capacious to exhibit the 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 19 
 
 brawling^ bubbling symptoms of repletion. It was 
 from a majestic heedlessness of the busy world and 
 its fame that he got the character of indolence, and 
 was set down as one who would leave no lasting 
 memorial of his great learning. But when he died, 
 it was not altogether without leaving a sign ; for 
 from the casual droppings of his pen has been pre- 
 served enough to signify to many generations of 
 students in the walk he chiefly affected how richly 
 his mind was stored, and how much fresh matter 
 there is in those fields of inquiry where compilers 
 have left their dreary tracks, for ardent students to 
 cultivate into a rich harvest. In him truly the 
 bibliomania may be counted among the many illus- 
 trations of the truth so often moralised on, that the 
 highest natures are not exempt from human frailty 
 in some shape or other. 
 
 Let us now summon the shade of another de- 
 parted victim — Fitzpatrick Smart, Esq. He, too, 
 through a long life, had been a vigilant and enthu- 
 siastic collector, but after a totally different fashion. 
 He was far from omnivorous. He had a principle 
 of selection peculiar and separate from all other's, as 
 was his own individuality from other men's. You 
 could not classify his library according to any of 
 the accepted nomenclatures peculiar to the initiated. 
 He was not a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or 
 an uncut man, oi- a rough-edge man, or an early- 
 English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider. 
 
20 His Nature. 
 
 or a pasquinader, or an old-brown-calf man, or a 
 Grangerite, or a tawny-moroccoite, or a gilt-topper, 
 a marbled-insider, or an editio prinpeps man ; neither 
 did he come under any of the more vulgar classifi- 
 cations of collectors whose thoughts run more upon 
 the usefulness for study than upon the external 
 conditions of their library, such as those who affect 
 science, or the classics, or English poetic and his- 
 torical literature. There was no way of defining his 
 peculiar walk save by his own name — it was the 
 Fitzpatrick-Smart walk. In fact, it wound itself in 
 infinite windings through isolated spots of literary 
 scenery, if we may so speak, in which he took a 
 personal interest. There were historical events, bits 
 of family history, chiefly of a tragic or a scandalous 
 kind, — efforts of art or of literary genius on which, 
 through some hidden intellectual law, his mind and 
 memory loved to dwell ; and it wels in reference to 
 these that he collected. If the book were the one 
 desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable 
 price, was to be grudgdd for its acquisition. If the 
 book were an inch out of his own line, it might be 
 trampled in the mire for aught he cared; be it as 
 rare or costly as it could be. 
 
 It was difficult, almost impossible, for others to 
 predicate what would please this wayward sort of 
 taste, and he was the torment of the book-caterers, 
 who were sure of a princely price for the right 
 article, but might have the wrong one thrown in 
 
Mighty Book-^Hunters. 21 
 
 their teeth with contumely. It was a perilous, but, 
 if successful, a gratifying thing to present him with 
 a book. If it happened to hit his fancy, he felt the 
 full force of the compliment, and overwhelmed the 
 giver with his courtly thanks. But great observa- 
 tion and tact were required for such an adventure. 
 The chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift- 
 maker were thousaiids to one ; and those who were 
 acquainted with his strange nervous temperament, 
 knew that the existence within his dwelling-place 
 of any book not of his own special kind, would 
 impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy horror 
 which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes 
 into its cell. Presentation copies by authors were 
 among the chronic torments of his existence. While 
 the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself 
 on his liberality in making the judicious gift, the 
 recipient was pouring out all his sarcasm, which 
 was not feeble or slight, on the odious object, and 
 wondering why an author could have entertained 
 against him so steady and enduring a malice as to 
 take the trouble of writing and printing all that 
 rubbish with ho better object than disturbing the 
 peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every 
 tribute from such dona ferentes cost him much un- 
 easiness and some want of sleep — for what could he 
 do with it ? It was impossible to make merchan- 
 dise of it, for he was every inch a gentleman. He 
 could not burn it, for under an acrid exterior he had 
 
22 His Nature. 
 
 a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he 
 had established some limbo of his own, in which 
 such unwelcome commodities were subject to a kind 
 of burial or entombment, where they remained in 
 existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of 
 his household gods. 
 
 These gods were a pantheon of a lively and 
 grotesque aspect, for he was a hunter after other 
 things besides books. His acquisitions included 
 pictures, and the various commodities which, for 
 want of a distinctive name, auctioneers call " miscel- 
 laneous articles o|" vertu." He started on his ac- 
 cumulating career with some old family relics, and 
 these, perhaps, gave the direction to his subsequent 
 acquisitions, for they were all, like his books, 
 brought together after some self-willed and peculiar 
 law of association that pleased himself A bad, 
 even an inferior, picture he would not have — for his 
 taste was exquisite — unless, indeed, it had some 
 strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward 
 fancies, and then he would adopt the badness as a 
 peculiar recommendation, and point it out with some 
 pungent and appropriate remark to his friends. 
 But though, with these peculiar exceptions, his 
 works of art were faultless, no dealer could ever 
 calculate on his buying a picture, however high in, 
 artistic merit or tempting as a bargain. With his 
 ever-accumulating cdllefction, in which tiny sculpture 
 and brilliant colour predominated, he kept a sort of 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 23 
 
 fairy world around him. But each one of the mob 
 of curious things he preserved had some story link- 
 ing it with others, or with his peculiar fancies, and 
 each one had its precise place in a sort of epos, as 
 certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of 
 a pantomime or a farce has his own position and 
 functions. 
 
 After all, he was himself his own greatest curi- 
 osity. He had come to manhood just after the 
 period of gold-laced waistcoats, small-clothes, and 
 shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a 
 living memorial of these now antique habits. It 
 happened to be his lot to preserve down to us the 
 earliest phase .of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while 
 the rest of the world were booted or heavy shod, his 
 silk-stockinged feet were thrust into pumps of early 
 Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was the 
 surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make 
 before it came to be called a frock. Round his 
 neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite neckerchief 
 (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a 
 great poultice — and so he took his walks abroad, 
 a figure whiph he could himself have turned into 
 ^~adraiirabi6ridicule. 
 
 One of the mysteries about him was, that his 
 clothes, though unlike any other person's, were 
 always old. This characteristic could not even be 
 accounted for by the supposition that he had laid 
 in a sixty years' stock in his youth, for they always 
 
24 His Nature. 
 
 appeared to have been a good deal worn. The very 
 umbrella was in keeping — it was of green silk, an 
 obsolete colour ten years ago — and the handle was 
 of a peculiar crosier -like formation in cast -horn, 
 obviously not obtainable in the market. His face 
 was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth ; 
 and, bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light- 
 brown hair which had long ago legitimately shaded 
 his brow, when he stood still — except for his linen, 
 which was snowy white — one might suppose that 
 he had been shot and stuffed on his return home 
 from college, and had been sprinkled with the frowzy 
 mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals 
 and other things, in which a semblance to the fresh- 
 ness of living nature is vainly attempted to be pre- 
 served. So if he were motionless ; but let him 
 speak, and the internal freshness was still there, an 
 ever-blooming garden of intellectual flowers. His 
 antiquated costume was no longer grotesque — it har- 
 monised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred 
 gentleness of manner, which he had acquired from 
 the best sources, since he had seen the first company 
 in his day, whether for rank or genius. And con- 
 versation and manner were far from exhausting his 
 resources. He had a wonderful pencil — it was 
 potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the ridi- 
 culous ; but it took a wayward wilful course, like 
 everything else about him. He had a brilliant pen, 
 too, when he chose to wield it ; but the idea that 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 25 
 
 he should exercise any of these his gifts in common 
 display before the world, for any even of the higher 
 motives that make people desire fame and praise, 
 would have sickened him. His faculties were his 
 own as much as his collection, and to be used accord- 
 ing to his caprice and pleasure. So fluttered through 
 existence one who, had it been his fate to have his 
 own bread to make, might have been a great man. 
 Alas for the end ! Some curious annotations are all 
 that remain of his literary powers — some drawings 
 and etchings in private collections all of his artistic. 
 His collection, with its long train of legends and 
 associations, came to what he himself must have 
 counted as dispersal. He left it to his housekeeper, 
 who, like a wise woman, converted it into cash while 
 its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a 
 great auction-room, its several catalogued items lay 
 in humiliating contrast with the decorous order in 
 which they were wont to be arranged. Sic transit 
 gloria mundi. 
 
 Let us now call up a different and a more com- 
 monplace type of the book-hunter — it shall be Inch- 
 rule Brewer. He is guiltless of all intermeddling 
 with the contents of books, but in their external 
 attributes his learning is marvellous. He derived his 
 nickname, from the practice of keeping, as his insep- 
 arable pocket-companion, one of those graduated 
 folding measures of length which may often be seen 
 protruding from the moleskin pocket of the joiner. 
 
26 His Nature. 
 
 He used it at auctions and on other appropriate 
 occasions, to measure the different elements of a 
 book — the letterpress — the unprinted margin — the 
 external expanse of the binding ; for to the perfectly 
 scientific collector all these things are very signifi- 
 cant.^ They are, in fact, on record among the 
 craft, like the pedigrees and physical characteristics 
 recorded in stud-books and short-horn books. One 
 so accomplished in this kind of analysis could tell 
 at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under 
 the hammer was , the same that had been knocked 
 down before at the Roxburghe sale — the Askew, the 
 Gordonstouri, or the Heber, perhaps — or was veri- 
 tably an impostor — or was in reality a new and 
 previously unknown prize well worth contending 
 for. The minuteness and precision of his know- 
 ledge exicited wonder, and, being anomalous in the 
 male sex even among collectors, gave occasion to a 
 rumour that its possessor must veritably be an aged 
 maiden in disguise. 
 
 ^ Of the copy of the celebrated 1635 Elzevir Csesar, in the Imperial 
 Library at Paris, Brunet triumphantly infonns us that it, is four inches 
 and ten-twelfths in height, and occupies the high position of being 
 the tallest copy of that volume in the wdrld, since other illustrious 
 copies put in competition vfith it have been found not to exceed four 
 inches and eight, or, at the utmost, nine, twelfths. 
 
 "Ces details," he subjoins, "paroitront sans doute puMs a bien 
 des gens : mais puisque c'est la grandeur des marges de ces sorts de 
 livres qu'en determine la valeur, il faut bien fixer le maximum de 
 cette grandeur, afin que les amateurs puissent appr&ier las exem- 
 plaires qui approchent plus ou moins de la raesure donriee." 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 27 
 
 His experience, aided by a heaven-born genius 
 tending in that direction, rendered him the most 
 merciless detector of sophisticated books. Nothing, 
 it might be supposed on first thought, can be a 
 simpler or more easily recognised thing than a book 
 genuine as printed. But in the old-book trade there 
 are opportunities for the exercise of ingenuity in- 
 ferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's 
 and the horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously in- 
 teresting. Sometimes entire facsimiles are made of 
 eminent volumes. More commonly, however, the 
 problem is to complete an imperfect copy. This 
 will be most satisfactorily accomplished, of course, 
 if another copy can be procured imperfect also, but 
 not in the same parts. Great ingenuity is some- 
 times shown in completing a highly esteemed edition 
 with fragments from one lightly esteemed. Some- 
 times a colophon or a decorated capital has to be 
 imitated, .and bold operators will reprint a page or 
 two in facsimile ; these operations^ of course, involve 
 the inlaying of paper, judiciously staining it, and 
 other mysteries. Paris is the great centre of this 
 kind of work, but it has been pretty extensively pur- 
 sued in Britain ; and the manufacture of first folio 
 Shakespeares has been nearly as staple a trade as the 
 getting up of genuine portraits of Mary Queen of 
 Scots. It will establish a broad distinction to note 
 the fact, that whereas our friend the Archdeacon 
 would collect several imperfect copies of the same 
 
28 His Nature. 
 
 book, in the hope of finding materials for one per- 
 fect one among them, Inchrule would remorselessly 
 spurn from him the most voluptuously got-up speci- 
 men (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it 
 tainted by the very faintest suspicion of " restoration." 
 Among the elements which constitute the value 
 of a book— rarity of course being essential — one 
 might say he counted the binding highest. He was 
 not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to 
 give the uninitiated a conception of the importance 
 attached to this mechanical department of book- 
 making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's 
 Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, 
 devoted to bindings. There are binders who have 
 immortalised themselves — as Staggemier, Walther, 
 Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian, 
 Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayday, and 
 Thomson. Their names may sometimes be found 
 on their work, not with any particularities, as if 
 they required to make themselves known, but with 
 the simple brevity of illustrious men. Thus you 
 take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence, 
 on the title-page of which the author sets forth his 
 full name and profession, with the distinctive initials 
 of certain learned societies to which it is his pride 
 to belong ; but the simple and dignified enunciation, 
 deeply stamped in his own golden letters, " Bound 
 by Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist 
 deigns to tell. 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 29 
 
 And let us, after all, acknowledge that there are 
 few men who are entirely above the influence of 
 binding. No one likes sheep's clothing for his 
 literature, even if he should not aspirS to russia 
 or morocco. Adam Smith, one of the least showy 
 of men, confessed himself to be a beau in his books. 
 Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so ' to 
 some extent, though poets are apt to be ragamuffins. 
 It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the 
 leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his 
 early career may have soured him of the proprieties. 
 It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active me- 
 chanic, who could do many things with his hands, 
 and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, "feck- 
 less" character with impatient disgust. When the 
 first of The Seasons — Winter it was, I believe — 
 had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a 
 presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scep- 
 ticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had 
 the book handsomely bound. The old man never 
 looked inside, or asked what the book was about, 
 but, turning it round and round with his fingers in 
 gratified admiration, exclaimed — "Come, is that 
 really our Jamie's doin' now ? — weel, I never thought 
 the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the 
 like ! " 
 
 The feeling by which this worthy man was influ- 
 enced was a mere sensible practical respect for good 
 workmanship. The aspirations of the collectors, 
 
30 His Nature. 
 
 however, in this matter, go out of the boundaries 
 of the sphere of the utilitarian into that of the 
 aesthetic. Their priests and prophets, by the way, 
 do not seem to be aware how far back this venerai- 
 tion for the coverings of books may be traced, or 
 to know how strongly their votaries have been 
 influenced in the direction of their taste by the 
 traditions of the middle ages. The binding of a 
 book was, of old, a shrine on which the finest work- 
 manship in , bullion and the costliest gems were 
 lavished. The psalter or the breviary of some early 
 saint, a portion of the Scriptures, or some other 
 volume held sacred, would be thus enshrined. It 
 has happened sometimes that tattered fragments of 
 them have been preserved as effective relics within 
 outer shells or shrines ; and in some instances, long 
 after the books themselves have disappeared, speci- 
 mens of these old bindings have remained to us 
 beautiful in their decay ; — but we are getting far 
 beyond the Inchrule. 
 
 Your affluent omnivorous collector, who has more 
 of that kind of business on hand than he can per- 
 form for himself, naturally brings about him a train 
 of satellites, who make it their business to minister 
 to his importunate cravings. With them the phrase- 
 ology of the initiated degenerates into a hard busi- 
 ness sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of 
 respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge 
 may linger in the conversation of their employers, 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 31 
 
 has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers 
 who have just two things to look to — the price of 
 their merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of 
 the unfortunates who employ them. Not that they 
 are destitute of all sympathy with the malady which 
 they feed. The caterer generally gets infected in 
 a superficial cutaneous sort of way. He has often 
 a collection himself, which he eyes complacently of 
 an evening as he smokes his pipe over his brandy- 
 and-water, but to which he is not so distractedly 
 devoted but that a pecuniary consideration will 
 tempt him to dismember it. It generally consists, 
 indeed, of blunders or false speculations — books 
 which have been obtained in a mistaken reliance 
 on their suiting the craving of some wealthy col- 
 lector. Caterers unable to comprehend the subtle 
 influences at work in the mind of the book-hunter, 
 often make miscalculations in this way. Fitzpatrick 
 Smart punished them so terribly, that they at last 
 abandoned him in despair to his own devices. 
 
 Several men of this class were under the autho- 
 rity of the Inchrule, and their communings were 
 instructive. "Thorpe's catalogue just arrived, sir — 
 several highly important announcements," says a 
 portly person with a fat volume under his arm, 
 hustling forward with an air of assured consequence. 
 There is now to be a deep and solemn consultation, 
 as when two ambassadors are going over a heavy 
 protocol from a third. It happened to me to see 
 
32 His Nature. 
 
 one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless 
 errand of inspection to a reputed collection ; he 
 was hot and indignant. "A collection" he sput- 
 tered forth — "that a collection! — mere rubbish, sir 
 — irredeemable trash. What do you think, sir? — 
 a set of the common quarto edition of the Delphini 
 classics, copies of Newton's works and Bacon's 
 works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth — 
 nothing better, I declare to you : and to call that a 
 collection ! " Whereas, had it contained The Par- 
 doner and the Frere, Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, A 
 Knacke to knowe a Knave, Banke's Bay Horse in a 
 Trance, or the works of those eminent dramatists, 
 Nabbes, May, Glapthorne, or Chettle, then would 
 the collection have been worthy of distinguished 
 notice. On another occasion, the conversation 
 turning on a name of some repute, the remark is 
 ventured, that he is " said to know something about 
 books," which brings forth the fatal answer — "He 
 know about books! Nothing — nothing at all, I 
 assure you ; unless, perhaps, about their insides." 
 
 The next slide of the lantern is to represent a 
 quite peculiar and abnormal case. It introduces a 
 strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and puerile figure, 
 wherein, however, resided one of the most potent 
 and original spirits that ever frequented a tenement 
 of clay. He shall be called, on account of associa- 
 tions that may or may not be found out, Thomas 
 Papaverius. But how to make palpable to the 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 3 3 
 
 ordinary human being one so signally divested of 
 all the material - and common characteristics of 
 his race, yet so nobly endowed with its rarer and 
 loftier attributes, almost paralyses the pen at the 
 very beginning. 
 
 In what mood and shape shall he be brought 
 forward ? Shall it be as first we met at the table 
 of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false 
 pretence that he would there meet with one who 
 entertained novel and anarchical opinions regarding 
 the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of 
 waiting dinner for him; He will come and depart 
 at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punc- 
 tualities nor , burdening others by exacting them. 
 The festivitiies of the afternoon are far on when a 
 commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or 
 other stray animal had. forced its way in. The 
 instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival^r- 
 he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. 
 What can it be ? a street-boy of some sort ? His 
 . costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very 
 threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to 
 the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti- 
 coloured belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list- 
 shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter 
 night; and the trousers ^ — some one suggests that 
 they are inner linen garments blackened with writ- 
 iflg-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been 
 at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be 
 
 c 
 
24 His Nature. 
 
 the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing 
 in the world— it consisted of the fragments of ap- 
 parel nearest at hand. Had chance thrown to him 
 a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's apron, a 
 kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his 
 entry. 
 
 The first impression that a boy has appeared 
 vanishes instantly. Though in one of the sweetest 
 and most genial of his essays he shows how every 
 man retains so much in him of the child he origin- 
 ally was — and he himself retained a great deal of 
 that primitive simplicity — it was buried within the 
 -depths of his heart— not visible externally. On the 
 contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an 
 erroneous reference to an event as being a century 
 old, by saying that he recollected its occurrence, one 
 felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in 
 his age, so old did he appear, with his arched 
 brow loaded with thought, and the countless little 
 wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thick- 
 ly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. 
 These lips are speedily opened by some casual re- 
 mark, and presently the flood of talk passes forth 
 from them; free, clear, and continuous — never rising 
 into declamation — never losing a certain mellow 
 earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as ex- 
 quisitely joifited- together as if they were destined 
 to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. 
 Still the hours stride over each other, and still flows 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 35 
 
 on the stream of gentle irhetoric, as if it were labitur 
 et labetur in omne volubilis avum. It is now far 
 in to the night, and slight hints and suggestions are 
 propagated about separation and home-going. The 
 topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilisa- 
 tion, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the 
 power of the domestic affections. Descending from 
 generals to the special, he could testify to the incon- 
 venience of late hours ; for, was it not the other 
 night that, coming to what was, or what he, believed 
 to be,- his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but 
 the old woman within either couldn't or wouldn't 
 hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, arid; having 
 taken his :repose in a furrow, was a,ble to testify to 
 the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch. The 
 predial gi'oove might indeed nourish kindly the 
 infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to 
 which it was appropriated, but was not a comfort- 
 able place of repose for adult man. 
 
 Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel- 
 stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night 
 like a shadow,! the child by the fire gazing on him 
 with round, eyes of astonishment, and suggesting 
 that he should get a penny and go home — a pro- 
 posal which , he subjected to some philosophical 
 criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How 
 far he had ; wandered since he had last refreshed 
 himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day, 
 were matters on which there was no getting articu- 
 
36 His Nature. 
 
 late utterance from Him. Though his costume was 
 muddy, however, and. his communications about the 
 material wants of life very hazy, the ideas which he 
 had stored up during his wandering poured them- 
 selves forth as clear and sparkling, both in logic and 
 language, as the purest fountain that springs from a 
 Highland rock. 
 
 How that wearied,, worn, little body was to be re- 
 freshed was a difficult problem : soft food disagreed 
 with him— the hard he could not eat. Suggestions 
 pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable 
 unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, 
 and it might be supposed that there were some fifty 
 cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house 
 that night. How many drops ? Drops ! nonsense. 
 If the wine-glasses of the establishment were not 
 beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk 
 — and so the weary is at rest for a time. 
 
 At early morn a triumphant cry of Eureka ! calls 
 me to his place of rest. With his unfailing . in- 
 stinct he has got at the books, and lugged a: con- 
 siderable heap, of them around him. That one 
 which specially claims his attention — my best bound 
 quarto — is spread upon' a piece of bedroom furniture 
 readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him 
 pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with 
 only one article of attire to separate him from the 
 condition in which Archimedes, according to the 
 -popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 37 
 
 He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism 
 in the commonly received histories of a very im- 
 portant period. As he expounded it, turning up 
 his unearthly face from the bpok with an almost 
 painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to 
 me that I had seen something like the scene in 
 Dutch paintings of the temptation of St Anthony. 
 
 Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant Country- 
 house, where the enlivening talk has make a guest 
 
 forget, ; , J . , 
 
 " The lang Scots miles, 
 
 The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles," 
 
 that lie between him and his place of rest. He 
 must be instructed in his course, but the instruction 
 reveals, more difficulties than it removes, and there 
 is much doubt and discussion, \yhich Papaverius at 
 once clears up as effectually as he had ever dispersed 
 a, cloud of logical sophisms; and this time the feat 
 is performed by a stroke of, the thoroughly practical, 
 which looks like inspiration — he will : acpompany the 
 forlorn .traveller, and .lead him through the difficul- 
 ties of the way—rfor have not midnight wanderings 
 and musings made, him familiar with all its intrica- 
 cies? Roofed by a huge wideawake, which makes 
 his tiny figure look like the stalk of some great 
 fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimen- 
 sions in his hand, away he goes down the wooded 
 path, up the steep bank, along the brawling stream, 
 and across the waterfall — and ever as he goes there 
 
38 His Nature. 
 
 cdmes from hiirri a continued stream of talk concern- 
 ing the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and other 
 kindred matters. Surely if we two were seen by 
 any hiiiiiah eyes, it must have been supposed that 
 some gnome, or troll, or kelpie was luring the list- 
 ener to his doom. The worst of- such affairs as this 
 was the consciousness that, when left, the old man 
 would continue walking on until, weariness over- 
 cortiing him; he would take his rest, wh'erevier that 
 happened, like some poor mendicant. He used to 
 denounce, with liis most fervent eloquence, that bar- 
 barous and brutal provision of the law of England 
 which rendered sleeping in the open air an act of 
 vagrancy, and so punishable, if the sleeper could 
 riot give a satisfactory account of himself — a thing 
 which Papaverius never could give under any cir- 
 cumstances. After' all,'! fear this is an attempt to 
 describe the indescribable. It was the commonest 
 of sayings when any of his friends were mentioning 
 to each other "his last," and creating mutual shrugs 
 of astonishment, that, were one to attempt to tell all 
 about' him, no man would believe it, so separate 
 would the whole be from all the normal conditions 
 of human nature. 
 
 The difficulty becomes more inextricable in pass- 
 ing from specific little incidents to an estimation of 
 the general nature of the man. The logicians lucidly 
 describe definition as h&mg per genus et differmUam. 
 You' have the characteristics in which all of the 
 
Mighty BookrHmnters. 39 
 
 genus partake as common ground, and then you 
 individualise your object by showing in what it 
 differs from the others of the genus. But we are 
 denied this standard for Papaverius, so entirely did 
 he stand apart, divested of' the ordinary characteris- 
 tics of social man — of those characteristics without 
 which the human race as a body could not get on or 
 exist For instance, those who knew him a little 
 might call him a loose man in money matters ; 
 those who knew him closer laughed at the idea 
 of coupling any notion' of pecuniary or other like 
 responsibility with his nature. You might as well 
 attack the character; of the nightingale, which may 
 have nipped up your five- pound note and torn it 
 to shreds to serve as nest-building material. Only 
 immediate craving necessities, could ever extract 
 from him an acknowledgment of the common 
 vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised' 
 society ; and only whilfe the necessity lasted did the 
 acknowledgment exist. Take just one example, 
 which will render this clearer than any generalities. 
 He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gain- 
 ing admission — a process in whichhe often endured 
 impediments — he represents, with his usual silver 
 voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity 
 of his being then and there invested with a sum 
 of money in the current coin of the realm — the 
 amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, 
 which he very freely states,) to' seven shillings and 
 
40 His Nature. 
 
 sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, 
 signs that his eloquence is likely to be unproductive, 
 he is fortunately reminded that, should there be 
 any difficulty in connection with security for the 
 repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in 
 possession of a document, which he is prepared to 
 deposit with the lender — a document calculated, 
 he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety 
 which the most prudent person could experience in 
 the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, 
 which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as 
 yet by no means valuable possessions, he at last 
 comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of, 
 paper, and spreads it out — a fifty-pound bank-note ! 
 The friend, who knew him well, was of opinion that, 
 had he, on delivering, over the seven shillings and 
 sixpence, received the bank-note, he never would 
 have heard anything more of the transaction from 
 the other party. It was also his opinion that, before 
 coming to a personal friend, the owner of the note 
 had made several efforts to raise money on it among 
 persons who might take a purely business view of 
 such transactions ; but the lateness of the hour, and 
 something in the appearance of the thing altogether, 
 had induced these mercenaries to forget their cun- 
 ning, and decline the transaction. , 
 He stretched till it broke , the proverb that to 
 give quickly is as good as to give twice. His giv-; 
 ing was quick enough on the rare occasions when he 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 41 
 
 had wherewithal to give, but then the act was final, 
 and could not be repeated. If he suffered in his 
 own person from this peculiarity, he suffered still 
 more in his sympathies, for he was full of them to 
 all breathing creatures, and, like poor Goldy, it was 
 agony to him to hear the beggar's cry of distress, 
 and to hear it without the means of assuaging it, 
 though in a departed fifty pounds there were doubt- 
 less the elements for appeasing many a street wail. 
 All sums of money were measured by him through 
 the common standard of immediate use ; and with 
 more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the 
 bank-note, might he inform you that, with the gen- 
 tleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been 
 entirely a stranger, but who happened to be nearest 
 to him at the time when the exigency occurred to 
 him, he had just succeeded in negotiating a loan, of 
 "twopence." He was and is a great authority in 
 political economy. I have known great anatomists 
 and physiologists as careless of their health as he 
 was of his purse, whence I have inferred that some- 
 thing more than a knowledge of the abstract truth 
 of political economy is necessary to keep some men 
 from pecuniary imprudence, and that something 
 more than a knowledge of the received principles 
 of physiology is necessary to bring others into a 
 course of perfect sobriety and general obedience to 
 the laws of health, Further, Papayerius; had an 
 extraordinary insight, into practical human life; not 
 
42 His Nature. 
 
 merely in the abstract, but in the concrete ; not 
 merely as a philosopher of human nature, but as one 
 who 'saw into those who passed him in the walk of 
 life with the kind of intuition attributed to expert 
 detectives — a faculty that is known to have belonged 
 to more than one dreamer, and is one of the mys- 
 teries in the nature of J. J. Rousseau ; and, by the 
 way, like Rousseau's, his handwriting was clear, 
 angular, and unimpassioned, and not less uniform 
 and legible than printing — as if' the medium of con- 
 veying' so noble a thing as thought ought to be: 
 carefully, symmetrically, and decorously constructed, 
 let all other material things be as neglectfully and 
 scornfully dealt with as may be. 
 
 This is a long proemium to the description of his 
 characteristics as a book-hunter — but these can be 
 briefly told. Not for him were the common enjoy- 
 ments and excitements of the pursuit He cared 
 not to add volume unto volume, and heap up the 
 relics of the printing-press. All the external niceties 
 about pet editions, peculiarities of binding or of 
 prifating, rarity itself, were no more to him than to 
 the Arab or the Hottentot. His pursuit, indeed, 
 was like that of the savage who seeks but to appease 
 the hunger of the moment If he catch a prey just 
 sufficient for his desires, it is well ; yet he will not 
 hesitate to bring down the elk or the buffalo, and, 
 satiating himself with the choicer delicacies, abandon 
 the bulk of the carcass to the wolves or the vultures. 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 4 3 
 
 So of Papaverius. If his inlt&l'lettual appetite were 
 craving after some passage in 'thfe CEdipus, or in the 
 Medeia, or in Plato's Republic, he would be quite 
 contented with the' most tattered and valueless frag- 
 ment of the volume, if it contained what he wanted ; 
 but, on the other hand, he would not hesitate to 
 seize upon your tall copy in russia gilt and tooled. 
 Nor would the exemption of an editio princeps from 
 everyday sordid work restrain his sacrilegious hands. 
 If it should contain the thing he desires to see, what' 
 is to hinder him from wrenching out the twentieth 
 volume of your Ericyclop^die Methbdique, or Ersch 
 und Gruber, leaving a vacancy like an extracted 
 front tooth, and carrying it off to his den of Cacus? 
 If you should mention the ma:ttef to any vulgar- 
 mannered acquaintance givdrl to the unhallowed 
 practice of jefering, he would probably touch his 
 nose with his extended palm and say, "Don't you 
 wish you may get it?" True, the world at large 
 has gained a brilliant essay on EUfipides or' Plato — ■ 
 but what is that to the rightful owner of the lost 
 sheep ? 
 
 The learned world may veiy fairly be divided into 
 those who return the books borrowed by them, and 
 those who do not. Papaverius belonged decidedly 
 to the latter order. A friend addicted to the mar- 
 vellous boasts that, urider the pressure of a call by 
 a public library to replace a mutilated book with a 
 new copy, which would have cost £"^0, he recovered 
 
44 His Nature. 
 
 a volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a 
 person specially bribed and authorised to take any 
 necessary measures, insolence and violence excepted 
 — but the power of extraction that must have been 
 employed in such a process excites very painful 
 reflections. Some legend, too, there is of a book 
 creditor having forced his way into the Cacus den, 
 and there, seen a sort of rubble-work inner wall of 
 volumes, with their edges outwards, while others, 
 bound and unbound, the plebeian sheepskin and the 
 aristocratic russian, were squeezed into certain tubs 
 drawn from the washing establishment of a con- 
 fiding landlady. In other instances the book has 
 been recognised at large, greatly enhanced in value 
 by a profuse edging of manuscript notes from a 
 gifted pen— a phenomenon calculated to bring into 
 practical use the speculations of the civilians about 
 pictures painted on other people's panels.^ What 
 became of all his waifs and strays, it might be well 
 not to inquire too curiously. If he ran short of 
 legitimate tabula rasa to write on, do you think he 
 would hesitate to tear out the most convenient 
 leaves of any broad-margined book, whether be- 
 longing to himself or another? Nay, it is said he 
 
 ^ "Si quis in aliena tabula pinxerit, quidam putant, tabulam 
 picturse cedere : aliis videtur picturam (qualiscunque sit) tabulse 
 cedere : sed nobis videtur melius esse tabulam picturse cedere. 
 Ridiculum est enim • picturam Apellis vel Parrhasii in accessionem 
 vilissimje tabulse cedere," — Inst. ii. i. 34. 
 
Mighty . Boak- Hunters. 45 
 
 once gave in copy written on the edges of a tall 
 octavo Somnium Scipionis ; and as he did not 
 obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather 
 puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the 
 letterpress Latin and the manuscript English. All 
 these things were the types of an intellectual vitality 
 which despised and thrust aside all that was gross 
 or material in that wherewith it came in contact. 
 Surely never did the austerities of monk or ancho- 
 rite so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar 
 nature removed them from him. It may be ques- 
 tioned if he, ever knew what it was "to eat a good 
 dinner," or could even comprehend . the nature of 
 such a felicity. Yet in all the sensuous nerves 
 which connect as it were the body with the ideal, 
 he was painfully susceptible. Hence a false quan- 
 tity or a wrong note in music was agony to him ; 
 and it, is- remembered with what ludicrous solemnity 
 he apostrophised his unhappy fate as one over whom 
 a cloud of the darkest despair had just been drawn 
 — a peacock had come to live within hearing dis- 
 tance from him, and not only the terrific yells of 
 the accursed biped; pierced him to the soul, but 
 the continued terror of their recurrence kept his 
 nerves in agonising tension during the intervals of 
 silence. 
 
 Peace be with his gentle and kindly spirit, now 
 for some time separated from its grotesque and 
 humble tenement of clay. It is both right and 
 
46 His Nature. 
 
 pleasant to say that the characteristics here spoken 
 of were not those of his latter days. In these he 
 was tended by affectionate hands ; and I have 
 always thought it a wonderful instance of the power 
 of domestic care and management that, through the 
 ministrations of a devoted offspring, this strange 
 being was so cared for, that those who came in 
 contact with him then, and then only, might have 
 admired him as the patriarchal head of an agree- 
 able and elegant household. 
 
 Let us now, for the sake of variety, summon up a 
 spirit of another order — Magnus Lucullus, Esq. of 
 Grand Priory. He is a man with a presence — tall, 
 and a little portly, with a handsome pleasant coun- 
 tenance looking hospitality and kindliness towards 
 friends, and a quiet but not easily, solvable reserve 
 towards the rest of the world. He has no literaiy 
 pretensions, but you will not talk long with him 
 without finding that he is a scholar, and a ripe and 
 good one. He is complete and magnificent in all 
 -his belongings, only, as no man's qualities and char- 
 acteristics are of perfectly uniform balance and 
 parallel action, his library is the sphere in which 
 his disposition for the complete and the magnificent 
 has most profusely developed itself. 
 
 As you enter its Gothic door a sort of indistinct 
 slightly musky 'perfume, like that said- to frequent 
 Oriental bazaars, hovers around. Everything is of 
 perfect finish — the mahogany -railed gallery — the 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters , 47 
 
 tiny ladders — tihe broad - winged lecterns, with 
 leathern cushions on the edges to keep the woqd 
 from grazing the rich bindings-^ the books them- 
 selves, each shelf unifqrm with its facings or ratl;ier 
 backings, like well-dressed lines at a review. Their 
 owner does not, profess to indulge much in quaint 
 monstrosities, though many a book of rarity is 
 : there. In the first place, he must have the best 
 and most complete editions, whether common or 
 rare ; aqd, in the second' place, they must be in 
 perfect condition. All the classics are there — one 
 complete set of Valpy's in good, russia, and many 
 separate copies of each, valuable for text or annota- 
 tion. The . copies of Bayle, Moreri, the Trevoux 
 Dictionary, Stephens's , Lexicon, Du Cange, . Mabil- 
 lon's , Antiquities, the Benedictine historians, the 
 BoUandists' Lives of the Saints, Graeyius and Gro- 
 novius, and heavy books of that order, are in their 
 old original morocco, without a scratch or abrasure, 
 gilt-edged, vellum-jointed, with their ba,cks blazing 
 in tooled gold. Your own dingy well-thumbed 
 Bayle or Moreri possibly cost you two or three 
 pounds; his cost forty or fifty. Further,, in these 
 affluent shelves may be found those great, costly 
 works which cross the .border of "three figures," and 
 of which only one or two of the public .libraries can 
 boast, such as the Celebri Famiglie Italiane of Litta, 
 iDenon's Egypt, the great' French work on the arts 
 of the middle ages, and the like; and many is the 
 
48 His Nature. 
 
 scholar who, unable to gratify his cravings else- 
 where, has owed it to Lucullus that he has seen 
 something he was in search after in one of these 
 great books, and has been able to put it to public 
 
 use. 
 
 Throughout the establishment there is an appear- 
 ance of care and order, but not of restraint Some 
 inordinately richly -bound volumes have special 
 grooves or niches for themselves lined with soft 
 cloth, as if they had delicate lungs, and must be 
 kept from ca;tching cold. But even these are not 
 guarded from the hand of the guest. Lucullus says 
 his books are at the service of his friends ; and, as 
 a hint in the same direction, he recommends to your 
 notice a few volumes from the collection of the 
 celebrated Grollier, the most princely and liberal of 
 collectors, on whose classic book-stamp you find the 
 genial motto, " Joannis Grollierii et amicorum.'' 
 Having coiiferred on you the freedom of his library, 
 he will not concern himself by observing how you 
 use it He would as soon watch you after dinner to 
 note whether you eschew common sherry and show 
 an expensive partiality for that madeira at twelve 
 pounds a-dozen, which other men would probably 
 only place on the table when it could be well in- 
 vested in company worthy of the sacrifice. Who 
 shall penetrate the human heart, and say whether a 
 hidden pang or gust of wrath has vibrated behind 
 that placid countenance, if you have been seen to 
 
Migkty Book-Hunters. 49 
 
 drop an ink-spot on the creamy margin of the Men- 
 telin Virgil, or to, tumble that heavy Aquinas from 
 the ladder and dislocate his joints ? As all the 
 world now knows, however, men assimilate to the 
 conditions by which they are surrounded, and we 
 civilise our city savages by substituting cleanness 
 and purity for the putrescence which naturally ac- 
 cumulates in great cities. So, in a noble library, the 
 visitor is enchained to reverence and, courtesy by 
 the genius of the place. You cannot toss about its 
 treasures as you would your own rough calfs and 
 obdurate hogskins ; as soon would you be tempted 
 to pull out your meerschaum and punk-box in a 
 cathedral. It is hard to say, but I would fain be- 
 lieve that even Papaverius himself might have felt 
 some sympathetic touch from the, spptless perfection 
 around him and the noble reliance of the owner ; 
 and that he might perhaps have restrained,, himself 
 from tearing out the most petted rarities, as a wolf 
 would tear a fat lamb from the fold. 
 
 Such, then, are some " cases " discussed in a sort 
 of clinical lecture. It will be seen that they have 
 differing symptoms — some mild and genial, others 
 ferocious and dangerous. Before passing to another 
 and the last case, I propose to say a word or two on 
 some of the minor specialties which characterise, the 
 pursuit in its less amiable or dignified form. It, is, 
 for instance, liable to be accompanied by an affec- 
 tion, known also to the agricultural world as affect- 
 
 D 
 
5° 
 
 His Nature. 
 
 ing the wheat crop, and called "the smiit." For- 
 tunately this is less prevalent among us than the 
 French, who have a name for the class of books 
 affected by this school of collectors in the Biblio- 
 tMque bleue. There is a sad story connected with 
 this peculiar frailty. A great and high-minded 
 scholar of the seventeenth centuiy had a savage 
 trick. played on him by some mad wags, who col- 
 lected a quantity of the brutalities of which Latin 
 literature affords an endless supply, and published 
 them in his name. He is said not long to have 
 survived this practical joke; and one does not 
 wonder at his sinking before such a prospect, if he 
 anticipated an age and a race of book-buyers among 
 whom his great critical Works are forgotten, and his 
 name is known solely for the spurious volume, 
 Sacred to infamy, which may be found side by side 
 with the works of the author of Trimalcion's Feast 
 — " par nobile fratrum." 
 
 There is another failing, without a leaning to 
 virtue's side, to which some collectors have been, by 
 reputation at least, addicted — a propensity to obtaift 
 articles without value given for them — a tendency 
 to be larcenish. It is the culmination, indeed, of a 
 sort of lax morality apt to grow out of the habits 
 and traditions of the class. Your true collector — 
 not the man who follows the occupation as a mere 
 expensive taste, and does not cater for himself— 
 considers himself a finder or discoverer rather than 
 
Mighty Book-Hunters. 51 
 
 a purchaser. He is an industrious prowler in un- 
 likely regions, and is entitled to some reward for his 
 diligtence and his skill. Moreover, it Is the essence 
 of that very skill to find value in those things 
 which, in the eye of the ordinary ' possessor, are 
 really w'orthless. From estimating them at little 
 value, and paying little for them, the steps are rather 
 too short to estimating them at nothing, and paying 
 nothing for them. What matters it, a few dirty 
 black-letter leaves picked out of that volume of 
 miscellaneous trash — leaves which the owner never 
 knew he had, and cannot miss — which he would 
 not know the value of, had you told him of them ? 
 What use of putting notions into the greedy barba- 
 rian's head, as if one were to find treasures for him ? 
 And the little pasquinade is so curious, and will fill 
 a gap in that fine collection so nicely! The notions 
 of the collector about such spoil are indeed the con- 
 verse of those which Cassio professed to hold about 
 his good name, for the scrap furtively removed is 
 supJ)Osed in no way to impoverish the loser, while 
 it makes the recipient rich indeed. 
 
 Those habits of the prowler which may gradually 
 lead a mind not strengthened by strong principle 
 into this downward career, are hit with his usual 
 vivacity and wonderful truth by Scott. The speaker 
 is our delightful iriend Oldenbuck of IVfohkbarns^ the 
 Antiquary, and what he -says has just enough of 
 confession in it to show a consciousness that the 
 
52 His Nature. 
 
 narrator has gone over dangerous- ground, and, if we 
 did not see that the narrative is tinged with some 
 exaggeration, has trodden a little beyond the limit.s 
 of what is gentlemanly and just. 
 
 "'See this bundle of ballads, not one of them 
 later than 1700, and some of them a hundred years 
 older. I, wheedled, an old woman out of these, who 
 loved them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco, 
 sir, snuff, and the Complete Syren, were the equiva- 
 lent ! For that mutilated copy of the Complaynt 
 of Scotland I sat out the drinking of two dozen 
 bottles of strong ale with the late learned proprietor, 
 who in gratitude bequeathed it to me by his last 
 will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and 
 trophies of many a walk: by night and morning 
 through , the Cowg^te, the Canongate, the Bow, St 
 Mary's Wynd — wherever, in fine, there were to be 
 found brokers: and trokers, those miscellaneous 
 dealers in things rare and curious. How often have 
 I stood haggling: on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready 
 acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be 
 led to suspect the value I set upon the article! 
 — how have I trembled lest some passing stranger 
 should chop in between me and the prize, and 
 regarded each. PPor student of divinity that stopped 
 to turn over the books at the stall as a rival amateur 
 or prowling bookseller in disguise! — And then, Mr 
 Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the 
 consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a 
 
Mighty Book- Hunters. 53 
 
 cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with 
 pleasure ! — Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier 
 and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure 
 as this ' (displaying a little black smoked book about 
 the size of a primer) — 'to enjoy their surprise and 
 envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mys- 
 terious consciousness, our own superior knowledge 
 and dexterity ; — these, my young" friend, these are 
 the white moments of life, that repay the toil and 
 pains and sedulous attention which our profession, 
 above all others, so peculiarly demands ! ' " 
 
 There is a nice subtle meaning in the worthy man 
 calling his weakness his. "profession," but it is in 
 complete keeping with the mellow Teniers-like tone 
 of the whole picture. Ere we have done I shall 
 endeavour to show that the grubber among book- 
 stalls has, with other grubs ^or grubbers, his useful 
 place in the general dispensation of the world. But 
 his is a pursuit exposing him to moral perils, which 
 call for peculiar efforts of self-restraint to save him 
 from them ;. and the moral Scott holds forth — for a 
 sound moral; he always: has — ^is, If you go as far as 
 Jt)nathan Oldenbuck 'did— and I don't advise you to 
 go so far, but hint that you should stop earlier — 
 say to yourself, Thus' far, and no farthei'. ' ' 
 
 So much for pne of the debased, symptoms which 
 in very bad cases sometimes characterise an other- 
 wise genial failing. There is another peculiar, and, 
 it may be said, vicious propensity, exhibited occa- 
 
54 His Ndture. 
 
 sionally in conjunction with the pursuit. This pro- 
 pensity is, like the other, antagonistic in spirit to the 
 tenth commandment, and consists in a desperate 
 coveting of the neighbour's goods, and a satisfaction, 
 not so much in possessing for one's self, as in dis- 
 possessing him. This spirit is said to burn, with 
 still fiercer flame in the breasts of those whose pur- 
 suit would externally seem to be the; most' innocent 
 in the world, and the least excitive of the bad pas- 
 sions — namely, among flower-fanciers. From some 
 mysterious cause,; it has been known to develop 
 itself most flagrantly among tulip-collectors, inso- 
 much that there are legends of Dutch devotees 
 of this pursuit who have paid their thousands-, of 
 dollars for a duplicate tuber, that they might have 
 the satis^faction of crushing it under the heel.^ This 
 line of practice is not entirely alien to the book- 
 hunter. Peignoti tells us that it is of rare occurrence 
 
 ' "The great {mint of view in a collector is to possess that not 
 possessed by any other. It is §aid ofa collector lately deceased, that 
 Ke used to purchase scarce prints at enormous prices in order to 
 destroy them, and thereby render the remaining impressions more 
 scarqeand valuable."— (jr(j)se's Olioj'p. 57. I do not fenow to vifhom 
 Grose allludes ; but it strikes me, in realising a man given to such 
 propensities — taking them Ss a reality and not a joke — that it would 
 be interesting to k);iow how, in his-,inoments;of serous thought, he 
 could contemplate his favourite pursuit — as, for instance, when the 
 conscientloBi physician may havfe thought it necessary to warn him 
 in time, of the approaching end — how he could reckon up his good 
 use of the talents bestowed on him, counting among them his oppor- 
 tunities for' the ebcoilragement'ofart as an elevator and improver of 
 the human race. ■ , . , ' 1 
 
Mighty B,ook- Hunters. 55 
 
 among his countrymen, and yet, as we have seen, 
 he thought it necessary to correct the technical 
 term applied to this kind of practitioner, by calling 
 him a Bibliothapte when he conceals books — a Bib- 
 liolyte when he destroys them. Dibdin warmed 
 his convivial guests at a comfortable fire, fed by 
 the woodcuts from which had been printed the 
 impression of the Bibliographical Decameron. It 
 was a quaint fancy, and deemed to be a pretty and 
 appropriate form of hospitality, while it effectually 
 assured the subscribers to his costly volumes that 
 the vulgar world who buy cheap books was defin- 
 itively cut off from participating in their privileges. 
 
 Let us, however, summon a more potent spirit of 
 this order. He is a different being altogether from 
 those gentle shadows who have flitted past us already. 
 He was known in the body by many hard names, 
 such as the Vampire, the Dragon, &c. He was an 
 Irish absentee, or, more accurately, a refugee, since 
 he had made himself so odious on his ample estate 
 that he could not live there. How on earth he 
 should have set about .collecting books is one of the 
 inscrutable mysteries which ever surround the diag- 
 nosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his 
 using his booJcs by reading them as out of the ques- 
 tion, he yet was never known to indulge in that 
 fondling and complacent examination of their ex- 
 terior and general condition, which, to Inchrule and 
 others of his class, seemed to afford the highest 
 
56 His Nature. 
 
 gratification that, as sojourners through this vale of 
 tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuri- 
 ate in the collective pride — like that of David when 
 he numbered his people — of beholding how his vol- 
 umes increased in multitude, and ranged with one 
 another, like well-sized and properly dressed troops, 
 along an ample area of book-shelves. His collection 
 — if it deserved the name — was piled in great heaps in 
 garrets, cellars, and warerooiiis, like unsorted goods. 
 They were accumulated, in fact, not so much that 
 the owner might have them, as that other people 
 might not. If there were a division of the order 
 into positive, or those who desire to make collec- 
 tions — and negative, or those who desire to prevent 
 them being made, his case would properly belong to 
 the latter. Imagine the consternation created in 
 a small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting 
 among them of a helluo librorum with such propen- 
 sities, armed with illimitable means, enabling him 
 to desolate the land like some fiery dragon ! , What 
 became of the chaotic mass of literature he had 
 brought together no one knew. It was supposed to 
 be congenial to his nature to have made a great 
 bonfire of it before he left the world ; but a little- 
 consideration showed such a feat to be impossible;) 
 for books may be burnt in detail by extraneous 
 assistance, but it is a curious fact that, combustible 
 as paper is supposed to be, books won't burn. If 
 you doubt this, pitch that folio Swammerdam or 
 
Mighty 'Book-Hunters. 57 
 
 Puffendorf into a good rousing fire, and mark the 
 result. 
 
 No — it is probable that, stored away in some 
 forgotten repositories, these miscellaneous relics still 
 remain ; and should they be brought forth, some 
 excitement might be created ; for, ignorant as the 
 monster was, he had an instinct for knowing what 
 other people wanted, and was thus enabled to snatch 
 rare and curious volumes from the grasp of syste- 
 matic collectors. It was his great glory to get hold 
 of a unique book and shut it up. There were 
 known to be just two copies of a spare quarto 
 called Rout upon RoUt, or the Rabblers Rabbled, 
 by Felix Nixon, Gent. He possessed one copy ; the 
 other, by indomitable perseverance,-he also got hold 
 of, and then his heart was glad within him ; and he 
 felt It glow with well-merited pride when an accom- 
 plished scholar, desiring to coriiplete an epoch in 
 literary history ori which that book threw some 
 light, besought the owner to allow him a sight of 
 it, were it but for a few minutes, and the request 
 was refused. "I might as well ask him," said the 
 animal, who was rather proud of his firmness than 
 ashamed of his churlishness, "to make me a present 
 of his brains and reputation." 
 
 It was among his pleasant ways to attend book- 
 sales, there to watch the biddings of persons on 
 whose judgment he relied, and cut in as the contest 
 was becoming critical. This practice soon betrayed 
 
58 His Nature. 
 
 to those he had so provoked the chinks in the 
 monster's armour. He was assailable and punish- 
 able at last, then, this potent tyrant — but the 
 attack must be made warily and cautiously. Ac- 
 cordingly, impartial bystanders, ignorant of the plot, 
 began to observe that he was degenerating by de- 
 grees in the rank of his purchases, and at last be- 
 coming utterly reckless, buying, at the prices of the 
 sublimest rarities, common works of ordinary litera- 
 ture to be found in every book-shop. Such was the 
 result of judiciously drawing hiip on, by biddings for 
 valueless books, on the part of those whom he had 
 outbid in the objects of their desire. Auctioneers 
 were surprised at the gradual change coming over 
 the book-market, and a few fortunate people ob- 
 taiiied considerable prices for articles they were 
 told to expect nothing for. But this farce, of course, 
 did not last long ; and whether or not he found out 
 that he had been beaten at his own weapons, the 
 devouring monster disappeared as mysteriously as 
 he had come. 
 
Reminiscences. 59 
 
 UCH incidents bring vividly before the 
 eye the scenes in which they took place 
 long long ago. If any one in his early 
 youth has experienced some slight 
 symptoms of the malady under discussion, which 
 his constitution, through a tough struggle with the 
 world, and a busy training in after life, has been 
 enabled to throw off, he will yet look back with 
 fond associations to the scenes of his dangerous 
 indulgence. The auction-room is often the centre 
 of fatal attraction towards it, just as the billiard- 
 room and the rouge-et-noir table are to excesses of 
 another kind. There is that august tribunal over 
 which at one time reigned Scott's genial friend Bal- 
 lantyne, succeeded by the sententious Tait, himself 
 a man of taste and a collector, and since presided 
 over by the great Nisbet, whose hand has dropped 
 the ensign of office even before the present lot has 
 an opportunity of obtaining fronj it the .crowning 
 honour. I bow with deferential awe to the august 
 tribunal before which so vast a mass of literature has 
 changed hands, and where the future destinies of so 
 many thousands — or, shall it be rather saidj millions 
 — of volumes \z.y^& been (decided, e^ch carrying with 
 it its own little train of suspense apd triumph. 
 More congenial, however, in , my recollection, is 
 
6o His Nature. 
 
 that remote and dingy hall where rough Carfrae, 
 like Thor, flourished his thundering hammer. There 
 it was that one first marked, with a sort of sym- 
 pathetic awe, the strange and varied influence of 
 their peculiar maladies on the book-hunters of the 
 last generation. There it was that one first handled 
 those pretty little pets, the Elzevir classics, a sort of 
 literary bantams^ which are still dear to memory, 
 and awaken old associations by their dwarfish ribbed 
 backs like those of ponderous folios, and their ex- 
 quisite, but now, alas ! too minute type. The eye- 
 sight that could formerly peruse them with ease 
 has suffered decay, but they remain unchanged ; and 
 in this they are unlike to many other objects of 
 early interest. Children, flowers, animals, scenery 
 eveih, all have undergone mutation, but no percep- 
 tible shade of change has passed over these little 
 reminders of old times. 
 
 There it was that one first could comprehend how 
 a tattered dirty fragment of a book once common 
 might be worth a deal more than its weight in gold. 
 There it was too, that, seduced by bad example, the 
 present respected pastor of Ardsnischen purchased 
 that beautiful Greek New Testament, by Jansen of 
 Amsterdam, which he loved so, in the freshness of 
 its acquisition, that he took it with him to church, 
 and, turning up the text, handed it to a venerable 
 woman beside^him, after the fashion of an absorbed 
 and absent student who was apt to forget whether 
 
Reminiscences. 6 1 
 
 he was reading Greek or English. The presiding 
 genius of the place, with his strange : accent, odd 
 sayings, and angular motions, accompanied by good- 
 natured grunts of. grotesque wrath, became a sort 
 of household figure. The dorsal breadth of pronun- 
 ciation with which he would expose Mr Ivory's 
 Erskine, used to produce a titter which; he was 
 always at a loss to understand. Though not the 
 fashionable mart where all. the thorough libraries 
 in perfect, condition went to be hammered off — 
 though it was rather a place where miscellaneous 
 collections were sold, and therefore bargains might 
 be expected by those who knew what they were 
 about — yet sometimes extraordinary and valuable 
 collections of rare books came under his hammer, 
 and created an access of more than common excite- 
 ment among the denizens of the place. On one of 
 these occasions a succession of valuable fragments of 
 early English poetry brought prices so high and far 
 beyond those of ordinary expensive books in the 
 finest condition, that it seemed as if their imper- 
 fections were their merit ; and the auctioneer, mom- 
 entarily carried off with this feeling, when the high 
 prices began to sink a little, remonstrated thus, 
 " Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen, — this 
 curious book — so low as thirty shillings — and quite 
 imperfect !" • \ ■..''• 
 
 Those who frequented this howf, being generally 
 elderly men, have now nearly all departed- The 
 
62 His Nature. 
 
 thunderer's hammer, too, has long been silenced by 
 the great quieter. One living memorial still exists 
 of that scfene — the genial and then youthful assist- 
 ant, whose partiality for letters and literary pursuits 
 made him often the monitor and kindly guide of the 
 raw student, and who now, in a higher field, exer- 
 cises a more important influence on the destinies of 
 litera:ture. I passed the spot the other day — it was 
 not desolate and forsaken, with the moss growing 
 on the hearthstone ; on the contrary, it flared with 
 many lights — a thronged gin-palace. When one 
 heard the sounds that issued from the old familiar 
 spot, the reflection not unnaturally occurred that, 
 after all, there are worse pursuits in the world than 
 book-hunting. 
 
 finaastficatton. 
 
 |ERHAPS it would be a good practical 
 distribution of the class of persons 
 under examination, to divide them into 
 private prowlers and auction -hunters. 
 There are many other modes of classifying them, 
 but none so general. They tnight be classified 
 by the different sizes of books they affect — as folios, 
 quartos, octavos, and duodecimos — but this would 
 be neither an expressive nor a dignified classifica- 
 tion. In enumierating the various orders to which 
 
Clttsiification. 63 
 
 Fitzpatrick Smart did not belong, I have mentioned 
 marly of the species, but a great many more might 
 be added. Some collectors lay themselves out for 
 vellum -printed volumes almost solely. There are 
 such not only anrong very' old books, but among 
 very new ; for of a certain class of modern books 
 it frequently happens that a copy or two may be 
 printed on vellum, to catch the class whose weak- 
 ness takes that direction. 
 
 It may be cited as a signal itistance of the freaks 
 of book -collecting, that of all men in the world 
 Junot, the hard-fighting soldier, had a vellum library 
 — but so it was. It was sold in London for about 
 ^£'1400. "The crown octavos," says Dibdin, "espe- 
 cially of ancient classics, and a few favburite English 
 authors, brought from four to six guineas. The first 
 virtually solid article of any importance, or rather 
 of the greatest importance, in the whole collection, 
 was the matchless Didot Horace, of 1799, folio, 
 containing the original • drawings from which the 
 exquisite copperplate vignettes were executed. This 
 was piurchased by the gallant Mr George Hibbert 
 for £,\ifi. Nor was it in any respect an extravagant 
 or even dear purchase." It now worthily adorns 
 the library of Norton Hall. 
 
 Some collectors may be styled Rubricists, being 
 influenced by a sacred rage for books having the 
 contents and marginal references printed in red ink. 
 Sonie "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad 
 
64 His Nature. 
 
 margins. These have all a certain amount of mag- 
 nificence in their tastes ; but there are others again 
 whose priceless collections are like the stock-in-trade 
 of a wholesale ballad -singer, consisting of chap- 
 books, as they are termed — the articles dealt in by 
 pedlars and semi-mendicants for the past century or 
 two. Some affect collections relating to the drama, 
 and lay great store by heaps of play-bills arranged in 
 volumes, and bound, perhaps, in costly russia. Of 
 a more dignified grade are perhaps those who have 
 lent themselves to the collection of the theses on 
 which aspirants after university honours held their 
 disputations or impugnments. Sometimes out of a 
 great mass of rubbish of this kind the youthful 
 production of some man who has afterwards be- 
 come great turns up. Of these theses and similar 
 tracts a German, Count Dietrich, collected some 
 hundred and forty thousand, which are now in this 
 country. 
 
 Those collectors whose affections are invested in 
 the devices or trade emblems of special favourites 
 among the old printers must not be passed without 
 a word of recognition. 
 
 Men who have had the opportunity of rummaging 
 among old libraries in their boyhood are the most 
 likely to cultivate pets of this kind. There is a rich 
 variety of choice in the luxuriantly floral Gothic, the 
 cold serene classic, and that prolific style combining 
 both, which a popular writer on the .(Esthetics of 
 
Classification. 65 
 
 Art has stigmatised by the term " sensual," ordering 
 all his votaries to abjure it accordingly. To intel- 
 lects not far enough advanced to acknowledge the 
 influence of such terms, or to comprehend their 
 application to what we should or should not like 
 and admire, there is a fortunate element even in 
 their deficiencies. They can admire the devices of 
 the old printers from association with the boyish 
 days when they were first noticed, from an absolute 
 likir^g for their fantastic fancies, and possibly from 
 an observation in some of them of the indications 
 of the gradual development of artistic purity and 
 beauty. In many of them in which the child has 
 seen only an attractive little picture, the man has 
 afterwards found a touch of poetic or religious 
 thought. 
 
 There is the hand pouring oil into a lamp of pure 
 Etruscan shape, symbolical of the nutriment sup- 
 plied to the intellectual flame. In another, the 
 gardener carefully plants the seedlings which are to 
 bear the fruit of, knowledge to the coming genera- 
 tions; in another, the sun rising, bright over the 
 eastern sea signifies the dawn of the restoration of 
 classical learning to the European nations. 
 
 Other interpretations of the kind, called quaint 
 conceits, can be read from these printers' devices. 
 There is Gesner's Biblibtheca swarming with frogs 
 and tadpoles like a quagmire in honour of its printer, 
 a German Frog, latinised Christopherus Froshoverus. 
 
 E 
 
66 His Nature. 
 
 The Qu(B Extant of Varro, printed at Dort, are 
 adorned with many lively cuts of bears and their 
 good-humoured cubs, because the printer's name is 
 Joannis Berewout. So the Aulus Gellius, printed 
 by Gryphius of Lyons, more than a hundred years 
 earlier, begins and ends with formidable effigies 
 of griffins. The device of Michael and Phillip 
 Lenoir is a jet-black shield, with an Ethiopian for 
 crest, and Ethiopians for supporters ; and Apiarius 
 has a neat little cut representing a bear robbing a 
 bee's nest in a hollow tree. Most instructive of 
 them all, Ascensius has bequeathed to posterity the 
 lively and accurate representation, down to every 
 nail and screw, of the press in which the great 
 works of the sixteenth century were printed, with 
 the brawny pressman pulling his proof 
 
 Collectors there have been, not unimportant for 
 number and zeal, whose mission it is to purchase 
 books marked by peculiar mistakes or errors of the 
 press. The celebrated Elzevir Cassar of 1635 is 
 known by this, that the number of the 149th page 
 is misprinted 153. All that want this peculiar dis- 
 tinction are counterfeits. The little volume being, 
 as Brunet says, "une des plus jolies et plus rares 
 de la collection des Elsevier," gave a temptation to 
 fraudulent imitators, who, as if by a providential 
 arrangement for their detection, lapsed into accuracy 
 at the critical figure. How common errors are in 
 editions of the classics, is attested by the one or two 
 
Classification, 67 
 
 editions which claim a sort of canonisation as im- 
 maculate — as, for instance, the Virgil of Didot, and 
 the Horace of Foulis. A collector, with a taste 
 for the inaccurate, might easily satiate it in the 
 editions so attractive in their, deceptive beauty of 
 the great Birmingham printer Baskerville. 
 
 The mere printers' blunders that have been com- 
 mitted upon editions of the Bible are reverenced in 
 literary history; and one edition — the Vulgate 
 issued under the authority of SixtusV. — achieved 
 immense value from its multitude of errors. The 
 well-known story of the German printer's wife, who 
 surreptitiously altered the passage importing that 
 her husband should be, her lord (Herr) so as to 
 make him be her fool (Narr), needs confirmation. 
 If such a misprint were found, it might quite nat- 
 urally be attributed to carelessness. Valarian Fla- 
 vigny, who had many controversies on his hand, 
 brought on the most terrible of them all with 
 Abraham Ecchellensis by a mere dropped letter. 
 In the rebuke about the mote in thy brother's 
 eye and the beam in thine own, the first letter in 
 the Latin for eye was carelessly dropped put, and 
 left a word which may be found occasionally in 
 Martial's Epigrams, but not in books of purer Latin 
 and purer ideas.^ 
 
 1 A traditional anecdote represents the Rev. William Thomson,, 
 a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, ,as having got into a scrape 
 by a very indecorous ' alteration of a word in Scripture. 'A young 
 
68 His Nature. 
 
 Questions as to typographical blunders in editions 
 of the classics are mixed up with larger critical 
 inquiries into the purity of the ascertained text, and 
 thus run in veins through the mighty strata of 
 philological and critical controversy which, from the 
 days of Poggio downwards, have continued to form 
 that voluminous mass of learning which the outer 
 world contemplates with silent awe. 
 
 To some extent the same spirit of critical inquiry 
 has penetrated into our own language. What we 
 have of it clusters almost exclusively around the 
 mighty name of Shakespeare. Shakespearian criti- 
 
 divine, on his first public appearance, had to read the solemn passage 
 in 1st Corinthians, "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not 
 all sleep, but we shall ajl be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling 
 of an eye, at the last trump." Thomson scratched the letter c out 
 of the word changed. The effect of the passage so mutilated can 
 easily be tested. The person who could play such tricks was ill 
 suited for his profession, and being relieved of its restraints, he found 
 a more congenial sphere of life among the unsettled crew of men of 
 letters in London, over whom Smollett had just ceased to reign. He 
 did a deal of hard work, and the world owes him at least one good 
 turn in his translation of Cunningham's Latin History of Britain from 
 the Revolution to the Hanover Succession. The value of this work, 
 in the minute light thrown by it on one of the most memorable periods 
 of British history, is too little known. The following extract may 
 give some notion of the curious and instructive nature of this neglected 
 book. It describes the influences which were in favour of the 
 French alliance, and against the Whigs, during Marlborough's cam- 
 paign. "And now I shall take this oppbrtunity to speak of the 
 French wine-drinkers as truly and briefly as I can. On the first 
 breaking out of the Confederate war, the merchants in England were 
 prohibited from all commerce vrith France, and a heavy duty was 
 laid upon French wine. This caused a grievous complaint among 
 the topers, who have great interest in the Parliament, as if they had 
 
Classification. 69 
 
 cism is a branch of knowledge by itself. To record 
 its triumphs — from that greatest one by which the 
 senseless "Table of Greenfield," which interrupted 
 the touching close of Falstaff's days, was replaced 
 by "'a babbled of green fields" — would make a 
 large book of itself He who would undertake it, 
 in a perfectly candid and impartial spirit, would 
 give us, varied no doubt with much erudition and 
 acuteness, a curious record of blundering ignorance 
 and presumptuous conceit, the one so intermingling 
 with the other that it would be often difficult to 
 distinguish them.^ 
 
 been poisoned by port wines. Mr Portman Seymour, who was a 
 jovial companion, and indulged his- appetites, but otherwise a good 
 man ; General Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough's brother, a man 
 of courage, but a lover of wine ; Mr Pereira, a Jew and smell-feast, 
 and other hard drinkers, declared, that the want of French wine ; was 
 not to be endured, and that they could hardly bear up under so great 
 a calamity. These were joined by Dr Aldridge, who, though nick- 
 named the priest of Bacchus, was otherwise an excellent man, and 
 adorned with all kinds of learning. Dr Ratcliffe, a physician of great 
 reputation, who ascribed the cause of all diseases to the want of 
 French wines, though he was very rich, and much addicted to wine, 
 yet, being extremely covetous, bought the cheaper wines ; but at the 
 same time he imputed the badness of his wine to the war, arid the 
 difficulty of getting better. Therefore the Duke of Beaufort and the 
 Earl of Scarsdale, two young noblemen of great interest among their 
 acquaintance, who had it in their power to live at their ease in magni- 
 ficence or luxury, merrily attributed all the doctor's complaints to his 
 avarice. All those were also for peace rather than war. And all the 
 bottle-companions, many physicians, and great numbers of the lawyers 
 and inferior clergy, and, in fine, the loose women too, were united 
 together in the faction against the Duke of Marlborough. " — ii. 200. 
 
 ^ Without venturing too near to this very turbulent arena, where 
 hard words have lately been cast about with much reckless ferocity, 
 
7© His Nature. 
 
 The quantity of typographical errors exposed in 
 those pages, where they are least to be expected, 
 and are least excusable, opens up some curious con- 
 siderations. It may surely be believed that, be- 
 tween the compositors who put the types together 
 and the correctors of the press, the printing of the 
 Bible has generally^ been executed with more than 
 average care. Yet the editions of the sacred book 
 have been the great mine of discovered printers' 
 blunders. The inference from this, however, is not 
 that blunders abound less in other literature, but 
 that they are not worth finding there. The issuing 
 of the true reading of the Scripture is of such 
 momentous consequence, that a mistake is sure of 
 exposure, like those minute incidents of evidence 
 which come forth when a murder has been com- 
 mitted, but would never have left their privacy for 
 the detection of a petty fraud. 
 
 The value to literature of a pure Shakespearian 
 
 I shall just offer one amended teading, because there is something 
 in it quite peculiar, and characteristic of its literary birthplace be- 
 yond the Atlantic. The passage operated upon is the wild soliloquy, 
 where Hamlet resolves to try the test of the play, and says — 
 
 " The devil hath power 
 T' assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps, 
 Out of my weakness and my melancholy, 
 As he is very potent with such spirits. 
 Abuses me to damn me. " 
 
 The amended reading stands — 
 
 "As he is very potent with such spirits, 
 Abuses me too — damme. " 
 
Classification. 7 " 
 
 text, has inspired the zeal of the detectives who 
 work on this ground. Some casual detections have 
 occurred in minor literature, — as, for instance, when 
 Akenside's description of the Pantheon, which had 
 been printed as "serenely great," was restored to 
 "severely great" The reason, however, why such 
 detections are not common in common books, is the 
 rather humiliating one that they are not worth 
 making. The specific weight of individual words 
 is in them of so little influence, that one does as well 
 as another. Instances could indeed be pointed out, 
 where an incidental blunder has much improved a 
 sentence, giving it the point which its author failed 
 to achieve — ^as a scratch or an accidental splash of 
 the brush sometimes supplies the painter with the 
 ray or the cloud which the cunning of his hand 
 cannot accomplish. Poetry in this way sometimes 
 endures the most alarming oscillations without being 
 in any way damaged, but, on the contrary, some- 
 times rather improved. I might refer to a signal 
 instance of this, where, by some mysterious accident 
 at press, the lines of a poem written in quatrains 
 got their order inverted, so that the second and 
 fourth of eaqh quatraiji changed places. This trans- 
 position was pronounced to operate a decided 
 improvement on the spirit and originality of the 
 piece, — an opinion in which, unfortunately, the 
 author did not concur ; nor could he appreciate 
 the compliment of a critic, who remarked that the 
 
72 His Nature. 
 
 experiment tested the soundness of the lines, which 
 could find their feet whatever way they were thrown 
 about.^ 
 
 There have been, no doubt, cruel instances of 
 printers' blunders in our own days, like the fate of 
 the youthful poetess in the Fudge family : — 
 
 "When I talked of the dewdrops on freshly-blown roses. 
 The nasty things printed it — freshly-blown noses." 
 
 Suchlike was the fatality which suddenly dried 
 up the tears of those who read a certain pathetic 
 ode, in which the desolate widow was printed as 
 " dissolute ; " and the accident which destroyed a 
 poetic reputation by making the "pale martyr in 
 his sheet of fire" come forward with "his shirt on 
 fire." So also a certain printer, whose solemn duty 
 it was to have announced to the world that " intoxi- 
 cation is folly," whether actuated by simplicity of 
 soul or by malignity, was unable to resist the faint 
 
 ^ One curious service of printers' blunders, of a character quite 
 distinct from their bibliological influence, is their use in detecting 
 plagiarisms. It may seem strange that there should be any difficulty 
 in critically determining the' question, when the plagiarism is so close 
 as to admit of this test ; but there are pieces of very hard work in 
 science, tables of reference, and the like, where, if two people go 
 through the same work, they will come to the same conclusion. In 
 such cases, the prior worker has sometimes identified his own by a 
 blunder, as he Would a stolen china vase by a crack. ' Peignot com- 
 plains that some thirty or forty pages of his Dictionnaire Biblio- 
 graphique were incorpora,ted in the Si^cles Litteraires de la France, 
 "avec une exactitude si admirable, qu'on y a precieusement conserve 
 toutes les fautes typographiques. " 
 
Classification. 73 
 
 amendment which announced the more genial doc- 
 trine that " intoxication is jolly." 1 
 
 A solid scholar there was, who, had he been called 
 to his account at a certain advanced period of his 
 career, might have challenged all the world to say- 
 that he had ever used a false quantity, or committed 
 an anomaly in syntax, or misspelt a foreign name, 
 or blundered in a quotation from a Greek or Latin 
 classic — to misquote an English author is a far 
 lighter crime, but even to this he could have pleaded 
 not guilty. He never made a mistake in a date, or 
 left out a word in copying the title-page of a volume ; 
 nor did he ever, in affording an intelligent analysis 
 of its contents, mistake the number of pages devoted 
 to one head. As to the higher literary virtues, too, 
 his sentences were all carefully balanced in a pair of 
 logical and rhetorical scales of the most sensitive 
 kind ; and he never perpetrated the atrocity of 
 ending a sentence with a monosyllable, or using the 
 same word twice within the same five lines, choos- 
 ing always some judicious method of circumlocution 
 to obviate reiteration. Poor man ! in the pride of 
 his unspotted purity, he little knew what a humilia- 
 tion fate had prepared for him. It happened to 
 him to have to state how Theodore Beza, or some 
 contemporary of his, went to sea in a Candian 
 
 ^ See this and other cases in point set forth in an amusing article 
 on "Literary Mishaps," in Hedderwick's Miscellany, part ii. 
 
74 His Nature. 
 
 vessel. This statement, at the last moment, when 
 the sheet was going through the press, caught the 
 eye of an intelligent and judicious corrector, more 
 conversant with shipping-lists than with the litera- 
 ture of the sixteenth century, who saw clearly what 
 had been meant, and took upon himself, like a man 
 who hated all pottering nonsense, to make the neces- 
 sary correction without consulting the author. The 
 consequence was, that people read with some sur- 
 prise, under the authority of the paragon of accuracy, 
 that Theodore Beza had gone to sea in a Canadian 
 vessel. The victim of this calamity had undergone 
 minor literary trials, which he had borne with philo- 
 sophical equanimity; as, for instance, when incon- 
 siderate people, destitute of the organ of veneration, 
 thoughtlessly asked him about the last new popular 
 work, as if it were something that he had read or 
 even heard of, and actually went so far in their 
 contumelious disrespect as to speak to him about 
 the productions of a certain Charles Dickens. The 
 "Canadian vessel/' however, was a more serious 
 disaster, and was treated accordingly. A charitable 
 friend broke his calamity to the author at a judicious 
 moment, to prevent him from discovering it himself 
 at an unsuitable time, with results the full extent of 
 which no one could foresee. It was an affair of 
 much anxiety among his friends, who made frequent 
 inquiries as to how he bore himself in his affliction, 
 and what continued to be the condition of his 
 
Classification. 75 
 
 health, ^nd especially of his spirits. And although 
 he was a confirmed book-hunter, and not uncon- 
 scious of the merits of the peculiar class of books 
 now under consideration, it may be feared that it 
 was no consolation to him to reflect that, some 
 century or so hence, his books and himself would 
 be known only by the curious blunder which made 
 one of them worth the notice of the book-fanciers. 
 Consequences from printers' blunders of a still more 
 tragic character even than this, have been preserved 
 — as for instance, the fate of Guidi the Italian poet, 
 whose end is said to have been hastened by the 
 misprints in his poetical paraphrase of the Homilies 
 of his patron, Clement XI. 
 
 .An odd accident occurred to a well-known book 
 lately published, called Men of the Time. It some- 
 times happens in a printing-office that some of the 
 types, perhaps a printed line or two, fall out of 
 " the forme." Those in whose hands the accident 
 occurs generally try to put things to rights as well 
 as they ca.n, and may be very successful in restoring 
 appearances with the most deplorable results to the 
 sense. It happened thus in the instance referred 
 to. A few lines dropping out of the Life of Robert 
 Owen, the parallelogram Communist, were hustled, 
 as the nearest place of refuge, into the biography 
 of his closest alphabetical neighbour — "Oxford, 
 Bishop of" The consequence is that the article 
 begins as follows ; — 
 
76 His Nature. 
 
 " Oxford, the Right Reverend Samuel 
 WiLBERFORCE, BiSHOP OF, was born in 1805. A 
 more kind-hearted and truly benevolent man does 
 not exist. A sceptic, as regards religious revelation, 
 he is nevertheless an out-and-out believer in spirit 
 movements." 
 
 Whenever this blunder was discovered, the leaf 
 was cancelled ; but a few copies of the book had 
 got into circulation, which some day or other may 
 be very valuable. 
 
 From errors of the press there is a natural transi- 
 tion to the class who incur the guilt of perpetrating 
 them, and whose peculiar mental qualities impart to 
 them their special characteristics. That mysterious 
 body called compositors, through whose hands all 
 literature passes, are reputed to be a placid and un- 
 impressionable race of practical stoics, who do their 
 work dutifully, without yielding to the intellectual 
 influences represented by it. A clause of an Act of 
 Parliament, with all its whereases, and be it enacteds, 
 and hereby repealeds, creates, it is said, quite as 
 much emotion in them as the most brilliant burst 
 of the fashionable poet of the day. They will set 
 you up a psalm or a blasphemous ditty with the 
 same equanimity, not retaining in their minds any 
 clear distinction between them. Your writing must 
 be something very wonderful indeed, before they 
 distinguish it from other " copy," except by the 
 goodness or badness of the hand. A State paper 
 
Classification. "jy 
 
 which all the world is mad to know about, is quite 
 safe in a printing-office ; and, if report speak truly, 
 they will set up what is here set down of them, 
 without noting that it refers to themselves. It is 
 said that this stoic indifference is a wonderful 
 provision for the preservation of the purity of litera- 
 ture, and that, were compositors to think with the 
 author under the "stick," they might make dire 
 havoc. 
 
 We are not to suppose, however, that they take 
 less interest in, or are less observant of, the work 
 of their hands than other workmen. The point of 
 view, however, from which their observation is 
 taken, is not exactly the same as that of their 
 co-operator, the author whose writing they set up, 
 nor, is their notification of specialties of a kind 
 which would always be felt by him as complimen- 
 tary. The tremendous philippic of Junius Brutus 
 against the scandalous and growing corruptions of 
 the age, is remembered in the "chapel" solely be- 
 cause its fiery periods exhausted the largest font of 
 italics possessed by the establishment. The exhaus- 
 tive inquiry by a great metaphysician into the Quan- 
 tification of the predicate, is solely associated with 
 the characteristic fact that the press was stopped 
 during the casting of an additional hundredweight 
 of parentheses for its special use. A youthful poet 
 I could recall, who, with a kind of exulting indig- 
 nation, thought he had discovered a celebrated 
 
78 His Nature. 
 
 brother of the lyre appropriating his ewe lamb in 
 a flagrant plagiarism. There was at least one man 
 who had the opportunity of being acquainted with 
 the productions of his unappreciated muse — the 
 printer. To him, accordingly, he appealed for con- 
 firmation of his suspicions, demanding if he did 
 not see in the two productions a similarity that in 
 some places even approached identity. The referee 
 turned over page after page with the scrupulous 
 attention of one whose acuteness is on trial. After 
 due deliberation he admitted that there was a very 
 striking similarity, only it seemed to him that the 
 other's brevier was a shade thinner in the hair-stroke' 
 than his own, and the small caps, would go a thought 
 more to the pound ; while as to the semicolons and 
 marks of interrogation, they looked as if they came 
 out of a different font altogether. 
 
 It is pleasant to be remembered for something, 
 and the present author has the assurance that these 
 pages will be imprinted on the memory of the 
 ''chapel" by the decorated capitals and Gothic de- 
 vices with which a better taste than his own has 
 strewed them. The position, indeed, conceded to 
 him in the book - hunting field through the in- 
 fluence of these becoming decorations has com- 
 municated to him something of the uneasiness of 
 Juvenal's 
 
 " Miserum est alioium incubere famse, 
 Ne coUapsa ruant subductis tecta columnis." 
 
Classification. 79 
 
 And having so disburdened himself, he rejoices in 
 the thought that whoever compliments him again 
 on the taste and talent displayed in the printing 
 and adorning of this volume, will only prove that 
 he has not read it. 
 
 Returning to compositors, and what they note and 
 do not note, if the fresh author has happened to feel 
 it a rather damping forecast of his reception by the 
 public that those who have had the first and closest 
 contact with his efforts are not in any way aroused 
 by their remarkable originality, yet one who may 
 have had opportunities of taking a wide view of the 
 functions of the compositor will not wonder that, 
 like the deaf adder, he systematically closes his ear 
 to the voice of the charmer. 
 
 That the uninitiated reader may form some prac- 
 tical- conception of my meaning, I propose to set 
 -down a few items froni the weekly contents of a 
 compositor's "bill-book," slightly enlarging his brief 
 entries with the view of rendering them the more 
 intelligible. 
 
 " I. A time job — viz., inserting, as per author's 
 proof, 50 'hear hears' and 20 'great cheerings' in 
 report of speech to be delivered by Alderman Nod- 
 dles at the great meeting on the social system. 
 . "2. Picking out all the 'hear hears' and 'great 
 •cheerings' from said speech, in respect it was not 
 permitted to be delivered, the meeting having dis- 
 persed when the alderman stood up ; and breaking 
 
8o His Nature. 
 
 up the same into pages, with title, ' A plan for the 
 immediate and total extirpation of intemperance by 
 prohibiting the manufacture of bottles.' 
 
 "3. A sheet of a volume of poems, titled 'Life 
 thoughts by a Life thinker,' beginning — 
 
 " ' Far I dipt beneath the surface, through the texture of the earth, 
 Till my heart's triumphant musings dreamt the dream of that new 
 
 birth. 
 When the engineer's deep science through the mighty sphere shall 
 
 probe, 
 And the railway trains to Melbourne sweep the centre of the globe, 
 And the electro-motive engine renders it no more absurd 
 That a human being should be in two places like a bird.' 
 
 "Item — Introduction, explaining the difficulties 
 in the way of the poet's success, in an age devoted 
 to forms and superficialities, by reason of his mus- 
 cular originality, impulsive grasping at the infinite, 
 and resolute disdain of popular and conventional 
 models ; but expressing opinion that, as he turns 
 round on the pivot of his own individual idiosyn- 
 crasy, he will come out all right 
 
 " 4. Advertisement by a disinterested draper, be- 
 ginning, 'awful sacrifices,' and ending, 'early appli- 
 cation necessary to prevent disappointment.' 
 
 " 5. Two sticks of prayer for a devotional work 
 which has had an unexpected run, and is largely 
 distributed over the office for an expeditious issue 
 of a new edition. 
 
 "6. Part of an accountant's report, containing 
 45 schemes for the ranking of the creditors on ten 
 
Classification. 8 1 
 
 bankrupt estates, each of which has drawn accom- 
 modation bills on all the others. 
 
 "7. Signature YY of 'A treatise on the form .and 
 material of the sickle used by the Welsh Druids in 
 cutting the mistletoe,' being a series of quotations 
 in Arabic, Hindoo, Greek, German, and Gaelic, 
 cemented together by thin lines of English. This 
 is a stock job which keeps the office going like a 
 balance-wheel when there is nothing else specially 
 pressing, and is rather popular, as it contains a good 
 many ethnological and etymological, tables, implying 
 scheme-work, which the compositors who are adepts 
 in that department contemplate with great satisfac- 
 tion as they put it together." 
 
 It is surely pleasant to suppose that the corn- 
 positor has acquired the faculty of passing such 
 dizzying whirls of heterogeneous element^ without 
 absorbing them .all, and that, when his day's labour 
 is over, he may find his own special intellectual food, 
 in his Milton or his Locke. In this view, his apathy 
 to the literary matter passing through his hands 
 may be contemplated as among the special benefi- 
 cences Jn: the provi^pntjal order of thir^gs, Hke the 
 faculty of healthy vitality to throw off morbid in- 
 fluences ; and perhaps it has still closer analogy to 
 that professional coolness which separg.tes the sur- 
 geon from a nervous sympathy with the: sufferings of 
 those on whom he operates — a phenomenon which, 
 though sometimes denounced as professional callous- 
 
 F 
 
82 His Nature. 
 
 ness, is one of the most beneficent specialties in the 
 lot of mankind. 
 
 In the several phases of the book-hunter, he 
 whose peculiar glory it is to have his books illus- 
 trated — the Grangerite, as he is technically termed 
 — must not be omitted. "Illustrating" a volume 
 consists in inserting in or binding up with it por- 
 traits, landscapes, and other works of art bearing 
 a reference to its contents. This is materially dif- 
 ferent from the other forms of the pursuit, in as far 
 as the quarry hunted down is the raw material, the 
 finished article being a result of domestic manufac- 
 ture. The Illustrator is the very Ishmaelite of col- 
 lectors — his hand is against every man, and every 
 man's hand is against him. He destroys unknown 
 quantities of books to supply portraits or other illus- 
 trations to a single volume of his own ; and as it is 
 not always known concerning any book that he has 
 been at work on it, mahy a common book -buyer has 
 cursed him on inspecting his own last bargain, and 
 finding that it is deficient in an interesting portrait 
 or two. Tales there are, fitted to make the blood 
 run cold in the veins of the most sanguine book- 
 hunter, about the devastations committed by those 
 who are gi-\lren over to this' special pursuit It is 
 generally understood that they received the impulse 
 which has rendered them an important sect, from 
 the publication of Granger's Biographical History — 
 hence their name of Grangerites. So it has hap- 
 
Classification. 83 
 
 pened that this industrious aijd respectable com- 
 piler is contemplated with mysterious awe as a sort 
 of literaiy Attila or Gengis Khcin, who has spread 
 terror and ruin aj-ound ,hini. In truth the illustra- 
 tor, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that 
 doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to becQine 
 ■excited with his work, and to go op ever widening 
 the circle of bis purveyances, and opening new 
 avenues toward the raw material on which he works. 
 To show how widely such, a person may levy contri- 
 butionsj I propose to take, not a whole volume, not 
 -even a whole page, but still, a specific and distin- 
 guished piece of English literature, and: describe 
 the way in which a devotee of this peculiar practice 
 would naturally proceed in illustrating it. The 
 piece of literature to be illustrated is as follows : — 
 
 " How doth the little busy bee 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the day 
 From every opening flfower ! " 
 
 The first thing to be done is to collect every 
 engraved portrait of the author, Isaac Watts. The 
 next, to get hold of any engravings of the house in 
 which he was , born, or houses in which he lived. 
 Then will come all kinds of views of Southampton 
 —of its Gothic gatCj and its older than Gothic walli 
 Any scrap connected with the inauguration of the 
 Watts statue, must of course be scrupulously gath- 
 ered. To go but a step beyond such commonplaces 
 
84 His Nature. 
 
 — there is a traditional story about the boyhood of 
 Isaac which has been told as follows. He took 
 precociously to rhyming : like Pope, he lisped in 
 numbers, for the numbers came. It happened that 
 this practice was very offensive to his father, a 
 practical man, who, finding his admonitions useless, 
 resolved to stop it in an effectual manner. He ac- 
 cordingly, after the practice of his profession — -being 
 a schoolmaster — assailed with a leathern thong, duly 
 prepared, the cuticle of- thiat portion of the body 
 which has from time immemorial been devoted to 
 such inflictions. Under torture, the divine songster 
 abjured his propensity in the following very hopeful 
 
 shape — 
 
 ' ' Oh, father, da some pity take,, 
 And I will no more verses make." 
 
 It is not likely_ that ,this simple domestic scene 
 has been engraved either for the Divine Hymns, or 
 the Improvement of the Mind. The illustrator will 
 therefore require to get a picture of it for his own 
 special use, and will add immensely to the value of 
 his treasure, while he gives scope to the genius of 
 a Cruikshank or a Doyle. 1 „■ 
 
 We are ' yet, it will be observed, only on the 
 threshold: We have next to' illustrate the sub- 
 stance of the poetry. All kinds of engravings of 
 bees Attic and other, and of bec'hives, will be ap- 
 propriate, and will be followed by portraits of Huber 
 and other great writers on bees, and views of Mount 
 
Classification. <85 
 
 Hybla and other honey districts. Spme Scripture 
 prints illustrative , of the history of Samson, who 
 had to do with honey a,nd bees, will be appropriate, 
 as well as any illustrations of the fable of the Bear 
 and the Bees, or of the .Roman story of the Sic 
 vos non vobis. A still more appropriate form of 
 illustration may, however, be drawn upon by. re- 
 membering that a periodijcal called The, Bee was 
 edited by Dr Anderson ; and it is important to 
 observe that the name was adopted in, the very 
 -Spirit which inspired Watts.; In , both instances the 
 most respected of all winged insects was, broijght 
 forward as;the type of industry. PortraitSj then, of 
 Dr Anderson^ and aiiy engravings- that can be con- 
 nected with himself and his pursuits, will have their 
 place in the polleption.; It will occur, perhaps, to 
 the intelligent: illi|strator, that Dr Anderson was the 
 grandfather of Sir James Outram, and, he will thus 
 have the satisfaction > of opening his ; collection for 
 all illustrations of the career of that distinguished 
 officer. Having been aptly called the Bayard of the 
 -Indian service, the collector, who has exhausted him 
 and , his; services willbg, justified by the principles 
 of the craft in following up the chase, and pick- 
 ing up any wpodjcuts or engravings referring to the 
 death of the false Bourbon, or any other scene in the 
 career of the kijight; withQUt fear or repro.ach." Here, 
 by a fortunate "and interesting coincidence, through 
 the Bourbons the collector getsi at the swarms of 
 
86 His Nature. 
 
 bees which distinguish the insignia of royalty in 
 France. When the illustrator comes to the last 
 line, which invites him to add to what he has 
 already collected a representation of " every open- 
 ing flower," it is easy to see that he has indeed 
 a rich garden of delights before him. 
 
 In- a classification of book-hunters, the aspirants 
 after large-paper copies deserve special notice, were 
 it only for the purpose of guarding against a com- 
 mon fallacy which confounds them with the lovers 
 of talt copies. The' difference is fundamental, large- 
 paper copies being created by system, while tall copies 
 are merely the creatures of accident; and Dibdin 
 bestows due castigation in a celebrated instance in 
 which a mere tall copy had, whether from ignorance 
 or design, beeli spoken "of as a large-paper copy. This 
 high development of the desirable book is the result of 
 ah arrartgemeint to print so many copies of a volume 
 on paper of larger size than that of the bulk of the 
 impression. The tall dopy is the result of careful 
 cutting by the binder, or of no cutting at all. In this 
 primitive shape a book has separate charms for a dis- 
 tinct class of collectors who esteem rough edges, and 
 are willing, for the sakeiof this excellence, to endure 
 the martyrdom of cohsulting books in that condition.^ 
 
 ^ "But devions oft, from ev'ry classic muse^ 
 TJiiekeencqlHeietorme^^iei; paths will choose: 
 And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, 
 Pure,- snow^, broad, the tyjie of nobler joys. 
 
Classification. 87 
 
 The historian of the private libraries of New 
 York makes us acquainted with a sect well known 
 in the actually sporting world, but not heretofore 
 familiar in the bibliological. Here is a description 
 of the Waltoniani library of the Reverend ,Dr 
 Bethune. In the sunshine he is a practical angler, 
 and — 
 
 "During the darker seasons of the year, when 
 forbidden the actual use of his rod, our friend has 
 occupied himself with excursions through sale cata- 
 logues, fishing out from their dingy pages whatever 
 tends to honour his favourite author or favourite 
 art, so that his spoils now number nearly five hun- 
 dred volumes, of all sizes and dates.. Pains have 
 been takeii to have not only copies of the works 
 included in the list, 'but also the several editions ; 
 and when it is of a work mentioned by Walton, an 
 edition which the good old man himself ^ay have 
 seen. Thus the collection has all the editions of 
 Walton, Cotton, and Venables in existence, and, 
 with 'few exceptions, all the works referred to by 
 Walton, or which tend to illustrate his favourite 
 rambles by the Lea or the Dove. Every scrap of 
 
 Ini vain might Homer roll the tide of song, ^ 
 
 Or Horace smile, or T.uUy charm the throng ; 
 
 If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade. 
 
 Or too oblique, or near the edge, invade, 
 
 The Bibliomane exclaims, with h^gard eye, 
 
 ' No margin ! '^urns in haste, and scorns to biiy.'' 
 
 — Ferriar's Bibliomania, v. 34-43. 
 
88 His Nature. 
 
 Walton's writing, and every compliment paid to 
 him, have been carefully gathered and garnered up, 
 with prints and autographs and some precious 
 manuscripts. Nor does the department end here, 
 but embraces most of the older and many of the 
 modern writers on ichthyology and angling." 
 
 9Kie Profeler anb tfie ^urtumif^aonter. 
 
 HESE incidental divisions are too nu- 
 merous and complex for a proper 
 classification of book-hunters, and I 
 am inclined to go back to the idea 
 that their most effective and comprehensive division 
 is into the private prowler and the auction-haunter. 
 The difference between these is something like, in 
 the sporting world, that between the stalker and 
 the hunter proper. Each function has its merits, 
 and calls for its special qualities and sacrifices. The 
 one demands placidity, patience, caution, plausibility, 
 and unwearied industry — such attributes as those 
 which have been already set forth in the words of 
 the Antiquary. The auction - room, on the other 
 hand, calls forth courage, promptness, and the spirit 
 of adventure. There is. wild work sometimes there, 
 and men find themselves carried off by enthusiasm 
 and competition towards pecuniary sacrifices which 
 at the threshold of the temple they had solemnly 
 
The Auction- Haunter. 89 
 
 vowed to themselves to eschew. But such sacrifices 
 are the tribute paid to the absorbing interest of the 
 pursuit, and are looked upon in their own peculiar 
 circle as tending to the immortal honour of those 
 who make them. This field of prowess has, it is 
 said, undergone a prejudicial change in these days, 
 the biddings being nearly all by dealers, while 
 gentlemen -collectors are gradually moving out of 
 the field. In old days one might have reaped for 
 himself, by bold and emphatic biddings at a few 
 auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of which 
 the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin — a name 
 familiarly abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin. 
 His descriptions of auction contests are perhaps the 
 best and most readable portions of his tremendously 
 overdone books. . , 
 
 Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the 
 sale of the ,Roxburghe library, perhaps the most 
 eminent contest of that kind on record. There 
 were of it some ten ' thpusand; separate " lots," as 
 auctioneers call them, and almost every one of them 
 was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of the 
 collecting community, and had been, with special 
 pains aiid care and anxious exertion, drawn into the 
 vortex of that, collection. Although it was created 
 by a Duke, yet it. has been rumoured that most of 
 the books, had bee^ bargains, and that the nQble 
 -collector drew; .largely on the spirit of patient per- 
 iseverance and enlightened sagacity for which Monk- 
 
90 His Nature. 
 
 barns claims credit. The great passion and pursuit 
 of his life having been of so peculiar a character- 
 he was almost as zealous a hunter of deer and wild 
 swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not 
 considered in the least peculiar — it was necessary 
 to iind some strange influencing motive for his con- 
 duct ; so it has been said that it arose from his 
 having been crossed in love in his early youth. 
 Such crosses, in general, arise from the beloved one 
 dying, or proving faithless and becoming the wife 
 of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the 
 Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the illustri- 
 ous marriage of the sister of his elected. She was 
 the eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg- 
 Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal 
 rank, yet there would be many countervailing ad- 
 vantages in the position of an affluent British 
 Duchess which might reconcile a young lady, even 
 of so illustrious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not 
 happened that Lord' Bute and the Princess of Wales 
 selected her younger sister to be the wife of George 
 III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as 
 the good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it 
 seems, the necessity, as a matter of st^te and politi- 
 cal etiquette, that the elder sister should abandon 
 the alliance with a British subject. 
 
 So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of 
 the Duke'S; bibliomania ; and it is supposed to havte 
 been in the thoughts of Sir Walter Scott, when he 
 
The A uction- Haunter. 9 \ 
 
 said of him that "youthful misfortunes, of a kind 
 against which neither wealth nor rank possess a 
 talisman, cast an early shade of gloom over his 
 prospects,' and gave to one splendidly endowed 
 with the means of enjoying society that degree of 
 reserved melancholy which prefers retirement to the 
 splendid scenes of gaiety." Dibdin, with more 
 specific precision, after, ranibling over the house 
 where the great auction sale occurred) as inquisitive 
 people are apt to do, tells us of the solitary room 
 occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which 
 he slept and died : " all his migrations," says the 
 bibliographer, "were confined to these two rooms. 
 When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed on which 
 this bibliomaniacal Duke had expired, I felt — as I 
 trust I ought to have felt on the occasion." Scott 
 attributed to an incidental occurrence at his father's 
 table the direction given lo, the great pursuit of 
 : his life.' " Lord Oxford and Lord Sunderland, both 
 famous collectors of the time, dined one .day with 
 the second Duke of Roxburghe, when their conver-. 
 sation happened to turn upon th.e editio princeps 
 of Boccaccio, printed in Venice in 1474, and so rare 
 that its very existence was doubted of". It so fh.ap- 
 pened that the Duke rernembered this volume hav- 
 ing been offered to him for slf 100, and he believed. 
 he could still trace and secure it : he did so, and. 
 laid it before his admiring friends at a subsequent,, 
 sitting. " His son, then^ Marquess of Bowmont,, 
 
92 His Nature. 
 
 never forgot the little scene upon this occasion, and 
 used to ascribe to it the strong passion which he 
 ever afterwards felt for rare books and editions, and 
 which rendered him one of the most assiduous and 
 judicious collectors that ever formed a sumptuous 
 library." ^ And this same Boccaccio was the point 
 of attack which formed the climax in the great con- 
 test of the Roxhurghe roup, as the Duke's fellow- 
 countrynien called it. I am not aware that any 
 of the English bibliographers have alluded to any 
 special cause for this volume's extreme rarity. 
 Peignot attributes it to a sermon preached by the 
 Italian pulpit orator Savonarola, on the 8th of 
 February 1497, against indecorous books, in conse- 
 quence of which the' inhabitants of Florence made 
 a bonfire of their Boccacdios, — an explanation which 
 every one who pleases is at liberty to believe.^ 
 
 The historian of the contest terms it " the Water- 
 loo among book-battles," whereto "many a knight 
 came far and wide froiil his retirement, and many 
 an unfledged combatant left his father's castle to 
 partake of the glory of such a; contest" He also 
 tells us that, the honour of the first effective shot 
 was due to a. house in the trade — Messrs Payne and 
 Foss — by whom " the Aldine Greek Bible was killed 
 off the first in the contests It produced the sum of 
 
 ^ Article on Pitcairn's CrimiQal Trials, in the 2ist vol. of Mis- 
 cellaneous Prose Works. 
 ^ Predicatoriana, p. 23. 
 
The Auction-Haunter. 93 
 
 ;^4, 14s. 6d. Thus measuredly, and guardedly, and 
 even fearfully, did this tremendous battle begin." 
 The earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off 
 when Lord Spencer bought two Caxtons for ;^24S, 
 a feat of which the closing scene is recorded, with 
 a touching simplicity, in these terms : — " His Lord- 
 ship put each volume under his coat, and walked 
 home with them in all the flush of victory and con- 
 sciousness of triumph." As every one does not 
 possess a copy of the three costly volumes of which 
 the Bibliographical Decameron consists — and, fur- 
 ther, as many a one so fortunate as to possess them 
 has not had patience and perseverance enough to 
 penetrate to the iniddle of the third volume, where 
 the most readable 1 part is to be found^^a character- 
 istic extract, describing the heat of the contest, may 
 not be unwelcome :— 
 
 "For two -and -forty successive days- — with the 
 exceptiorl only of Sundays — were the voice and 
 hammer of Mr Evans heai'd with equal efficacy in 
 the dining-room of the late Duke, which had been 
 appropriated to the vendition of the books ; and 
 within that same space (some thirty -five feet by 
 twenty) were such deeds of valour performed, and 
 such feats of book-heroism achieved, as had never 
 been previously beheld, and of which the like will 
 probably never be seen again. The shouts of the 
 victors and the groans of the vanquished stunned 
 and appalled you as you entered. The striving and 
 
94 His Nature. 
 
 press, both of idle spectators and determined bid- 
 ders, was unprecedented. A sprinkling of Caxtons 
 and De Wordes marked the first day, and these 
 were obtained at high, but, comparatively with the 
 subsequent sums given, moderate prices. Theology, 
 jurisprudence, philosophy, and philology chiefly 
 marked the earlier days of this tremendous contest ; 
 and occasionally during these days, there was much 
 stirring up of courage, and' many hard and heavy 
 blows were interchanged ; and the combatants may 
 be said to have completely wallowed themselves in 
 the conflict. At length came poetry, Latin, ItaHan^ 
 and French: a steady fight yet continued to be 
 fought ; victory seemed to hang in doubtful scales 
 — sometimes- on the one, sometimes on the other 
 side of Mr Evans, who preserved throughout (as it 
 was his bounden duty to preserve) a uniform, im- 
 partial, and steady course; and who maybe said 
 on that occasion, if not ' to have rode the whirlwind,' 
 at least to have ' directed the storm.' " 
 
 But the dignity and power of the historian's nar- 
 rative cannot be fully appreciated until we find him 
 in the midst of the climax of the contest — the battle, 
 which gradually merged into a single combat, for 
 the possession of the Venetian Boccaccio. Accord- 
 ing to the established historical practice, we have in 
 the' first place a statement of the position taken up 
 by the respective " forces." 
 
 "At length the moment of sale arrived. Evans 
 
The Auction- Haunter. 95 
 
 prefaced the putting-up of the article by an appro- 
 priate oration, in which he expatiated on its extreme 
 rarity, and concluding by informing the company of 
 the regret, and even anguish of heart, expressed by 
 Mr Van Praet that such a treasure was not to be 
 found in the Imperial collection at Paris. Silence 
 followed the address of Mr Evans. On his right 
 hand, leaning against the wall, stood Earl Spencer ; 
 a little lower down, and standing at right angles 
 with his Lordship, appeared the Marquess of Bland- 
 ford. Lord Althorp stood a little backward, to the 
 right of his father. Earl Spencer." 
 
 The iirst movement of the forces g=ives the histo- 
 rian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer 
 at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions 
 as to suppose that a hundred, pounds or two would 
 be of any avail in such a contest. 
 
 " The honour of firing the first shot was due to a 
 gentleman of Shropshire, unused to this species of 
 warfare, and who seemed to recoil from the rever- 
 beration of the report himself had made. 'One 
 hundred guineas,' he exclaimed. Again a pause 
 ensue4 ; but anon the biddings rose rapidly to five 
 hundred guineas. Hitherto, however, it was evident 
 that the firing was but masked and desultory. At 
 length all random shots ceased, and the champions 
 before named stood gallantly up to each other, re- 
 solving not to flinch from a trial of their respective 
 strengths. A thousand guineas were bid, by Earl 
 
96 His Nature. 
 
 Spencer — to which the Marquess added ten. You 
 might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned 
 -rr-all breathing wellnigh stopped — revety, sword was 
 put home within its scabbard — and not a piece of 
 steel was seen to move or to glitter except that 
 which each of these champions brandished in his 
 valorous hand." 
 
 But even this exciting sort of narrative will tire 
 one when it goes on page after page, so that we 
 must take a leap to the conclusion. "Two thousand 
 two hundred and fifty pounds," said Lord Spencer. 
 " The spectators were now absolutely electrified. 
 The Marquess quietly adds his usual ten" and so 
 there an end. "Mr Evans, ere his hammer fell, 
 made a short pause — and indeed, as if by something 
 preternatural, the ebony instrument itself seemed to 
 be charmed or suspended in the mid air. However, 
 at last down dropped the hammer." 
 
 Such a result naturally created excitement beyond 
 the book -collectors' circle,' for here was an actual 
 stroke of trade in which a profit of more than two 
 thousand per cent had been netted. It is easy to 
 believe in Dibdin's statement of the crowds of people 
 who imagined they were possessors of the identical 
 Venetian Boccaccio, and the still larger number who 
 wanted to do a stroke of business with some old 
 volume, endowed with the same rarity and the same 
 or greater intrinsic vialue. The general excitement 
 created by the dispersal of the Roxburghe collection 
 
The Auction- Haunter. 97 
 
 proved an epoch in literary history, by the estab- 
 lishment of the Roxburghe Club, followed by a 
 series of others, the history of which has to be told 
 farther on. 
 
 Of the great bopk- sales that have been com- 
 memorated, it is curious to observe how seldom 
 they embrace ancestral libraries accumulated in old 
 houses from generation to generation, and how gen- 
 erally they markr the short-lived duration of the accu- 
 mulations of some collector freshly deposited. One 
 remarkable- exception to this was in the Gordon- 
 stoun library, sold in 1816. It was begun by Sir 
 Robert Gordon, a Morayshire laird of the time of 
 the great civil wars of the seventeenth century. 
 He was the author of the History of the Earldom 
 of Sutherland, and a man of great political as well 
 as literary account He laid by heaps of the pam- 
 phlets, placards, and- other documents of his stormy 
 period, and thus many a valuable morsel, which 
 had otherwise disappeared from the world^^ left a 
 representative in the Gordonstoun collection. It 
 was increased by a later Sir Robert, who had the 
 reputation of being a vvizard. He beloiiged to one 
 of those terrible clubs from which Satan is entitled 
 to take a victim annually ; but when Gordon's turn 
 came, he managed to get off with merely the loss 
 of his shadow ; a^nd many a Morayshire peasant has 
 testified to having seen him riding forth, on a sunny 
 day, the shadow of his horse visible, with those of 
 
 G 
 
98 His Nature. 
 
 his spurs and his whip, but his body offering no 
 impediment to the rays of the sun. He enriched 
 the library with books on necromancy, demonology, 
 and alchemy. 
 
 The largest book-sale probably that ever was in 
 the world, was that of Heber's collection in 1834. 
 There are often rash estimates made of the size of 
 libraries, but those who have stated the number of 
 his books in six figures seem justified when one 
 looks at the catalogue of the sale, bound up in five 
 thick octavo volumes. For results so magnificent, 
 Richard Heber's library had but a small beginning, 
 according to the memoir of him in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, where it is said, that "having one day 
 accidentally met with a little volume called The 
 Vallie of Varietie, by Henry Peacham, he took it to 
 the late Mr Bindley of the Stamp-office, the cele- 
 brated collector, and asked him if this was not a 
 curious book. Mr Bindley, after looking at it, 
 answered, 'Yes — not very^but rather a curious 
 book.'" This faint morsel of encouragement was, 
 it seems, sufficient to start him in his terrible career, 
 and the trifle becomes important as a solemn illus- 
 tration of the obsia principiis. His labours, and 
 even his perils, were on a par with those of any 
 veteran commander who has led armies and fought 
 battles during the great part of a long life. He 
 would set off on a journey of several hundred miles 
 any day in search of a book not in his collection! 
 
The Auction- Haunter. 99 
 
 Sucking in from all around him whatever books were 
 afloat, he of course soon exhausted the ordinary 
 market; and to find a book obtainable which he 
 did not already possess, was an event to be looked 
 to with the keenest anxiety, and a chance to be 
 seized with promptitude^ courage, and decision. At 
 last, however, he could not supply the cravings of 
 his appetite without recourse to duplicates, and far 
 more than duplicates. His friend Dibdin said of 
 him, " He has now and then an ungovernable pas- 
 sion to possess more copies of a book than there 
 were ever parties to a deed or stamina to a plant ; 
 and therefore I cannot call him a duplicate or a 
 triplicate collector." He satisfied his own con- 
 science by adopting a creed, which he enounced 
 thus : " Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably 
 do without three copies of a book. One he must 
 have for a show copy, and he will probably keep it 
 at his country-house ; another he will require for 
 his own use and reference ; and unless he is inclined 
 to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or 
 risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have 
 a third at the service of his friends." 
 
 This last necessity is the key-note to Heber's 
 popularity : he was a liberal and kindly man, atid 
 though, like Wolsey, he was unsatisfied in getting, 
 yet, like him, in bestowing he was most princely. 
 Many scholars and authors obtained the raw mate- 
 rial for their labours from his transcendent stores. 
 
lOO His Nature. 
 
 These, indeed, might be said less to be personal to 
 himself than to be a feature in the literary geography 
 of Europe. " Some years ago," says the writer in 
 the Gentleman's Magazine, " he built a new libraiy 
 at his house at Hodnet, which is said to be full. 
 His residence at Pimlico, where he died, is filled, 
 like Magliabechi's at Florence, with books, from the 
 top to the bottom — every chair, every table, every 
 passage containing piles of erudition. He had 
 another house in York Street, leading to Great 
 James's Street, Westminster, laden from the ground- 
 floor to the garret with curious books. He had a 
 library in the High Street, Oxford, an immense 
 library at Paris, another at Antwerp, another at 
 Brussels, another at Ghent, and at other places in 
 the Low Countries and in Germany." 
 
^ 
 
 ^^^^SBiiin^^ 
 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 i^^^wir^^^^^ 
 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 PART II.— HIS FUNCTIONS. 
 
 Wl)e f^ttfihg. 
 
 jlAVING devoted the preceding pages 
 to the diagnosis of the book-hunter's 
 condition, or, in other words, to the 
 different shapes which the pheno- 
 mena peculiar to it assume, I now 
 propose to offer some account of his place in the 
 dispensations of Providence, which will probably 
 show that he is not altogether a mischievous or 
 a merely useless member of the human family, but 
 does in reality, however unconsciously to himself, 
 minister in his own peculiar way to the service both 
 of himself and others. This is to be a methodical 
 discourse, and therefore to be divided and subdi- 
 vided, insomuch that, taking in the first place his 
 services to himself, this branch shall be subdivided 
 into the advantages which are purely material and 
 those which are properly intellectual. 
 
I02 His Functions. 
 
 And, first, of material advantages. Holding it to 
 be the inevitable doom of fallen man to inherit some 
 frailty or failing, it would be difficult, had he a 
 Pandora's box-ful to pick and choose among, to 
 find one less dangerous or offensive. As the judicious 
 physician informs the patient suffering under some 
 cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison 
 lay deep in his constitution — that it must have 
 worked in some shape — and well it is that it has 
 taken one so innocuous — so may even the book- 
 hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate 
 moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and 
 rather a salubrious form. To pass over gambling, 
 tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily 
 spoken of in good society, let us look to the other 
 shapes in which man lets himself out — ^far instance 
 to horse-racing, hunting, photography, shooting, fish- 
 ing, cigars, dog-fancying, dog-fighting, the ring, the 
 cockpit, phrenology, revivalism, socialism ; which of 
 these contains so small a balance of evil, counting of 
 course that the amount of pleasure conferred is equal 
 — for it is only on the datum that the book-hunter 
 has as much satisfaction from his pursuit as the fox- 
 hunter, the photographer, and so on, has in his, that 
 a fair comparison can be struck? These pursuits, 
 one and all, leave little or nothing that is valuable 
 behind them, except, it may be, that some of them 
 are conducive to health, by giving exercise to the 
 body and a genial excitement to the mind ; but 
 
The Hobby. 103 
 
 every hobby gives the latter, and the former may 
 be easily obtained in some other shape. They leave 
 little or nothing behind — even the photographer's 
 portfolio will bring scarcely anything under the 
 harrimer after the death of him whose solace and 
 pursuit it had been, should the positives remain 
 visible, which may be doubted. And as to the 
 other enumerated pursuits, some of them, as we all 
 know, are immensely costly, all unproductive as 
 they are. 
 
 But the. book-hunter may possibly leave a little 
 fortune behind him. His hobby, in fact, merges 
 into an investrhent. This is the light in which a 
 celebrated Quaker collector of paintings put his con- 
 duct, when it wtas questioned by the brethren, in 
 virtue of that right to admonish one another con- 
 cerning the errors of their ways, which makes them 
 so chary in employing domestic servants of their 
 own persuasion. " What ' had the brother paid for 
 that bauble [a picture by Wouvermans], for in- 
 stance?" "Well, ;^300.". "Was not that then an 
 awful wasting of his substance on vanities?" "No. 
 He had been offered ;f 900 for it. If any of the 
 Friends was prepared to offer him a better invest- 
 ment of his money than one that could be realised 
 at a profit of 200: per cent, he was ready to alter the 
 existing disposal of his capital." 
 
 It is true that amateur purchasers do not, in the 
 long-run, make a profit, though an occasional bar- 
 
I04 His Functions. 
 
 gain may pass through their hands. It is not main- 
 tained that, in the general case, the libraries of 
 collectors would be sold for more than they cost, or 
 even for nearly so much ; but they' are always worth 
 something, which is more than can be said of the 
 residue of other hobbies and pursuits. Nay, farther; 
 the scholarly collector of books is not like the or- 
 dinary helpless amateur ; for although, doubtless, 
 nothing will rival the dealer's instinct for knowing 
 the money-value of an article, though he may know 
 nothing else about it, yet there is often a subtle 
 depth in the collector's educated knowledge which 
 the other cannot match, and bargains may be ob- 
 tained off the counters of the most acute. 
 
 A small sprinkling of these — even the chance of 
 them — excites him, like the angler's bites and rises, 
 and gives its zest to his pursuit. It is the reward 
 of his patience, his exertion, and his skill, after the 
 manner in which Monkbarns has so well spoken ; 
 and it is certain that, in many instances, a collector's 
 library has sold for more than it cost him. 
 
 No doubt, a man may ruin himself by purchas- 
 ing costly books, as by indulgence in any other 
 costly luxury, but the chances of calamity are com- 
 paratively small in this pursuit A thousand pounds 
 will go a great way in book-collecting, if the collec- 
 tor be true to the traditions of his pursuit, such as 
 they are to be hereafter expounded. There has 
 been one instance, doubtless, in the records of bib- 
 
The Hobby. 105 
 
 liomania, of two thousand pounds having been given 
 for one book. But how many instances far more 
 flagrant could be found in picture-buying? Look 
 around upon the world and see how many men 
 are the victims of libraries, and compare them with 
 those whom the stud, the kennel, and the preserve 
 have brought to the Gazette. Find out, too, any- 
 where, if you can, the instance in which the money 
 scattered in these forms comes back again, and 
 brings with it a large profit, as the expenditure 
 of the Duke of Roxburghe did when his library 
 was sold. 
 
 But it is necessary to arrest this train of argu- 
 ment, lest its tenor might be misunderstood. The 
 mercenary spirit must not be admitted to a share in 
 the enjoyments of the book-hunter. If, after he 
 has taken his last survey of his treasures, and spent 
 his last hour in that quiet library, where he has 
 ever found his chief solace against the wear and 
 worry of the world, the book-hunter has been 
 removed to his final place of rest, and it is then 
 discovered that the circumstances of the family 
 require his treasures to be dispersed, — if then the 
 result should take the unexpected shape that his 
 pursuit has not been so ruinously costly after all — 
 nay, that his expenditure has actually fructified — it 
 is well. But if the book-hunter allow money-mak- 
 ing — even for those he is to leave behind^ — to be 
 combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish, 
 
io6 His Functions. 
 
 its exhilarating influence, and becomes the ; source 
 of wretched cares and paltry anxieties. Where 
 money is the object, let a man speculate or become 
 a miser — a very enviable condition to him who has 
 the saving grace to achieve it, if we hold with Byron 
 that the accumulation of money is the only passion 
 that never cloys. 
 
 Let not the collector, therefore, ever, unless in 
 some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with 
 any of his treasure^. Let him not even have re- 
 course to that practice called barter, which political 
 philosophers tell us is the universal resource of 
 mankind preparatory to the invention of money as 
 a circulating medium and means of exchange. Let 
 him confine all his transactions in the market to 
 purchasing only. No good ever comes of gentle- 
 men amateurs buying and selling. They will either 
 be systematic losers, or they will acquire shabby, 
 questionable habits, from which the professional 
 dealers — on whom, perhaps, they look down — are 
 exempt There are two trades renowned for the 
 quackery and the imposition with which they are 
 habitually stained — the trade in horses and the 
 trade in old pictures ; and these have, I verily 
 believe, earned their evil reputation chiefly from 
 this, that they are trades in which gentlemen of 
 independent fortune and cons^iderable position are 
 in the habit of embarking. 
 
 The result is not so unaccountable- as it might 
 
The Hobby. 107 
 
 seem. The professional dealer, however smart he 
 may be, takes a sounder estimate of any individual 
 transaction than the amateur. It is his object, not 
 so much to do any single stroke of trade very suc- 
 cessfully, as to d^al acceptably with the public, and 
 make his money in the long-run. . Hence he does 
 not place an undue estimate on the special article 
 he is to dispose of, but will let it go at a loss, if that 
 is likely to prove the most beneficial course for his 
 trade at large. He has no special attachment to any 
 of the articles in which he deals, and no blindly 
 exaggerated appreciation of their merits and value. 
 They come and go in an equable stream, and the 
 cargo of yesterday is sent abroad to the world with 
 the same methodical indifference with whi.ch that 
 of to-day is unshipped. It is otherwise with the 
 amateur. He feels towards the article he is to part 
 with all the prejudiced attachment, and all the con- 
 sequent over-estimate, of a possessor. Hence he and 
 the market take incompatible views as to value, and 
 he is apt to become unscrupulous in his efforts to 
 do justice to himself. Let the single-minded and 
 zealous collector then turn the natural propensity 
 to over-estimate one's own into its proper and legiti- 
 mate channel. Let him guard his treasures as 
 things too sacred for commerce, and say, Procul, 
 procul este, profani, to all who may attempt by 
 bribery and corruption to drag them from their 
 legitimate shelves. If, in any weak moment, he 
 
io8 His Functions. 
 
 yield to mercenary temptation, he will be for ever 
 mourning after the departed unit of his treasure 
 — the lost sheep of his flock. If it seems to be in 
 the decrees of fate that all his gatherings are to be 
 dispersed abroad after he is gone to his rest, let 
 him, at all events, retain the reliance that on them, 
 as on other things beloved, he may have his last 
 look ; there will be many changes after that, and 
 this will be among them. Nor, in his final reflec- 
 tions on his conduct to himself and to those he is 
 to leave, will he be disturbed by the thought that 
 the hobby which was his enjoyment has been in any 
 wise the more costly to him that he has not made it 
 a means of mercenary money-getting.^ 
 
 W^t JBtaultorg J^ealjer or JSoJfEtntan of 3Litetatuw. 
 
 AVING so put in a plea for this pursuit, 
 as about the least costly foible to which 
 those who can afford to indulge in 
 foibles can devote themselves, one 
 might descant on certain auxiliary advantages — as, 
 
 1 Atticus was under the scandal of havinig disposed of his books, 
 and Cicero sometimes hints to him that he might let more of them 
 go his way. In truth, Atticus carried this so far, however, that he 
 seems to have been a sort of dealer, and the earliest instance of a 
 capitalist publisher. He had slaves whom he occupied in copying, 
 and was in fact much in the position of a rich Virginian or Caro- 
 linian, who should find that the most profitable investment for his 
 stock of slaves is a printing and publishing establishment. 
 
The Desultory Reader. 109 
 
 that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low 
 company ; that it offends no one, and is not likely 
 to foster actions of damages for nuisance, trespass, 
 or assault, and the like. But rather let us turn our 
 attention to the intellectual advantages accompany- 
 ing the pursuit, since the proper function of books 
 is in the general case associated with intellectual 
 culture and occupation. It would seem that, ac- 
 cording to a received prejudice or opinion, there is 
 one exception to this general connection, in the 
 case of the possessors of libraries, who are under 
 a vehement suspicion of not reading their books. 
 Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those 
 who utter the taunt understand the reading of a 
 book. That one should possess no books beyond 
 his power of perusal — that he should buy no faster 
 than as he can read straight through what he has^ 
 already bought — is a supposition alike preposterous 
 and unreasonable. "Surely you have far more 
 books than you can read," is sometimes the inane 
 remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume 
 by volume, from some circulating library or reading 
 club, and reads them all through, one a,fter the other, 
 with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that 
 he has got the value of his money. 
 
 It is true that there are some books — as Homer, 
 Virgilj Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott — 
 which every man should read who has the oppor- 
 tunity — should read, mark, learn, and inwardly 
 
I lo His Functions. 
 
 digest. To neglect the opportunity of becoming 
 familiar with them is deliberately to sacrifice the 
 position in the social scale which an ordinary educa- 
 tion enables its posseissor to reach. But is one 
 next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes 
 of the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, and the new 
 edition of the Byzantine historians, and the State 
 Trials, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Moreri, 
 and the Statutes at large, and the Gentleman's 
 Magazine from the beginning, each separately, and 
 in succession ? Such a course of reading would cer- 
 tainly do a good deal towards weakening the mind, 
 if it did not create absolute insanity. 
 
 But in all these just named, even in the Statutes 
 at large, and in thousands upon thousands of other 
 books, there is precious honey to be gathered by 
 the literary busy bee, who passes on from flower 
 to flower. In fact, "a course of reading," as it is 
 sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing 
 the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to 
 King Gharles spaniels to keep them small. Within 
 the span of life allotted to man there is but a certain 
 number of books that it is practicable to read 
 through, and it is not possible to make a selection 
 that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from 
 a free expansion over the republic of letters. The 
 being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the 
 perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of 
 mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even 
 
The Desultory Reader. i ii 
 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, luminous and compre- 
 hensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant 
 the narrative, will become deleterious mental food 
 if consumed straight through without variety. It 
 will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little 
 Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations, 
 or Sturm's Reflections for Every Day in the Year, 
 or Don Juan, or Ward's History of Stoke-upon- 
 Trent. 
 
 Isaac D'Israeli says, " Mr Maurice, in his animated 
 memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a fact 
 which may be deemed important in the life of a 
 literary man. He tells us, 'We have been just 
 informed that Sir William Jones invariably read 
 through every year the works of Cicero.' " What a 
 task ! one would be curious to know whether he 
 felt it less heavy in the twelve duodecimos of 
 Elzevir, or the nine quartos of the Geneva edition. 
 Did he take to it doggedly, as Dr Johnson says, 
 and read straight through according to the editor's 
 arrangement, or did he pick out the plums and take 
 the dismal work afterwards ? For the first year or 
 two of his task, he is not to be pitied perhaps about 
 the Offices, or the Dialogue on Friendship, or 
 Scipio's Dream, or even the capital speeches against 
 Verres and Catiline; but those tiresome Letters, and 
 the Tusculan Questions, and the De Natura ! It is 
 a pity he did not live till Angelo Mai found the De 
 Republica. What disappointed every one else 
 
112 His Functions. 
 
 might perhaps have commanded the admiration 
 of the great Orientalist. 
 
 But here follows, on the same authority, a more 
 wonderful performance still. " The famous Bourda- 
 loue reperused every year St Paul, St Chrysostom, 
 and Cicero." ^ The sacred author makes but a 
 slight addition to the bulk, but the works of St 
 Chrysostom are entombed in eleven folios. Bour- 
 daloue died at the age of seventy -two ; and if he 
 began his task at the age of twenty-two, he must 
 have done . it over fifty times. It requires nerves of 
 more than ordinary strength to contemplate such a 
 statement with equanimity. The tortures of the 
 classic Hades, and the disgusting inflictions courted 
 'by the anchorites of old, and the Brahmins of later 
 times, do not approach the horrors of such an act of 
 self-torture. 
 
 Of course any one ambitious of enlightening the 
 world on either the political or the literary history 
 of Rome at the commencement of the empire, must 
 be as thoroughly acquainted with every word of 
 Cicero as the writer of the Times leader on a critical 
 debate is with the newly-delivered speeches. The 
 more fortunate vagabond reader, too, lounging about 
 among the Letters, will open many little veins of 
 curious contemporary history and biography, which 
 he can follow up in Tacitus, Sallust, Caesar, and the 
 
 1 Curiosities of Literature, iii. 339. 
 
The Desultory Reader, 113 
 
 contemporary poets. Both are utterly different from 
 the stated-task reader, who has come under a vow to 
 work so many hours or get through so many pages 
 in a given time. They are drawn by their occupa- 
 tion, whether work or play ; he drives himself to his. 
 All such work is infliction, varying from the highest 
 point of martyrdom down to tasteless drudgery ; 
 and it is as profitless as other supererogatory in- 
 flictions, since the task-reader comes to look at his 
 -words without following out what they suggest, or 
 even absorbing their grammatical sense, much as 
 the stupid ascetics of old went through their peni- 
 tential readings, or as their representatives of the 
 present day, chiefly of the female sex, read "screeds 
 of good books," which they have not " the presump- 
 tion" to understand. The literary Bohemian is 
 sometimes to be pitied when his facility of character 
 exposes him to have a modification of this inflic- 
 tion forced upon him. This will occur when he 
 happens to be living in a house frequented by 
 "a good reader," who solenlnly devotes certain 
 hours to the reading of passages from the English 
 or French classics for the benefit of the company, 
 and becomes the mortal • enemiy of every guest 
 who absents himself from the torturing perfor- 
 mance. 1 . — 
 
 As to collectors, it is quite true that they do not 
 in general read their books successively straight 
 through, and the; practice of desultory reading, as 
 
 H 
 
114 ^^^ Functions. 
 
 it is sometimes termed, must be treated as part of 
 their case, and if a failing, one cognate with their 
 habit of collecting. They are notoriously addicted 
 to the practice of standing arrested on some round 
 of a ladder, where, having mounted up for some 
 certain book, they have by wayward chance fallen 
 upon another, in which, at the first opening, has 
 come up a passage which fascinates the finder as the 
 eye of the Ancient Mariner fascinated the wedding- 
 guest, and compels him to stand there poised on his 
 uneasy perch and read. Peradventure the matter 
 so perused suggests another passage in some other 
 volume which it will be satisfactory and interesting 
 to find, and so another and another search is made, 
 while the hours pass by unnoticed, and the day 
 seems all too short for the pursuit which is a luxury 
 and an enjoyment, at the same time that it fills the 
 mind with varied knowledge and wisdom. 
 
 The fact is that the book-hunter, if he be genuine, 
 and have his heart in his pursuit, is also a reader 
 and a scholar. Though, he may be more or less 
 peculiar, and even eccentric, in his style of reading, 
 there is a necessary intellectual thread of connection 
 running through the objects of his search which 
 predicates some acquaintance with the contents of 
 the accumulating volumes. Even although he pro- 
 fess a devotion to mere external features — the style 
 of binding, the cut or uncut leaves, the presence or 
 the absence of the gilding— yet the department, iw 
 
The Collector and the Scholar. 115 
 
 literature holds more or less connection with this 
 outward sign. He who has a passion for old editions 
 of the classics in vellum bindings— St'ephenses or 
 Aldines — ^will not be put off with a copy of Robinson 
 Crusoe or the Ready Reckoner, bound to match 
 and range with the contents of his shelves. Those 
 who so vehemently afiffect some external peculiarity 
 are the eccentric exceptions ; yet even' they have 
 some consideration for the contents of a -book as 
 well as for its coat. - ' j 
 
 a^fje Collector anti tj&e Scljolat. 
 
 ITHER the possession', or, in sorhe other 
 shape, access to a far larger Collection 
 of books than can be read through in a 
 lifetime, is in fact' an absolute condition 
 of intellectual culture and expansioil. The library 
 is the great iritellectuar stratification in which the 
 literary investigator works — examining its -external 
 features, or perhaps driving a ^' shaft through its 
 various layers— passing over this stratum as not 
 immediate to his purpose, ex^niining "that other 
 with the minute attention of microscopic investi- 
 gation. The geologist, the botanist, and' the zoolo-^ 
 gist, are not content to -receive one speCirhen after 
 another into their homes, to be thoroughly and 
 separately examined, eafch In- succession,' as 'novels 
 
ii6 His Functions., 
 
 readers go through the volumes of a circulating 
 library at twopence ,a-night — they have all the 
 world of nature before thern, and examine as their 
 scientific instincts : or their fancies suggest. . For all 
 inquir;ers, like pointers, have a sort of instinct, 
 sharpened^ by training and practice, the power and 
 acuteness of which astonish the unlearned. " Read- 
 ing with the fingers," as Basnage said of Bayle — 
 turning the pages rapidly over and alighting on the 
 exact spot where the thing wanted is to be found — 
 is far from a superficial faculty, as some deem it to 
 be, — it is the thoroughest test of active scholarship. 
 It was what- enabled Bayle to collect so many 
 flowers of literature, all so interesting, and yet all 
 found in corners 39 distant and obscure. -,, 
 
 In fact, there are subtle dexterities, accjuired by 
 sagacious experience in searching for valuable little 
 trinkets in great libraries, just as in other! pursuits. 
 A great deal of that appea.rance of dry drudgery 
 which excitesr, the ..pitying amazement of the by- 
 stander , is nimbly evaded. People acquire a sort of 
 instinct, picking the valuables out of the useless 
 vei;biage, or the ,passia,ges i:epeated, from former 
 authors. It, is soon, found Vfhftt a great deal of lit- 
 erature h^, been, the mere "pouring; out of one 
 bottle ipto another,'? as the Anatomist ,of melan- 
 choly, terms it. There are those terrible foHos of 
 the scholas.tip divines, tJie civilians,; and the canonists, 
 their nsajestic stream, of ■ central, print overflowing 
 
The Collector and the Scholar. 117 
 
 into rivulets of marginal notes sedgy with citations. 
 Compared with these, all the intellectual efforts of 
 our recent degenerate days seem the work of pig- 
 mies; and for any of us even to profess to read 
 all that some of those indomitable ' giants wrote, 
 would seem an audacious undertaking. But, in fact, 
 they were to a great extent solenin shams, since the 
 bulk of their work was merely that of the clerk 
 who copies page after page from other people's 
 writings. : 
 
 Surely these laborious old writers exhibited in 
 this matter the perfection of literary modesty. Far 
 from secretly pilfering, like the modern" plagiarist, it 
 was their great boast that they themselves had not 
 suggested the great thought or struck oiit the bril- 
 liant metaphor, but that it had been done -by some 
 one of old, and was folind in its legitimate place 
 — a book. I believe tha:t if oneJof these laborious 
 persons hatched a good idea of his own, he could 
 experience no peace of rfiirid until he found "it legiti- 
 mated by having passed through an earlier brain, 
 and that the' author who failed thus 'to establish a 
 paternity for his thought would sometimes auda- 
 ciously set dowri' some great name in his crowded 
 margin, in the hope that the imposition might pass 
 undiscovered.- Authorities, of course,' enjoy priority 
 according to their rank in literature! First come 
 Aristotle and Plato, with the other great classical 
 ancients; next the primitive fathers ;■ then^ Abailard, 
 
ii8 His Fwictwm^\\ ■; 
 
 Erigena, Peter Lombard, Ramus, Major, and the like. 
 If the matter be jurisprudence, we shall have Mar- 
 cianus, Papinianus,, Ulpianus, Hermogenianus, and 
 Tryphonius. to begin with ; and shall then pass 
 through the' straits of Bartplus and Baldus,- on to 
 Zuichefnus, r Sanchez, Brissonius, Ritterhusius, and 
 Gothofridus, If all( these, say the same thing, each 
 of the others copyirig it from the first who uttered 
 it, so much, the more valuable to the literary world 
 is deemed the idea that has been so amply backed — 
 iti'is like a vote by a, great maj.ority, or a strongly- 
 signed petition. There is only; one quarter in which 
 this] practice appears to be,; followed at the present 
 day — the copaposition, or the compilation, as it may 
 better be termed, of English law-books. ■ Having 
 selected [a, department to be expounded, the first 
 point istoset down all that Coke said about it two 
 centuries and a half ago, and all that Blackstone 
 said about it a century ago, with passages in due 
 subordination from inferior , authorities. To these 
 are -added the rubrics of some later cases, and' a title- 
 pagp and index, aiid so a new " authority " is added 
 to the array on the shelyesof the practitioner. 
 
 Whoever is wrell up to such repetitions has many 
 short cuts through literature, to enable him to find 
 the scattered originalities of which he may be in 
 search. Whether he be the enthusiastic investi- 
 gator resolved on exiiausting any great question, or 
 be a mere wayward potterer, picking up curiosities 
 
The Collector and the Scholar. 119 
 
 by the way for his own private intellectual museum, 
 the larger the collection at his disposal the better — 
 it cannot be too great.^ No one, therefore, can be 
 an ardent follower of such a pursuit without having 
 his own library. And yet it is probably among 
 those whose stock is the largest that we. shall find 
 
 1 I am quite aware that the authorities to tie. contrary are so high 
 as to make these sentiments partake of heresy, if not a sort of clas- 
 sical profanity. 
 
 " Studioruih' quoque, quae liberalissima impensa est, tamdiu ra- 
 tionem habet, quamdiu modum. Quo innumerabiles libros et bib- 
 lipthecas, quarum dominus vix tota vita indices perlegit? Onerat 
 discentem turba, non instruit : multoque satius est paucis te auctoribus 
 tradere, quam errare per multos. Quadraginta millia librorum Alex- 
 andrse arserunt : pulcherrimum regise opuleutise monumentum alius 
 laudaverit, sicut et Livius, qui elegantise regum cureeque egregium 
 id , opus ait fuisse.^ Non fuit elegantia- illud aut cura, sed studiosa 
 luxuria. Immo ne studiosa quidem : quoniam non in studium, sed 
 in spectaculum comjjaraverant : sictit plerisque, ignairis etiam ser- 
 vilium literarum libri non studiorum instrumenta, sed coenationum 
 omamenta sunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in 
 appaifatum. Hoiiestius, inquis, hoc te impensse,* quam ill Corinthia 
 pictasque tabulas effuderint. Vitiosum est ubique; quod nimium est. 
 Quid habes, cur ignoscas homini armaria, citro atque ebore captanti, 
 corpora conquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum, et 
 inter tot millia librorum oscitantf,' cui voluminum suorum frontes 
 maxime placent titulique ? Apud" desidiosissimos ergo *idebis quic- 
 quid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenus exstructa loculamenta ; 
 jam eriim inter balnearia et thermas bibliotheca quoque ut necessarium 
 domus ornamentum expolitur. Ignoscerem plane, si studiorum nimia 
 cupidine oriretur : nunc ista conquisita, cum imaginibus suis descripta 
 et sacrorum opera ingeniorum in speciem et cultum parietum compar- 
 antur." — Seneca, De Tranquillitate, c. ix. 
 
 There are some good hits here, which would tell at the present 
 day. Seneea is reported to have had a large library ; it is certain 
 that he possessed and fully enjoyed enormous wealth ; and it is amus- 
 ing to find this commendation of literary moderation following on a 
 well-known passive in praise of parsimonious living, and of the good 
 
I20 His Functions. 
 
 the most frequent visitors to the British Museum 
 and the State Paper Office; perhaps, for what can- 
 not be found even there, to the/ Imperial , Library: 
 at Paris, or the collections of some of the German 
 universities. 
 
 To every man of our Saxon race endowed with 
 full health and strength, there is committed, as if it 
 were the price he pays for these blessings, the cus- 
 tody of a restless demon, for which he is doomed to 
 find ceaseless excitement, either in honest work, or 
 some less profitable or more mischievous occupation. 
 Countless have been the projects devised by the wit 
 of man to open up for this fiend fields of exertion 
 great enough for the absorption of its tireless ener- 
 gies, and none of them is more hopeful than the 
 great world of books, if the demon is docile enough 
 to be coaxed into it. Then will its erratic restless- 
 ness be sobered by the immensity of the^ sphere of 
 exertion, and the consciousness that, however vehe- 
 mently and however long it may struggle, the re- 
 sources set before it; will not be exhausted when the 
 life to which it is attached shall have faded away ; 
 and hence, instea,d of dreading the languor of inac- 
 tion, it will have to summon all its resources of 
 
 example set by Diogenes. Modem scepticism about the practical 
 stoicism of the ancients is surely brought to a climax by a living 
 writer, M. Fournier, who maintains that the so-called tub of Diogenes 
 was in reality a commodious little dwelling — neat but not gorgeous. 
 It must be supposed, then, that he spoke of his tub much as an 
 English country gentleman does of his "box." 
 
The Collector and the Scholar. 121 
 
 promptness and activity to get over any consider- 
 able portion of the ground within the short space 
 allotted to the life of man. 
 
 That the night cometh when no man can work, 
 haunts those who have gone so far in their in- 
 vestigations, and draws their entire energies into 
 their pursuit with an exclusiveness which astonishes 
 the rest of the world. But the energies might be 
 more unfitly directed. Looki back, for instance^ 
 no great distance back — on the great high-priest of 
 our national school of logic and metaphysics, — he 
 who gathered up its divers rays, and, helping them 
 with light from all other sources of human know- 
 ledge, concentrated the whole into one powerful 
 focus. No one could look at the massive brow, .the 
 large, full, lustrous eyes, the firm compressed lip, 
 without seeing that the demon of energy was power- 
 ful within him, and had it not found work in the 
 conquest of all human learning, must have sought it 
 elsewhere. You see in him the nature that must 
 follow up all inquiries, not by languid solicitation 
 but hot pursuit.' His coriquestsas he goes are rapid 
 but complete. Summing up the thousands upon 
 thousands of volumes, upon all matters of human 
 study andi in many languages,- which he has passed 
 through his hands, ypii think he has merely dipped 
 into them or skimmed them, or in some other shape 
 put them t6 superficial use. You are wropg: he 
 has found his way at once to the very heart of the 
 
122 His Functions. 
 
 living matter of each one ; between it and him there 
 are henceforth no secrets.^ 
 
 Descending, however, from so high a sphere, we 
 shall find that the collector and the scholar are so 
 closely connected with each other that it is diiificult 
 to draw the line of separation between them. As 
 dynamic philosophers say, they act and react on 
 each other. The possession of certain books has 
 made men acquainted with certain pieces of know- 
 ledge which they would not otherwise have acquired. 
 It is, in fact, one of the amiable weaknesses of the 
 
 ^ How a nature endowed with powerful impulses like these might 
 be led along with them into a totally diflFerent groove, I am reminded 
 by a traditionary anecdote of student life. A couple of college chums 
 are under the impression that their motions are watched by an in- 
 quisitive tutor, who for the occasion may be called Dr Fusby. They 
 become both exceeding wroth, and the more daring of the two en^ 
 gages on the first opportunity to "settle the fellow." They are 
 occupied' in ardent colloquy, whether on the predicates or other 
 matters it imports not, when a sudden pause in the conversation 
 enables them to be aware that there is a human being breathing close, 
 on the other side of the " oak." The light is extinguished, the door 
 opetied, and a terrific blow from a strong and scientifically levelled 
 fist hurls the listener down-stairs to the next landing- placer, from 
 which resting-place he hears thundered after him for his information,, 
 " If you 4ome back again, you scoundrel, I'll put you into the hands 
 of Dr Fusby." From that source, however, no one had much to 
 dread for some considerable period, during which the Doctor was 
 confined to his bedroom by serious indisposition. It refreshed the 
 recollection of this anecdote, years after I had heard it, and many 
 years after, the date attributed to it, to have seen a dignified scholar 
 make what appeared to me an infinitesimally narrow escape from 
 sharing the fate of Dr Fusby, having indfeed just escaped it by 
 satisfactorily proving to a hasty philosopher that he was not the, 
 party guilty of keeping a certain copy of Occam on the sentences of 
 Peter Lombard out of his reach. 
 
The Collector and the Scholar. 123 
 
 set, to take a luxurious glance at a new acquisition. 
 It is an outcropping of what remains in the man, of 
 the affection towards a new toy that flourished in 
 the heart of the boy. Whether the right reverend 
 or right honourable Thomas has ever taken his new- 
 bought Baskerville to bed with him, as the Tommy 
 that was has taken his humming-top,; is a sort of 
 case which has not actually come under observation 
 in the course of my own clinical inquiries into the 
 malady; but I am ipot prepared to state that it 
 never occurred, and can attest many instances where 
 the recent purchase, has kept the owner from bed 
 far on in the night. In this incidental manner is 
 a general notion sometjnies fornied of the true ob- 
 ject and tenor of a book, which is retained in the 
 mind, stored for use, and capable of being refreshed 
 and strengthened whenever it is wanted. In the 
 skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious 
 work in the great conflict, of the Roxburghe sale, 
 it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated, 
 on the authority of the great historian of the war, 
 that Earl Spencer, the victor, "put each volume 
 under his coat, and walked home with them in all 
 the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph." ^ 
 
 1 The author, from a vitiated reminiscence, at first made the unpar- 
 donable blunder of attributing this' touching trait of nature to the noble 
 purchaser of the Valderfaer Boccaccio, For this, as not only a mistake, 
 but in some measure an imputation on the tailor who could have 
 made for his lordship pockets of dimensions so abnormal, I received due 
 castigation froni an eminent practical man in the book-hunting field. 
 
124 His Functions. 
 
 Ere next morning he would know a good deal more 
 about the contents of the volumes than he did 
 before. 
 
 Wit ©leaner anli l&ia l^arfaeat. 
 
 HERE are sometimes agreeable and 
 sometimes disappointing surprises in 
 encountering the intferiors of books.' 
 The title-page is not always a distinct 
 intimation of what is to follow. Whoever dips into 
 the Novelise of Leo, or the Extravagantes, as edited 
 by Gothofridus, will hot find either of them to con- 
 tain matter of a light, airy, and amusing kind. Dire 
 have been the disappointments incurred by The. 
 Diversions of Purley— one of the toughest books in 
 existence. It has even cast a shade over one of our 
 best story-books, The Diversions of Hollycot, by the 
 late Mrs Johnston. The great scholar, Leo AUatius, 
 who broke his heart when he lost the special pen 
 with which he wrote during forty years, published 
 a work called Apiss Urbanse — Urban Bees. It is a 
 biographical work, devoted to the great men who 
 flourished during the Pontificate of Urban VIII., 
 whose family carried bees on their coat- armorial. 
 The History of New, York, by Diedrich Knicker- 
 bocker, has sorely perplexed certain strong-minded 
 women, who read nothing but genuine history. The 
 book which, in the English translation, goes by the 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 125 
 
 name of Marmontel's Moral Tales, has been found 
 to give disappointment to parents in search of the 
 absolutely correct and improving ; and Edgeworth's 
 Essay on Irish Bulls has been counted money abso- 
 lutely thrown away by eminent breeders. There is 
 a sober-looking volume,, generally bound in sheep, 
 called MacEwen on the Types — a theological book, 
 in fact, treating of the, types of Christianity in the 
 old law. Concerning it, a friend once told me that, 
 at an auction, he had seen it vehemently competed 
 for by an acute-looking citizen artisan and a burly 
 farmer from the hills. The liatter, the successful 
 party, tossed the lot to the other, who might have 
 
 it and be d d to it, he "thought it was a buik 
 
 upo' the tups," a word which, it may be' necessary 
 to inform the unlearned reader, means rams : but 
 the other competitor, also; declined the lot; he was 
 a compositor or journeyman printer, and expected to 
 find the book honestly devoted to those tools of his 
 trade of which . it , professed to treat. Mr Ruskin, 
 having formed the pleasant little joriginal design of 
 abolishing the difference between Popery and Pro- 
 testantism, through the persuasive influence of his 
 own special eloquence, set forth his. views upon the 
 matter in a book which he termed a ' treatise " on 
 the construction of sheepfolds." I have been in- 
 formed that this work had a considerable run among 
 the muirland farmers, whose reception of it was not 
 flattering. I think I could also point to a public 
 
126 His Functions. 
 
 library in England, the keeper of which justified his 
 high character for classification and arrangement by 
 binding up this production between "suggestions 
 as to eating off turnips with stock " and " an in- 
 quiry concerning the best materials for smeering;" 
 Peignot discusses, by the, way, with his usual scien- 
 tific precision,: as a department in Bibliography, 
 " Titres de livres qui ont induit en erreiir des Biblio- 
 thecaires et des Libraires peu instruits." After men- 
 tioning a treatise De Missis Dominicis, which was 
 not a religious book; as it might seem, but an in- 
 quiry into the functions of certain officers sent into 
 the provinces by the emperors and the early kings of 
 France, he comes neater to our ;own door in telling 
 how "un ignorant avait place le TraiU des Fluxions 
 de Maclaurin avec les livres de pathologie, prenant 
 pour une maladie les fluxions mathdmatiques." ^ 
 
 Logic has not succeeded as yet in discovering 
 the means of framing a title-page which shall be 
 exhaustive, as it is termed, and constitute an in- 
 fallible finger-post to the nature of a book. From 
 the beginning of all literature it may be said that 
 man has been contintially struggling after this 
 achievement, and struggling in vain,- and it is a 
 humiliating fact, that the greatest adepts, abandon- 
 ing the effort in despaiir, have taken refuge in some 
 fortuitous word, which has served their purpose 
 
 ^ Diet, de Bibliologie, i. 391. 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 127 
 
 better than the best results of their logical analysis. 
 The book which has been the supreme ruler of the 
 intellect in this kind of work, stands forth as an 
 illustrious example of failure. To those writings of 
 Aristotle which dealt with mind, his editing pupils 
 could give no name,— therefore they called them the 
 things after the physics — the metaphysics ; and that 
 fortuitous title the great arena of thought to which 
 they refer still bears, despite of efforts to supply 
 an apter designation in such words as Psychology, 
 Pneumatology, and Transcendentalism. 
 
 Writhing under this nightmare kind of difficulty, 
 men in later times tried to achieve completeness by 
 lengthening the title-page; but they found that 
 the longer they made it, the more it wriggled itself 
 into devious tracks, and the farther did it depart 
 from a comprehensive name. Some title-pages in 
 old folios make about half an hour's jeading.^ One 
 
 ^ A good modern specimen of a lengthy title-pa^e may be found 
 in one of the books appropriate to the matter in hand, by the diligent 
 French bibliographer Peignot : — 
 
 " DiCTlONNAiRE RaisonniS de BtBLiOLOGlE : contenant — imo, 
 L'explication des principaux termes relatifs k la bibliographie, a Tart 
 typographique, a la diplomatique, aux langues, aux archives, aux 
 manuscrits, aux m^dailles, aux antiquites, &c. ; 2do, Des notices 
 historiques detaillees sur les principales biblioth^ues anciennes et 
 modernes ; sur les differentes sectes philosophiques ; sur les plus 
 celfebres imprimeurs, avec une indication des rtieilleures Editions 
 sorties de leurs presses, et sur les bibliographes, avec la liste de 
 leurs ouvrages ; 3tio, enfin, L'expositibn des diff&entes systfemes 
 bibliographiques, &c., — ouvr^e utile aux bibliothecaires, archivistes, 
 imprimeurs, libraires, &c. Par G. Peignot, Biblioth^caire de la 
 
128 His Functions. 
 
 advantage, however, was found in these lengthy 
 titles — they afforded to controversialists a means of 
 condensing the pith of their malignity towards each 
 other, and throwing it, as it were, right in the face 
 of the adversary. It will thus often happen that 
 the controversialist states his case first in the title- 
 page ; he then gives it at greater length in the 
 introduction ; again, perhaps, in a preface ; a third 
 time in an analytical form, through means of a table 
 of contents ; after all this skirmishing, he brings up 
 his heavy columns in the body of-the book ; and if 
 he be very skilful, he may let fly a few Parthian 
 arrows from the index. 
 
 Haute-S^6ne, membre-correspondant de la Soci^te libre d'emulation 
 du Haut-Rhin. IndocH discant, ei ament meminisse periii, Paris, 
 An X. 1802." 
 
 Here follows a rival specimen selected from the same department 
 of literature : — 
 
 " BiBLIOGRAPHIE INSTRUCTIVE; OU, TrAIT£ DE LA CONNAIS- 
 
 SANCE DES LiVRES Rares et Singuliers ; contenant un catalogue 
 raisonn^ de la plus grande partie de ces livres precieux, qui ont paru 
 successivement dans la r^publique des lettres, depuis I'invention de 
 I'imprimerie jusqu'a nos jours ; avec des notes sur la diflF&ence et la 
 rarete de leurs Editions, et des remarques sur I'origine de cette rarete 
 actuelle, et son degre plus ou moins considerable ; la maniere de 
 distinguer les Editions originales, d'avec les contrefaites ; avec une 
 description typographique particulifere, du compost de ces rares 
 volumes, au moyen de laquelle il sera ais4 de reconnoitre facilement 
 les exemplaires, ou mutiles en partie, ou absolument imparfaitSj qui 
 s'en rencontrent journellement dans le commerce, et de Ies:distinguer 
 siiremelit de ceux qui seront exactement complets dans toutes leurs 
 parties. Dispose par ordre de matieres et de facultes, suivant le sys- 
 time bibliographique gfe&alement adopts ; avec une table gfo^rale 
 des auteurs, et uil syst^me complet de bibliographie choisie. Par 
 Guillaume-Franfois de.Bftre le jeune, Libraire de Paris." 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 129 
 
 It is a remarkable thing that a man should have 
 been imprisoned, and had his ears cut off, and be- 
 come one of the chief causes of our great civil wars, 
 all along of an unfortunate word or two in the last 
 page of a book containing more than a thousand. 
 It was as far down in his very index as W that the 
 great offence in Prynne's Histrio-Mastix was found, 
 under the head " Women actors." The words which 
 follow are rather unquotable in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury ; but it was a very odd compliment to Queen 
 Henrietta Maria to presume that these words must 
 refer to her — ^something like Hugo's sarcasm that, 
 when the Parisian police overhear any one use the 
 terms " ruffian " and " scoundrel," they say, " You 
 must be speaking of the Emperor." The Histrio- 
 Mastix was, in fact, so big and so complex a thicket 
 of confusion, that it had been licensed without ex- 
 amination by the licenser, who perhaps trusted that 
 the world would have as little inclination to peruse 
 it as he had. The calamitous discovery of the sting 
 in the tail must surely have been made by a Hebrew 
 or an Oriental student, who mechanically looked for 
 the commencement of the Histrio-Mastix where he 
 would have looked for that of a Hebrew Bible. 
 Successive licensers had given the work a sort of 
 go-by, but, reversing the order of the sibylline books, 
 it became always larger and larger, until it found a 
 licenser who, with the notion that he "must put 
 a stop to this," passed it without examination. It 
 
 I 
 
130 His Functions.. 
 
 got a good deal of reading immediately afterwards, 
 especially from Attorney-General Noy, who asked 
 the Star-Chamber what it had to do with the im- 
 morality of stage -plays to exclaim that church- 
 music is not the noise of men, but rather "a bleating 
 of brute beasts — choristers bellow the tenor as it 
 were oxen, bark a counterpoint as a kennel of dogs, 
 roar out a treble like a set of bulls, grunt out a bass 
 as it were a number of hogs." But Mr Attorney 
 took surely a more nice distinction when he made 
 a charge against the author in these terms : " All 
 stage-players he terms them rogues : in this he doth 
 falsify the very Act of ParHament; for unless they 
 go abroad, they are not rogues." 
 
 In the very difficulties in the way of framing a 
 conclusive and exhaustive title, there is a principle 
 of compensation. It clears literature of walls and 
 hedgerows, and makes it a sort of free forest. To 
 the desultory reader, not following up any special 
 inquiry, there are delights in store in a devious rum- 
 mage through miscellaneous volumes, as there are 
 to the lovers of adventure and the picturesque in 
 any district of country not desecrated by the tourist's 
 guide-books. Many readers will remember the plea- 
 sant little narrative appended to Croker's edition of 
 Boswell, of Johnson's talk at Cambridge with that 
 extensive book-hunter, Dr Richard Farmer, who 
 boasted of the possession of "plenty of all such read- 
 ing as was never read," and scandalised his visitor by 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 131 
 
 quoting from Markham's Book of Armorie a passage 
 applying the technicalities of heraldry and genealogy 
 to the most sacred mystery of Christianity. One 
 who has not tried it may ,fprm an estimate of this 
 kind of pursuit from Charles Lamb's Specimens of 
 the Writings of FuUen No doubt, as thus trans- 
 planted, these have not the same fresh relish which 
 they have for the wanderer who finds them in their 
 own native wilderness, yet, like the specimens in a 
 conservatory or a museum, they are examples of what 
 may be found in the place they have come from. 
 
 But there are passages worth finding in books less 
 promising, Those who potter in libraries, especially 
 if they have courage to meddle with big volumes, 
 sometimes find curious things — for all gems are not 
 collected in caskets. In searching through the solid 
 pages of Hatsell's Precedents in Parliament for 
 something one doesn't find, it is some consolation to 
 alight on such a precedent as the following, set forth 
 as likely to throw light on the mysterious process 
 called " naming a member." " A story used to be 
 told of Mr Onslow, which those who ridiculed his 
 strict observance of forms were fond of repeating, 
 that as he often, upon a member's not attending to 
 him, but persisting in any disorder, threatened to 
 name him — 'Sir, sir, I must name you '-r— on being 
 asked what would be the consequence of putting 
 that threat in execution and naming a member, he 
 answered, ' The Lord in heaven knows.' " 
 
132 His Functions. 
 
 In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress 
 of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written 
 by a native of that country, after a good deal of 
 tedious and vexatious matter, the reader's compla- 
 cency is restored by an artless statement how an 
 eminent person "abandoned the errors of the Church 
 of Rome, and adopted those of the Church of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 So also a note I have preserved of a brief passage 
 descriptive of the happy conclusion of a duel runs 
 thus : — 
 
 "The one party received a slight wound in the 
 breast ; the other fired in the air — and so the matter 
 terminated." ^ 
 
 Professional law-books and reports are not gene- 
 rally esteemed as light reading, yet something may 
 be made even of them at a pincL Menage wrote a 
 
 1 This passage has been quoted and read by many people quite 
 unconscious of the arrant bull it contains. Indeed, an eminent 
 London newspaper, to which the word Bull cannot be unfamihar, 
 tells me, in reviewing my first edition, that it is no bull at all, but 
 a plain statement of fact, and boldly quotes it in confirmation of this 
 opinion. There could be no better testimony to its being endowed 
 with the subtle spirit of the genuine article. Irish bulls, as it has 
 been said of constitutions, "are not made — they grow," and that only 
 in their own native soil. Those manufactured for the stage and the 
 anecdote-books betray their artificial origin in their breadth and ob- 
 viousness. The real bull carries one with it at first by an imper- 
 ceptible confusion and misplacement of ideas in the mind where it 
 has arisen, and it is not until you reason back that you see it. Horace 
 Walpole used to say that the best of all bulls, from its thorough and 
 grotesque confusion of identity, was that of the man who complained 
 of having been "changed at nurse;" and perhaps he is right. An 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 133 
 
 book upon the amenities of the civil law, which does 
 anything but fulfil its promise. There are many 
 much better to be got in the most unlikely corners ; 
 as, where a great authority on copyright begins a 
 narrative of a case in point by saying, " One Moore 
 had written a book which he called Irish Melodies ;" 
 and again, in an action of trespass on the case, "The 
 plaintiff stated in his declaration that he was the 
 true and only proprietor of the copyright of a book 
 of poems entitled The Seasons, by James Thomson." 
 I cannot lay hands at this moment on the index 
 which refers to Mr Justice Best — he was the man, 
 as far as memory serves, but never mind. A searcher 
 after something or other, running his eye down the 
 index through letter B, arrived at the reference 
 "Best — Mr Justice — his great mind." Desiring to be 
 better acquainted with the particulars of this asser- 
 
 Irishman, and he only, can handle this confusion of ideas so as to 
 make it a more powerful instrument of repartee than the logic of 
 another man : take, for instance, the beggar who, when imploring a 
 dignified clergyman for charity, was charged not to take the sacred 
 name in vain, and answered, "Is it in vain, then? and whose fault 
 is that ? " I have doubts whether the saying attributed to Sir Boyle 
 Roche about being in two places at once ' ' like a bird, " is the genuine 
 article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than Sir 
 Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among 
 some Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the 
 warrior poet, in which he says about two contradictory military in- 
 structions, "It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in 
 execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once, 
 like a bird." A few copies' of these letters were printed for the use 
 of the Abbotsford Club. This letter of Strowan's occurs in p. 92. 
 
134 His Functions. 
 
 tion, he turned up the page referred to, and there 
 found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr Justice Best 
 said he had a great mind to commit the witness for 
 prevarication." 
 
 The following case is curiously suggestive of the 
 state of the country round London in the days when 
 much business was done on the road : — A bill in 
 the Exchequer was brought by Everett against a 
 certain Williams, setting forth that the complainant 
 was skilled in dealing in certain commodities, " such 
 as plate, rings, watches, &c.," and that the defendant 
 desired to enter into partnership with him. They 
 entered into partnership accordingly, and it was 
 agreed that they should provide the necessary plant 
 for the business of the firm--— such as horses, saddles, 
 bridles, &c. (pistols not mentioned) — and should 
 participate in the expenses of the road. The dec- 
 laration then proceeds, "And your orator and the 
 said Joseph Williams proceeded jointly with good 
 success in the said business on Hounslow Heath, 
 where they dealt with a gentleman for a gold watch; 
 and afterwards the said Joseph Williams told your 
 orator that Finchley, in the county of Middlesex, 
 was a good and convenient place to deal in, and that 
 commodities were very plenty at Finchley aforesaid, 
 and it wfould be almost all clear gain to them ; that 
 they went accordingly, and dealt with several gentle- 
 men for divers watches, rings, swords, canes, hats, 
 cloaks, horses, bridles, saddles, and other things; 
 
^The Gleaner and his Harvest. 135 
 
 that about a month afterwards the said Joseph Wil- 
 liams informed your orator that there was a gentle- 
 man at Blackheath who had a good horse, saddle, 
 bridle, watch, sword, cane, and other things to dis- 
 pose of, which, he believed, might be had for little 
 or no money ; that they accordingly went, and met 
 with the said gentleman, and, after some small dis- 
 course, they dealt for the said horse, &c. That your 
 orator and the said Joseph Williams continued their 
 joint dealings together in several places — viz., at 
 Bagshot, in Surrey ; Salisbury, in Wiltshire ; Hamp- 
 stead, in Middlesex ; and elsewhere, to the amount 
 of ;£'2000 and upwards." ^ 
 
 Here follows a brief extract from a law-paper, for 
 the full understanding of which it has to be kept in 
 view that the pleader, being an officer of the law 
 who hks been prevented from executing his warrant 
 by threats, requires, as a matter of form, to swear 
 that he was really afraid that the ' threats would 
 be carried into execution. 
 
 "Farther depones, that the said A. B. said that 
 if deponent did not immediately take himself off 
 he would pitch him (the deponent) down stairs — 
 which the deponent verily believes he would have 
 done. 
 
 " Farther depones, that, time and pl^ce aforesaid, 
 
 ^ This case has been often referred to in law-books, but I have 
 never met with so full a statement of tjie contents of the declaration 
 as in the Retrospective Review (vol. v. p. 8l). 
 
136 His Functions. 
 
 the said A. B. said to deponent, ' If you come an- 
 other step nearer I'll kick you to hell ' — which the 
 deponent verily believes he would have done." ^ 
 
 I know not whether " lay gents," as the Eng- 
 lish bar used to term that portion of mankind 
 who had not been called to, itself, can feel any 
 pleasure in wandering over the case -books, and 
 picking up the funny technicalities scattered over 
 them ; but I can attest from experience that, to 
 a person trained in one set of technicalities, the 
 pottering about among those of a different parish 
 is exceedingly exhilarating. When one has been 
 at work among interlocutors, suspensions, tacks, 
 wadsets, multiplepoindings, adjudications in im- 
 plement, assignations, infeftments, homologations, 
 charges of horning, quadriennium utiles, vicious in- 
 tromissions, decrees of putting to silence, conjoint 
 actions of declarator and reduction-improbation, — 
 the brain, being saturated with these and their 
 kindred, becomes refreshed by crossing the border 
 of legal nomenclature, and getting among common 
 recoveries, demurrers, Quarei impedits, tails -male, 
 tails-female, docked tails, latitats, avowrys, nihil 
 
 ^ It is curious to observe how bitter a prejudice Themis has against 
 her own humbler ministers. Most of the bitterest legal jokes are 
 at the expense of the class who have to carry the law into effect. 
 Take, for instance, the case of the bailiff who had been compelled 
 to swallow a writ, and, rushing into Lord Norbury's court to pro- 
 claim the indignity done to justice in his person, was met by the 
 expression of a hope that the writ was " not returnable in this court." 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 137 
 
 dicits, cestui que trusts, estopels, essoigns, darrein 
 presentments, emparlances, mandamuses, qui tams, 
 capias ad faciendums or ad withernam, and so forth. 
 After vexatious interlocutors in which the Lord 
 Ordinary has refused interim interdict, but passed 
 the bill to try the question, reserving expenses ; or 
 has repelled the dilatory defences, and ordered the 
 case to the roll for debate on the peremptory de- 
 fences ; or has taken to avizandum, ; or has ordered 
 re-revised condescendence and answers on the con- 
 joiilt probation ; or has sisted diligence till caution 
 be found judicio sisti ; or has done nearly all these 
 things together in one breath, — it is like the con- 
 solation derived from meeting a companion in ad- 
 versity, to find that at Westminster Hall, "In fer- 
 medon the tenant having demanded a view after 
 a general imparlance, the demandant issued a writ 
 of petit cape — held irregular." 
 
 Also, "If, after nulla bona returned, a testatum 
 be entered upon the roll, quod devastavit, a writ of 
 inquiry shall be directed to the sheriff", and if by 
 inquisition the devastavit be found and returned, 
 there shall be a scire facias quare executio non de 
 propriis bonis, and if upon that the sheriff returns 
 scire feci, the executor or administrator may appear 
 and traverse the inquisition." 
 
 Again, "If the record of Nisi prius be a die 
 Sancti Trinitatis in tres Septimanas nisi a 27 June, 
 prius venerit, which is the day after the day in 
 
138 His Functions. 
 
 Bank, which was mistaken for a die Sancti Mich- 
 aelis, it shall not be amended." 
 
 It is interesting to observe that at one end of the 
 island a panel means twelve perplexed agriculturists, 
 who, after haVing taken an oath to act according to 
 their consciences, are starved till they are of one 
 mind on some complicated question ; while, at the 
 other end, the same term applies to the criminal on 
 whose conduct they are going to give their verdict 
 It would be difficult to decide which is the more 
 happy application ; but it must be admitted that 
 we are a great way behind the South in our power 
 of selecting a nomenclature immeasurably distant 
 in meaning from the thing signified. We speak 
 of a bond instead of a mortgage, and we adjudge 
 where we ought to foreclose. We have no such 
 thing as chattels, either personal or real.^ If you 
 want to know the English law of book-debts, you 
 
 ^ A late venerable practitioner in a humble department of the law, 
 who wanted to write a book, and was recommended to try his hand 
 at a translation of Latin law-ipaxims as a thing much wanted, was 
 considerably puzzled by the maxim, "Catella realis non potest 
 legari ; " nor was he quite relieved when he turned up his Ainsworth 
 and found that catella means a "little puppy." There was nothing 
 for it, however, but obedience, so that he had to give currency to 
 the remarkable principle of law, that "a genuine little whelp cannot 
 be left in legacy." He also translated "messis sequitur sementem," 
 with a fine simplicity, into "the harvest foUoVfs the seed-time;" 
 and "actor sequitur forum rei," he made "the agent must be in 
 court when the case is going on." Copies, of the book containing 
 these gems are exceedingly rare, some malicious person having put 
 the author up to their absurdity. 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 139 
 
 will have to look for it under the head of Assump- 
 sit in a treatise on Nisi Prius, while a lawyer of 
 Scotland would unblushingly use the word itself, 
 and put it in his index. So, too, our bailments are 
 merely spoken of as bills, notes, or whatever a mer- 
 chant might call them. Our garneshee is merely a 
 common debtor. Baron and feme we call husband 
 and wife, and coverture we term marriage. 
 
 Still, for the honour of our country, it is possible 
 to find a few technicalities which would do no dis- 
 credit to our neighbours. Where one of them would 
 bring a habeas corpus — a name felicitously expres- 
 sive, according to the English method, of civil 
 liberty — an inhabitant of the North, in the same 
 unfortunate position, would take to running his 
 letters. We have no turbary, or any other ease- 
 ment ; but, to compensate us, we have thirlage, out- 
 sucken multures, insucken multures, and dry mul- 
 tures ; as also we have a soumin and roumin, as 
 any one who has been so fortunate as to hear Mr 
 Outram's pathetic lyric on that interesting right of 
 pasturage will remember, in conjunction with pleas- 
 ing associations. To do the duty of a. duces tecum 
 we have a diligence against havers. We have no 
 capias ad faciendum (abbreviated cap ad fac), nor 
 have we the fieri facias, familiarly termed fi fa, but 
 we have perhaps as good in the in meditatione 
 fugae warrant, familiarly abbreviated into fugie, as 
 poor Peter Peebles termed it, when he burst in 
 
140 His Functions. 
 
 upon the party assembled at Justice Foxley's, ex- 
 claiming, " Is't here they sell the fugie warrants ? " ^ 
 
 I am not sure but, in the very mighty heart of 
 all legal formality and technicality — the Statutes 
 at large — some amusing as well as instructive things 
 might be found. Let me offer a guiding hint to the 
 investigator ambitious of entering on this arduous 
 field. The princely collector will, of course, put 
 himself in possession of the magnificent edition of 
 the Statutes issued by the Record Commission, but 
 let not the unprofessional person who must look 
 short of this imagine that he will find satisfaction 
 in the prim pages of a professional lawyer's modern 
 edition. These, indeed, are not truly the Statutes 
 at large, but rather their pedantic and conven- 
 tional descendants, who have taken out letters of 
 administration to their wild ancestors. They omit 
 all the repealed Statutes in which these ancestors 
 might be found really at large sowing their wild 
 
 ' There are two old methods of paying rent in Scotland — Kane 
 and Carriages ; the one being rent in kind from the farmyard, the 
 other being an obligation to furnish the landlord with a certain 
 amount of carriage, or rather cartage. In one of the vexed cases 
 of domicile, which had found its way into the House of Lords, a 
 Scotch lawyer argued that a landed gentleman had shown his de- 
 termination, to abandon his residence in Scotland by having given 
 up his "kane and carriages." It is said that the argument went 
 further than he expected — the English laviryers admitting that it was 
 indeed very strong evidence of an intended change of domicile when 
 the laird not only ceased to keep a carriage, but actually divested 
 hitaself of his walking-cane. 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 141 
 
 oats, and consequently all that would give them 
 interest and zest for those in search of such qualities. 
 It is not, for instance, in the decorous quartos of 
 Roughhead, but in the hoary blackletter folios, look- 
 ing older than they are — for blackletter adhered 
 to the Statutes after it had been cast off by other 
 literature — that one will find such specimens of 
 ancestral legislation as the following : — 
 
 Attorneys. — (33 Henry VI. c. 7.) 
 
 " Item : Whereas of time not long past, within 
 the city of Norwich, and the counties of Norfolk 
 and Suffolk, there were no more but six or eight 
 atturneys at the most coming to the King's Courts, 
 in which time great tranquillity reigned in the said 
 city and counties, little trouble or vexation was 
 made by untrue or foreign suits, and now so it is, 
 that in the said city and counties there be four score 
 atturneys or more, the more part of them having no 
 other thing to live upon, but only his gain by the 
 practise of atturneyship : and also the more part of 
 them not being of sufficient knowledge to be an 
 atturney, which come to every fair, market, and 
 other places, where is any assembly of people, ex- 
 horting, procuring, moving, and inciting the people 
 to attempt untrue and foreign suits for small tres- 
 passes, little offences, and small sums of debt, whose 
 actions be triable and determinable in Court Barons, 
 
142 His Functions. 
 
 whereby proceed many suits, more of evil will and 
 malice than of truth of the things to the manifold 
 vexations and no little damage of the inhabitants 
 of the said city and counties, and all to the per- 
 petual diminution of all the Court Barons in the 
 said counties, unless convenient remedy be provided 
 in this behalf The foresaid Lord the King, con- 
 sidering the -premises, by the advice, assent, and 
 authority aforesaid, hath ordained and stablished 
 that at all times, from hencefort, there shall be but 
 six common atturneys in the said county of Norfolk, 
 and six common atturneys in the said county of 
 Suffolk, and two common atturneys in the said city 
 of Norwich, to be atturneys in the Courts of Re- 
 cord." 
 
 Fustian. — (ii Henry VII. c. 27.) 
 
 " Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtilty and 
 undue sleights and means, have deceivably imagined 
 and contrived instruments of iron, with the which 
 irons, in the most highest and secret places of their 
 houses, they strike and draw the said irons over the 
 said fustians unshorn ; by means whereof they pluck 
 off both the nap and cotton of the same fustians, 
 and break commonly both the ground and threeds 
 in sunder, and after by crafty sleeking, they make 
 the same fustians to appear to the common people 
 fine, whole, and sound : and also they raise up the 
 
The Gleaner and kis Harvest. 143 
 
 cotton of such fustians, and then take a light candle 
 and set it in the fustian burning, which sindgeth and 
 burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from 
 the one end to the other down to the hard threeds, 
 in stead of shering, and after that put them in 
 colour, and so subtilly dress them that their false 
 work cannot be espied without it be by workmen 
 sherers of such fustians, or by the wearers of the 
 same, and so by such subtilties, whereas fustians 
 made in doublets or put to any other use, were 
 wont and might endure the space of two years and 
 more, will not endure now whole by the space of 
 four months scarcely, to the great hurt of the poor 
 commons and serving men of this realm, to the 
 great damage, loss, and deceit of the King's true 
 subjects, buyers and wearers of such fustians," &c. 
 
 The history of statute -making is not absolutely 
 divested of pleasantry. The best tradition connected 
 with it at present arising in the memory is not to 
 be brought to book, and must be given as a tradi- 
 tion of the time when George III. was king. Its 
 tenor is, that a bill which proposed, as the punish- 
 ment of an offence, to levy a certain pecuniary 
 penalty, one half thereof to go to his Majesty and 
 the other half to the informer, was altered in com- 
 mittee, in so far that, when it appeared in the form 
 of an act, the punishment was changed to whipping 
 and imprisonment, the destination being left un- 
 altered. 
 
144 -^^-^ Functions. 
 
 It is wonderful that such mistakes are not of 
 frequent occurrence when one remembers the hot 
 hasty work often done by committees, and the com- 
 plex entanglements of sentences on which they have 
 to work.^ Bentham was at the trouble of counting 
 the words in one sentence of an Act of Parliament, 
 and found that, beginning with " Whereas " and 
 ending with the word ''repealed," it was precisely 
 the length of an ordinary three-volume novel. To 
 offer the reader that sentence on the present occa- 
 sion would be rather a heavy jest, and as little 
 reasonable as the revenge offered to a village school- 
 master who, having complained that the whole of 
 his little treatise on the Differential Calculus was 
 printed bodily in one of the earlier editions of the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica (not so profitable as the 
 later), was told that he was welcome, in his turn, 
 to incorporate the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the 
 next edition of his little treatise. 
 
 In the supposition, however, that there are few 
 readers who, like Lord King, can boast of having 
 read the Statutes at large through, I venture to give 
 a title of an Act — a title only, remember, of one of 
 the bundle of acts passed in one session — as an in- 
 
 1 A polite correspondent reminds me of the Registration Act, 52 
 G. III. c. 156, in which the fruit of penalties is divided between the 
 informer, who gets one half, and certain charitable purposes, to which 
 the other is devoted, while the only penalty set forth in the Act is 
 transportation for fourteen years. 
 
The Glmmr and his Harvest. 145 
 
 stance of the comprehensiveness of English statute 
 law, and the lively way in which it , skips from one 
 subject to another. ,,It is called — 
 , "An Act to continue several laws for the better 
 regulating of pilots, for th,e; conducting of ships and 
 vessels from Dover, Deal, and the Isle of Thanet, 
 up; the River Thaiiies; and Medway; and for the 
 permitting rum or spirits of the British sugar plan- 
 tations to.be ilanded before the duties of excise are 
 paid thereon,;, and to .continue and ^naend an Act 
 for preventing fraud in the admeasurement of coals 
 within the- city and iliberties of WeiStminster, and 
 several , parishes near thereunto; and to continue 
 several laws for preventing exactions of occupiers 
 of locks and wears upon the River Thames west- 
 ward ; and for ascertaining the rates .of water-car- 
 riage upon the said river ; and for the better regula- 
 tion and goyern-ment of sjeanien in the, merchant 
 service ; and also to amend so imuch of an Act 
 made during the reign, of King George I. as relates 
 to the better -preservation of salmon in the River 
 Ribble; and to regulate fees in trials. and assizes at 
 nisi prius," &c. ,;,;■, 
 
 But this gets ti;re§Qj?ie, aiid we: are only half way 
 through the title after all. If the reader wants the 
 rest of it, asi also. the substantial Act itself, whereof 
 it is the title, let him turn to the 23d of Geo. II., 
 
 chap. 26. . ,j 'L. ,:.,;.-.. ; o -. '-:.■-■■ ■-'■ 
 
 No wonder, if he anticipated this sort; of thing, 
 K 
 
146 His Functions. 
 
 that Bacon should have commended ■" the excellent 
 brevity of the old Scots acts." Here, for instance, 
 is a specimen, an actual statute at large, -such as 
 they were in those pigmy days :-^ 
 
 "Item, it is statute that gif onie of the King's 
 lieges passes in England, and resides and remains 
 there against the King's will, he shall be halden as 
 Traiter to the King." 
 
 Here is another^ very comprehensive, and worth 
 a little library of modern statute-books, if it was 
 duly enforced : — 
 
 " Item, it is statute and' ordained, that all our 
 Sovereign lord's lieges being under his obeisance, 
 and especially thfe Isles, be ruled by our Sovereign 
 lord's own laws, and the common laws of the realm, 
 and none other laws," '■'-'' 
 
 The' Irish statute-book conveys more expressively 
 than any narrative the motl^ -contrasts of a history 
 in the fabric of which the grotesque and the tragic 
 are so closely interwoven. So early as. the middle 
 of the sixteenth century, English statesmen discover 
 usquebaugh, and pass an act to extinguish it at once: 
 " forasmuch as aqua vitm, a drink nothing profitable 
 to be daily drunken and used, is now universally 
 throughout this realm of Ireland made, and espe- 
 cially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the fur- 
 niture of Irishmen, and thereby niuch corn, grain; 
 and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted," 
 and so fbrth."^- "'' :■' . •■'■''''.^y^. cri ''; ;; ''-•'■ ' 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 147 
 
 To get men to shave and wash themselves, and 
 generally to conform to the standard of civilisation 
 in their day, seems innocent if not laudable ; yet 
 is there a world! of heartburning, strife, oppres- 
 sion, and retaliatory hatred expressed in the title of 
 " an act, that the Irishmen dwelling in the counties 
 of Dublin, Meath, Uriell, and Kildare, shall go 
 apparelled like Englishmen, and wear their beards 
 after the English manner, swear allegiance, and take 
 English surnames." Further on we have a wholei 
 series of acts, with a conjunction of epithets in their 
 titles, which, at the present day, sounds rather start- 
 ling, "for the better suppressing Tories, Robbers, 
 and Rapparees, knd for preventing robberies, burg- 
 laries, and other heinous crimes." The classes so 
 associated having an unreasonable dislike of being 
 killed, difficulties are thus put in the way of those 
 beneficially employed in killing them, insomuch 
 that they, "upon the killing of any one of their 
 number, are thereby so alarmed and put upon their' 
 keeping, that it hath been found impracticable foi* 
 such person or persons to discover and apprehend 
 or kill any more of them, whereby they are dis- 
 couraged from discovering and apprehending or 
 killing," and so forth. There is a strange and 
 melancholy historical interest in these grotesque 
 enactments," since they almost verbatim repeat the 
 legislation about the Highland clans passed a cen- 
 tury earlier by the Lowland Parliament of Scotland. 
 
148 His Functions. 
 
 There is one shelf of the law library laden with 
 a store of which few will deny the attractive interest 
 — that devoted to the literature of Criminal Trials. 
 It will go hard indeed, if, besides the reports of 
 mere technicalities, there be not here some glimpses 
 of the sad romances which lie at their heart ; and, 
 at all events, when the page passes a very slight 
 degree beyond the strictly professional, the techni- 
 calities will be found mingled with abundant nar- 
 rative. The State Trials, for instance — surely a 
 lawyer's book — contaiiis the materials of a thousand 
 romances: nor are these all attached to political 
 offences ; as, fortunately, the book is better than its 
 name, and makes a virtuous effort to embrace all 
 the remarkable trials coming within the long period 
 covered by the collection. Some assistance may be 
 got, at the same time, froin minor luminaries, such 
 as the Newgate Calendar-^not to be commended, 
 certainly, for its literary merits, but full of matters 
 strange and horrible, which, like the gloomy forest 
 of the Castle of Indolence, "sent forth a sleepy 
 horror through the blood." 
 
 There are many other books, where records of re- 
 markable crimes are mixed up with much rubbish, 
 as. The Terrific Register, God's Revenge against 
 Murder, a little French book called Histoire Gen6- 
 rale des Larrons (1623), and if the inquirer's taste 
 turn towards maritime crimes, The History of the 
 Bucaniers, by Esquemeling. A little work in four 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 149 
 
 volumes, called the Criminal Recorder, by a student 
 in the Inner Temple, can be commended as a sort 
 of encyclopaedia of this kind of literature. It pro- 
 fesses—and is not far from accomplishing the pro- 
 fession — to ■ give biographical sketches of notorious 
 public characters, including " murderers, traitors, 
 pirates, mutineer^; incendiaries, defrauders, rioters, 
 sharpers, highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, swind- 
 lers, housebreakers, coiners, receivers, extortioners, 
 and other noted persons who have suffered the 
 sentence of the law for criminal offences." By far 
 the most luxurious book of this kind, however, in 
 the English language, is Captain Johnston's Lives 
 of Highwaymen and Pirates. It is rare to find it 
 now complete. The old folio editions have been 
 often mutilated by over use ; the many later edi- 
 tions in octavo are mutilated by design of their 
 editors ; and for conveying any idea of the rough 
 truthful descriptiveness of a book compiled in the 
 palmy days of highway robbery, they are worthless. 
 All our literature of that nature must, however; 
 yield to the French Causes C^lebres, a term rendered 
 so significant by the value and interest of the book 
 it names, as to have been borrowed by writers in 
 this country to render their works attractive. It 
 must be noted as a reason for the success of this 
 work, and also of the German collection by Feuer- 
 bach, that the despotic Continental method of pro- 
 cedure by secret inquiry affords much better material 
 
150 His Functions. 
 
 for narrative than ours by open trial. We make, 
 no doubt, a great drama of, a criminal trial. Every- 
 thing is brought on the; s.tage at once, and cleared 
 off before an audience excited so as no player ever 
 could excite ; but it loses in reading ; while the 
 Coiitinental inquiry, with its slow secret, develop- 
 ment : of the plot, makes the better novel for the 
 fireside. 
 
 There is a method by which, among ourselves, 
 the trial can be imbedded in a narrative which may 
 carry down to later generations a condensed reflec- 
 tion of that protracted expectation and excitement 
 which disturb society during the investigations and 
 trials occasioned by any great crime. This is by 
 "illustrating" the trial, through a process resemb- 
 ling that which has been already supposed to have 
 been applied to one of Watts's hymns. In this in- 
 stance -there will be all the newspaper scraps — all 
 the hawker's broadsides— -the portraits of the crimi- 
 nal, of the chief witnesses, the judges, the counsel, 
 and various other persons, — everything in literature 
 or art that bears on the great question. 
 
 He who inherits or has been able to procure a 
 collection of such illustrated trials, a century or so 
 old, is ;deemed fortunate among collectors, for he 
 can at any time, raise up for himself the spectre as 
 it were of the; great mystery and exposure that for 
 weeks was the : absorbing topic of attraction for 
 millions. The curtains are down — -the fire burns 
 
The Gleamr..mkd his Harvest. 151 
 
 bright — the cat purrs on the rug ; Atticus, soused 
 in his easy-chair, cannot ^e; at the. trouble of going 
 to see Macbeth or Othello-4-he will sup full of 
 horrors from his own stores. .Accordingly he takes 
 down an unseemly yglume, characterised by a flabby 
 obesity by reason of the, unequjal size of the papers 
 contained in it, all being bound to the back, while 
 the largest only reach the margin. The first thing 
 at opening is the dingy pea- green r looking para- 
 graph from the provincial'; newspaper, describing 
 how the reapers, going to their work at dawn, saw 
 the clay beaten with: the marks; of struggle, and, 
 following the dictates of curiosity, saw a bloody 
 rag sticking on a tree, the leaves also streaked 
 with red, and, lastly, the instrunient of violence 
 hidden, in the moss ;;- next , comes from another 
 source the lamentations for a young woman who 
 had left her home — then the exc^ten;ient of putting 
 that and that together — the searchj and the dis- 
 covery of the body. The next paragraph turns 
 suspense into exulting wratihi : the perpetrator has 
 been found with his bloody shirt on — a scowling 
 murderous villain as ever was seen — an eminent 
 poacher, and fit for anything. But the next para- 
 graph turns the tables. The ruffian had his own 
 secrets of what he had been about that night, and 
 a,t last makes a clean breast. It w:ould have been 
 a bad business for him at any other time, but now 
 he is a revealing angel, for hc; noted this and that 
 
152 His Functions. 
 
 in the course of his own little game, and gives 
 justice the thread which leads- to a wonderful 
 romance, and brings home desperate crime to that 
 quarter where, from rank, education, and profession, 
 it was least likely to be found. Then comes the 
 trial and the execution ; and so, at a sitting, has 
 been swallowed all that excitement which, at some 
 time long ago, chained up the public in protracted 
 suspense for weeks. 
 
 The reader will see, from what I have just been 
 saying, that I am not prepared to back Charles 
 Lamb's Index Expurgatoriiis.^ It is difficult, 
 
 1 " In .this, catalogue ,of books which are no books — biblia a biblia — 
 I reckon court calendars, directories, pdcket-books, draught-boards 
 bound and lettered on the back, scientific treatises, almanacs,' statutes 
 at large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Bea,ttie, Soame 
 Jenyns, and generally .all those, volunies which 'no gentleman's 
 library should be without ; ' thfe histories of Flavius Josephus (that 
 learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Pliilosophy. With these exceptions, 
 I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, 
 so unexcludihg. I confess that it moves rhy spleen to see these things 
 in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of 
 true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legiti- 
 mate occupants. To re'acli down a well-bound semblaiice of a volume, 
 and hope it some-kind-hearted play-book, -then, opening what 'seem 
 its leaves, 'to come bolt upon a withering population essay. To ex- 
 pect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find-pAdam Smith. To view a 
 well-arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopaedias (Anglicanas 
 or Metropolitanas) 'sef. ,oi}t in.an array of russia or morocco, when 
 a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclojhe my shiver- 
 ing folios, would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Ray- 
 mund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never 6ee 
 these impostors but I long to strip theip, to warm my ragged veterans 
 in their spoils. " — Essays of Elia. ' ' '' 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 153 
 
 almost impossible, to find the book from which 
 something either valuable or amusing may not be 
 found, if the proper alembic be applied. I know 
 books that are curious, and really amusing, from 
 their excessive badnessi - If you want to find pre- 
 cisely how a thing ought not to be said, you take 
 one of them down, and make it perform the service 
 of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some 
 volumes in which, at a chance opening, you are 
 certain to find a mere platitude delivered in the 
 most superb and amazing climax of big words, and 
 others in which you have a like happy facility in 
 finding every proposition stated with its stern for- 
 ward, as sailors 6ay, or in some other grotesque 
 mismanagement . of composition. There are no 
 better farces on or off the stage than when two or 
 three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind, 
 and compete with each other in taking fun out of 
 them. ' 
 
 There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring 
 spirit, but in a manner which reminds one of deep 
 C^ling Unto deep,' about the dark superstitions of a 
 country which was once a separate European king- 
 dom. I feel a pd'ciiliar interest in it, from the author 
 having informed me, by way of communicating an 
 important fact in literary histoty, dnd also as an 
 example to be followed by literary aspirants, that, 
 before committing the book to the press, he had 
 written it over sixteen times. 'It would have been 
 
154 ,, His Functions, 
 
 valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only 
 that one might form some idea of the steps by which 
 he had brought it into the condition in which it was 
 printed. But its perusal in that condition was not 
 entirely thr.own away, since I was able to recommend 
 it to a teacher of composition, as containing, within 
 a moderate compass^^— after the manner, in fact, of a 
 handbook — good practical specimens of every de- 
 scription of depravity of style of virhich the English 
 language is susceptible. , 
 
 In the present day, when fevy spholars have op- 
 portunities of enriching the world with their prison 
 hours, perhaps the best conditions for testing how 
 far any volume or, portion of printed matter, how- 
 ever hopeless -looking, may yet yield edifying or 
 amusing m^itter to a sufficient pressure, will occur 
 when a bookish- person finds himself imprisoned in a 
 country inn, say for twenty-four hours. Such things 
 are not impossible in this age of rapid movement. 
 It is not long since a train, freighted with musical 
 artistes, sent express to perform at a provincial con- 
 cert and be back immediately in town for other 
 engagements, was caught by a great snow-storm 
 which, obliterated the railway, and the travellers had 
 to live for a weeljc or two in a wayside alehouse, 
 in one of the dreariest districts of Scotland. The 
 possessor and user of a Icirge library undergoing such 
 a calamity in a niodified shape will- be able to form 
 a conception ;ofi the resources at his disposal, and to 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 155 
 
 calculate how long it will take him to exhaust the 
 intellectual treasures at his command, just as a 
 millionaire, hauated as such people sometimes are 
 by the dread of coming on the parish, might test 
 how long a life his invested capital would support 
 by spending a winter in a Shetland cottage, and 
 living on what he could procure. Having exhausted 
 all other sources of exicitement and interest, the 
 belated traveller is supposed to call for the literature 
 of the, establishment. Perhaps the Directory of the 
 county town is the only available volume. Who 
 shall say what the belated , traveller may make of 
 this ? He may do a turn in local statistics, or, if his 
 ambition rises higher, he may pursue some valuable 
 ethnological inquiries, trying whether Celtic or Saxon 
 names prevail, and testing the justice of Mr Thierry's 
 theory by counting the Norman patronymics, and 
 observing whether any of them are owned by per- 
 sons following plebeian and sordid occupations. If 
 in after-life the sojourner should come in contact 
 with people interested in the politics or business of 
 that county town, he will surprise them by exhibit- 
 ing his minute acquaintance with its affairs. 
 , If, besides the Directory, an Almanac, old or new, 
 is to be had, the analysis may bg^ conducted on a 
 greatly widened basis. The rotations of the changes 
 of the seasons may at the same time suggest many 
 appropriate reflections on the progress of man from 
 the cradle to the grave, and all: that he meets with 
 
156 His Functions. 
 
 between the alpha and omega ; and if the prisoner 
 is a man of genius, the announcements of eclipses 
 and other solar phenomena will suggest trains of 
 thought which he can carry up to any height of 
 sublimity. A person in the circumstances supposed, 
 after he has exhausted the Directory and the Al- 
 manac, may perhaps be led to read (if he can get) 
 Zimmerman On Solitude, Hervey's Meditations, 
 Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah 
 More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what he may 
 be reduced to ? I remember the great Irish libera- 
 tor telling how, when once detained in an inn in 
 Switzerland, he could find no book to beguile the 
 time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. 
 I have no doubt that the coerced perusal of them 
 to which he had to submit did him a deal of good. 
 
 Let us imagine that nothing better is to be found 
 than the advertising sheet of an old newspaper — 
 never mind. Let the unfortunate man fall to and 
 read the advertisements courageously, and make the 
 best of them. An advertisement is itself a fact, 
 though it. may sometimes be the vehicle of a false- 
 hood ; and, as some one has remarked, he who has 
 a fact in hand is like a turner with a piece of wood 
 in his lathe, which he can manipulate to his liking, 
 tooling it in any way, as a plain cylinder or a richly 
 ornamented toy.' There have been fortunate in- 
 stances of people driven to read them finding good 
 jokes and other enjoyable things in advertisements 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 157 
 
 — such things as make one almost regret that so 
 little attention has been paid to this department 
 of literature.^ Besides the spontaneous undesigned 
 attractions to be found in it, there have been men 
 of distinguished parts whose powers have found 
 development in the advertisement line. George 
 Robins, a hero in his day, is surely not yet quite 
 forgotten ; and though he were, doubtless his works 
 will be restored to notice by future philosophers 
 who will perhaps find in them the true spirit of 
 the nineteenth century. Advertisements, more pro- 
 saic than his, however, bring us into the very heart 
 of life and business, and contain a world of interest; 
 Suppose that the ,dirty broadside you pick up in 
 the dingy inn's soiled room contains the annual 
 announcement of the reassembling of the school 
 in which you spent your own years of schoolboy 
 Hfe — what a mingled and many -figured romance 
 does it recall of all that has befallen to yourself 
 and others since th^ day when the same advertise- 
 ment made you sigh, because the hour was close at 
 
 "^ Take, for instance, the announcement of the wants of an affluent 
 and pious elderly lady, desirous of having the services of a domestic 
 like-minded with herself, who appeals to the public for a "groom to 
 take charge of two carriage-horses of a serious turn of mind." So 
 also the simple-hearted innkeeper, who founds on his "limited 
 charges and civility ; " or the description given by a, distracted family 
 of a runaway member, who consider that they are affording valuable 
 means for his identification by saying, "age not prfecisely known— 
 butlooks.plder thanheis." . ' , ' 
 
158 His Functions. 
 
 hand when you were to leave home and all its 
 homely ways to dwell among strangers ! Going 
 onward, you remember how each one after another 
 ceased to be a stranger, and twined himself about 
 your heart ; and then comes the reflection, Where 
 
 are they all now? You rettiember how 
 
 ' ' I r ' ,1 
 '■' He, the young and strong,- who cherished 
 Noble longings for the strife, 
 By the roadside fell arid perished, 
 Weary with the march of life." 
 
 You recall to your memory also those two insepar- 
 ables — :linked together, it would seem, because they 
 were so unlike. The one, gentle,' dreamy, and 
 romantic, was to be the genius of the set ; but alas, 
 he " took to bad habits," and oozed into the slime 
 of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting rib creature 
 but himself — unless it may be that to some parent 
 or other near of kin his gentle facility may have 
 caused keener pangs than others give by cruelty and 
 tyranny. The other, bright -eyed, healthy, strong, 
 and keen - tempered ^the best fighter and runner 
 and leaper in the school — the dare-devil who was 
 the leader in every row— took to Greek much about 
 the time when his companion took to drinking, got 
 a presentation, wrote some wonderful things about 
 the functions of the chorus, and is now on the fair 
 road to a bishopric. 
 
 Next arises the vision of " the big boy," the lout 
 — the butt of every one, even of the masters, who. 
 
The Gleaner and his Harvest. 159 
 
 when any little imp did a thing well, always made 
 the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of 
 the big boy, as if he were bound to be as super- 
 fluous in intellect as in flesh. He has sufficiently 
 dinned into him to make him thoroiighly modest, 
 poor fellow, how all great men were little. Napo- 
 leon was little, so was Frederic the Great, William' 
 III., the illustrious Cond^ Pope, Horace, Anacreon, 
 Campbell, Tom -iVT^ore,' and Jeffrey. His relations 
 have so thoroughly given in to the prfejudice against 
 him, that they get him a cadetship because he is fit 
 for nothing at home ; and now, years afterwards, 
 the newspapers resound with his farrie^-^how, when 
 at the quietest of all stations when the mutiny sud- 
 denly broke out in its most murderous shape, and 
 even experienced veterans lost heart, he remained 
 firm and collected, quietly developing, one after an- 
 other, resources of which he was not himself aware„ 
 and in the end putting things right, partly by stern 
 vigour, but more by a quiet tact and genial appre- 
 ciation of the native character. But what has be- 
 come of the Dux — hiin who, in the predictions of 
 all, teachers and taught^ was to render the institu- 
 tion some day illustrious by occupying the Wool- 
 sack, or the chief place at the. Speaker's right hand? 
 A curious destiny is his : at a certain point the 
 curve of his ascent was as it were truncated, and 
 he took to the commonest level of ordinary life 
 He may now be seen, staid and sedate in his walk, 
 
i$o His Functions. 
 
 which brings him, with a regularity that has ren- 
 dered him useful, to neighbours owning erratic 
 watphes, day by day to a, lofty three-legged stool, 
 mounted on which, all his proceedings confirm the 
 high character retained by him through several 
 years for the neatness of his handwriting, and 
 especially for his precision in dotting his i's and 
 stroking his t's. , 
 
 This is all along of the use which the reflective 
 man may make of an old advertisement. If it be 
 old, the older the better — the more likely is it to 
 contain matter of curious interest or instruction 
 about the ways of men. To show this, I reprint 
 two advertisements, from British newspapers. 
 
 From the .Public Advertiser of 28th March 1769. 
 
 f< 'T^O BE SOLD, A BLACK GIRL, the property of J. B , 
 
 -'- eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her 
 needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well : is of an excel- 
 lent temper, and willing disposition. 
 
 "inquire of Mr Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement's 
 Church in the Strand. " 
 
 From the Edinburgh Evening Courant, i8th 
 
 April 1768. 
 
 "A BLACK BOY TO SEf.L. 
 
 a 'yO BE SOLD, A BLACK BOY, with Ipng hair, stout made, 
 ■^ and well-limbed — is^ good tempered, can dress hair, and 
 take care of a horse indifferently. He has' been in Britain nearly 
 three years. 
 
 " Any person that inclines to purchase him may have him for £i/:>. 
 He belongs to Captain Abercrombie at Broughton; 
 
 ".This advertisements not to be repeated. " ., ; •■ s 
 
Pretenders. i6i 
 
 There was at that time probably more of this 
 description of property in Britain than in Virginia. 
 It had become fashionable, as one may see in 
 Hogarth. Such advertisements^ — they were abun- 
 dant — might furnish an apt text on which a phil- 
 osophical historian could speculate on the probable 
 results to this country, had not Mansfield gone to 
 the root of the matter by denying all property in 
 slaves. 
 
 So much for the chances which still remain to 
 the deyourer of books, if, after having consumed 
 all the solid volumes within his reach, he should 
 be reduced to shreds and patches of literature, — like 
 a ship's crew having resort to shoe-leather and the 
 sweepings of the locker. 
 
 Pretenbera. 
 
 UT now to return to the point whence 
 we started — the disposition, and almost 
 the necessity, which the true enthusiast 
 in the pursuit feels to look into the 
 soul, as it were, of his book, after he has got pos- 
 session of the body. When he is not of the omniv- 
 orous kind, but one who desires to possess a par- 
 ticular book, and, having got it,: dips into the 
 contents before committing it to permanent ob- 
 scurity on his loaded shelves, there is, as we hafve 
 
 L 
 
1 62 His Functions. 
 
 already seen, a certain thread of intelligent associa- 
 tion linking the items of his library to each other. 
 The collector knows what he wants, and why he 
 wants it, and that why does not entirely depend 
 on exteriors, though he may have his whim as to 
 that also. 
 
 He is a totally different being from the animal 
 who goes to all sales, and buys every book that is 
 cheap. That is a painfully low and grovelling type 
 of the malady ; and, forttinately for the honour of 
 literature, the bargain-hunter who suffers under it 
 is not in general a special votary of books, but 
 buys all bargains that corrie in his way— clocks, 
 tables, forks, spoorts, old uniforms, gas-meters, magic 
 lanterns, galvanic batteries, violin's (warranted real 
 Cremonas, from their being smashed to pieces), 
 classical busts (with the same testimony to their 
 genuineness), patent ,coffgg-pots, crucibles, amputat- 
 ing knives, wheel -barrows, retorts, cork-screws, boot- 
 jacks, smoke-jacks, melon-frames, bath-chairs, and 
 hurdy-gurdies.! It has been said that once, a coffin, 
 made too short for its tenant, being to be had an 
 undoubted bargaiin, was bought by hina, in the hopie 
 that, some diy cir other, it might prove of service in 
 his family. His Jibrary if such it may be termed,- 
 is very rich in old trade-directories, justices of peace 
 and registers ' of voters, road-books, and other use- 
 ful manuals; (Jjut.: there' are very learned' books in 
 it too. That clean folio' HerodotuS was certainly 
 
Pretenders. i6 
 
 J 
 
 extremely cheap at half-a-crown ; and you need not 
 inform him that the ninth book is wanting, for he 
 will never find that out. The day when he has 
 discovered that any book has been bought by 
 another person^ a better bargain than his own 
 copy, is a black one in his calendar; but he has 
 a peculiar device for getting over the calamity by 
 bringing down the average cost of his own copy 
 through fresh investments. Having had the mis-? 
 fortune to buy a copy of . Goldsmith's History; of 
 England for five shillings, while a neighbour flaunts 
 daily in his face a copy obtained for three, he has 
 been busily occupied in a search for copies still 
 cheaper. He has now brought down the- average 
 price of his numerous copies of this more agreeable 
 than accurate work to three shillings and twopence, 
 and hopes in another year to get below the three" 
 shillings. 
 
 Neither is the: rich man who purchases fine and 
 dear books by deputy to be admitted , within the 
 category' of; the: genuine book-hunter. He must 
 hunt himself — must actually undergo the anxiety, 
 the fatigue, and, so far as purse is concerned, the 
 risks of the chase. Your rich man, known to the 
 trade as a great orderer of books,; is like the owrier 
 of the great ganie-preser^e, where the sport is heavy 
 butcheiy; there is none of the real zest of the! 
 hunter of -the wilderness to be had within his gates. 
 The old Duke of Roxburghe wisely sank his rank 
 
164 His Functions. 
 
 and his wealth, and wandered industriously and 
 zealously from shop to stall over the world, just 
 as he wandered over the moor, stalking the deer. 
 One element in the excitement of the poorer book- 
 hunter he must have lacked — the feeling of com- 
 mitting something of extravagance — the conscious- 
 ness of parting with that which will be missed. 
 This is the sacrifice which assures the world, and 
 satisfies the man's own heart, that he is zealous 
 and earnest in the work he has set about. And 
 it is decidedly this class who most read and use 
 the books they possess. How genial a picture does 
 Scott give of himself at the time of the Roxburghe 
 sale — the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one 
 way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library 
 round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar 
 Terry, he says, " The worst of all is, that while my 
 trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an 
 inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance 
 will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the 
 literary entertainment your researches hold out for 
 me. I should, however, like much to have the 
 treatise on Dreams by the author of the New 
 Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson, the smith, 
 said of the minister's sermon, ' must be neat 
 wark.' The loyal poems by N. T. are probably 
 by poor Nahum Tate, who was associated with 
 Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more hon- 
 ourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom, 
 
Pretenders. 165 
 
 and Achitophel. I never saw them, however, 
 but would give a guinea or thirty shillings for the 
 collection." 
 
 One of the reasons why Dibdin's expatiations 
 among rare and valuable volumes are, after all, so 
 devoid of interest, is, that he occupied himself in a 
 great measure in catering for men with measureless 
 purses. Hence there is throughout too exact an 
 estimate of everything by what it is worth in ster- 
 ling cash, with a contempt for small things, which 
 has an unpleasant odour of plush and shoulder-knot 
 about it Compared with dear old Monkbarns and 
 his prowlings among the stalls, the narratives of the 
 Boccaccio of the book-trade are like the account of 
 a journey that might be written from the rumble 
 of the travelling chariot, when compared with the 
 adventurous narrative of the pedestrian or of the 
 wanderer in the far East Everything is too com- 
 fortable, luxurious, and easy — russia, morocco, em- 
 bossing, marbling, gilding — all crowding on one 
 another, till one feels suffocated with riches. There 
 is a feeling, at the same time, of the utter useless 
 pomp of the whole thing. Volumes, in the condi- 
 tion in which he generally describes them, are no 
 more fitted for use and consultation than white kid 
 gloves and silk stockings are for hard work. Books 
 should be used decently and respectfully — rever- 
 ently, if you will ; but let there be no toleration 
 for the doctrine that there are volumes too splendid 
 
1 66 His Functions. 
 
 for use, too fine almost to be looked at, as Brummel 
 said of some of his Dresden china. That there 
 should be little interest in the record of rich men 
 buying costly books which they know nothing about 
 and never become acquainted with, is an illustration 
 of a wholesome truth, pervading all human en- 
 deavours, afteir happiness. It is this, that the active, 
 racy enjoyments of life — those enjoyments in which 
 there is also exertion and achievement, and which 
 depend on these for their proper relish — are not 
 to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him 
 the true elements of enjoyment, the book-hunter's 
 treasures must not be his mere property, they must 
 be : his achievements— each one of them recalling 
 the excitement of the chase and the happiness of 
 success., Like Monkbarns with his Elzevirs and 
 his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in 
 common with all hunters, a touch of the competi- 
 tive in his nature, and be, able to take the measure 
 of a,' rival, ^ — ^^as Monkbarns magnanimously takes 
 that of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy 
 Davie, from his inveterate addiction to. black rappee, 
 who was the very prince of scouts for searching 
 blind aj.leys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. 
 He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap 
 of a bulUdog. He would detect you an old black- 
 letter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and 
 find an editio princeps under the rnask of a school 
 Corderius,' " 
 
Pretenders, 167 
 
 In pursuing the chase in this spirit, the sports- 
 man is by no means precluded: from indulgence 
 in the adventitious specialties that delight the com- 
 monest bibliomaniac. There is a good deal more 
 in many of them than the first thought discloses. 
 An editio pHnceps is not a mere toy — it has some- 
 thing in it that may purchase the attention even of 
 a thinking man. In the first place, it is a very old 
 commodity — about four hundred years of age. If 
 you look around you in the world you will see very 
 few movables coeval with it. No doubt there are 
 wonderfully ancient things shown to travellers, — as 
 in Glammis Castle you may see the identical four- 
 posted bedstead — a very creditable piece of cabinet- 
 makery — in which King Malcolm was murdered a 
 thousand years ago. But genuine articles of furni- 
 ture so old as the editio princeps 2txe!\ery rzxe. If 
 we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a dfinking- 
 can, of that age, is there not something worthy of 
 observance, as indicating the social condition of the 
 age, in those venerable pages, made to look as like 
 the handwriting of their day as possible, with their 
 decorated capitals, all .squeezed between two solid 
 planks of oak, tovered with rithly embossed hog- 
 skin, which can be clasped together^ by means of 
 massive decorated clasps? And shall We riot admit 
 it to a higher: place in our reverence than some 
 mere item of household furnishing, when we reflect 
 that it is the very form in which some great ruling 
 
1 68 His Functions. 
 
 intellect, resuscitated from long interment, burst 
 upon the dazzled eyes of Europe and displayed 
 the fulness of its face? 
 
 I^ia acf)te&«mentB in t^ie Creation o( Etkatteg. 
 
 O much, then, for the benefit which the 
 class to whom these pages are devoted 
 derive to themselves from their peculiar 
 pursuit Let us now turn to the far 
 more remarkable phenomena, in which these sep- 
 arate and perhaps selfish pursuers of their own in- 
 stincts and objects are found to concur in bringing 
 out a great influence upon the intellectual destinies 
 of mankind. It is said of Brindley, the great canal 
 engineer, that, — when a member of a committee, 
 where he was under examination, a little provoked 
 or amused by his entire devotion to canals, asked 
 him if he thought there was any use of rivers, — ^he 
 promptly answered, " Yes, to feed navigable canals." 
 So, if there bfe no other respectable function in life 
 fulfilled by the book-hunter, I would stand up for 
 the proposition that he is the feeder, provided by 
 nature, for the preservation of literature from age 
 to age, by the accumulation and preservation of 
 libraries, public or private. It will require perhaps 
 a little circumlocutory exposition to show this, but 
 here it is. 
 
Creation of Libraries. 169 
 
 A great library cannot be constructed — it is the 
 growth of ages. You may buy books at any time 
 with money, but you cannot make a library like one 
 that has been a century or two a-growing, though 
 you had the whole national debt to do it with. I 
 remember once how an extensive publisher, speak- 
 ing of the rapid strides which literature had made 
 of late years, and referring to a certain old public 
 library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, 
 the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated 
 how he had himself freighted for exportation, within 
 the past month, as many books as that whole library 
 consisted of This was likely enough to be true, 
 but the two collections were very diiferent from each 
 other. The cargoes of books were probably thou- 
 sands of copies of some few popular selling works. 
 They might be a powerful illustration of the diffu- 
 sion of knowledge, but what they were compared 
 with was its concentration. Had all the paper of 
 which these cargoes consisted been bank-notes, they 
 would not have enabled their owner to create a 
 duplicate of the old library, rich in the fathers, the 
 civilians, and the medieval chroniclers. 
 
 This impossibility of improvising libraries is really 
 an important and curious thing ; and since it is apt 
 to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buying 
 books, in quantities generally far beyond the avail- 
 able means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy 
 of some special consideration. A man who sets to 
 
1 70 His Functions. 
 
 form a library will go on swimmingly for a short 
 way. He will easily get Tennyson's Poems — Mac- 
 aulay's and, Alison's Histories — the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica — Buckle on Civilisation — all the books 
 "in print," as it is, termed. Nay, he will find no 
 difficulty in procuring copies of others which may 
 not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or 
 of the retailer of new books. Of Voltaire's works — 
 a little library: in itself— he will get a copy at his 
 call in London, if he has not set his mind on some 
 special edition. So of SCott's edition of Swift or 
 Dryden, Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, and 
 the like. One can scarcely sM|)pose a juncture in 
 which any of these cannot be found through the 
 electric chain of communication established by the 
 book-trade. Of Gibbon's , and Hume's Histories — 
 Jeremy Taylor's works — iBbssuet's Universal History, 
 and the like^ copies abound everywhere. Go back 
 a little, and ask for Kennet'is Collection, of the His- 
 torians — Echard's History, Bayle, Moreri, or Pather 
 Daniers_ History of France, you cannot be. so certain 
 of inamediately obtaining, your object, but you will 
 get the book in the end — no, doubt about that 
 
 Everything has its: capricies, and there are some 
 books which might be expected to be equally shy, 
 but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality,- are as 
 plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are 
 Famianus Strada's History of the Dutch War of 
 Independence^one of the most brilliant works ever 
 
Creation of Libraries. 171 
 
 written, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan's. 
 There is Buchanan's own history, veiry common even 
 in the shape of the early Scotch edition of 1582, 
 which is a highly favourable specimen of Arbuth- 
 not's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis, 
 and Raynal's Philosophical History of the East and 
 West Indies, without which no book-stall is to be 
 considered complete, and which seem to be possessed 
 of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements, 
 since, month after month, in fair weather or foul, 
 they are to be seen at their p'osts dry or dripping. 
 
 So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects 
 some five thousand 'volumes or so of select works. 
 If he is miscellaneous in his taste, he may get on 
 pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and 
 then his troubles will arise. He has easily got 
 Baker's and Froissart's and Monstrelet's. Chronicles, 
 because there are modern reprints of them in the 
 market. But if he want Cooper's Chronicle, he may 
 have to wait for it, since its latest form is still the 
 black-letter. True, J did pick up a copy lately, at 
 Braidwood's, for half-a-guinea, but that was a catch 
 — it might have caused the search of a lifetime. 
 Still more hopeless it is when the collector's ambi- 
 tion extends to The Ladder of Perfection of Wynkin 
 de Worde, or to' his King Rycharde Cure de Lion, 
 whereof it is reported in the Repertorium Biblio- 
 graphicum, that "an imperfect copy, wanting one 
 leaf, was sold by auction at Mr Evans's, in June 
 
172 His Functions. 
 
 1817, to Mr Watson Taylor for £4,0, 19s." "Woe 
 betide," says Dibdin, " the young bibliomaniac who 
 sets his heart upon Breton's Flourish upon Fancie 
 and Pleasant Toyes of an Idle Head, 1557, 4to; or 
 Workes of a Young Wyt trussed up with a Fardell 
 of Pretty Fancies ! ! Threescore guineas shall 
 hardly fetch these black-letter rarities from the 
 pigeon-holes of Mr Thorpe. I lack courage to add 
 the prices for which these copies sold." But he has 
 some comfort reserved for the hungry collector, in 
 the intimation that The Ravisht Soul and the 
 Blessed Weaper, by the same author, may be had 
 for ;^i5.^ It creates a thrilling interest to know, 
 through the same distinguished authority, that the 
 Heber sale must have again let loose upon the world 
 " A merry gest and a true, howe John Flynter made 
 his Testament," concerning which we are told, with 
 appropriate solemnity and pathos, that "Julian 
 Notary is the printer of this inestimably precious 
 volume, and Mr Heber is the thrice-blessed owner 
 of the copy described in the Typographical Anti- 
 quities." 
 
 Such works as the Knightly Tale of Galogras, 
 The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, 
 or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of 
 Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or 
 his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired 
 
 ^ Library Compaiiion, p. 699. 
 
Creation of Libraries. 173 
 
 after before they come to the market, thoroughly- 
 contradicting that fundamental principle of politi- 
 cal economy, that the supply is always equal to the 
 demand. 
 
 He, indeed, who sets his mind on the possession 
 of any one of these rarities, may go to his grave a 
 disappointed man. It will be in general the con- 
 solation of the collector, however, that he is by no 
 means the "homo unius libri." There is always 
 something or other turning up for him, so long as 
 he keeps within moderate bounds. If he be rich 
 and ravenous, however, there is nothing for it but 
 duplicating — the most virulent form of book-mania. 
 We have seen that Heber, whose collection, made 
 during his own lifetime, was on the scale of those 
 public libraries which take generations to grow, had, 
 with all his wealth, his liberality, and his persevering 
 energy, to invest himself with duplicates, triplicates 
 — often many copies of the same book. 
 
 It is rare that the private collector runs himself 
 absolutely into this quagmire, and has so far ex- 
 hausted the market that no already unpossessed 
 volume turns up in any part of the world to court 
 his eager embraces. The limitation constitutes, 
 however, a serious difficulty in the way of rapidly 
 creating great public libraries. We would obtain 
 the best testimony to this difficulty in America, 
 were our brethren there in a condition to speak or 
 think of so peaceful a pursuit as library -making. 
 
174 His Functions. 
 
 In the normal condition of society there — some- 
 thing like that of Holland in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury — ^there are powerful elements for the promo- 
 tion of art and letters, when wealth gives the means 
 and civilisatioh the desire to promote them. The 
 very absence of feudal institutions — the inability 
 to found a baronial house — turns the thoughts of 
 the rich and liberal to other foundations calcular 
 ted to transmit' their name and influence to pos- 
 terity. And so we have such bequests as John 
 Jacob Astor's, who left four hundred thousand 
 dollars for a library, and the hundred and eighty 
 thousand which were the nucleus of the Smith- 
 sonian Institution. Yes ! Their efforts in this 
 direction have fully earned for them their own 
 peculiar form of laudation as " actually, equal to 
 cash." Hence, as the book-trade, and book-buyers 
 know very well, the "almighty dollar" has been 
 hard at work, trying to rear up by its sheer force 
 duplicates of the old European libraries, containing 
 not only all the ordinary stock books in the market, 
 but also the rarities, and those individualities — 
 solitary remaining copies of impressions— ^which the 
 initiated call uniques. It is clear, however, that 
 when there is but one copy, it can only, be in one 
 place ; and if it have been rooted for centuries in 
 the Bodleian, or the University of Tubingen, it 
 is not to be had for Harvard or the Astorian. Dr 
 Cogswell, the 'first librarian of the Astoriain, spent 
 
Creation of Libraries. 175 
 
 some time in Europe with' his princely endow- 
 ment in his pocket, and showed himself a judici- 
 ous, active, and formidable sportsman in the book- 
 hunting world. Whenever, from private collections, 
 or the breaking -up of public institutions, rarities 
 got abroad into the open market, the collectors of 
 the old country found that they had a resolute 
 competitor to deal with — almost, it might be said, 
 a desperate one — since he was in a manner the 
 representative of a nation using powerful efforts to 
 get possession of a share of the literary treasures of 
 the Old World. 
 
 In the case of a book, for instance, of which half- 
 a-dozen copies might be known to exist, the com- 
 batants before the auctioneer would be, on the one 
 side, many an ambitious collector desiring to belong 
 to the fortunate circle already in possession of such 
 a treasure ; but on the other side was one on whose 
 exertions depended the ;question, whether the book 
 should henceforth be part of the intellectual wealth 
 of a great empire, and should be accessible for con- 
 sultation by Anierican scholars and authors without 
 their requiring to cross the Atlantit. Let us see 
 how far, by a brief comparison, money has enabled 
 them to triumph over the difficulties of their posi- 
 tion. ; : ; 
 
 It is difficult to know exactly the , numerical con- 
 tents of a librairyi as some people count by volumes, 
 and others by the separate works, small of great ; 
 
176 His Functions. 
 
 and even if all should consent to count by volume^ 
 the estimate would not be precise, for in some lib- 
 raries bundles of tracts and other small works are 
 massed in plethoric volumes for economy, while in 
 affluent institutions every collection of leaves put 
 under the command of a separate title-page is 
 separately bound in cloth, calf, or morocco, ac- 
 cording to its rank. The Imperial Library at Paris 
 is computed to contain above eight hundred thou- 
 sand volumes ; the Astorian boasts of approaching 
 a hundred thousand : the next libraries in size in 
 America are the Harvard, with from eighty thou- 
 sand to ninety thousand ; the Library of Congress 
 which has from sixty thousand to seventy thousand ; 
 and the Boston Athenaeum, which has about sixty 
 thousand. 
 
 There are many of smaller size. In fact, there is 
 probably no country so well stocked as the States 
 with libraries of from ten thousand to twenty thou- 
 sand volumes, — ^the evidence that they have bought 
 what was to be bought, and have done all that a 
 new people can to participate in the long-hoarded 
 treasures of literature which it is the privilege of 
 the Old World to possess. I know that, especially 
 in the instance of the Astorian Library, the selec- 
 tions of books have been made with great judg- 
 ment, and that, after the boundaries of the common 
 crowded market were passed, and individual rarities 
 had to be stalked in distant hunting-grounds, innate 
 
Creation of Libraries. 177 
 
 literary value was still held an objegt more impor- 
 tant than mere abstract rarity, and, as the more 
 worthy quality of the two, that on which the buy- 
 ing power available to the emissary was brought to 
 bear. 
 
 The zeal and wealth which the citizens of the 
 States have thrown into the limited field from 
 which a library can be rapidly reaped, are mani- 
 fested in the size and value of their private collec- 
 tions. A volume, called The Private Libraries of 
 New York, by James Wynne, M.D., affords interest- 
 ing evidence of this phenomenon. It is printed on 
 large thick paper, after the most luxurious fashion 
 of our book clubs, apparently for private distribu- 
 tion. The author states, however, that " the greater 
 part of the sketches of private libraries to be found 
 in this volume, were prepared for and published in 
 the Evening Post about two years since. Their 
 origin is due to a request on the part of Mr Bige- 
 low, one of the editors of the Post, to the writer, to 
 examine and sketch the more prominent private 
 collections of books in New York." 
 
 Such an undertaking reveals, to us of the old 
 country, a very singular social condition. With us, 
 the class who may be thus offered up to the mar- 
 tyrdom of publicity is limited. The owners of great 
 houses and great collections are doomed to share 
 them with the public, and if they would frequent 
 their own establishments, must be content to do so 
 
 M 
 
178 His Functions. 
 
 in the capacity of librarians or showmen, for the 
 benefit of their numerous and uninvited visitors. 
 They generally, with wise resignation, bo)v to the 
 sacrifice, and, abandoning all connection with their 
 treasures, dedicate them to the people — nor, as their 
 affluence is generally sufficient to surround, them 
 with an abundance of other enjoyments, are they an 
 object of much pity. . 
 
 But that the privacy of our ordinary wealthy and 
 middle classes should be invaded in a similar shape, 
 is an idea that could not get abroad without creat- 
 ing sensations of the most lively horror. They 
 manage these things differently across the Atlantic, 
 and so here we have "over" fifty gentlemen's pri- 
 vate collections ransacked and anatomised. If they 
 like it, we have no reason to complain, but rather 
 have occasion to rejoice in the valuable and inter- 
 esting result. 
 
 It is quite natural that their ways of esteeming 
 a collection should not be as our ways. There is 
 a story of a Cockney auctioneer, who had a location 
 in the back settlements to dispose of, advertising 
 that it was "almost entirely covered with fine old 
 timber." To many there would appear to be an 
 equal degree of verdant simplicity in mentioning 
 among the specialties and distinguishing features 
 of a collection — the Biographia and Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica; Lowndes's Manual, the Quarterly and 
 Edinburgh Reviews, Boyle;, Ducange, Moreri, Dods- 
 
Creation of Libraries. 179 
 
 ley's Annual Register, Watt's Bibliotheca, and Dio- 
 dorus Siculus. 
 
 The statement that there is in Dr Francis's col- 
 lection a " complete set of the Recueil des Causes 
 C^l^bres; collected by' Maurice Mejan, in eighteen 
 volumes — a scarce and valuable work " — would 
 throw any of our black-letter knight -errants into 
 convulsions of laughter. There are also some in- 
 stances of perhaps not unnatural confusion between 
 one merely local British celebrity and another, as 
 where it is set forth that in Mr Noyes's collection 
 "there is a fine copy of Sir Robert Walpole's 
 works, in five large quarto volumes, embellished 
 with plates." But under all this inexperience of 
 the ways of the craft as it is cultivated among us, 
 and unconsciousness of such small parochial dis- 
 tinctions as may hold between Sir Robert Walpole, 
 our Prime Minister, and Horace Walpole, the man 
 of letters and trinkets, the book contains a quantity 
 of valuable and substantial matter, both as a record 
 of rich stores of learning heaped up for the use of 
 the scholar, and marvellous varieties to dazzle the 
 eyes of the mere Dibdinite. , The prevailing feature 
 throughout is the lavish costliness and luxury of 
 these collections, several of which exceed ten thou- 
 sand volumes. Where collections have grown so 
 large that, on the principles already explained, their 
 increase is impeded, the owner's zeal and wealth 
 seem to have developed themselves in the lavish 
 
i8o His Functions. 
 
 enshrining and decorating of such things as were 
 attainable.^ 
 
 The descriptions of a remorseless investigator like 
 this have a fresh individuality not to be found here, 
 where our habitual reserve prevents us from offering 
 
 1 Take as a practical commentary on what has been said (p. 82) 
 on " illustrating " books, the following passage describing some of 
 the specialties of a collection, the general features of which are de- 
 scribed further on : — 
 
 " But the crowning glory is a folio copy of Shakespeare, illustrated 
 by the collector himself, with a prodigality of labour and expense, 
 that places it far above any similar work ever attempted. The 
 letterpress of this great work is a choice specimen of Nichol's types, 
 and each play occupies a separate portfolio. These are accompanied 
 by costly engravings of landscapes, rare portraits, maps, elegantly 
 coloured plates of costumes, and water-colour drawings, executed 
 by some of the best artists of thie day. Some of the plays have over 
 200 folio illustrations, each of which is beautifully inlaid or mounted, 
 and many of the engravings are very valuable. Some of the land- 
 scapes, selected from the oldest cosmographies known, illustrating 
 the various places mentioned in the pages of Shakespeare, are ex- 
 ceedingly curious as well as valuable. 
 
 "In the historical plays, when possible, every character is por- 
 trayed from authoritative sources, as old tapestries, monumental 
 brasses, or illuminated works of the age, in well-executed drawings 
 or recognised engravings. There are in this work a vast number 
 of illustrations, in addition to a very numerous collection of water- 
 colour drawings. In addition to the thirty-seven plays, are two 
 volumes devoted to Shakespeare's life and times, one volume of 
 portraits, one volume devoted to distinguished Shakespearians, one 
 to poems, and two to disputed plays, the whole embracing a series 
 of forty-two folio volumes, and forming, perhaps, the most remark- 
 able and costly monument, in this shape, ever attempted by a devout 
 worshipper of the Bard of Avon. The volume devoted to Shake- 
 speare's portraits was purchased by Mr Burton, at the sale of a 
 gentleman's library, who had spent many years in making the col- 
 lection, and iticludes various 'effigies ' unknown to many laborious 
 collectors. It contains upwards of 100 plates, for the most part 
 
Creation of Libraries. i8i 
 
 or enjoying a full, true, and particular account of 
 the goods of our neighbours, unless they are brought 
 to the hammer, — and then they have lost half the 
 charm which they possessed as the household gods 
 of some one conspicuous by position or character. 
 
 proofs. The value of this collection may be estimated by the fact, 
 that a celebrated English collector recently offered its possessor ;^6o 
 for this single volume. 
 
 " In the reading-room directly beneath the main library, are a 
 number of portfolios of prints illustrative of the plays of Shakespeare, 
 of a size too large to be included in the illustrated collection just 
 noticed. There is likewise another copy of Shakespeare, based 
 upon Knight's pictorial royal octavo, copiously illustrated by the 
 owner ; but although the prints are numerous, they are neither as 
 costly nor as rare as those contained in the large folio copy. 
 
 ' ' Among the curiosities of the Shakespeare collection are a num- 
 ber of copies of the disputed plays, printed during his lifetime, with 
 the name of Shakespeare as their author. It is remarkable, if these 
 plays were not at least revised by Shakespeare, that no record of a 
 contradiction of their authorship should be found. It is not im- 
 probable that many plays written by others were given to Shake- 
 speare to perform in his capacity as a theatrical manager, requiring 
 certain alterations in order to adapt them to the use of the stage, 
 which were arranged by his cunning and skilful hand, and these 
 plays afterward found their way into print, with just sufficient of his 
 emendations to allow his authorship of them, in the carelessness in 
 which he held his literary fame, to pass uncontradicted by him. 
 
 "There is a copy of an old play of the period, with manuscript 
 annotations, and the name of Shakespeare written on the title-page. 
 It is either the veritable signature of the poet, or an admirably 
 imitated forgery. Mr Burton inclined to the opinion that the work 
 once belonged to Shakespeare, and that the signature is genuine. 
 If so, it is probably the only scrap of his handwriting on this con- 
 tinent. This work is not included in the list given of Ireland's 
 library, the contents of which were brought into disrepute by the 
 remarkable literary forgeries of the son, but stands forth peculiar 
 and unique, and furnishes much room for curious speculation."— 
 (148-SI.) 
 
1 82 His Functions. 
 
 and are little more estimable than other common 
 merchandise. ■ It would be difficult to find, among 
 the countless books about books produced by us in 
 the old country, any in ^irhich the bent of individual 
 tastes and propensities is so distinctly represented 
 in tangible symbols ; and the reality of the elucida- 
 tion is increased by the sort of innocent surprise 
 with which the historian approaches each " lot," 
 evidently as a first acquaintance, about whom he 
 inquires and obtains all available particulars, good- 
 humouredly communicating them in bald detail to 
 his reader. Here follows a sketch — and surely a 
 tempting one — of a New York interior : — 
 
 " Mr Burton's library contains nearly sixteen 
 thousand volumes. Its proprietor had constructed 
 for its accommodation and preservation a three- 
 storey fire-proof building, about thirty feet square, 
 which is isolated from all other buildings, and. is 
 connected with his residence in Hudson Street by 
 a conservatory gallery. The chief library-room oc- 
 cupies the upper floor of this building, and is about 
 twenty-five feet in height. Its ceiling presents a 
 series of groined rafters, after the old English style, 
 in the centre of which rises a dome - skylight of 
 stained glass. The sides of the library are fitted up 
 with thirty-six oak book-cases of a Gothic pattern, 
 which entirely surround it, and are nine feet in 
 height . The space between the ceiling and the 
 book -cases is filled with paintings, for the most 
 
Creation of 'Libraries. 183 
 
 part of large! size, a.hd said to be of value. Speci- 
 mens of armour and busts of distinguished authors 
 decorate appropriate compartments, and in a pro- 
 minent niche, at the head of the apartment, stands 
 a full-length statue of Shakespeare, executed by 
 Thom, in the same style as the Tarn o' Shanter and 
 Old Mortality groups of this Scotch sculptor. 
 
 " The great specialty of the library is its Shake- 
 speare collection ; but, although very extensive and 
 valuable, it by no means engrosses the entire library, 
 which contains a large number of valuable works in 
 several departments of literature. 
 
 " The number of lexicons and dictionaries is large, 
 and among the latter may be found all the rare old 
 English works so valuable for reference. Three 
 book-cases are devoted to serials, which, contain 
 many of the standard reviews and magazines. One 
 case is appropriated to voyages and travels, in which 
 are found many valuable ones. In another are 
 upwards of one hundred volumes of table-talk, and 
 numerous works on the fine arts and bibliography. 
 One book-case is devoted to choice works on Ame- 
 rica, among which is Sebastian Munster's Cosmo- 
 graphia Totius Orbis Regionum, published in folio 
 at Basle in 1537, which contains full notes of Co- 
 lumbus, Vespucci, and other early voyagers. An- 
 other department contains a curious catalogue of 
 authorities relating to Grime and Punishment ; a 
 liberal space is devoted to Facetiae, another to Ajne- 
 
184 His Functions. 
 
 rican^ Poetry, and also one to Natural and Moral 
 Philosophy. The standard works of Fiction, Bio- 
 graphy, Theology, and the Drama, are all repre- 
 sented. 
 
 "There is a fair collection of classical authors, 
 many of which are of Aldine and Elzevir editions. 
 Among the rarities in this department is a folio 
 copy of Plautus, printed at Venice in 15 18, and 
 illustrated with woodcuts." 
 
 The author thus coming upon a Roman writer of 
 plays, named Plautus, favours us with an account of 
 him, which it is unnecessary to pursue, since it by 
 no means possesses the interest attached to his still- 
 life sketches. Let us pass on and take a peep at 
 the collection of Chancellor Kent, known in this 
 country as the author of Kent's Commentary: — 
 
 "To a lawyer, the Chancellor's written remarks 
 on his books are, perhaps, their most interesting 
 feature. He studied pen in hand, and all of his 
 books contain his annotations, and some are literary 
 curiosities. His edition of Blackstone's Commen- 
 taries is the first American edition, printed in Phil- 
 adelphia in 1 77 1. It is creditable to the press of 
 that time, and is overlaid with annotations, showing 
 how diligently the future American commentator 
 studied the elegant work of his English predecessor. 
 The general reader will find still more interest in 
 the earlier judicial reports of the State of New 
 York, printed while he was on the bencL He will 
 
Creation of Libraries. 185 
 
 find not merely legal notes, but biographical memo- 
 randa of many of the distinguished judges and 
 lawyers, who lived at the commencement of the 
 century, and built up the present system of laws. 
 
 " In proceeding from the legal to the miscellane- 
 ous part of the library, the visitor's attention will, 
 perhaps, be attracted by an extensive and curious 
 collection of the records of criminal law. Not 
 merely the English state trials and the French 
 causes celkbres are there, but the criminal trials of 
 Scotland and of America, and detached publications 
 of remarkable cases, Newgate Calendars, Malefac- 
 tors' Register, Chronicles of Crime, with ghastly 
 prints of Newgate and Old Bailey, with their ex- 
 ecutions. The Chancellor is not responsible for this 
 part of the library, which owes its completeness to 
 the morbid taste of his successor, who defends the 
 collection as best illustrating the popular morals 
 and manners of every period, and contends that 
 fiction yields in interest to the gloomy dramas of 
 real life." 
 
 The practice attributed to the Chancellor of anno- 
 tating his books is looked on by collectors as in the 
 general case a crime which should be denied benefit 
 of clergy. What is often said, however, of other 
 crimes may be said of this, that if the perpetrator 
 be sufficiently illustrious, it becomes a virtue. If 
 Milton, for instance, had thought fit to leave his 
 -autograph annotations on the first folio Shake- 
 
1 86 His Functions. 
 
 speare, the offence wQuld not only have been par- 
 doned but applauded, greatly to the pecuniary 
 benefit of any one so fortunate as to discover the 
 treasure. But it would be highly dangerous for 
 ordinary peoplfe to found on such an irainunity. I 
 remember being once shown by an indignant col- 
 lector a set of utterly and hopelessly destroyed 
 copies of i^ai-e tracts connected with the religious 
 dispute's of. QUeen Elizabeth's day, each inlaid and 
 separately bound in a thin volume in the finest 
 morocco, with the title lengthways along the back. 
 These had been lerlt to a gentleman who deemed 
 himself a distinguished poetj and he thought proper 
 to write on the margin the sensations caused within 
 him by the perusal of some of the more striking 
 passages, certifying the genuiherless of his autograph 
 by' his signature at full length in a bold distinct 
 hand. He, worthy man, deemed that he was adding 
 greatly to the value of the rarities ; but had he 
 beheld the owner's face on occasion of the discovery, 
 he would have been undeceived. 
 -. There are in Dr Wynne's book descriptions, not 
 only of libraries according to their kind, but accord- 
 ing to their stage of growth, from those which, as 
 the work of a generation or two, have reached from 
 ten to fifteen thousand, to the collections still in 
 their youth, such as Mr Lorimer Graham's of five 
 thousand volumes, rich in early editions of British 
 poetry, and dbubtless, by this time, still richer, since 
 
Creation of Libraries. 187 
 
 its owner was lately here collecting early works on 
 the literature of Scotland, and other memorials of 
 the land of his fathers. Certainly, however, the 
 most interesting of the whole is the library of the 
 Rev. Dr Magoon, " an eminent and popular divine 
 of the Baptist Church." He entered on active life 
 as an operative bricklayer. There are, it appears, 
 wall -plates extant, and not a few, built by his 
 hands, and it was only by saving the earnings these 
 brought to him that he could obtain an education. 
 When an English mechanic finds out that he has 
 a call to the ministry, we can easily figure the grim 
 ignorant fanatical ranter that comes forth as the 
 result. If haply he is able to read, his library will 
 be a few lean sheepskin-clad volumes, such as Bos- 
 ton's Crook in the Lot, Fisher's Marrow of Modern 
 Divinity, Brooks's Apples of Gold, Bolton's Saint's 
 Enriching Examination, and Halyburton's Great 
 Concern. The bricklayer, however, was endowed 
 with the heavenly gift of the high aesthetic, which 
 no birth or breeding can secure, and threw him- 
 self into that common ground where art and reli- 
 gion meet — the literature of Christian medieval art. 
 Things must, however, have greatly changed among 
 our brethren since the days of Cotton Mather, or 
 even of Jonathan Edwards, when a person in Dr 
 Magoon's position could embellish his private sanc- 
 tuary in this fashion. 
 
 "The chief characteristic of the collection is its 
 
1 8b His Functions. 
 
 numerous works on the history, literature, and theory 
 of art in general, and of Christian architecture in 
 particular. There is scarcely a church, abbey, mon- 
 astery, college, or cathedral ; or picture, statue, or 
 illumination, prominent in Christian art, extant in 
 Italy, Germany, France, or the British Islands, that 
 is not represented either by original drawings or in 
 some other graphic form. 
 
 " In addition to these works, having especial re- 
 ference to Christian art, are many full sets of folios 
 depicting the leading galleries of ancient, medieval, 
 and modern art in general. Some of these, as the 
 six elephant folios on the Louvre, are in superb 
 bindings ; while many others, among which are the 
 Dresden Gallery and , Retzsch's Outlines, derive an 
 additional value from once having formed a part of 
 the elegant collection of William Reginald Cour- 
 tenay. 
 
 "But what renders this collection particularly 
 valuable, is its large number of original drawings 
 by eminent masters which accompany the written 
 and engraved works. Amongst these are two large 
 sepia drawings, by Amici, of the Pantheon and St 
 Peter's at Rome. These drawings were engraved 
 and published with several others by Ackermann. 
 Both the originals, and the engravings executed from 
 them, are in the collection. The original view near 
 the Basilica of St Marco, by Samuel Prout, the en- 
 graving of which is in Finden's Byron, and the 
 
Creation of Libraries. 189 
 
 interior of St Marco, by Luke Price, the engraving 
 of which is in Price's Venice Illustrated, grace the 
 collection. There is likewise a superb general view 
 of Venice, by Wyld ; a fine exterior view of Rheims 
 Cathedral, by Buckley; an exterior view of St 
 Peter's at Caen, by Charles Vacher ; and the inte- 
 rior of St Germain des Pr^s at Paris, by Duval." 
 
 The early history of the American settlements is 
 naturally the object around which many of these 
 collections cluster ; but the scraps of this kind of 
 literature which have been secured have a sadly 
 impoverished aspect in comparison with the luxuri- 
 ous stores which American money has attracted from 
 the Old World.^ Here one is forcibly reminded of 
 
 1 "This collection [Mr Menzies's] contains four thousand volumes, 
 and is for the most part in the English langus^e. Its chief specialty 
 consists in works on American history and early American printed 
 books. Among the latter may be mentioned a series of the earliest 
 works issued from the press in New York. Of these, is A Letter of 
 Advice to a Young Gentleman, by R. L., printed and sold by Wil- 
 liam Bradford, in New York, 1696. Richard Lyon, the author, came 
 early to this country, and officiated as a private tutor to a young 
 English student at Cambridge, to whom the letter of advice was 
 written. It is undoubtedly the earliest work which issued from the 
 press in New York, and is so extremely rare, that it is questionable 
 whether another copy is to be found in the State. There is a col 
 lection of tracts comprised in seven volumes, written by the Rev, 
 George Keith, and published by Bradford, at New York, 1702-4, 
 Keith was bom in Scotland, and settled in East Jersey, in the capa- 
 city of surveyor-general, in 1682. The several tracts in the collec 
 tion are on religious subjects, and are controversial in their character. 
 As early specimens of printing, and as models of the manner in 
 which the religious controversies of the day were conducted, they are 
 both instructive and curious. In addition to these is a work entitled 
 
igo His Functions. 
 
 those elements in the old-established libraries of 
 Europe which no wealth or zeal can achieve else- 
 where, because the commodity is not in the niarket. 
 
 America had just one small old library, and the 
 lamentation over the loss of this ewe-lamb is touch- 
 ing evidence of her poverty in such possessions. 
 The Harvard Library dates from the year 1638. 
 In 1764 the college buildings were burned, and 
 though books are not easily consumed, yet the 
 small collection of five thousand volumes was over- 
 whelmed in the general ruin. So were destroyed 
 many books from the early presses of the mother 
 country, and many of the firstlings of the trans- 
 atlantic printers ; and though its bulk was but that 
 of an ordinary country squire's collection, the loss 
 has been always considered national and irreparable. 
 
 It is, after all, a rather serious consideration — 
 which it never seems as yet to have occurred to 
 any one to revolve — how entirely the new states of 
 the West and the South seem to be cut off from the 
 
 The Rebuker Rebuked, by Daniel Leeds, 1703; A Sermon preached 
 at Kingston in Jamaica, by William Corbin, 1703 ; The Great Mys- 
 tery of Foxcraft, by Daniel Leeds, 1705 ; A Sermon preached at 
 Trinity Church, in New York, by John Sharp, 1706; An Alarm 
 Sounded to the Inhabitants of the World, by Bath Bowers, 1709; 
 and Lex Parliamentaria, 1716. All the above works were printed 
 by Bradford, the earliest New York publisher, and one of the earliest 
 printers in America. They constitute, perhaps, the most complete 
 collection in existence of the publications of this early typographer. 
 The whole are in an excellent state of preservation, and are nearly, 
 if not quite, unique." 
 
Creation vf Libraries. 191 
 
 literary, resources which the Old World possessed 
 in her old libraries. Whatever light lies - hidden 
 beneath the bushel in these venerable institutions, 
 seems for ever denied to the students and inquirers 
 of the new empire rising in the antipodes, and. con- 
 sequently to the minds of the people at large who 
 receive , impressions from students and inquirers. 
 Books can be .reprinted, it is true ; but where is 
 the likelihood that seven hundred thousand old 
 volumes will be reprinted to put the Astorian 
 Library on a par with the Imperial ? Well, per- 
 haps some quick and cheap way will be found of 
 righting it all when the Aerial Navigation Com- 
 pany issues its time-bills, and news come of battles 
 "from the nation's airy navies grappling in the 
 central blue." 
 
 - In the meantinie, what a lesson do these matters 
 impress on us of the importance of preserving old 
 books ! Government and legislation have done little, 
 if anything, in Britain, towards this object, beyond 
 the separate help that may have been extended to 
 individual public libraries, and the Copyright Act 
 deposits. Of general measures, it is possible to 
 point out some which have been injurious, by lead- 
 ing to the dispersal or destruction of books. The 
 house and window duties have done this to a large 
 extent. As this statement may not be quite self- 
 evident, a word in explanation may be appropriate. 
 The practice of the department having charge of 
 
192 His Functions. 
 
 the Assessed Taxes has been, when any furniture 
 was left in an unoccupied house, to levy the duty — 
 to exempt only houses entirely empty. It was a 
 consequence of this that when, by minority, family 
 decay, or otherwise, a mansion-house had to be shut 
 up, there was an inducement entirely to gut it of 
 its contents, including the library. The same cause, 
 by the way, has been more destructive still to fur- 
 niture, and may be said to have lost to our posterity 
 the fashions of a generation or two. Tables, chairs, 
 and cabinets first grow unfashionable, and then 
 old ; in neither stage have they any friends who 
 will comfort or support them — they are still worse 
 off than books. But then comes an after-stage, in 
 which they revive as antiquities, and become ex- 
 ceeding precious. As Pompeiis, however, are rare 
 in the world, the chief repositories of antique fur- 
 niture have been mansions shut up for a generation 
 or two, which, after more fashions than generations 
 have passed away, are reopened to the light of day, 
 either in consequence of the revival of the fortunes 
 of their old possessors, or of their total extinction 
 and the entry of new owners. How the house and 
 window duties disturbed this silent process by which 
 antiques were created is easily perceived. 
 
 One service our Legislature has done for the pre- 
 servation of books in the copies which require to 
 be deposited under the Copyright Act at Stationers' 
 Hall for the privileged libraries. True, this has 
 
Creation of Libraries. 193 
 
 been effected somewhat in the shape of a burden 
 upon authors, for the benefit of that posterity which 
 has done no more for them specially than it has 
 for other people of the present generation. But in 
 its present modified shape the burden should not 
 be grudged, in consideration of the magnitude of 
 the benefit to the people of the future — a benefit 
 the full significance of which it probably requires a 
 little consideration to estimate. The right of receiv- 
 ing a copy of every book from Stationers' Hall has 
 generally been looked on as a benefit to the library 
 receiving it. The benefit, however, was but lightly 
 esteemed by some of these institutions, the directors 
 of which represented that they were thus pretty 
 well supplied with the unsaleable rubbish, while 
 the valuable publications slipped past them ; and, 
 on the whole, they would sell their privilege for a 
 very small annual sum, to enable them to go into 
 the market and buy such books, old and new, as 
 they might prefer. The view adopted by the law, 
 however, was, that the depositing of these books 
 created an obligation if it conferred a privilege, the 
 institution receiving them having no right to part 
 with them, but being bound to preserve them as 
 a record of the literature of the age.i 
 
 If the rule come ever to be thoroughly enforced, 
 
 1 I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source of 
 public information, there is any authenticated statement of the 
 quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through 
 
 N 
 
194 fii^ Func^ig-m, 
 
 it will then come to pass that of every boqk that is 
 printed in Britain, good or bad, , five copies shall 
 be preserved in the shelves oi so many public lib- 
 raries, slumbering there in peace, or tossed about 
 by impatient readers, as the case may be. For the 
 latter there need not perhaps be much anxiety ; it 
 is for the sake of those addicted to slumbering in 
 peaceful, obscurity that this refuge is valuable. 
 There is thus at lea.st a remnant saved from the 
 relentless trunks maker. If the day of resuscita- 
 tion from the long sluipber should arrive, we know 
 where to find the book^-in a privileged library. The 
 recollection just now occurs to me of a man of 
 
 the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the 
 fertility of the British press. It is rathciteurious, that for a morsel 
 of tWs kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse 
 to so scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the Prafationes et 
 Efistola Edi^onibus principibus y^ucto-ntm Veterum praposita, curante 
 Beriah Botfield, A.M. The editor of that rioble quarto obtained a 
 return from Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the 
 British Museum from 1814 to i86o. Counting the "pieces," as they 
 are called — that is, every volume, pamphlet, page of music, and 
 other publication — the total number received in 1814 was 378. It 
 increased by steady gradation until 1851, when it- reached 9871.. 
 It then got an impulse, from a determination more strictly to enforce 
 the Act, and next year the ntitnber rose to 13,934, and ia 1859 it 
 reached 28,807. In this grea.t mass, the number of books coming 
 forth complete in one volume or more is roundly f ^timated at 5000, 
 but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make 
 up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain 
 number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority, 
 it appears that^ tlje total nunii|ber of publications which issued from 
 the Frenclji, press in 1858 was estimated at I3,cxxi ; ^jut this includes 
 "sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, an^, engravings." In 
 
Creation of Libraries. 195 
 
 unquestionable character and scholarship, who wrote 
 a suitable and ihtelligent book on an important 
 subject, and at his own expense had it brought into 
 the world by a distinguished publisher, prudently 
 intimating on the title-page that he reserved the 
 right of translation. Giving the work all due time 
 to find its way, he called at the Row, exactly a 
 year after the day of publication, to ascertain the 
 result. He was presented with a perfectly succinct 
 account of charge and discharge, in which he was 
 credited with three copies sold. Now, he knew that 
 his family had bought two copies, but he never 
 could find out who it was that had bought the 
 
 the same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included, 
 are estimated at 10,000^ all apparently actual volumes, or consider- 
 able pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts. 
 What a contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway, 
 where the annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes ! In 
 Holland the annual publications approach 2000. "During the 
 year 1854, 861 works in the Russian language, and 451 in foreign 
 languages were printed in Russia ; besides 2940, scientific and liter- 
 ary treatises in the different periodicals." The number of works 
 anywhere published is, however, no indication of the number of 
 books put in circulation, since some will have to be multiplied by 
 tens, others by hundreds, and others by thousands. We know that 
 there is an immense currency of literature in the American States, 
 yet, of the quantity of literature issued there, the Publishers' Circular 
 for February 1859 gives the following- meagre estimate: — "There 
 were 912 works ptiblished in America during 1858. Of these 177 
 were reprints from England, 35 were new editions, and 10 were 
 translations from the French or German. X^e new American works 
 thus number only 690, and among them are included sermons, 
 pamphlets, and letters, whereas the reprints are in most cases honC 
 fide books. > 
 
196 His Functions. 
 
 third. The one mind into which his thoughts had 
 thus passed, remained ever mysteriously undiscover- 
 able. Whether or not he consoled himself with the 
 reflection that what might have been diffused over 
 many was concentrated in one, it is consolatory to 
 others to reflect that such a book stands on record 
 in the privileged libraries, to come forth to the 
 world if it be wanted. 
 
 Nor is the resuscitation of a book unsuited to its 
 own age, but suited to another, entirely unexampled. 
 That beautiful poem called Albania was reprinted 
 by Leyden, from a copy preserved somewhere : so 
 utterly friendless had it been in its obscurity, that 
 the author's history, and even his name, were un- 
 known ; and though it at once excited the high 
 admiration of Scott, no scrap of intelligence con- 
 cerning it could be discovered in any quarter con- 
 temporary with its first publication. The Discourse 
 on Trade by Roger North, the author of the amusing 
 Lives of Lord-Keeper Guildford and his other two 
 brothers, was lately reprinted from a copy in the 
 British Museum, supposed to be the only one exist- 
 ing. Though neglected in its own day, it has been 
 considered worthy of attention in this, as promulgat- 
 ing some of the principles of our existing philosophy 
 of trade. On the same principle, some rare tracts 
 on political economy and trade were lately reprinted 
 by a munificent nobleman, who thought the doc- 
 trines contained in them worthy of preservation 
 
Creation of Libraries. 197 
 
 and promulgation. The Spirit of Despotism, by 
 Vicesimus Knox, was reprinted, at a time when its 
 doctrines were popular, from a single remaining 
 copy : the book, though instructive, is violent and 
 declamatory, and it is supposed that its author dis- 
 couraged or endeavoured to suppress its sale after 
 it was printed. 
 
 In the public duty of creating great libraries^ and 
 generally of preserving the literature of the world 
 from being lost to it, the collector's or book-hunter's 
 services are eminent and numerous. In the first 
 place, many of the great public libraries have been 
 absolute donations of the treasures to which some 
 enthusiastic literary sportsman has devoted his life 
 and fortune. Its gradual accumulation has been the 
 great solace and enjoyment of his active days ; he 
 has beheld it, in his old age, a splendid monument 
 of enlightened exertion, and he resolves that, when 
 he can no longer call it his own, it shall preserve the 
 relics of past literature for ages yet to tome, and 
 form a centre whence scholarship and intellectual 
 refinement shall diffuse themselves around. We can 
 see this influence in its most specific and material 
 shape, perhaps, by looking round the reading-room 
 of the British Museum — that great manufactory of 
 intellectual produce, where so many heads are at 
 work. Thel beginning of this great institution, as 
 everybody knows, was in the fifty thousand volumes 
 collected by Sir Hans Sloane — a wonderful, achieve- 
 
198 His Functions. 
 
 ment for a private gentleman at the beginning of 
 the last century. When George III. gave it the 
 libraries of the kings of England, it gained, as it 
 were, a better start still by absorbing collections 
 which had begun before Sloane was born— ^those of 
 Cranmer, Prince Henry, and Casaubon. The Am- 
 brosian Library at Milan was the private collection 
 of Cardinal Borromeo, bequeathed by him to the 
 world. It reached forty thousand volumes ere he 
 died, and these formed a library which had arisen 
 in free, natural, and symmetrical growth^ insomuch 
 as, having fed it during his whole life, it began with 
 the young and economic efforts of youth and poverty, 
 and went on accumulating in bulk and in the costli- 
 ness of '■ its contents as succeeding years brought 
 wealth and honours to the great prelate. What 
 those merchant princes, the Medici, did for the 
 Laurentian Library at Florence is part of history. 
 Old Cosmo, who had his mercantile and political 
 correspondents in all lands, made them also his lit- 
 erary agents, who thus sent him goods too precious 
 to be resold even at a profit. " He corresponded," 
 says Gibbon, "at once with Cairo and London, and 
 a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often 
 imported by the same vessel." The Bodleian started 
 with a collection which had cost Sir Thomas Bodley 
 ;^ 1 0,000, and it was augmented from time to time 
 by the absorption of tributary influxes of the same 
 kind. Some far-seeing promoters of national muse- 
 
Creation of Libraries, 1 99 
 
 ums have reached the conclusion that it is not a 
 sound ultimate policy to press too closely on the 
 private collector. He is thdrefdfe pefmitted, under 
 a certain amount cif watchful inspection, to accumu- 
 late his small treasury of antiquities, shells, or dried 
 plants, in the prospect that in the course of time it 
 will find its way, like' the feeding fills of a lake, into 
 th6 great public treasury.^ 
 
 In many instances the collectors whose stores 
 have thus gone to the public, have merely followed 
 their hunting propensities, without having the merit 
 of framing the ultimate destiny of their collections, 
 but in others the intention of doing benefit to the 
 world has added zest and energy to the chase. Of 
 this class there is one memorable and beautiful in- 
 stance in Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durbarh, who 
 lived and laboured so early as the days of Edward 
 III., and has left an autobiographical sketch infin- 
 itely valuable, as at once informing us of the social 
 habits, and letting us into the very inner life, of the 
 highly endowed studetit and the affluent collector 
 of the fourteenth century. His little book, called 
 Philobibliott, was brought to light from an older 
 obsctife' edition by the scholar printer Badiiis As- 
 censitis, and was the first fruit of his press when 
 
 1 The most complete mass of iiiformatioii which We probably possess 
 in the English language about the history of libraries, both home and 
 foreign, is in the two octavos called Memoirs of Libraries, including 
 a Handbook of Library Concerns, by Edward Edwards. 
 
200 His Functions. 
 
 he set it up in Paris in the year 1499. An Eng- 
 lish translation of it was published in 1832. It is 
 throughout adorned with the gentle and elevated 
 nature of the scholar, and derives a still nobler lustre 
 from the beneficent purpose to which the author 
 destined the literary relics which it was the enjoy- 
 ment of his life to collect and study.. Being en- 
 dowed with power and wealth, and putting to him- 
 self the questiori, "What can I render to the Lord 
 for all that he hath conferred on me?" he found 
 an answer in the determination of smoothing the 
 path of the poor and ardent student, by supplying 
 him with the means of study. " Behold," he says, 
 "a herd of outcasts rather than of elect scholars 
 meets the view of our contemplations, in which God 
 the artificer, and nature his handmaid, have planted 
 the roots of the best, niorals and most celebrated 
 sciences. But the penury of their private affairs so 
 oppresses them, being opposed by adverse fortune, 
 that the fruitful seeds of virtue, so productive in the 
 unexhausted field of youth, unmoistened by their 
 wonted dews, are compelled to wither. Whence it 
 happens, as Boetius says, that bright virtue lies hid 
 in obscurity, and the burning lamp is not put under 
 a bushel, but is utterly extinguished for want of oil. 
 Thus the flowery field in spring is ploughed up be- 
 fore harvest; thus wheat gives way to tares, the vine 
 degenerates to woodbine, and the olive grows wild 
 
Creation of Libraries. 201 
 
 and unproductive." Keenly alive to this want, he 
 resolved to devote himself, not meirely to supply 
 to the hungry the necessary food,, but to impart 
 to the poor and ardent scholar the mental susten- 
 ance which might possibly enable him to burst the 
 bonds of circumstance, and, triumphing over his 
 sordid lot, freely communicate to mankind the bless- 
 ings which it is the function of cultivated genius to 
 distribute. 
 
 The Bishop was a great and powerful man, for 
 he went over Europe commissioned as the spiritual 
 adviser of the great conqueror, Edward III. Wher- 
 ever he went on public business — to Rome, France, 
 or the other states of Europe — "on tedious embas- 
 sies and in perilous times," he carried about with 
 him "that fondness for books which many waters 
 could not extinguish," and gathered up all that his 
 power, his wealth, and his vigilance brought within 
 his reach. In Paris he becomes quite ecstatic : " Oh 
 blessed God of gods in Zion ! what a rush of the 
 glow of pleasure rejoiced our heart as often as we 
 visited Paris — the Paradise of the world ! There 
 we longed to remain, where, on account of the great- 
 ness of our love, the days ever appeared to us to be 
 few. There are delightful libraries in cells redolent 
 of aromatics— th^e flourishing greenhouses of all 
 sorts of volumes : there academic meads trembling 
 with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing 
 
202 His F%mctiOns: 
 
 up and down : thete the pfofliontcrfies of Parnassus 
 and the porticos of the stoics." 
 
 The most powerful instrument in his policy was 
 encouraging and bringing round hirti, as dependents 
 and followers, the members of the mendicant orders 
 — the labourers called to the vineyard in the eleventh 
 hour, as he calls theni. These he set to cater for 
 him, and he triuniphantly asks, "Among so many 
 of the keenest hunters, what leveret could lie hid ? 
 What fry could evade the hook, the net, or the 
 trawl of these men? From the body of divine 
 law down to the latest controversial tract of the 
 day, nothing could escape the notice of these scruti- 
 nisers." In further revelations of his method he 
 says, "When, indeed, we happened to turn aside 
 to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers 
 had convents, we were nOt slack in visiting their 
 chests and bther repositories of boOks ; for there, 
 amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most 
 exalted riches treasured up ; there, in their satchels 
 and caskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that 
 fell from the master's table for the little dogs, but, 
 indeed, the shew-bread without leaven — the bread 
 of angels containing all that is delectable." He 
 specially marks the zedl of the Dominicans or 
 Preachers ; and in exulting over his success in the 
 field, he affords curioUs glimpses into the ways of 
 the various humble assistants who were glad to 
 
Creation of Libraries. 203 
 
 lend themselves to the hobby of one of the most 
 powerful prelates of his day.^ 
 
 The manner in which Richard of Bury dedicated 
 his stores to the intellectual nurture of the poor 
 scholar, was by converting them into a library for 
 Durham College, which merged into Trinity of Ox- 
 ford. It would have been a pleasant thing to look 
 upon the actual collection of manuscripts which 
 awakened so much recorded zeal and tenderness in 
 the great ecclesiastic of five hundred years ago ; but 
 in later troubles they became dispersed, and all that 
 
 1 ' ' Indeed, although we had obtained abundance both of old and 
 new works, through an extensive communication with all the religious 
 orders, yet we must in justice extol the Preachers with a special com- 
 mendation in this respect ; for we found them, above all other reli- 
 gious devotees, ungrudging of their most acceptable communications, 
 and overflowing with a certain divine liberality ; we experienced 
 them not to be , selfish hoarders, but meet professors of enlightened 
 knowledge. Besides all the opportunities already touched upon, we 
 easily acquired the notice of the stationers and librarians, not only 
 within the provinces of our natiye soil, but of those dispersed over 
 the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy, by the prevailing 
 power of money ; no distance whatever impeded, no fury of the sea 
 deterred them ; nor was cash wanting for their expenses, when they 
 sent or brought us the wished-for, books ; for they knew to a certainty 
 that their hopes reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed, 
 but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our 
 common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect 
 the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, 
 but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and 
 paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up 
 neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such 
 coarse digests of barbarism, as with the gift of eloquence might be 
 made sanative to the pectoral arteries. Ampngst productions of this 
 
204 His Functions. 
 
 seems to be known of their whereabouts is, that 
 some of them are in the library of Baliol.^ Another 
 eminent English prelate made a worthy, but equally 
 ineffectual, attempt to found a great university lib- 
 rary. This was the Rev. John Fisher, Bishop of 
 Rochester, who gave what was called "the noblest 
 library in England " to the newly founded college 
 of St John's. It was not a bequest. To make his 
 gift secure, it was made over directly to the college, 
 but as he could not part with his favourites while 
 he lived, he borrowed the whole back for life. This 
 is probably the most extensive book loan ever ne- 
 
 kind, we found many most worthy of renovation, which, when the 
 foul rust was skilfully polished off, and the mask of old age removed, 
 deserved to be once more remodelled into comely countenances, and 
 which we, having applied a sufficiency of the needful means, resusci- 
 tated for an exemplar of future resurrection, having in some measure 
 restored them to renewed soundness. Moreover, there was always 
 about us in our halls no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, 
 bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and, generally, of all such 
 persons as were qualified to labour advantageously in the service of 
 books. 
 
 "To conclude; All of either sex, of every degree, estate, or 
 dignity, whose pursuits were in any way connected vnith books, could, 
 with a knock, most easily open the door of our heart, and find a 
 convenient reposing place in our bosom. We so admitted all who 
 brought books, that neither the multitude of first-comers could pro- 
 duce a fastidiousness of the last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday 
 be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually 
 resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant 
 attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and 
 a multifarious flight of the best volumes were made to us. And this 
 is what we undertook to relate at large in the present chapter." 
 
 ^ Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586. 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 205 
 
 gotiated ; but the Reformation, and his own tragic 
 destiny, were coming on apace, and the books were 
 lost both to himself and his favourite college.^ 
 
 2Df)e ^teatrijatum of %!AzxsXixn. 
 
 |HE benefactors whose private collections 
 have, by a generous act of endowment, 
 been thus rendered at the same time 
 permanent and public, could be counted 
 by hundreds. It is now, however, my function to 
 describe a more subtle, but no less powerful influ- 
 ence which the book-hunter exercises in the preser- 
 vation and proniulgation of literature, through the 
 mere exercise of that instinct or passion which 
 makes him what he is here called. What has been 
 said above must have suggested — if it was not seen 
 before — how great a pull it gives to any public 
 library, that it has had an early start ; and how 
 hard it is, with any amount of wealth and energy, 
 to make up for lost time, and raise a later institu- 
 tion to the level of its senior. The Imperial Lib- 
 rary of Paris, which has so marvellously lived 
 through all the storms that have swept round its 
 walls, was founded in the fourteenth century. It 
 began, of course, with manuscripts ; possessing, be- 
 
 ^ Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609. 
 
2o6 His Functions. 
 
 fore the beginning of the fifteenth century, the then 
 enormous number of a thousand volumes. The 
 reason, however, of its present greatness, so far 
 beyond the rivalty of later establishments, is, that 
 it was in active operation at the birth of printing, 
 and, received the first-born of the press. There 
 they have been sheltered and preserved, while their 
 unprotected brethren, tossed about in the world 
 outside, have long disappeared, and passed out of 
 existence for ever. 
 
 Among the popular notions passing current as 
 duly certified axioms, just because they have never 
 been questioned and examined, one is, that, since 
 the age of printing, no book once put to press has 
 ever died. The notion is quite inconsistent with 
 fact. When we count by hundreds of thousands the 
 books that are in the Paris Library, and not to be 
 had for the British Museum, we know the number 
 of books which a chance refuge has protected from 
 the general destruction, and can readily see, in 
 shadowy bulk, though we cannot estimate in num- 
 bers, the great mass which, having found no refuge, 
 have disappeared out of separate existence, and been 
 mingled up with the other elements of the earth's 
 crust. 
 
 We have many accounts of the marvellous preser- 
 vation of books after they have become rare — the 
 snatching of them as brands from the burning; 
 their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 207 
 
 breach. It would be interesting, also, to have some 
 account of the progress of destruction among books. 
 A work dedicated apparently to this object, which 
 I have been unable to find in the body, is men- 
 tioned under a very tantalising title. It is by a 
 certain John Charles Conrad Oelrichs, author of 
 several scraps of literary history, and is called a 
 Dissertation concerning the Fateg of Libraries and 
 Books, and, in the first place, concerning the books 
 that have been eaten — such I take to be the mean- 
 ing of " Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum 
 Fatis, iniprimis libris comestis." This is nearly as 
 tantalising as the wooden-legged Britisher's explan- 
 ation to the inquisitive Yankee, who solemnly en- 
 gaged to ask not another question were he told how 
 that leg was lost, and was accordingly told that " it 
 was bitten off." 
 
 Nor is there anything to allay the curiosity thus 
 excited in finding that the French, in the aU-com- 
 prehensive spirit of their classification and nomen- 
 clature, include the book-eater with the decorous 
 title Bibliophage, seeing that in so gossiping a work 
 as Peignot's Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, all that is 
 communicated under this department is, "Biblio- 
 phage signifie celui qui mange des livres." We are 
 not favoured \vith any examples explanatory of the 
 kind of books most in demand by those addicted to 
 this species of food, nor of the effect of the different 
 classes of books on the digestive organs. 
 
2o8 His Functions. 
 
 Religious and political intolerance has, as all the 
 world knows, been a terrible enemy to literature, 
 not only by absolute suppression, but by the re- 
 straints of the licenser. So little was literary free- 
 dom indeed understood anywhere until recent days, 
 that it was only by an accident after the Revolution 
 that the licensing of books was abolished in Eng- 
 land. The new licenser, Edmond Bohun, happened 
 in fact to be a Jalcobite, and though he professed 
 to confbrm to the Revolution Settlement, his sym- 
 pathies with the exiled house disabled him from 
 detecting disaffection skilfully smothered, and the 
 House of Commons, in a rage, abolished his office 
 by refusing to renew the Licensing Act. Of the 
 extent to which literature has suffered by suppres- 
 sion, there are no data for a precise estimate. It 
 might bring out some curious results, however, were 
 any investigator to tell us of the books which had 
 been effectually put down after being in existence. 
 It would of course be found that the weak were 
 crushed, while the strong flourished. Among the 
 valuable bibliographical works of Peignot, is a dic- 
 tionary of books which have been condemned to the 
 flames, suppressed, or censured. We do not require 
 to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the 
 burnings and condemnations have been in their 
 effect on the giants of literature. The first name 
 of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up 
 the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubignd 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 209 
 
 the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, 
 Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crdbillon, 
 and so on, down to Voltaire and Wicliffe. 
 
 Wars and revolutions have of course done their 
 natural work on many libraries, yet the mischief 
 effected by them has often been more visible than 
 real, since they have tended rather to dispersion than 
 destruction. The total loss to literature by the dis- 
 persion of the libraries of the monastic establish- 
 ments in England, is probably not nearly so great as 
 that which has accompanied , the chronic moulder- 
 ing away of the treasures preserved so obstinately 
 by the lazy monks of the Levant,, who were found 
 by Mr Curzon at their public devotions laying down 
 priceless volumes which they: could not read, to 
 protect their dirty feet from the cold floor. In the 
 wildest times the book repository often partakes in 
 the good fortune of the humble student whom the 
 storm passes over. In the hour of danger, too, some 
 friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety may 
 interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of 
 the French libraries were certainly in terrible danger 
 when Robespierre had before him the draft of a 
 decree, that "the books of the public libraries of 
 Paris and the departments should no longer be per- 
 mitted to offend the eyes of the republic by shame- 
 ful marks of servitude." The word would have 
 gone forth, and a good deal beyond the mere marks 
 of servitude would have been doubtless destroyed, 
 
 O 
 
2IO His Functions. 
 
 had not the emergency called forth the courage and 
 energies of Renouard.and Didot.* ' 
 
 There are probably false impressionis abroad as 
 to the susceptibility of literature ' to destruction by 
 fire. Books' are not good fuel, as, fortUnatfely, many 
 a housexnaid has found, when, among other frantic 
 efforts and failures in fire-lighting, she has reasoned 
 from the. false data of the inflammability of a piece 
 of paper. In the days when heretical books were 
 burned, it was necessary to place them on large 
 wooden stagesj and after all the pains taken to 
 demolish them, considerable readable masses were 
 sometimes found in the embers ; whence it was sup- 
 posed that the devil, conversant in fire and its 
 effects, gave them his special protection. In the 
 end it was found easier and cheaper to burn the 
 heretics themselves than their books. 
 
 Thus books can be burned, but they don't burn, 
 and though in great fir^s libraries have been wholly 
 or partially destroyed, we never hear of a library 
 making a great conflagration like a cotton mill 'or 
 a tallow warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house 
 seeming irretrievably on iire, until the flames, com- 
 ing in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the 
 Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over 
 this joint barrier, and sank defeated. When any- 
 thing is said about the burning of libraries, Alex- 
 
 . 1 Edwards on Libraries^ vol. ii. p. 272. 
 
The Presetiiation of Literature. 211 
 
 andria at once flares up in the memory ; but it- is 
 strange how little of a satisfactory kind investigators 
 have ibeen able to make out, either about the forma- 
 tion or destruction of the many famous libraries 
 collected from time to time in that ■ city. There 
 seems little doubt that Caesar's auxiliaries uninten- 
 tionally burnt one of them ; its contents were 
 probably written on papyrus, a material about as 
 inflammable as dried reeds or wood-shavings. As 
 to that other burning in detail, when the collection 
 was used for fuel to the baths, and lasted some six 
 weekS' — surely never was there a greater victim of 
 historical prejudice arid calumny than the " ignorant 
 and fanatical " Caliph Omar al Raschid. Over and 
 over has this act been disproved, and yet it will 
 continue to be reasserted with uniform pertinacity 
 in successive rolling sentences, all as like each other 
 as the successive billows in a swell at sea.-' 
 
 Apart, however, from violence and accident, there 
 is a constant decay of books from what might be 
 called natural causes, keeping, like the decay of 
 
 ^ One of the latest inquirers who has gone over the ground con- 
 cludes his evidence thus : "Omar ne vint pas a Alexandria ; et s'il 
 y fut venu, il n'eut pas trouve des livres 4 bruler. La bibliotheque 
 n'existait plus depuis deux siecles et demi." — Foumier, L'Esprit dans 
 I'Histoire. What shall we say to the story told by Zonaras and 
 repeated by Pancirole, of the burning, in the reign of the Emperor 
 Basilisc, of the library of Constantinople, containing one hundred and 
 twenty thousand volumes, and among them a copy of the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey, written in golden letters on parchment made from the 
 intestines of the dr^on? 
 
212 His Functions. 
 
 the human race, a proportion to their reproduction, 
 which varies according to place or circumstance ; 
 here showing a rapid increase where production 
 outruns decay, and there a decrease where the 
 morbid elements of annihilation are stronger than 
 the active elements of reproduction. Indeed, vol- 
 umes are in their varied external conditions very 
 like human beings. There are some stout and 
 others frail — some healthy and others sickly ; and 
 it happens often that the least robust are the most 
 precious. The full fresh health of some of the 
 folio fathers and schoolmen, ranged side by side 
 in solemn state on the oaken shelves of some 
 venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who 
 expect mouldy decay ; the stiff hard binding is 
 as angular as ever, — there is no abrasion of the 
 leaves, not a single dog-ear or a spot, or even a 
 dust-border on the mellowed white of the margin. 
 So, too, of those quarto civilians and canonists of 
 Leydeh and Amsterdam, with their smooth white 
 vellum coats, bearing so generic a resemblance to 
 Dutch cheeses, that they might be supposed to re- 
 present the experiments of some Gouda dairyman 
 on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life and 
 an established positiori in society are the secret of 
 their excellent preservation and condition. Their 
 repose has been little disturbed by intrusive readers 
 or unceremonious investigators, and their repute for 
 solid learning has given them a claim to attention 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 213 
 
 and careful preservation. It has sometimes hap- 
 pened to me, as it probably has to many another 
 inquisitive person, to penetrate to the heart of one 
 of these solid volumes and find it closed in this 
 wise : — As the binder of a book is himself bound 
 to cut off as little as possible of its white margin, 
 it may take place, if any of the leaves are inaccu- 
 rately folded, that their edges are not cut, and that, 
 as to such leaves, the book is in the uncut condition 
 so often denounced by impatient readers. So have 
 I sometimes had to open with a paper-cutter the 
 pages which had shut up for two hundred years 
 that knowledge which the ponderous volume, like 
 any solemn holder-forth whom no one listens to, 
 pretended to be distributing abroad from its place 
 of dignity on the shelf Sometimes, also, there will 
 drop out of a heavy folio a little slip of orange- 
 yellow paper covered with some cabalistic-looking 
 characters, which a careful study discovers to be a 
 hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that the dealer 
 from whom the volume was purchased, about the, 
 time of some crisis in the Thirty Years' War, would 
 be rather gratified than otherwise should the pur- 
 chaser be pleased to remit to him the price of it. 
 Though quartos and folios are dwindling away, 
 like many other conventional distinctions of rank,: 
 yet are authors of the present day not entirely 
 divested of the opportunity of taking their place 
 on the shelf like these old dignitaries. It would 
 
214 His Functions. 
 
 be as absurd, of course, to appear in folio as to 
 step abroad in the small-clothes and queue of our 
 great-grandfathers' day, and even quarto is reserved 
 for science and some departments of the law; But 
 then, on the other hand, octavos are growing as 
 large as some of the folios of the seventeenth- cen- 
 tury, and a solid roomy -lookitig book is still prac- 
 ticable. Whoever desires to achieve a sure, though 
 it may be but a humble, niche in the temple of 
 fame, let him write a few solid volumes with re- 
 spectably sounding titles, and matter that will 
 rather repel the reader than court him to such 
 familiarity as may beget contempt. Such books 
 are to the frequenter of a library like country gen- 
 tlemen's- seats to travellers, something to know the 
 name and ownership of in passing. The stage- 
 coachman of old used to proclaim each in suc- 
 cession — the guide-book tells them now. So do 
 literary 'guide-books in the shape of library-cata- 
 Ibgues and bibliographies, tell of these steady and 
 respectable mansions of literature. No one speaks 
 ill of them, or even proclaims his ignorance of their 
 nature; and your '' man who knows everything" will 
 profess some familiarity with them, the more readily 
 that the verity of his pretensions is not likely to 'be 
 tested. A man's name may have resounded for a 
 time through all the' newspapers as the gainer of a 
 great victory or the speaker of marvellous speeches 
 — he may have been the most brilliant wit of some 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 215 
 
 distinguished social circle — the head of a great pro- 
 fession^-^eVen a leading statesman ; yet his memory 
 has utterly evaporated with the departure! of his 
 own generation. Had he but written one or two 
 of these solid books, now, ' his name would have 
 been perpetuated in catalogues and bibliographical 
 dictionaries ; nay, biographies and encyclopaedias 
 would contain their' titles, and perhaps' the day of 
 the author's birth and death. Let those who" desire 
 posthumous fame, counting recollectidtl' as equiva- 
 lent to fame, think of this. 
 
 It is with? no desire to further the arfflihilation or 
 decay of the stout and lorig-lived class of books of 
 which I 'have been speaking, that I nov<r' draw atten- 
 tion to the book'hunter's services in the preservation 
 of some that are of a more fragile nature, and are 
 liable to dtoop and decay. We can see the process 
 going on around us, just as we see other things tra- 
 velling towards extinction. Ldok, for instance, at 
 school-books, how rapidly and obviously they go to 
 ruin. True, there are plenty of them, but save of 
 those preserved in the privileged libraries, or of 
 some that may be tossed aside among lumber in 
 which they happen tO; remain until they become 
 curiosities, -what chance iS there of any of them 
 bemg in existence, a century hence? Collectors 
 know well the extrertle' rarity and value of ahcie'ht 
 school-ljppks. ; , Nor is theij" value by any means fan- 
 ciful. The dominie will tell us that they are old- 
 
2i6 His Functions. 
 
 fashioned, and the pedagogue who keeps a school, 
 "and ca's it a acaudemy," will sneer at them as 
 "obsolete and incompatible with the enlightened 
 adjuncts of modern tuition ; " but if we are to con- 
 sider that. the condition of the human intellect at 
 any particular juncture is worth, studying, it is cer- 
 tainly of importance to know on what' food its in- 
 fancy is fed. And so of children's play-books as 
 well as their work-books ; these are as ephemeral 
 as their other toys. Retaining dear recollections 
 of some that were the favourites, and desiring to 
 awaken from them old recollections of careless boy- 
 hood, or perhaps to try whether your own children 
 inherit the paternal susceptibility to their beauties, 
 you make application to the bookseller — but, be- 
 hold, they have disappeared from existence as 
 entirely as the rabbits you fed, and the terrier 
 that followed you with his cheery clattering bark. 
 Neither name nor description — not the announce- 
 ment of the benevolent publishers, " Darton, Harvey, 
 and Darton" — can recover the faintest traces of 
 their vestiges.^ Old cookery-books, almanacs, books 
 
 ^ I question if Toy Literature, as it may be called, has received the 
 consideration it deserve?, when one remembers how great an influ- 
 ence it must have on the formation of the infant mind. I am not 
 prepared to argue that it should be put under regulation — perhaps it 
 is best that it shpfild be left to the w|ld luxuriance of nature — but its 
 characteristics and influence are surely worthy of studious observa- 
 tion. It happened to me once to observe in the library of an emin- 
 ent divine a large heap of that Class of Works which used to be known 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 217 
 
 of prognostication, directories for agricultural opera- 
 tions, guides to handicrafts, and other works of a 
 practical nature, are infinitely valuable when they 
 refer to remote times, and also infinitely rare. 
 
 But of course the most interesting of all are 
 the relics of pure literature, of poems and plays. 
 Whence have arisen all the anxious searches and 
 disappointments, and the bitter contests, and the 
 rare triumphs, about the early editions of Shake- 
 speare, separately or collectively, save from this, 
 that they peissed from one impatient hand to an- 
 other, and were subjected to an unceasing greedy 
 perusal, until they were at last used up, and put out 
 of existence ? True it was to be with him — 
 
 " So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 
 
 as "penny bookies.'' My reverend friend explained, in relation to 
 them, that they were intended to counteract some pernicious influ- 
 ences at work — that he had made the important and painful dis- 
 covery that the influence of this class of literature had been noticed 
 and employed by the enemies of the Church. In confirmation of 
 this view, he showed me some passages, of which I remember the 
 following : — 
 
 " B was a Bishop who loved his reposet 
 C was a Curate who had a red nose," 
 
 D was a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think, 
 however, that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of reli- 
 gion and the specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were 
 mixed up with childish prattle, was much more decorous or appro- 
 priate than what it was intended to counteract. 
 
2 1 8 His Functions. 
 
 But his tuneful companions' who' had less vital 
 power have , lain' like some aneJbnt cemetery or 
 buried city, in which antiquaries' have been for a 
 long age digging and searching for some fragment 
 of intellectual treasure.' 
 
 One book, and that the mGst read of all, was 
 hedged by a sort of divinity which protected it, so 
 far as that was practicable, from the dilapidating 
 effects of use. The Bible seems to have been ever 
 touched with ' reverent gentleness, and, when the 
 sordid effects of long' handling had become inevi- 
 tably conspicuous, to have been generally removed 
 out of sight, and, aS it were, decently interred. 
 Hence it is that, of the old editions of the Bible, 
 the copies are so comparatively numerous and in 
 such fine preservation. Look at those two folios 
 from the types of Guttenburg and Fust, running so 
 far back into the earliest stage of the art of printing, 
 that of them is told the legend of a combination 
 with the devil, which epabled one man to write so 
 many copies identically the same. See how clean 
 and spotless is the paper, and how hlack, glossy, 
 and. distinct the type, telling us how little progress 
 printing has made since the days of its inventors, 
 in anything save the greater' rapidity with which, 
 in consequence pf the progress of machinery, it can 
 now be executed. 
 
 The reason ,of^ the extreme rarity of the books 
 printed by the early English printers is that, being 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 219 
 
 very amusing, they were used up, thumbed out of 
 existence. Such were Caxton's Book of the Otdre 
 of Chyualry ; his Knyght of the Toure j the Myrour 
 of the World ; and the Golden Legende ; Cocke 
 Lorell's Bote, by De Worde ; his Kalender of 
 Shepeherdes, and suchlike. If any one feels an 
 interest in the process of exhaustion, by which such 
 treasures were reduced to rarity, he may easily 
 witness it in the dSbris of a circulating library ; 
 and perhaps he will find the phenomenon in still 
 more distinct operation at any book-stall where lie 
 heaps of school-books, odd volumes of novels, and 
 a choice of Watts's Hymns and Pilgrim's Progresses. 
 Here, too, it is possible that the enlightened on- 
 looker may catch sight of the book-hunter plying 
 his vocation, much after the manner in which, in 
 some ill-regulated town, he may have beheld the 
 chiffonniers, at early dawn, rummaging among the 
 cinder heaps for ejected treasures. A ragged morsel 
 is perhaps carefully severed from the heap, wrapped 
 in paper to keep its leaves together, and deposited 
 in the purchaser's pocket You would probably find 
 it difficult to recognise the fragment, if ypu should 
 see it in the brilliancy of its resuscitation. A skilled 
 and cautious workman has applied a bituininous sol- 
 vent to its ragged edges, and literally incorporated, 
 by a sort of paper-making process, each mouldering 
 page into a broad leaf of fine strong paper, in which 
 the print, according to a simile used for such occa- 
 
2 20 His Functions. 
 
 sions, seems like a small rivulet in a wide meadow 
 of margin. This is termed inlaying, and is a very- 
 lofty department in the art of binding. Then there 
 is, besides, the grandeur of russia or morocco, with 
 gilding, and tooling, and marbling, and perhaps a 
 ribbon marker, dangling out with a decoration at its 
 end — all tending, like stars, and garters, and official 
 robes, to stamp the outer insignia of importance on 
 the book, and to warn all the world to respect it, 
 and save it from the risks to which the common 
 herd of literature is liable. The French have, as 
 usual, dignified the process which restores diseased 
 books to health and condition by, an appropriate 
 technical name — it is Bibliuguiancie ; and under 
 that title it will be found fitly and appropriately 
 discussed in the Dictionnaire de Bibliologie of 
 Peignot, who specially mentions two practitioners 
 of this kind as having conferred lustre on their 
 profession by their skill and success — Vialard and 
 Heudier.^ 
 
 1 There is something exceedingly curious, not only in its bearing 
 on the matter of the text, but as a record of some peculiar manners 
 and habits of the fourteenth century, in Richard of Bury's injunctions 
 as to the proper treatment of the manuscripts which were read in his 
 day, and the signal contrast offered by the practice both of the clergy 
 and laity to his decorous precepts : — 
 
 "We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing 
 volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if 
 we first handle so as not to injure them, then return theni to their 
 proper places and commend them to undefiling custody, that they 
 may rejoice in thfeir purity while held in the hand, and repose in 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 221 
 
 I have recourse to our old friend Monkbarns 
 again for a brilliant description of the prowler 
 among the book-stalls, in the performance of the 
 function assigned to him in the dispensation of 
 things, — renewing my already recorded protest 
 against the legitimacy of the commercial part of 
 the transaction : — 
 
 " ' Snuffy Davie bought the game of Chess, 1474, 
 the first book ever printed" in England, from a stall 
 
 security when laid up in their repositories. Truly, next to the vest- 
 , ments and vessels dedicated to the body of the Lord, holy books de- 
 serve to be most decorously handled by the clergy, upon which injury 
 js inflicted as often as they presume to touch them with a dirty hand. 
 Wherefore, we hold it expedient to exhort students upon various 
 negligencies which can always be avoided, but which are wonderfully 
 injurious to books. , 
 
 " In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening 
 and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with pre- 
 cipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly 
 closed ; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully 
 preserved than a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely 
 educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of their superiors, are 
 puffed up with infinite absurdities ; they act with petulance, swell 
 with presumption, judge of everything with certainty, and are unex- 
 perienced in anything. 
 
 "You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in 
 his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with 
 cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it 
 with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with 
 its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in 
 the place of his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with 
 stinking filth, with which he points out the place of any pleasant sub- 
 ject. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the 
 ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot 
 retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, 
 and which nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accus- 
 
222 His Functions. 
 
 in Holland, for about two groschen, or twopence of 
 our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty 
 pounds, and as many books as came to twenty 
 pounds more. ' Osborne resold this inimitable wind- 
 fall to Dr Askew foi' sixty guineas. At Dr Askew's 
 sale,' continued the old gentleman, kindling as he 
 spoke, ' this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its 
 full value, and was purchased by royalty itself for 
 one hundred and seventy pounds ! Could a copy 
 
 tomed closure, and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become 
 putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, 
 and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it ; and because 
 he has not his 'alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments 
 in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to 
 his companions ; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void 
 of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, 
 with the sputtering of his saliva.- What is worse, he next reclines 
 with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap ; 
 and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of 
 the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume. He goes out in 
 the rain, and now flowers make their appearance upon our soil. Then 
 the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector 
 of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadri- 
 foils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turn- 
 ing over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with 
 his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his fore- 
 finger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy 
 book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a month, 
 and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it will not 
 yield to the efforts of the closer. 
 
 " But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling 
 with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, 
 if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to be- 
 come incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broad- 
 est margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, 
 or their unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 223 
 
 now occur,, X<Wd, only, knows,' he ejaculated, with a 
 deep sJgh and Hfted-up hands, — ' Lord only knows 
 what would i be Us ransom ! — ^and yet it wsis origin- 
 ally secured, by skill and research, for the easy 
 equivalent of twopence sterling. Happy, ; thrice 
 happy, Snuffy Davie ! — and blessed were the times 
 when thy industry could be: so rewarded ! ' " 
 
 In such manner is it that books are saved from 
 annihilation, and that their preservers become the 
 
 frivolous :tJiii;^ whatever that occurs to their imagination. There the 
 Latinist, there the sophist,, there every sort pf unlearae^, ;scrihe tries 
 the goodness of his pen, which we have frequently seen to have beeri 
 most injurious to the fairest volumes, both as to utility and price. 
 There are E^lsp certain thieves iyho enormously .^^^emti^r books by 
 cutting off the side margins for letter-paper (leaving only the letters or 
 text), or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which 
 they take away for .V3Jijflus uses ai^d abuses, which sort pf, sacrilege 
 ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema. 
 
 "But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholat thst wash- 
 ing should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from 
 his meals to study, before his fingers, besnieared with grease, loosen 
 a clasp or turn over the leaf of a book. Let not a crying child admire 
 the dirawipgs in the capital letters, lest,heipDllute the parchment with 
 his wet fingers, for he instantly touches whatever he sees. 
 
 " Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look 
 at a book turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its 
 natural order, are altogether unworthy of ^py communion, with books. 
 Let the clerk also take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from 
 the pots, do not touch the leaves of books unwashed ; but he who • 
 Pfiters without spot ^hall give hi? services to the precious v<)lumes. 
 
 "The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules could 
 not be clerical characteristics, might also be most important, as well 
 to books as to scholars, who, ^s often as they perceive defects, in 
 books, should attend to them instantly, for nothing enlarges mpre 
 quickly than a rent, as a fracture neglected at the time will afterwards 
 be repaired with increased trouble."— Philobiblion, p. loi. 
 
224 His Functions. 
 
 feeders of the great collections in which, after their 
 value is established, they find refuge ; and herein it 
 is that the class to whom our attention is at present 
 devoted perforin an inestimable service to literature. 
 It is, as you will observe, the general ambition of 
 the class to find value where there seems to be none, 
 and this develops a certain skill and subtlety, en- 
 abling the operator, in the midst of a heap of rubbish, 
 to put his finger on those things which have in them 
 the latent capacity to become valuable and curious. 
 The adept will at once intuitively separate from its 
 friends the book that either is or will become curious. 
 There must be something more than mere rarity to 
 give it this value, although high authorities speak 
 of the paucity of copies as being everything. David 
 Clement, the illustrious French bibliographer, who 
 seems to have anticipated the positive philosophy 
 by an attempt to make bibliography, as the Ger- 
 mans have named it, one of the exact sciences, lays 
 it down with authority, that "a book which it is 
 difficult to find in the country where it is sought 
 ought to be called simply rare ; a book which it is 
 difficult to find in any country may be called very 
 rare ; a book of which there are only fifty or ' sixty 
 copies existing, or which appears so seldom as if 
 there never had been more at any time than that 
 number of copies, ranks as extremely rare; and 
 when the whole number of copies does not exceed 
 ten, this constitutes excessive rarity, or rarity in the 
 
The Preservation of Literature. 225 
 
 highest degree." This has been received as a settled 
 doctrine in bibliography; but it is utter pedantry. 
 Books may be rare enough in the real or objective 
 sense of the term, but if they are not so in the 
 nominal or subjective sense, by being sought after, 
 their rarity goes for nothing. A volume may be 
 unique — may stand quite alone in the world — 
 but whether it is so, or one of a numerous family, 
 is never known, for no one has ever desired to 
 possess it, and no one ever will. 
 
 But it is a curious phenomenon in the old-book 
 trade, that rarities do not always remain rare ; 
 volumes seeming to multiply through some cryp- 
 togamic process, when we know perfectly that no 
 additional copies are printed and thrown off. The 
 fact is, that the rumour of scarcity, and value, and 
 of a hunt after them, draws them from their hiding- 
 places. If we may judge from the esteem in which 
 they were once held, the Elzevirs must have been 
 great rarities in this country ; but they are now 
 plentiful enough — the heavy prices in the British 
 market having no doubt sucked them out of dingy 
 repositories in Germany and Holland — so that; even 
 in this department of commerce the law of supply 
 and demand is not entirely abroga!ted. He who 
 dashes at all the books called rare, or even very 
 rare, by Clement and his brethren, will be apt to 
 suffer the keen disappointment of finding that there 
 are many who participate with him in the posses- 
 
 P 
 
2 26 His functions. 
 
 sion of the same treasures. In fact, let a book but 
 make its appearance in that author's Bibliotheque 
 Curieuse, Historique, et Critique, ou Catalogue 
 Raisonn^ des Livres difificiles a trouver ; or in 
 Graesses's Tr6sor des Livres Rares et Pr^cieux ; 
 or in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique des Livres 
 Rares, published by Caileau — or let it be mentioned 
 as a rarity in Eibert's AUgemeines Bibliographisches 
 Lexicon, or in Debure, Clement, Osmont, or the 
 Repertorium Bibliographicum, — such proclamation 
 is immediate notice to many fortunate possessors 
 who were no more aware of the value of their 
 dingy - looking volumes than Monsieur Jourdain 
 knew himself to be in the habitual daily practice 
 of talking prose. 
 
 So are we brought again back to the conclusion 
 that the true book-hunter must not be a follower 
 of any abstract external rules, but must have an 
 inward sense and literary taste. It is not absolutely 
 that a book is rare, or that it is run after, that must 
 commend it to him, but something in the book 
 itself Hence the relics which he snatches from 
 ruin will have some innate merits to recommend 
 them. They will not be of that unhappy kind 
 which nobody has desired to possess for their own 
 sake, and nobody ever will. Something there will 
 be of original genius, or if not that, yet of curious, 
 odd, out-of-the-way information, or of quaintness of 
 imagination, or of characteristics pervading some 
 
Librarians. 227 
 
 class of men, whether a literary of a ipolemical, — 
 something, in short, which people desirous of in- 
 formation will some day or other be anxious to 
 read, — such are the volumes which it is desirable 
 to save from annihilation, that they may find their 
 place at last in some of the great magazines of the 
 world's literary treasures. 
 
 3Ltlitartan3. 
 
 T will often be fortunate for these great 
 institutions if they obtain the services 
 of the hunter himself, ^long with his 
 spoils of the chase. The leaders in 
 the German wars often found it an exceedingly 
 sound policy to subsidise into their own service 
 some captain of - free lances, who might have been 
 a curse to all around him. Your great game-pre- 
 servers sometimes know the importance of taking 
 the most notorious poacher in the district into pay 
 as a keeper. So it is sometimes of the nature of 
 the book-hunter, if he be of the genial sort, and free 
 of some of the more, vicious peculiarities of his kind, 
 to make an invaluable librarian. Such an arrange- 
 ment will sometimes be found to be like mercy 
 twice blessed,7— it blesseth him that gives and; him 
 that takes. '■ The imprisoned spirit probably (finds 
 freedom at last, and those purchases and accumula- 
 
2 28 His Functions. 
 
 tions which, to the private purse, were profuse and 
 culpable recklessness, may become veritable duty ; 
 while the wary outlook and the vigilant observation, 
 which before were only leading a poor victim into 
 temptation, may come forth as commendable atten- 
 tion and zealous activity. 
 
 Sometimes mistakes have been made in selections 
 on this principle, and a zeal has been embarked 
 which has been found to tend neither to profit nor 
 edification ; for there have been known, at the head 
 of public libraries, men of the Cerberus kind, who 
 loved the books so dearly as to be unable to endure 
 the handling of them by the vulgar herd of readers 
 and searchers — even by those for whose special aid 
 ahd service they are employed. They who have 
 this' morbid terror of the profanation of the treasures 
 committed to their charge suffer in themselves the 
 direst torihents— something like those of a cat be- 
 holding her kittens tossed by a dog— whenever their 
 favourites are handled '; and the excruciating ex- 
 tent of their agonies, when any ardent and careless 
 student dashes right into the^ heart of some editio 
 princeps- or tall copy, or perhaps lays it open with 
 its face on the table i while he snatches another 
 edition that he may collate a passage, is not to be 
 conceived. ' It! is then the dog worrying the kittens. 
 Such men will, only give satisfactiori in great private 
 libraries little disturbed by i their proprietors, or in 
 monastic- or other corporate institutions, where it is 
 
L ibr avians.. 229 
 
 the worthy object of the patrons to keep their col- 
 lection in fine condition, and, at the same time, to 
 take order that it shall be of the least possible 
 service to education or literaturie. Angelo Mai, the 
 great librarian of the Vatican, who made so many 
 valuable discoveries himself, had the character of 
 taking good care that no one else' should make any 
 within his own strictly preserved hunting grounds. 
 
 In the general case, however, a bibliophile at the 
 head of a public library is genial and communica- 
 tive, and has a pleasure in helping the investigator 
 through the labyrinth of its stores. Such men feel 
 their strength ; and the immense value of the ser- 
 vice which they may sometimes perform by a brief 
 hint in the right direction which the inquiry should 
 take, or by handing down a volume, or recommend- 
 ing the best directory to all the learning on the 
 matter in hand, has laid many men of letters under 
 great obligations to them. 
 
 The most eminent type of this class of men was 
 Magliabecchi, librarian to the Grand-Duke of Tus- 
 cany, who could direct you to any book; in any part 
 of the world, with the precision with which the 
 metropolitan policeman directs you to St Paul's or 
 Piccadilly. It is of him that the stories are told of 
 answers to inquiries after bOoks, in these terms : 
 " There is but one copy of that book in the world. 
 It is in the Grand Seignior's library at Constanti- 
 nople, and is the seventh book in the second shelf 
 
230 His Functions. 
 
 on the right hand as you go in." His faculties 
 were, like those of all great men, self-born and self- 
 trained. So little was i the impoverished soil in 
 which he passed his infancy congenial to his pur- 
 suits in after life, that it was not within the parental 
 intentions to teach him to read, and his earliest 
 labours were in the shop of a greengrocer.. Had 
 his genius run on natural science, he might have 
 fed it here, but it was his felicity and his fortune 
 to be transferred to the shop of a patronising book^ 
 seller. Here he drank in an education such as 
 no academic forcing machinery could ever infuse. 
 He devoured books, and the printed leaves became 
 as necessary to his existence as the cabbage-leaves 
 to the caterpillars which at times made their not 
 welcome appearance in the abjured greengrocery. 
 Like these verdant reptiles, too, he became assimi- 
 lated to the food he fed on, insomuch that he was 
 in a manner hot-pressed, bound, marble-topped, let- 
 tered, and shelved. He could bear nothing but 
 books around him, and would allow no space for 
 aught else ; his furniture, according to repute, being 
 limited to two chairs, the second: of which was ad- 
 mitted in order that the two together might serve 
 as a bed. 
 
 Another enthusiast of the same kind was Adrien 
 Baillet, the author, or, more properly speaking, the 
 compiler, of the Jugeniens des. : Savans. Some 
 copies of this book, which has a quantity of valuable 
 
Librarians. 231 
 
 matter scattered through it, have Baillet's portrait, 
 from which his calm scholarly countenance looks 
 genially forth, with this appropriate motto, "Dans 
 une douce solitude, a I'abri du mensonge et de la 
 vanit6, j'adoptai la critique, et j'en fis mon 6tude, 
 pour decouvrir la v^rit6." Him, struggling with 
 poverty, aggravated with a thirst for books, did 
 Lamoignon the elder place at the head of his library, 
 thus at once pasturing him in clover. When the 
 patron told his friend, Hermant, of his desire to 
 find a librarian possessed of certain fabulous qualifi- 
 cations for the duty, his correspondent said, "I will 
 bring the very man to you ; " and Baillet, a poor, 
 frail, attenuated, diseased scholar, was produced. 
 His kind patron fed him up, so far as a man who 
 could not tear himself from his books, unless when 
 nature became entirely exhausted, could be fed up. 
 The statesman and his librarian were the closest of 
 friends ; and on the elder Lamoignon's death, the 
 son, still more distinguished, looked up to Baillet as 
 a father and instructor. 
 
 Men of this stamp are generally endowed with 
 deep and solid learning. For any one, indeed, to 
 take the command of a great public library, without 
 large accomplishments, especially in the languages, 
 is to put himself in precisely the position where 
 ignorance, superficiality, and quackery are subjected 
 to the most potent test, and are certain of detection. 
 The number of librarians who have united great 
 
232 His Functions. 
 
 learning to a love of books, is the best practical 
 answer to all sneers about the two being incompat- 
 ible. Nor, while we count among us such names 
 as Panizzi, Birch, Halkett, Naudet, Laing, Cogswell, 
 Jones, Pertz, and Todd, is the race of learned libra- 
 rians likely to decay. 
 
 It will be worth while for the patrons of public 
 libraries, even in appointments to small offices, to 
 have an eye on bookish men for filling them. One 
 librarian differs greatly from another, and on this 
 difference will often depend the entire utility of an 
 institution, and the question whether it is worth, 
 keeping it open or closing its door. Of this class 
 of workman it may be said quite as aptly as of the 
 poet, that he is born, not made. The usual testimo- 
 nies to qualification — steadiness, sobriety, civility, 
 intelligence, &c. — may all be up to the mark that 
 will constitute a first-rate book-keeper in the mer- 
 cantile sense of the term, while they are uiTited in a 
 very dreary and hopeless keeper of books. Such 
 a person ought to go to his task with something 
 totally different from the impulses which induce a 
 man to sort dry goods or make up invoices with emi- 
 nent success. In short, your librarian would need 
 to be in some way touched with the malady which 
 has been the object of these desultory remarks. 
 
Bibliographies. 233 
 
 PASSING remark is due to the place 
 and function in literature of those 
 books which act the part of gentle- 
 man-usher towards other books, by 
 introducing them to the notice of strangers. The 
 talk about librarians, in fact, brings these naturally 
 before us by the law of association, since the duties 
 of the librarian are congenial to this special depart- 
 ment of the literary world, the work of which has 
 indeed been chiefly performed by eminent librarians. 
 The best general name for the class of books 
 which I refer to, is that of Bibliographies, given to 
 them by the French. Like most other products of 
 human ingenuity, they are varied in their objects 
 and their merits. At the one end of the scale is 
 the Leipsic Bibliotheca Horatiana, ambitious only 
 of commemorating the several editions of Horace, 
 or Kuster's Bibliotheca Historica Brandenburgica, 
 sacred to the histories of that duchy ; while the 
 other extremity aims at universality, an object 
 which has not yet been accomplished, and seems 
 every day fleeing farther off from those who are 
 daring enough to pursue it. In 1545, when the 
 world of literature was rather smaller than it now 
 is, Conrade Gesner, in his Bibliotheca, made the first 
 
2 34 His Functions. 
 
 attempt at a universal bibliography. The incom- 
 pleteness of the result is confessed in the Epitome 
 of the Bibliotheca, printed five years afterwards, 
 which professes only to record nearly all the books 
 written since the world began, and yet boasts of 
 adding more than tyvo thousand names of authors 
 to the number mentioned in the original Biblio- 
 theca.^ 
 
 Of what any list of all the books that have ap- 
 peared in the world might be, one may form some 
 conception by the effort of Dr Watt, accomplished 
 nearly fifty years ago. The work is said to have 
 killed him ; and no one who turns over the densely 
 printed leaves of his four quartos, can feel surprised 
 at such a result. It is by no means perfect or com- 
 plete, even as a guide to books in the compiler's 
 native tongue, yet stands in honourable contrast 
 with the failure of several efforts to continue this 
 portion of it down to later days. The voluminous 
 France Litteraire of Qu^rard confesses its imper- 
 fections even to accomplish its limited object, by 
 professing to devote its special attention to books 
 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
 
 As to bibliographies of the present century 
 
 ■' Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be found, 
 as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the heart 
 of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it : " Thomas Leirmant, 
 vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica qusedam, et ob id 
 Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est'. Vixit anno 1286." 
 
Bibliographies. 235 
 
 aiming at universality, the AUgemeines Gelehrten 
 Lexicon of Jocher- — ^when accompanied by Adeluhg's 
 supplement, which is its better-half — for scholarship 
 and completeness casts into shade anything pro- 
 duced either in France or here. It is a guide 
 which few people consult without passing a com- 
 pliment either internally or aloud on the satisfac- 
 tory result. That it contains an account of every, 
 or nearly every, book is at once contradicted by 
 its bulk, yet it is often remarked that no one 
 appeals to it in vain — a specialty which seems 
 to have arisen from the peculiar capacity of its 
 editors to dive, as it were, into the hearts of those 
 likely to seek their aid. 
 
 Naturally, the most satisfactory of bibliographies 
 are those limited to books of a special class. These 
 are frequent in law and divinity, but are most 
 numerous in history. Hence have we such valued 
 guides as Lelong, Dupin, Dufresnoy, and our own 
 dynasty of historical bibliographers, which, includ- 
 ing Leland, Bale, Pitts, and Tanner, reached its 
 climax in Bishop Nicholson, whose introduction 
 to the sources of British history, hitherto so valu- 
 able, will be superseded for most practical purposes 
 on the completion of Mr Duffus Hardy's Descripr 
 tive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History 
 of Great Britain and Ireland. Science, though it 
 can boast of the great compilations of Haller, and 
 of other sources of reference to its literature, takes 
 
236 His Functions. 
 
 less aid from such guides than: other departments 
 of intellectual labour, for the obvious reason that, 
 except to the few who are pursuing its history 
 through its dawn and progress, the latest books on 
 any department generally supersede their predeces- 
 sors. They are, in fact, themselves the guides which 
 show the scientific inquirer his work, not lying 
 like that of the historian and divine in old books, but 
 in existing things and practical experiments. Of 
 books intended to show what is to be found in 
 others, an extremely curious history attaches to 
 one, the Bibliotheca of Photius. It is known of 
 course to all divines, but not necessarily, perhaps, 
 to every other person, that this turbulent and am- 
 bitious patriarch, during what he calls his embassy 
 to Syria, occupied himself in taking down notes of 
 the contents of theological treatises by his prede- 
 cessors and contemporaries, with his judgments on 
 their merits. , Being a man of controversial pro- 
 pensities, he selected for criticism the works of 
 the authors with ^vhom he was at war. Ranking 
 himself among the orthodox, he thus collected 
 notes of the works of heterodox writers, and, among 
 these, of several eminent Arians ; and the rather 
 startling result of his labours is, that a considerable 
 quantity of Arian literature has thus been pre- 
 served, which, but for the exertions of the man 
 who intended to exterminate it by his censure, 
 would have been entirely lost to the world. 
 
Bibliographies. 237 
 
 There are among bibliographers many highly 
 meritorious leaders through the mysteries of occult 
 literature — as, for instance, those who, like Placcius, 
 Mylius, Barbi^re, and Melzi, have devoted them- 
 selves to the discovery and publication of the 
 authorship of anonymous works. Their function 
 is, on the whole, a rather cruel one, and suggests 
 that those who betake themselves to it are men of 
 austere character. Sometimes, to be sure, it falls to 
 their lot to place the laurel wreath of fame on the 
 deserving brow, but very seldom before the grave 
 has closed over it. The resuscitation of books 
 which have passed unnoticed because they were 
 beyond their age, or failed to touch its sympathies, 
 has been the class of instances in which honour has 
 been thus conferred ; and it has seldom fallen to 
 the lot of the living, for the reason that it is the 
 nature of the human being not very resolutely to 
 conceal from an inquiring public those of his actions 
 which receive the* approval of" 'his Own conscience 
 and taste. In dealing with the living, and often 
 the recently departed, it is the function of this class 
 of investigators to expose the weaknesses and in- 
 consistencies of the wise and great. It is they who 
 have told the world about the youthful Jacobitism 
 of the eminent pillar of the Constitution ; of the 
 early Radicalism of the distinguished Conservative; 
 of the more than questionable escapades of the 
 popular, yet sedate divine, whose works are the 
 
238 His Functions. 
 
 supreme model of decorous piety. In this wise, 
 indeed, the function of the bibliographer of the 
 anonymous much resembles the detective's. Like 
 that functionary, he must not let feelings of deli- 
 cacy or humanity interfere with the relentless exe- 
 cution of his duty, for of those who have achieved 
 eminence as public teachers, all that they have ever 
 told the world is the world's property. Whatever 
 mercy may be shown to the history of their private 
 life, cannot be claimed for the sayings which they 
 -have made or tried to make public. If they have 
 at other times uttered opinions different from those 
 which have achieved for them fame and eminence, 
 those early utterances are an effective test of the 
 value and sincerity of the later, and were it for this 
 object only, the world is entitled to look at them. 
 This is one of the penalties which can only be 
 escaped by turning aside from the path to emin- 
 ence;l 
 
 Passing from this cl^ss of interesting though 
 rather unamiable elucidations, I come to another 
 class of bibliographies, of which it is difficult to 
 speaik with patience— those which either profess to 
 
 1 It will be agreeable news to the severely disposed, to know that a 
 wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to hide their 
 deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work haying been under- 
 taken, as police reports say, by "a thoro\ighly efficient officer of 
 indomitable activity." 
 
Bibliographies. 2 39 
 
 tell you how to find the best books to consult on 
 every department of learning, or undertake to point 
 out to you the books which you should select for 
 your library, or for your miscellaneous reading. As 
 to those which profess to be universal mentors, at 
 hand to help you with the best tools for your work, 
 in whichever department of intellectual labour it 
 may happen to be, they break down at once. Who- 
 ever has set himself to any special line of investiga- 
 tion, cannot open one of those books without dis- 
 covering its utter worthlessness and incapacity to 
 aid him in his own specialty As to the other 
 class of bibliographers, who profess to act the 
 guide, philosopher, and friend to the collector and 
 the reader, I cannot imagine anything more offen- 
 sively audacious than the function they assume. 
 It is an attempt of the pedagogue to assert a juris- 
 diction over grown intellects, and hence such books 
 naturally develop in flagrant exaggeration the prag- 
 matical priggism which is the pedagogue's charac- 
 teristic defect. I would except from this condemna- 
 tion a few bibliographers, who, instead of sitting in 
 the schoolmaster's chair and dictating to you what 
 it is proper that you should read, rather give you 
 a sly hint that they are going a-vagabondising 
 through the byways of literature, and will take 
 you with them if you like. Among these I would 
 chiefly be inclined to affect the company of Peignot, 
 
240 His Functions. 
 
 whose wild and wayward course of reading provides 
 for you something like to a ramble over the moun- 
 tains with an Alpine hunter, the only kind of guide 
 to whom the thorough pedestrian wanderer should 
 give up his freedom. One of Peignot's books, 
 called Predicatoriana, ou Revelations Singuli^res 
 et Amusantes sur les Pr^dicateurs, brings one into 
 scenes apt to shock a mind not tolerably hardened 
 by eclectic reading. It is an anonymous publica- 
 tion, but has been traced home by the literary 
 detectives. It may be characterised as a collection 
 of the Buffooneries of Sermons. A little book en- 
 livened by something like the same spirit, called 
 The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, is known 
 among ourselves ; and there is an answer to it 
 assailing the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in a 
 tone which decidedly improves on the lesson of 
 sarcasm and malignity taught by the other side. 
 Both writers : are dishonest in the statements they 
 make and the passages they quote from their ad- 
 versaries, and both are grotesque and profane. 
 Peignot, not being influenced by polemical ran- 
 cour, is no doubt honest in his quotations, and 
 tells you that the persons who pi;eached the pas- 
 sages quoted by him uttered them in all religious 
 sincerity. Yet wide as the Christian world stretches 
 beyond our corner of it, by so far does the French- 
 man's book in grotesqueness and profanity out- 
 
Bibliographies. 241 
 
 shadow the attempts of the Scottish polemical com- 
 batants. 
 
 Of that highly patrician class of bibliographies 
 which offer their services exclusively to the collec- 
 tors of rare, curious, and costly books, there are so 
 many notices dotted over this volume, that I shall 
 only stop here to mark the recentness of their 
 appearance in literature. To judge from the title-. 
 page, one might trace them as far back as 1676, in 
 John Hallervord's Bibliotheca Curiosa, in which the 
 editor professes to indicate many authors which are 
 very rare and known to few ; but this book would 
 give no satisfaction to pure rarity seekers. Haller- 
 vord takes curious in its old sense, which corre- 
 sponds in some measure with the present use of the 
 word interesting; and the specialty of the books 
 being known to few, seems to refer to their pro- 
 fundity and the rarity of learning sufficient to sound 
 their depths. Nor does the list published a few 
 years later by the London bookseller Hartley, 
 though it professes to signalise very rare books, 
 show that nice sense which discriminates game of 
 a high order from the vulgar and useful.^ I sus- 
 pect that before we reach the dawn of this class of 
 
 ' Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque in- 
 signium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley, 
 Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn 
 dicto. MDCXCIX. 
 
242 His Functions, 
 
 literature proper, we must descend at oBtte to the 
 year 1750, distinguished by the simultaneous ap- 
 pearance of Clement's Bibliothequ.e Curieuse, and 
 Freytag's Analecta de Libris Rarioribus.i 
 
 ^ Of course the' Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each other, and 
 bibliographical notices of Bibliographies, abound. , 1,6 Brjm sets aside 
 a department for them, but the most handy reference to them that 
 has come my way ' is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire Biblio- 
 graphique, ou Nouyeau Manuel ,du,Libraire,_by M. p***** — identi- 
 fied by his brother detectives as M. fsaume. 
 
PART III.— HIS CLUB. 
 
 ffilufis m ffimeral. 
 
 |N author of the last generation, pro- 
 fessing to deal with any branch of 
 human affairs, if he were ambitious 
 of being considered philosophical, 
 required to go at once to the be- 
 ginning of all things; where, finding man alone in 
 the world, he would describe how the biped set 
 about his own special business, for the supply of his 
 own wants and desires ; and then finding that the 
 human being was, by his instincts, not a solitary but 
 a social animal, the ambitious author would proceed 
 in well-balanced sentences to describe how men 
 aggregated themselves into hamlets, villages, towns, 
 cities, counties, parishes, corporations, select vestries, 
 and so on. I find that, without the merit of enter- 
 taining any philosophical views, I have followed, 
 unconsciously, the same routine. Having discussed 
 
244 His Club. 
 
 the book-hunter as he individually pursues his ob- 
 ject, I now propose to look in upon him at his club, 
 and say something about its peculiarities, as the 
 shape in which he takes up the pursuit collectively 
 with others who happen to be like-minded to him- 
 self. 
 
 Those who are so very old as to remember the 
 Episcopal Church of Scotland in that brief period 
 of stagnant depression when the repeal of the penal 
 laws had removed from her the lustre of martyrdom, 
 and she had not yet attained the more secular lustre 
 which the zeal of her wealthy votaries has since 
 conferred on h^, will be familiar with the name of 
 Bishop Robert Jolly. To the ordinary reader, how- 
 ever, it may be necessary to introduce him more 
 specifically. He was a man of singular purity, de- 
 votedness, and learning. If he had no opportunity 
 of attesting the sincerity of his faith by undergoing 
 stripes and bondage for the Church of his adoption, 
 he developed in its fulness that unobtrusive self- 
 devotion, not inferior to martyrdom, which dedicates 
 to obscure duties the talent and energy that, in the 
 hands of the selfish and ambitious, would be the 
 sure apparatus of wealth and station. He had no 
 doubt risen to an office of dignity in his own Church 
 — he was a bishop. But to understand the position 
 of a Scottish bishop in those days, one must figure 
 Parson Adams, no richer than Fielding has de- 
 scribed him, yet encumbered by a title ever asso- 
 
Clubs in General. 245 
 
 dated with wealth and dignity, and only calculated, 
 when allied with so much poverty and social humil- 
 ity, to deepen the incongruity of his lot, and throw 
 him more than ever on the mercy of the scorner. 
 The office was indeed conspicuous, not by its digni- 
 ties or emoluments, but by the extensive opportu- 
 nities it afforded for self-devotion. One may have 
 noticed his successor of later times giving lustre to 
 newspaper paragraphs as "The Lord Bishop of 
 Moray and Ross." It did not fall to the lot of him 
 of whom I write to render his title so flagrantly 
 incongruous. A lordship was not necessary, but it 
 was the principle of his Church to require a bishop, 
 and in him she got a bishop. In reality, however, 
 he was the parish clergyman of the small and poor 
 remnant of the Episcopal persuasion who inhabited 
 the odoriferous fishing-town of Fraserburgh. There 
 he lived a long life of such simplicity and abstinence 
 as the poverty of the poorest of his flock scarcely 
 drove them to. He had one failing to link his life 
 with this nether world — he was a book-hunter. How 
 with his poor income, much of which went to feed 
 the necessities of those still poorer, he should have 
 accomplished anything in a pursuit generally con- 
 sidered expensive, is among other unexplained mys- 
 teries. But somehow he managed to scrape together 
 a curious and interesting collection, so that his name 
 became associated with rare books, as well as with 
 rare Christian virtues. 
 
246 His Club. 
 
 When it was proposed to establish an institution 
 for reprinting the works of the fathers of the Epis- 
 copal Church in Scotland, it was naturally deemed 
 that no more worthy or characteristic name could 
 be attached to it than that of the venerable prelate 
 who, by his learning and virtues, had so long 
 adorned the Episcopal chair of Moray and Ross, 
 and who had shown a special interest in the de- 
 partment of literature to which the institution was 
 to be devoted. Hence it came to pass that, through 
 a perfectly natural process, the association for the 
 purpose of reprinting the works of certain old divines 
 was to be ushered into the world by the style and 
 title of The Jolly Club. 
 
 There happened to be amongst those concerned, 
 however, certain persons so corrupted with the 
 wisdom of this world, as to apprehend that the 
 miscellaneous public might fail to trace this desig- 
 nation to its true origin, and might indeed totally 
 mistake the nature and object of the institution, 
 attributing to it aims neither consistent with the 
 ascetic life of the departed prelate, nor with the 
 pious and intellectual objects of its founders. The 
 counsels of these worldly-minded persons prevailed. 
 The Jolly Club was never instituted, — at least, as 
 an association for the reprinting of old books of 
 divinity, though I am not prepared to say that 
 institutions more than one so designed- may not 
 exist for other purposes. The object, however, was 
 
Club's if^ General. 247 
 
 not entirely abandoned. A body of gentlemen 
 united themselves together under the name of an- 
 other Scottish prelate, whose fate had been more 
 distinguished, if not more fortunate ; and the Spot- 
 tiswoode Society was established. Here, it will be 
 observed, there was a passing to the opposite ex- 
 treme; and: so intense, seems to have been the 
 anxiety to escape from all excuse, for indecorous 
 jokes or taint of joviality, that the word Club, wisely 
 adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was 
 abandoned, and this one called itself a Society. To 
 that abandonment of the medio tutissimus has been 
 attributed its early death by those who contemn 
 the taste of those other communities, essentially 
 Book Clubs, which have taken to the devious course 
 of calling themselves " Societies." , 
 
 In fact, all our societies, from the broad-brimmed 
 Society of Friends downwards, have something in 
 them of a homespun,;humdrum, plain, flat — not un- 
 profitable, perhaps, but unattractive' character. They 
 may be good and useful, but they have no dignity 
 or splendour,, and are quite destitute of the strange 
 meteoric power and grandeur which have accom- 
 panied the career of Clubs. Societies there are, 
 indeed, which identify themselves through their very 
 nomenclature with, misfortune and misery, seeming 
 proudly to proclaim; thenlselves, victims to all the 
 saddest ills that flesh is heir tO: — as, for instance, 
 Destitute Sick Societies, Indigent Blind Societies, 
 
248 His Club. 
 
 Deaf and Dumb Societies, Burial Societies, and the 
 like. The nomenclature of some of these benevo- 
 lent institutions seems likely to test the etymological 
 skill of the next generation of learned men. Per- 
 haps some ethnological philosopher will devote 
 himself to the special investigation and develop- 
 ment of the phenomenon ; and if such things are 
 done then in the way in which they are now, the. 
 result will appear in something like the following 
 shape : — 
 
 " Man, as we pursue his destiny from century to 
 century, is still found inevitably to resolve himself 
 into a connected and antithetic series of consecutive 
 cycles. The eighteenth century having been an age 
 of individuative, the nineteenth necessarily became 
 an age of associative or coinonomic development. 
 He, the man — ^to himself the ego, and to others the 
 mere homo — ceased to revolve around the centre of 
 gravity of his own personality, and, following the 
 instincts of his adhesive nature, resolved himself into 
 associative community. In this necessary develop- 
 ment of their nature all partook, from the congresses 
 of mighty monarchs down to those humbler but not 
 less majestic types of the predominant influence, 
 which, in the expressive language of that age, were 
 recognised as twopenny goes: . It is known only to 
 those whose researches have led them through the 
 intricacies of that phase of human progress, how 
 multifarious and varied were the forms in which 
 
Clubs in General. 249 
 
 the inner spirit, objectively at work in mankind, had 
 its external subjective development. Not only did 
 associativeness shake the monarch on his throne, 
 and prevail over the counsels of the assembled mag- 
 nates of the realm, but it was the form in which 
 each shape and quality of humanity, down even tb 
 penury and disease, endeavoured to express its in- 
 stincts ; and so the blind and the lame, the deaf 
 and dumb, the sick and poor, made common stock 
 of their privations, and endeavoured by the force of 
 union to convert weakness into strength," &c. 
 
 When the history of clubs is fully written, let us 
 hope that it will be in another fashion. If it suffi- 
 ciently abound in details, such a history would be 
 full of marvels, from the vast influences which it 
 would describe as arising from time to time by 
 silent obscure growth out of nothing, as it were. 
 Just look at what clubs have been, and have done ; 
 a mere enumeration is enough to recall the impres- 
 sion. Not to dwell on the institutions which have 
 made Pall Mall and its neighbourhood a conglo- 
 merate of palaces, or on such lighter affairs as " the 
 Four-in-Hand," which the railways have left behind, 
 or the " Alpine," whose members they carry to the 
 field of their enjoyment : there was the Mermaid, 
 counting among its members Shakespeare, Raleigh, 
 Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson ; then came the 
 King's Head ; the October ; the Kit-Cat ; the Beef- 
 Steak ; the Terrible Calves Head ; Johnson's club. 
 
250 His Club. 
 
 where he had Bozzy, Goldie, Burke, and Reynolds ; 
 the Poker, where Hume, Carlyle, Ferguson^ and 
 Adam Smith took their claret 
 
 In these, with all their varied objects — literary, 
 political, or convivial — the one leading peculiarity 
 was the powerful influence they exercised on the 
 condition of their times. A certain dub there was 
 with a simple unassuming name, — differing, by the 
 way, only in three letters from that which would 
 have . commemorated the virtues of Bishop Jolly. 
 The club in question, though nothing in the eye 
 of the country but ah easy knot of gentlemen who 
 assembled for their amusement, cast defiance at a 
 sovereign prince, and shook the throne and institu- 
 tions of the. greatest of modern states. But if we 
 want to see the club culnainating to its highest pitch 
 of ppwer, we must go across the water and saturate 
 ourselves with the horrors of the Jacobin clubs, 
 the Breton, and the Feuillans. The scenes we will 
 there find stand forth in eternal protest against 
 Johnson's genial; definition in his Dictionary, where 
 he calls a club " an assembly of good fellows, 
 meieting under certain conditions." 
 
Structure: of the Book Clubs. 251 
 
 W^z StrtictKtE of tlie Book CCluis. 
 
 HERE has been an addition, by no 
 means contemptible, to the influence 
 exercised by' these institutions on the 
 course of events, in the Book Clubs, or 
 Printing Clubs as they are otherwise termed, of the 
 present day. They have within a few years added 
 a department to literature. The collector who has 
 fbeen a meniber of several may count their fruit by 
 the thousand, all ranging- in symrtietrical and portly 
 volumes. Without interfering either with the author 
 who seeks in his copyrights the reward of his genius 
 and labour, or with the publisher who calculates 
 on a return for his capital, skill, and industry, the 
 book clubs have ministered to literary wants, which 
 .these legitimate sources of supply have been unable 
 to meet. 
 
 I hope ho one is capable of reading, so far through 
 thisbook who is so grossly ignorant as not to know 
 that the Book Clubs are a set, of associations , for 
 the purpose of printing and. distributing among 
 their members certain books, calculated; to gratify 
 the peculiar taste which has brought them together 
 and united them into, a club. An opportunity may 
 perhaps be presently taken for indulging in some 
 characteristic notices of the several clubs, their 
 
252 His Club. 
 
 members, and their acts and monuments : in the 
 mean time let me say a word on the utilitarian 
 efficiency of this arrangement — on the blank in 
 the order of terrestrial things which the Book Club 
 was required to fill, and the manner in which it has 
 accomplished its function. 
 
 There is a class of books of which the production 
 has in this country always been uphill work ; — large 
 solid books, more fitted for authors and students 
 than for those termed the reading public at large 
 — books which may hence, in some measure, be 
 termed the raw materials of literature, rather than 
 literature itself They are eminently valuable ; but, 
 since it is to the intellectual manufacturer who .is 
 to produce an article of saleable literature that they 
 are valuable, rather than to the general consumer, 
 they do not secure an extensive sale. Of this kind 
 of literature the staple materials are old state papers 
 and letters — old chronicles — specimens of poetic, 
 dramatic, and other literature, more valuable as 
 vestiges of the style and customs of their age 
 than for their absolute worth as works of genius — 
 massive volumes of old divinity — disquisitions on 
 obsolete science, and the like. 
 
 It is curious, by the way, that costly books of 
 this sort seem to succeed better with the French 
 than with us, though we do not generally give that 
 people credit for excelling us in the outlay of 
 money. Perhaps it is because they enjoy the 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 253 
 
 British market as well as their own that they are 
 enabled to excel us ; but they certainly do so in 
 the publication, through private enterprise, of great 
 costly works, having a sort of national character. 
 The efforts to rival them in this country have been 
 considerable and meritorious, but in many instances 
 signally unfortunate. Take, for instance, the noble 
 edition of HoUingshed and the other chroniclers, 
 published in quarto volumes by the London trade ; 
 the Parliamentary History, in thirty-six volumes, 
 each containing about as much reading as Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall ; the State Trials ; Sadler's and 
 Thurlow's State Papers ; the Harleian Miscellany, 
 and several other ponderous publications of the 
 same kind. AH" of them are to be had cheap, some 
 at just a percentage above the price of waste paper. 
 When an attempt was made to publish in the Eng- 
 lish language a really thorough Biographical Dic- 
 tionary, an improvement on the French Biographic 
 Universelle, it stuck in letter A, after the comple- 
 tion of seven dense octavo volumes — an abortive 
 fragment bearing melancholy testimony to what 
 such a work ought to be. Publications of this 
 kind have, in several instances^ caused great losses 
 to some, while they have brought satisfaction to 
 no one concerned in them. A publisher has just 
 the same distaste as any other ordinary member of 
 the human family to the loss of five or ten thousand 
 pounds in hard cash. Then, as touching the pur- 
 
2 54 H^^ Club. 
 
 chasers, — no doubt the throwing of a "remnant" 
 on the market may sometimes bring the book into 
 the possession of one who can put it to good use, 
 and would have been unable to purchase it at the 
 original price. But the rich deserve some considera- 
 tion as well as the poor. It will be hard to find the 
 man so liberal and benevoleint that he will joyfully 
 see his neighbour obtain for thirty shillings the 
 precise article for which he has himself paid thirty 
 pounds; nor does there exist the descendant of 
 Adam who, whatever he may say or pretend, will 
 take such an ■ antithesis with perfect equanimity. 
 Even the fortunate purchasers of portions of "the 
 remnant," or " the broken book," as another pleasant 
 technicality of the trade has it, are not always 
 absolutely happy in their lot. They have been 
 tempted by sheer cheapness to admit some bulky 
 and unwieldy articles into their abodes, and they 
 look askance at the commodity as being rather a 
 sacrifice to mammon than a monument of good 
 taste. 
 
 It has been the object of the machinery here 
 referred to, to limit the impressions of such works 
 to those who want and can pay for them — an ex- 
 tremely simple object, as all great ones are. There 
 is, however, a minute nicety in the adjustment of 
 the machinery, which was not obvious until it came 
 forth in practice — a nicety without which the whole 
 system falls to pieces. It was to accomplish this 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 255 
 
 nicety that the principle of the club was found to 
 be so well adapted. A club is essentially a body to 
 which more people want admission than can gain 
 it ; if it do not manage to preserve this character- 
 istic, it falls to pieces, for want of pressure from 
 without, like a cask divested of its hoops. To 
 make the books retain their value, and be an object 
 of desire, it was necessary that the impressions 
 should be slightly within the natural circulation — 
 that there should be rather a larger number de- 
 sirous of obtaining each volume than the number 
 that could be supplied with it. The club effected 
 this by its own natural a:ction. So lohg as there 
 were candidates for vacancies and the ballot-box 
 went round, so long were the books printed in 
 demand and valuable to their possessors. If there 
 were no or 120 people willing to possess and pay 
 for a certain class of books, the secret of keeping 
 up the pressure from without and the value of the 
 books, was to limit the number of members and 
 participators to lOO. There is nothings noble or 
 disinterested in this. The arrangement has no pre- 
 tension to either of these qualities ; nor, when we 
 come to the great forces which influence the supply 
 and demand of human wants, whether in the higher 
 or the humbler departments, will we find these 
 qualities in force, or indeed any other motive than 
 common Selfishness. It is a sufficient vindication 
 of the arrangement that it produced its effect. If 
 
256 His Club. 
 
 there were ten or twenty disappointed candidates, 
 the hundred were possessed of the treasures which 
 none could have obtained but for the restrictive 
 arrangements. Scott used to say that the Banna- 
 tyne Club was the only successful joint-stock com- 
 pany he ever invested in — and the remark is the 
 key-note of the motives which kept alive the system 
 that has done so much good to literature. 
 
 To understand the nature and services of these 
 valuable institutions, it is necessary to keep in view 
 the limits within which alone they can be legiti- 
 mately worked. They will not serve for the pro- 
 pagation of standard literature — of the books of 
 established reputation, which are always selling. 
 These are merchandise, and must follow the law of 
 trade like other commodities, whether they exist in 
 the form of copyright monopolies, or are open to all 
 speculators. No kind of co-operation will bring the 
 volumes into existence so cheaply as the outlay of 
 trade capital, which is expected to replace itself 
 with a moderate profit after a quick sale. The 
 perfection of this process is seen in the production 
 and .sale of that book which is ever the surest of 
 a market — the Bible ; and when a printer requires 
 the certain and instantaneous return of his outlay, 
 that is the shape in which he is most secure of ob- 
 taining it. 
 
 On the other hand, the clubs will not avail for 
 ushering into the world the books of fresh ambitious 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 257 
 
 authors. That paradise of the geniuses, in which 
 their progeny are to be launched full sail, where 
 they are to encounter no risks, and draw all the 
 profits without discount or percentage, as yet exists 
 only in the imagination. It would not work very 
 satisfactorily to have a committee decreeing the 
 issues, and the remuneration to be paid to each 
 aspirant — ten thousand copies of Poppleton's Epic, 
 and a cheque for a thousand pounds handed over 
 out of the common stock, to begin with — half the 
 issue, and half the remuneration for the Lyrics of 
 Astyagus, as a less robust and manful production, 
 but still a pleasant, murmuring, meandering, earnest 
 little dream-book, fresh with the solemn purpose of 
 solitude and silence. No, it must be confessed our 
 authors and men of letters would make sad work 
 of it, if they had the bestowal of the honours and 
 pecuniary rewards of literature in their hands, 
 whether these were administered by an intellectual 
 hierarchy or by a collective democracy. Hence the 
 clubs have wisely confined their operations to books 
 which are not the works of their members ; and to 
 keep clear of all risk of literary rivalries, they have 
 been almost exclusively devoted to the promulga- 
 tion of the works of authors long since dead, 
 whether by printing from original manuscripts or 
 from rare printed volumes. 
 
 It has been pleaded that this machinery might 
 have been rendered influential for the encourage- 
 
 R 
 
2 58 His Club. 
 
 ment of living authorship. It has been, for instance, 
 observed, with some plausibility, that he who has 
 the divine fervour of the author in him, will sacrifice 
 all he has to sacrifice — time, toil, and health — so 
 that he can but secure a hearing by the world ; and 
 institutions of the nature of the book clubs might 
 afford him this at all events, leaving him to find his 
 way to wealth and honours, if the sources of these 
 are in him. No doubt the history of book-publish- 
 ing shows how small are the immediate induce- 
 ments and the well-founded hopes that will set 
 authors in motion, and, indeed, a very large per- 
 centage of valueless literature proves that the bar- 
 riers between the author and the world are not 
 very formidable, or become somehow easily remov- 
 able. This, in fact, furnishes the answer to the 
 pleading here alluded to ; and it may further be 
 safely said, where the book demanding an introduc- 
 tion professes to be a work of genius, addressing 
 itself to all mankind, that if it really be what it 
 professes, the market will get it. No production 
 of the kind is liable to be lost to the world. 
 
 Here it is plaintively argued by Philemon, that 
 the rewards of genius are very unequally distributed. 
 Who can deny it ? Nothirig is distributed with per- 
 fect balance like chemical equivalents in this world, 
 at least so far as mortal faculties are capable of 
 estimating the elements of happiness and unhappi- 
 ness in the lot of our fellow-men ; nor. can one 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 259 
 
 imagine that a world, all balanced and squared off 
 to perfection, would be a very tolerable place to live 
 in. Genius nriust take its chance, like all other 
 qualities, and, on the whole, in a civilised country- 
 it gets on pretty well. Is it not something in itself 
 to possess genius? and is it seemly, or a good 
 example to the uninspired world, that its owner 
 should deem it rather a misfortune than a blessing 
 because he is not also surrounded by plush and 
 shoulder-knots? If all geniuses had a prerogative 
 right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and 
 vanities of this wicked world, could we be sure 
 that none but genuine geniuses would claim them, 
 and that there would be no margin for disputation 
 with " solemn shams " ? Milton's fifteen pounds are 
 often referred to by him who finds how hard it is 
 to climb, &c. ; but we have no " return," as the 
 blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities 
 afforded to intellects ambitious of arising as meteors 
 but only showing themselves as farthing rush-lights. 
 On the other hand,, no doubt, the wide fame and 
 the rich rewards of the popular author are not in 
 every instance an exact measure of his superiority 
 to the disappointed aspirant. His thousand pounds 
 do not furnish incontrovertible evidence that he is 
 a hundred times superior to the drudge who goes 
 over as much work for ten pounds, and there may 
 possibly be some one making nothing who is su- 
 perior to both. 
 
26o His Club. 
 
 Such aberrations are incident to all human 
 affairs ; but in those of literature, as in many others, 
 they are exceptional. Here, as in other spheres of 
 exertion, merit will in the general case get its own 
 in some shape. Indeed, there is a very remarkable 
 economic phenomenon, never, as it occurs to me, 
 fully examined, which renders the superfluous suc- 
 cess of the popular author a sort of insurance fund 
 for enabling the obscure adventurer to enter the 
 arena of authorship, and show what he is worth. 
 Political economy has taught us that those old 
 bugbears of the statute law called forestallers and 
 regraters are eminent benefactors, in as far as their 
 mercenary instincts enable them to see scarcity from 
 afar, and induce them to "hold on" precisely so long 
 as it lasts but no longer, since, if they have stock 
 remaining on hand when abundance returns, they 
 will be losers. Thus, through the regular course 
 of trade, the surplus of the period of abundance is 
 distributed over the period of scarcity with a pre- 
 cision which the genius of a Joseph or a Turgot 
 could not achieve. 
 
 The phenomenon in the publishing world to which 
 I have alluded has sonie resemblance to this, and 
 comes to pass in manner following. The confirmed 
 popular author whose books are sure to sell is an 
 object of competition among publishers. If he is 
 absolutely mercenary, he may stand forth in the 
 public market and commit his works to that one 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 261 
 
 who will take them on the best terms for the author 
 and the worst for himself, like the contractor who 
 gives in the lowest estimate in answer to an adver- 
 tisement from a public department. Neither under- 
 taking holds out such chances of gain as inde- 
 pendent speculation may open, and thus there is an 
 inducement to the enterprising publisher to risk his 
 capital on the doubtful progeny of some author 
 unknown to fame, in the hope that it may turn out 
 " a hit." Of the number of books deserving a better 
 fate, as also of the still greater number deserving 
 none better than the fate they have got, which have 
 thus been published at a dead loss to the publisher, 
 the annals of bookselling could afford a moving 
 history. 
 
 When an author has sold his copyright for a 
 comparative trifle, and the book turns out a great 
 success, it is of course matter of regret that he can- 
 not have the cake he has eaten. This is one side of 
 the balance-sheet, and on the other stands the debit 
 account in the author who, through a work which 
 proved a dead loss to its publisher, has made a re- 
 putation which lias rendered his subsequent books 
 successful, and made himself fashionable and rich. 
 There have been instances where publishers who 
 have bought for little the copyright of a successful 
 book have allowed the author to participate in their 
 gains ; and I am inclined to believe that these in- 
 stances are fully as numerous as those in which an 
 
262 His Club. 
 
 author, owing his reputation and success to a book 
 which did not pay its expenses, has made up the 
 losses of his first pubUsher. 
 
 If we go out of the hard market and look at the 
 tendency of sympathies, they are all in the author's 
 favour. Publishers, in fact, have, though it is not 
 generally believed, a leaning towards good literature, 
 and a tendency rather to over than to under esti- 
 mate the reception it may meet with from the 
 world. In considering whether they will take the 
 risk of a new publication, they have no criterion 
 to value it by except its literary merit, for they 
 cannot obtain the votes of the public until they are 
 committed ; and, indeed, there have been a good 
 many instances where a publisher, having a faith in 
 some individual author and his star, has pushed 
 and fought a way for him with dogged and detei'- 
 mined perseverance, sometimes with a success of 
 which, were all known, he has more of the real 
 merit than the author, who seems to have naturally, 
 without any external aid, taken his position among 
 the eminent and fortunate. 
 
 There are, at , the same time, special disquisitions 
 on matters of science or learning intended for pecu- 
 liar and limited audiences, which find their way to 
 publicity without the aid of the publisher. For 
 these there is an opening in certain institutions 
 far older than, the book clubs, and possessed of 
 a far higher social and intellectual position, since 
 
Structure of the Book Clubs. 263 
 
 • 
 
 they have the means of conferring titles of dignity 
 on those they adopt into their circle — titles which 
 are worn nqt by trinkets dangling at the button- 
 hole, but by certain cabalistic letters strung to the 
 name in the directory of the town where the owner 
 lives, or in the numberless biographical dictionaries 
 which are to immortalise the present generation. 
 So the author of an essay, especially in scholar- 
 ship or science, will, if it be worth anything, find a 
 place for it in the Transactions of one or other of 
 the learned societies. It will probably keep com- 
 pany with, if indeed it be not itself one of, a series 
 of papers which appear in the quarto volumes of 
 the learned corporation's Transactions,, merely be- 
 cause they cannot get into the octavo pages of the 
 higher class of periodicals ; but there they are, 
 printed in the face of the world, whose inhabitants 
 at large may worship them if they so please, and 
 their authors cannot complain that they are sup- 
 pressed. Whether the authors of these papers may 
 have been ambitious of their appearance in a wider 
 sphere, or are content with their appearance in 
 " The Transactions," it suffices for the present pur- 
 pose to explain how these volumes are a more 
 suitable receptacle than those printed by the book 
 clubs for essays or disquisitions by men following 
 up their own specialties in literature or science ; 
 and if it be the case that some of the essays which 
 appear in the Transactions of learned bodies jvpuld 
 
264 His Club, 
 
 have gladly entered society under the auspices of 
 some eminent periodical, yet it is proper at the 
 same time to admit that many of the most valuable 
 of these papers, concerning discoveries or inventions 
 which adepts alone can appreciate, could only be 
 satisfactorily published as they have been. And so 
 we find our way back to the proposition, that the 
 book clubs have been judiciously restricted to the 
 promulgation of the works of dead authors. 
 
 This has not necessarily excluded the literary 
 contributions of living men, in the shape of editing 
 and commenting ; and it is really difficult to esti- 
 mate the quantity of valuable matter which is thus 
 deposited in obscure but still accessible places. , A 
 deal of useful work, too, has been done in the way 
 of translation ; and where the book to be dealt with 
 is an Icelandic saga, a chronicle in Saxon, in Irish 
 Celtic, or even in old Norman, one may confess to 
 the weakness of letting the original remain, in some 
 instances, unexamined, and drawing one's informa- 
 tion with confiding gratitude from the translation 
 furnished by the learned editor. 
 
 Let me ofTer one instance of the important ser- 
 vice that may be done by affording a vehicle for 
 translations. The late Dr Francis Adams, a village 
 surgeon by profession, was at the same time, from 
 taste and pursuit, a profound Greek scholar. He 
 was accustomed to read tjie old authors on medicine 
 and surgery — a custom too little respected by his 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 265 
 
 profession, of whom it is the characteristic defect to 
 respect too absolutely the standard of the day. As 
 a physician, who is an ornament to his profession 
 and a great scholar, once observed to me, the writ- 
 ings of the old physicians, even if we reject them 
 from science, may be perused with profit to the 
 practitioner as a record of the diagnosis of cases 
 stated by men of acuteness, experience, and accu- 
 racy of observation. Adams had translated from 
 the Greek the works of Paul of .^gina, the father 
 of obstetric surgery, and printed the first volume. 
 It was totally unnoticed, for in fact there were no 
 means by which the village surgeon could get it 
 brought under the notice of the scattered members 
 of his profession who desired to possess such a book. 
 The remainder of his labours would have been lost 
 to the world had it not been taken off his hands by 
 the Sydenham Club, established for the purpose of 
 reprinting the works of the ancient physicians. 
 
 REAT institutions and small institutions 
 have each individually had a begin- 
 ning, though it cannot always be dis- 
 covered, distance often obscuring it 
 
 before it has been thought worth looking after. 
 
 There is an ingenious theory abroad, to the effect 
 
266 His Club. 
 
 that every physical impulse, be it but a wave of a 
 human hand, and that every intellectual impulse, 
 whether it pass through the mind of a Newton 
 or a brickmaker, goes, with whatever strength it 
 may possess, into a common store of dynamic influ- 
 ences, and tells with some operative power, however 
 imperceptible and infinitesimal, upon all subsequent 
 events, great or small, so that everything tells on 
 everything, and there is no one specific cause, 
 primary or secondary, that can be assigned to any 
 particular event. It may be so objectively, as the 
 transcendentalists say, but to common apprehen- 
 sions there are specific facts which are to them 
 emphatic as beginnings, such as the day when any 
 man destined for leadership in great political events 
 was born, or that whereon the Cape of Good Hope 
 was doubled, or America was discovered. 
 
 The beginning of the book clubs is marked by 
 a like, distinctness, both in date and circunistance. 
 The institution did not spring in full maturity and 
 equipment, like Pallas from the brain of Jove ; it 
 was started by a casual impulse, and remained long 
 insignificant ; but its origin and early progress are 
 as distinctly and specifically its own, as the birth 
 and infancy of any hero or statesman are his. It is 
 to the garrulity of Dibdin writing before there was 
 any prospect that this class of institutions would 
 reach their subsequent importance and usefulness, 
 that we owe many minute items of detail about the 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 267 
 
 cradle of the new system. We first slip in upon a 
 small dinner-party, on the 4th of June in the year 
 18 1 3, at the table of " Hortensius." The day was 
 one naturally devoted to hospitality, being the birth- 
 day of the reigning monarch, George III. ; but this 
 the historian passes unnoticed, the object of all- 
 absorbing interest being the great conflict of the 
 Roxburghe book-sale, then raging through its forty- 
 and-one days. Of Hortensius it is needless to know 
 more than that he was a distinguished lawyer, and 
 had a fine library, which having described, Dibdin 
 passes on thus to matters of more immediate im- 
 portance : " Nor is the hospitality of the owner of 
 these treasures of a less quality and calibre than his 
 taste ; for Hortensius regaleth liberally — and as the 
 ' night and day champagnes ' (so he is pleased hu- 
 morously to call them) sparkle upon his Gottingen- 
 manufactured table-cloth, 'the master of the revels,' 
 or (to borrow the phraseology of Pynson) of the 
 'feste royalle,' discourseth lustily and loudly upon 
 the charms — not of a full-curled or full-bottomed 
 'King's Bench' periwig— but of a full -margined 
 Bartholomseus or Barclay like his own." ^ 
 
 After some forty pages of this sort of matter, we 
 get another little peep at this momentous dinner- 
 party. " On the clearance of the Gottingen-manu- 
 factured table-cloth, the Roxburghe battle formed 
 
 1 Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 28. 
 
268 His Club. 
 
 the subject of discussion, when I proposed that we 
 should not only be all present, if possible, on the 
 day of the sale of the Boccaccio, but that we should 
 meet at some ' fair tavern ' to commemorate the sale 
 thereof" They met accordingly on the 17th of 
 June, some eighteen in number, "at the St Albans 
 Tavern, St Albans Street, now Waterloo Place." 
 Surely the place was symbolical, since on the i8th 
 of June, two years afterwards, the battle of Waterloo 
 was fought ; and as the importance attributed to 
 the contest at Roxburghe House on the 17th pro- 
 cured for it afterwards the name of the Waterloo of 
 book-battles, it came to pass that there were two 
 Waterloo commemorations treading closely one on 
 the other's heels. 
 
 The pecuniary stake at issue, and the consequent 
 excitement when the Valdarfer Boccaccio was 
 knocked off, so far exceeded all anticipation, that at 
 the festive board a motion was made and carried by 
 acclamation, for meeting on the same day and in 
 the same manner annually. And so the Roxburghe 
 Club, the parent of all the book clubs, came into 
 existence. 
 
 It must be admitted that its origin bears a curi- 
 ous generic resemblance to some scenes which pro- 
 duce less elevating results. On the day of some 
 momentous race or cock-fight, a parcel of sporting 
 devotees, "regular bricks," perhaps, agree to cele- 
 brate the occasion in a tavern, and when the hilarity 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 269 
 
 of the evening is at its climax, some festive orator, 
 whose enthusiasm has raised him to the table, sug- 
 gests, amidst loud hurrahs and tremendous table- 
 rapping, that the casual meeting should be converted 
 into an annual festival, to celebrate the event which 
 has brought them together. At such an assemblage, 
 the list of toasts will probably include Eclipse, Co- 
 therstone, Mameluke, Plenipo, the Flying Dutch- 
 man, and other illustrious quadrupeds, along with 
 certain bipeds, distinguished in the second degree as 
 breeders, trainers, and riders, and may perhaps cul- 
 minate in " the turf and the stud all over the world." 
 With a like appropriate reference to the common 
 bond of sympathy, the Roxburghe toasts included 
 the uncouth names of certain primitive printers, as 
 Valdarfer himself, Pannartz, Fust, and Schoeffher, 
 terminating in "The cause of Bibliomania all over 
 the world." ^ 
 
 ^ As of other influential documents, there have been various ver- 
 sions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of 
 critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such dis- 
 putes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from 
 time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of com- 
 pleteness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr Hazle- 
 wood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its 
 original shape as the printer can give it : — 
 
 W^t ©rin: of ■^ SDostes. 
 
 SGfje Immnrtal JKcmorg of 
 
 Koijn IBttfe of IRorfrargi^e. 
 
 ffljjrfetopficr FBlSarfw, ^rmtn: of tfjc ffijcamreon of 
 
 1471. 
 
270 His Club. 
 
 The club thus abruptly formed, consisted of 
 affluent collectors, some of them noble, with a 
 sprinkling of zealous practical men, who assisted 
 them in their great purchases, while doing minor 
 strokes of business for themselves. These, who 
 in some measure fed on the crumbs that fell from 
 the master's table, were in a position rather too 
 closely resembling the professionals in a hunt or 
 cricket club. The circle was a very exclusive one, 
 however; the number limited to thirty-one members, 
 '' one black ball excluding ; " and it used to be re- 
 marked, that it was easier to get into the Peerage 
 or the Privy Council than into " the Roxburghe." 
 
 Nothing has done so much to secure the potent 
 influence of clubs as the profound secrecy in which 
 
 ffiuitmitrg, ihist, aitlr .Scfjoeffljct, tltc JiibnttDts of 
 
 tfjE att Df Prtnting. 
 
 JKEtlltam Caxton, tfit JFatfjn nf tfje iBritisfr Pwss. 
 
 JBamc Saliana ISerrarrs, an! tfjt St aiiatts ^rcss. 
 
 fflSEgnftgn He aSEorte, anS aCvitfjarU ?3gitsan, X\t Hlus^ 
 
 trinus Sucwasnts of raiEiam ffiaitoit. 
 
 SCfje aiBtee JFamtlg, at "Smtt. 
 
 ®i)t ffiiuntB JFantilg, at JTortnce. 
 
 Wcjt SoctEtg of tije 93ifaltop!jilts at ^arts. 
 
 SCflE ^Irospnitg of tfjc lEloximrgfje Club. 
 
 ffifrt Cattse of BtWiomania all obcr tfie fflSEorlB. 
 
 It will be seen that this accomplished black -letterer must have 
 been under a common delusion, that. our ancestors not only wrote 
 but pronounced the definite article "the"as "ye." Every blunderer 
 ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have re- 
 course to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The 
 Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 271 
 
 their internal or domestic traftsactions have gen- 
 erally been buried. The great safeguard of this 
 secrecy will be found in that rigid rule of our 
 social code which prohibits every gentleman from 
 making public the affairs of the private circle ; and 
 if from lack of discretion, as it is sometimes gently 
 termed, this law is supposed to have a lax hold on 
 any one, he is picked off by the " one," " two," 
 "three black balls." It is singular that a club so 
 small and exclusive as the Roxburghe should have 
 proved an exception to the rule of secrecy, and that 
 the world has been favoured with revelations of its 
 doings which have made it the object of more 
 amusement than reverence. In fact, through failure 
 of proper use of the black ball, it got possession of 
 
 expressing in one letter our present t and h conjoined. When it was 
 abandoned, some printers substituted for it the letter y as most 
 nearly resembling it in shape, hence the "ye" which occurs some- 
 times in old books, but much more frequently in modern imitations 
 of them. 
 
 The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol 
 of knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their 
 representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open 
 his refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide- 
 in the potent vin dii pays to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, 
 and the others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge 
 successive glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged 
 ' ' to fery respectaple persons, " probably to the chief landed gentry of 
 his entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not 
 induce him to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world," 
 being unable to foresee what influence the utterance of words so 
 unusual and so suspiciously savouring of demonology might exercise 
 over his future destiny. 
 
272 His Club. 
 
 a black sheep, in the person of a certain Joseph 
 Hazlewood. He had achieved a sort of reputation 
 in the book -hunting community by discovering the 
 hidden author of Drunken Barnaby's Journal. In 
 reality, however, he was a sort of literary Jack 
 Brag. As that amusing creation of Theodore 
 Hook's practical imagination mustered himself with 
 sporting gentlemen through his command over the 
 technicalities or slang of the kennel and the turf, so 
 did Hazlewood sit at the board with scholars and 
 aristocratic book -collectors through a free use of 
 their technical phraseology. In either case, if the 
 indulgence in these terms descended into a motley 
 grotesqueness, it was excused as excessive fervour 
 carrying the enthusiast off his feet. When Hazle- 
 wood's treasures — for he was a collector in his way 
 — -were brought to the hammer, the scraps and 
 odds and ends it contained were found classified 
 in groups under such headings as these — Garlands 
 of Gravity, Poverty's Pot Pourri, Wallat of Wit, 
 Beggar's Balderdash, Octagonal Olio, Zany's Zo- 
 diac, Noddy's Nuncheon, Mumper's Medley, Quaf- 
 fing Quavers to Quip Queristers, Tramper's Twattle, 
 or Treasure and Tinsel from the Tewksbury Tank, 
 and the like. He edited reprints of some rare 
 books — that is to say, he saw them accurately re- 
 printed letter by letter. Of these one has a name 
 which — risking due castigation if I betray gross 
 ignorance by the supposition — I think he must 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 273 
 
 certainly have himself bestowed on it, as it excels 
 the most outrageous pranks of the alliterative age. 
 It is called, " Green - Room Gossip ; or, Gravity 
 Gallinipt ; A Gallimaufry got up to guile Gym- 
 nastical and Gyneocratic Governments; Gathered 
 and Garnished by Gridiron Gabble, Gent, Godson 
 to Mother Goose." 
 
 The name of Joseph Hazlewood sounds well ; it 
 is gentleman-like, and its owner might have passed 
 it into such friendly commemoration as that of 
 Bliss, Cracherode, Heber, Sykes, Utterson, Town- 
 ley, Markland, Hawtrey, and others generally under- 
 stood to be gentlemen, and, in virtue of their 
 bookish propensities, scholars. He might even, 
 for the sake of his reprints, have been thought an 
 "able editor," had it not been for his unfortunate 
 efforts to chronicle the doings of the club he had 
 got into.^ His History, in ma"nuscript, was sold 
 
 ' A voice from the other side of the Atlantic reveals the portentous 
 nature of the machinery with which Mr Hazlewood conducted his ed- 
 itorial labours. The following is taken from the book on the Private 
 Libraries of New York, already so freely quoted : — 
 
 "A unique book of unusual interest to the bibliophile in this de- 
 partment is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English 
 Poets and Poesy, edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London, 
 1815. This is Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decor- 
 ated by him in the most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school 
 in which he held so eminent a position., It is illustrated throughout 
 with portraits, some of which are very rare ; it contains all the letters 
 which the editor received in relation to it from the eminent literary 
 antiquarians of his day ; and not only these, but all the collations and 
 memoranda of any consequence which were made for him during its 
 progress, frequently by men of literary distinction. To these are 
 
 S 
 
2 74 His Club: 
 
 with his other treasures after his death, and was 
 purchased by the proprietor of the ^Athenaeum, 
 where fragments of it were printed some fifteen years 
 ago, along with editorial comments, greatly to the 
 amusement, if not to the edification, of the public. 
 
 In these revelations we find how long a probation 
 the system of book clubs had to pass through, before 
 it shook off the convivial propensities which con- 
 tinued to clustei- round the normal notion of a club, 
 and reached the dry asceticism and attention to the 
 duties of printing and editing, by which the greater 
 number of book clubs are distinguished. It was at 
 first a very large alUowance of sack to the proportion 
 of literary food, and it was sarcastically remarked 
 that the club had spent a full thousand pounds in 
 guzzling before it had produced a single valuable 
 volume. We have some of the bills of fare at the 
 
 added all the announcements of the work, together with the impres- 
 sions of twelve cancelled pages, printed four in one form and eight in 
 another, apparently by way of experiment, with other cancelled 
 matter ; tracings of the facsimile woodcuts of the title to Puttenham's 
 Arte of Enghsh Poesie, with a proof of it on India paper, and three 
 impressions of this title, one all in black, one with the letter in black 
 and the device in red, and the third vice vend; tracings for, and 
 proofs of, other woodcuts ; an impression of a leaf printed to be put 
 into a single copy of the work, &c. &c. ; for we must stop, although 
 we have but indicated the nature rather than the quantity of the 
 matter, all of it unique, which gives this book its peculiar value. But 
 it should be remarked besides, that the editorial part of the work is 
 interleaved for the purpose of receiving Mr Hazlewood's explanations 
 and corrections, and those that he received from literary friends, 
 which alone would give this copy a singular interest. It is bound by 
 Clarke in maroon morocco."' 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 275 
 
 " Roxburghe Revels," as they were called. In one, 
 for instance, there may be counted, in the first 
 course, turtle cooked five different ways, along with 
 turbot, John dory, tendrons of lamb, souch^e of had- 
 dock, ham, chartreuse, and boiled chickens. The 
 bill amounted to ;^S, 14s. a-head ; or, as Hazlewood 
 expresses it, " according to the long - established 
 principles of ' Maysterre Gockerre,' each person had 
 £^, 14s. to pay." Some illustrious strangers appear 
 to have been occasionally invited to attend the sym- 
 posium. If the luxurious table spread for them 
 may have occasioned them some surprise, they must 
 have experienced still more in the tenor of the in- 
 vitation to be present, which, coming in the name 
 of certain "Lions of Literature," as their historian 
 and the author of the invitation calls them, was 
 expressed in these terms — -" The honour of your 
 company is requested to dine with the Roxburghe 
 dinner, on Wednesday the 17th instant." One might 
 be tempted to offer the reader a fuller specimen of 
 the historian's style ; but unfortunately its charac- 
 teristics, grotesque as they are, cannot be exemplified 
 in their full breadth without being also given at full 
 length. The accounts of the several dinners read 
 like photographs of a mind wandering in the mazes 
 of indigestion-begotten nightmare.^ 
 
 ' It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was considerable 
 within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for himself ; so, 
 if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading through small 
 
276 His Club. 
 
 When Dibdin protested against the publication 
 of this record, he described it a great deal too at- 
 tractively when he called it " the concoction of one 
 in his gayer and unsuspecting moments — the re- 
 pository of private confidential communications — a 
 mere memorandum-book of what had passed at con- 
 vivial meetings, and in which 'winged words' and 
 flying notes of merry gentlemen and friends were 
 obviously incorporated." No ! certainly wings and 
 flying are not the ideas that naturally associate with 
 the historian of the Roxburghe, although, in one 
 instance, the dinner is sketched off" in the following 
 epigrammatic sentence, which startles the reader like 
 a plover starting up in a dreary moor : " Twenty- 
 one members met joyfully, dined comfortably, chal- 
 lenged eagerly, tippled prettily, divided regretfully. 
 
 print, he may read the following specimen of Mr Hazlewood's style. 
 He would certainly himself not have objected to its being taken as a 
 criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of it. 
 
 " Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts, 
 foh ! nankeen displays : as intersticed vrith many a brilliant drop to 
 friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the 
 incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better 
 dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to 
 commune, that can converse, and each willing to give and receive 
 information, more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered 
 conviviality — a social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom ; com- 
 bining all that Anacreon was famed for, tempered with the reason of 
 Demosthenes, and intersected with the archness of Scaliger. It is 
 true we had not any Greek verses in praise of the grape ; but we had, 
 as a tolerable substitute, the ballad of the ' Bishop of Hereford and 
 Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was of his own composing. 
 It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing the absentees, the 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 277 
 
 and paid the bill most cheerfully." On another 
 occasion the historian's enthusiasm was too expan- 
 sive to be confined to plain prose, and he inflated 
 it in lyric verse : — 
 
 " Brave was the banquet, the red red juice, 
 Hilarity's gift sublime. 
 Invoking the heart to kindred use, 
 And bright'ning halo of time. " 
 
 This, and a quantity of additional matter of like 
 kind, was good fun to the scorners, and, whether 
 any of the unskilful laughed at it, scarcely made 
 even the judicious grieve, for they thought that 
 those who had embarked in such pompous follies 
 deserved the lash unconsciously administered to 
 them in his blunders by an unhappy member of 
 their own order. 
 
 cabinet council, or any other set of men ; but there was not a man 
 present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the cloth was 
 removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superior to 
 any record of antiquity. It is true, no trace of wit is going to be 
 here preserved, for the flashes were too general, and what is the 
 critical sagacity of a Scaliger compared to our chairman ? Ancients 
 believe it ! We were not dead drunk, and therefore lie quiet under 
 the table for once, and let a few modems be uppermost." 
 
 The following chronicle of the third dinner and second anniversary 
 records an interesting little personal incident : — 
 
 ' ' After Lord Spencer left the chair, it was taken, I believe, by Mr 
 Heber, who kept it up to a late hour, — Mr Dodd very volatile and 
 somewhat singular, at the same time , quite novel, in amusing the 
 company with Robin Hood ditties and similar productions. I give 
 this on af^er report, having left the room very early from severe attack 
 of sickness, which appeared to originate in some vile compound par- 
 took of at dinner. " 
 
278 His Club. 
 
 In fact, however, this was the youthful giant 
 sowing his wild oats. Along with them there lay 
 also, unseen at first, the seed of good fruit. Of these, 
 was a resolution adopted at the second meeting, and 
 thus set forth by the historian in his own peculiar 
 style : " It was proposed and concluded for each 
 member of the club to reprint a scarce piece of 
 ancient lore to be given to the members, one copy 
 to be on vellum for the chairman, and only as many 
 copies as members." 
 
 The earliest productions following on this reso- 
 lution were on a very minute scale. One member, 
 stimulated to distinguish himself by " a merry con- 
 ceited jest," reprinted a French morsel called "La 
 Contenance de la Table," and had it disposed of 
 in such wise, that as each guest opened his napkin 
 expecting to find a dinner-roll, he disclosed the 
 typographical treasure. It stands No. 6 on the 
 list of Roxburghe books, and is probably worth 
 an enormous sum. The same enthusiast reprinted 
 in a more formal manner a rarity called " News 
 from Scotland, declaring the damnable life of Dr 
 Fian, a notable sorcerer," &c. This same morsel 
 was afterwards reprinted for another club, in a 
 shape calculated almost to create a contemptuous 
 contrast between the infantine efforts of the Rox- 
 burghe and the manly labours of its robust- fol- 
 lowers. It is inserted as what the French call a 
 pike justificative in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, edited 
 
The Roxbi^rghe Club. 279 
 
 for the Bannatyne, and there occupies ten of the 
 more than 2000 pages which make, up that solid 
 book. 
 
 It was not until the year 1827 that a step was 
 taken by the Roxburghe Club which might be 
 called its first exhibition of sober manhood. Some 
 of the members, ashamed of the -paltry nature of 
 the volumes circulated in the name of the club, 
 bethought themselves of uniting to produce a book 
 of national value. They took Sir Frederick Mad- 
 den into their counsels, and authorised him to print 
 eighty copies of the old metrical romance of Have- 
 lok the Dane. This gave great dissatisfaction to 
 the historian, who muttered how "a MS. not dis- 
 covered by a member of the club was selected, and 
 an excerpt obtained, not furnished by the industry 
 or under the inspection of any one member, nor 
 edited by a member ; but, in fact, after much pro 
 and con., it was made a complete hireling concern, 
 truly at the expense of the club, from the copying 
 to the publishing." 
 
 The value of this book has been attested by the 
 extensive critical examination it has received, and 
 by the serviceable aid it has given to all recent 
 writers on the infancy of English literature. It 
 was followed by another interesting old romance, 
 William and the Wer Wolf, valuable not only as 
 a specimen of early literature, but for the light it 
 throws on the strange wild superstition dealing with 
 
28o His Club. 
 
 the conversion of men into wolves, which has been 
 found so widely prevalent that it has received a 
 sort of scientific title in the word Lycanthropy. 
 These two books made the reputation of the Rox- 
 burghe, and proved an example and encouragement 
 to the clubs which began to arise more or less on 
 its model. It was a healthy protest against the 
 Dibdinism which had ruled the destinies of the 
 club, for Dibdin had beerj its master, and was the 
 Gamaliel at whose feet Hazlewood and others 
 patiently sat. Of the term now used, the best ex- 
 planation I can give ' is this, that in the selection of 
 books — other questions, such as rarity or condition, 
 being set aside or equally balanced — a general pre- 
 ference is to be given to those which are the most 
 witless, preposterous, and in every literary sense 
 valueless — which are, in short, rubbish. What is 
 here meant will be easily felt by any one who 
 chooses to consult the book which Dibdin issued 
 under the title of " The Library Companion, or the 
 Young Man's Guide and the Old Man's Comfort in 
 the choice of a Library." This, it will be observed, 
 is not intended as a manual of rare or curious, or 
 in any way peculiar books, but as the instruction 
 of a Nestor on the best books for study and use 
 in all departments of literature. Yet one will look 
 in vain there for such names as Montaigne, Shaftes- 
 bury, Benjamin Franklin, D'Alembert, Turgot, 
 Adam Smith, Malebranchcj Lessing, Goethe; Schiller, 
 
The Roxburghe Club. 281 
 
 F6nelon, Burke, Kant, Richter, Spinoza, Flechier, and 
 many others. Characteristically enough, if you turn 
 up Rousseau in the index, you will find Jean Bap- 
 tiste, but not Jean Jacques. You will search in 
 vain for Dr Thomas Reid, the metaphysician, but 
 will readily find Isaac Reed, the editor. If you 
 look for Molinaeus or Du Moulin, it is not there, 
 but alphabetic vicinity gives you the good for- 
 tune to become acquainted with "Moule, Mr, his 
 Bibliotheca Heraldica." The name Hooker will be 
 found, not to guide the reader to the Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, but to Dr Jackson Hooker's Tour in Ice- 
 land. Lastly) if any one shall search for Hartley 
 on Man, he will find in the place it might occupy, 
 or has reference to, the editorial services of " Hazle- 
 wood, Mr Joseph." 
 
 Though the Roxburghe, when it came under the 
 fostering care of the scholarly Botfield, and secured 
 the services of men like Madden, Wright, and 
 Taylor, outgrew the pedantries in which it had 
 been reared, and performed much valuable literary 
 work, yet its chief merit is in the hints its practice 
 afforded to others. The leading principle; indeed, 
 which the other clubs so largely adopted after the 
 example of the Roxburghe, was not an entire 
 novelty. The idea of keeping up the value of a 
 book by limiting the impression, so as to restrain 
 it within the number who might desire to possess 
 it, was known before the birth of this the oldest 
 
282 His Club. 
 
 book club. The practice was sedulously followed 
 by Hearne the antiquary, and others, who provided 
 old chronicles and books of the class chiefly 
 esteemed by the book-hunter. The very fame of 
 the restricted number, operating on the selfish jeal- 
 ousy of man's nature, brought out competitors for 
 the possession of the book, who never would have 
 thought of it but for the pleasant idea of keeping 
 it out of the hands of some one else. 
 
 There are several instances on record of an un- 
 known book lying in the printer's warerooms, dead 
 from birth and forgotten, having life and importance 
 given to it by the report that all the copies, save a 
 few, have been destroyed by a fire in the premises. 
 This is an illustration in the sibylline direction of 
 value being conferred by the decrease of the com- 
 modity ; but by judiciously adjusting the number 
 of copies printed, the remarkable phenomenon has 
 been exhibited of the rarity of a book being in- 
 creased by an increase in the number of copies. 
 To understand how this may come to pass, it is 
 necessary to recall the precept elsewhere set forth, 
 and look on rarity as not an absolute quality, but 
 as relative to the number who desire to possess the 
 article. Ten copies which two hundred people 
 want constitute a rarer book than two copies which 
 twenty people want. Even to a sole remaining 
 copy of some forgotten book, lying dead, as it were, 
 and buried in some obscure library, may collective 
 
Some Book- Club Men. 283 
 
 vital rarity be imparted. Let its owner print,- say, 
 twenty copies for distribution — the book-hunting 
 community have got the "hark-away," and are off 
 after it. In this way, before the days of the clubs, 
 many knowing people multiplied rarities ; and at the 
 present day there are reprints by the clubs them- 
 selves, of much greater pecuniary value than the 
 rare books from which they have been multiplied. 
 
 Same 33aoft=ei;itt6 iWeti. 
 
 i|0 one probably did more to raise the 
 condition of the book clubs than Sir 
 Walter Scott. In 1823 the Roxburghe 
 made proffers of membership to him, 
 partly, it would seem, under the influence of a 
 waggish desire to disturb his great secret, which 
 had not yet been revealed. Dibdin, weighting him- 
 self with more than his usual burden of ponderous 
 jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott 
 the desire of the club that the Author of Waverley, 
 with whom it was supposed that he had the means 
 of communicating, would accept of the seat at the 
 club vacated by the death of Sir Mark Sykes. 
 Scott got through the affair ingeniously with a little 
 coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally 
 accepted as the Author of Waverley's representa- 
 tive. The . Roxburghe had, however, at that time, 
 
284 His Club. 
 
 done nothing in serious book-club business, having 
 let loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets 
 of letterpress already referred to. It was Scott's 
 own favourite club, the Bannatyne, that first pro- 
 jected the plan of printing substantial and valuable 
 volumes, 
 
 At the commencement of the same year, 1823, 
 when he took his seat at the Roxburghe (he did not 
 take his bottle there, which was the more impor- 
 tant object, for some time after), he wrote to the 
 late Robert Pitcairn, the editor of the Criminal 
 Trials, in these terms : " I have long thought that 
 a something of a bibliomaniacal society might be 
 formed here, for the prosecution of the important 
 task of publishing dilettante editions of our national 
 literary curiosities. Several persons of rank, I be- 
 lieve, would willingly become members, and there 
 are enough of good operatives. What would you 
 think of such an association ? David Laing was 
 ever keen for it ; but the death of Sir Alexander 
 Boswell and of Alexander Oswald has damped his 
 zeal. I think, if a good plan were formed, and a 
 certain number of members chosen, the thing would 
 still do well." 1 
 
 Scott gave the Bannatyners a song for their fes- 
 tivities. It goes to the tune of " One Bottle More," 
 and is a wonderful illustration of his versatile powers, 
 
 ^ Notices of the Bannatyne Club, privately printed. 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 285 
 
 in the admirable bibulous sort of joviality which he 
 distils, as it were, from the very dust of musty vol- 
 umes, thus : — 
 
 "John Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concerned 
 I can't call that worthy so candid as learned ; 
 He railed at the plaid, and blasphemed the claymore, 
 And set Scots by the ears in his one volume more. 
 One volume more, my friends, one volume more — 
 Celt and Goth shall be pleased with one volume more. 
 
 As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor. 
 
 And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar, 
 
 His diet too acid, his temper too sour. 
 
 Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more. 
 But one volume, my friends, one volume more — 
 We'll dine on roast beef, and print one volume more." 
 
 I am tempted to add a word or two of prosaic 
 gossip and comment to the characteristics thus so 
 happily hit off in verse. John Pinkerton was, upon 
 the whole, a man of simple character. The sim- 
 plicity consisted in the thorough belief that never, 
 in any country or at any period of the world's his- 
 tory, had there been created a human being des- 
 tined to be endowed with even an approach to the 
 genius, wisdom, and learning of which he was him- 
 self possessed. He never said a word in praise of 
 any fellow-being, for none had ever risen so much 
 above the wretched level of the stupid world he 
 looked down upon as to deserve such a distinction. 
 He condescended, however, to distribute censure, 
 and that with considerable liberality. For instance, 
 take his condensed notice of an unfortunate worker 
 
286 His Club. 
 
 in his own field, Walter Goodal, whose works are 
 "fraught with furious railing, contemptible scurril- 
 ity, low prejudice, small reading, and vulgar error." 
 Thus having dealt with an unfortunate and rather 
 obscure author, he shows his impartiality by dealing 
 with Macpherson, then in the zenith of his fame, in 
 this wise : " His etymological nonsense he assists 
 with gross falsehoods, and pretends to skill in the 
 Celtic without quoting one single MS. In short, 
 he deals wholly in assertion and opinion, and it is 
 clear that he had not even an idea what learning 
 and science are." Nor less emphatic is his railing at 
 the plaid and blaspheming at the claymore. Donald 
 and his brethren are thus described : " Being mere 
 savages, but one degree above brutes, they remain 
 still in much the same state of society as in the 
 days of Julius Caesar ; and he who travels among 
 the Scottish Highlanders, the old Welsh, or wild 
 Irish, may see at once the ancient and modern state 
 of women among the Celts, when he beholds these 
 savages stretched in their huts, and their poor 
 women toiling like beasts of burden for their un- 
 manly husbands;" and finally, "being absolute 
 savages, and, like Indians and negroes, will ever 
 continue so, all we can do is to plant colonies 
 among them, and by this, and encouraging their 
 emigration, try to get rid of the breed." 
 
 This fervency is all along of the question whether 
 the Picts, or Piks, as Pinkerton chooses to call 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 287 
 
 them, were Celts or Goths. If we turn to the 
 books of his opponent on this question, Joseph 
 Ritson, we find him paid back in his own coin, and 
 that so genuine, that, on reading about gross ignor- 
 ance, falsehood, and folly, one would think he was 
 still enjoying Pinkerton's own flowers of eloquence, 
 were it not that the tenor of the argument has 
 somehow turned to the opposite side. I drop into 
 the note below a specimen from the last words of 
 this controversy, as characteristic of the way in 
 which it was conducted, and a sample of the kind 
 of dry fuel which, when ignited by these incen- 
 diaries, blazed into so much rage.^ 
 
 Ritson was a man endowed with almost super- 
 human irritability of temper, and he had a genius 
 fertile in devising means of giving scope to its 
 restless energies. I have heard that it was one 
 of his obstinate fancies, when addressing a letter to 
 
 1 "See Pinkerton's Enquiry, i. 173, &c., 369. He explains the 
 Vecturiones of Marcellinus, ' Vectveriar, or Pikish men, as,' he un- 
 truly says, ' the Icelandic writers call them in their Norwegian seats 
 Vik-veriar, ' and, either ignorantly or dishonestly to countenance this 
 most false and absurd hypothesis, corrupts the Pihtas of the Saxons 
 into Pihtar, a termination impossible to their language. It is true, 
 indeed, that he has stumbled upon a passage in Rudbeck's Atlantica, 
 i. 672, in which that very fanciful and extravagant writer speaks of 
 the Packar, Baggar, Paikstar, Baggeboar, Pitar, and Medel Pakcar, 
 whom he pretends ' Britanni vero Peiktar appellant, et Peictonum 
 tam eorum qui in Galliis quam in Britannia resident genitores 
 faciunt. ' He finds these Pacti also in the Argonauticks, v. 1067 ; and 
 his whole work seems the composition of a man whom ' much learning 
 ha;th made mad.'" — Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, &c., i. 81. 
 
2 88 His Club. 
 
 a friend of the male sex, instead of using the 
 ordinary prefix of Mr or the affix Esq., to use the 
 term " Master," as Master John Pinkerton, Master 
 George Chalmers. The agreeable result of this 
 was, that his communications on intricate and irri- 
 tating antiquarian disputes were delivered to, and 
 perused by, the young gentlemen of the family, so 
 opening up new little intricate avenues, fertile in 
 controversy and misunderstanding. But he had 
 another and more inexhaustible resource for his 
 superabundant irritability. In his numerous books 
 he insisted on adopting a peculiar spelling. It was 
 not phonetic, nor was it etymological ; it was simply 
 Ritsonian. To understand the efficacy of this ar- 
 rangement, it must be remembered that the instinct 
 of a printer is to spell according to rule, and that 
 every deviation from the ordinary method can only 
 be carried out by a special contest over each word. 
 General instructions on such a matter are apt to 
 produce unexpected results. One very sad instance 
 I can now recall ; it was that of a French author 
 who, in a new edition of his works, desired to alter 
 the old-fashioned spelling of the imperfect tense 
 from o to a. To save himself trouble, on the first 
 instance occurring in each proof, he put in the mar- 
 gin a general direction to change all such o's into 
 a's. The instruction was so literally and comprehen- 
 sively obeyed, that, happening to glance his eye over 
 the volume on its completion, he found the letter o 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 289 
 
 entirely excluded from it Even the sacred name of 
 Napoleon was irreverently printed Napalean, and 
 the Revolution was the Revalutian. Ritson had far 
 too sharp a scent for any little matter of controversy 
 and irritating discussion to get into a difficulty like 
 this. He would fight each step of the way, and such 
 peculiarities as the following, profusely scattered 
 over his books, may be looked upon as the names 
 of so many battles or skirmishes with his printers 
 — compileer, write'e'r, wel, kil, onely, probablely. Even 
 when he condescended to use the spelling common 
 to the rest of the nation, he could pick out little 
 causes of quarrel with the way of putting it in type 
 — as, for instance, in using the word Ass, which 
 came naturally to him, he would not follow the 
 practice of his day in the use of the long and short 
 (fs), but inverted the arrangement thus, sf This 
 strange creature exemplified the opinion that every 
 one must have some creed — something from with- 
 out having an influence over thought and action 
 stronger than the imperfect apparatus of human rea- 
 son. Scornfully disdaining revelation from above, 
 he groped below, and found for himself a little 
 fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as 
 fanatical a devotee of vegetarianism as others have 
 been of a middle state or adult baptism ; and, after 
 having torn through a life of spiteful controversy 
 with his fellow - men, and ribaldry of all sacred 
 things, he thus expressed the one weight hang- 
 
 T 
 
290 His Club. 
 
 ing on his conscience, that " on one occasion, when 
 tempt^ed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of 
 Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed 
 under the roast, nothing less repugnant to feelings 
 being to be had." ^ 
 
 To return to the services of him of mightier re- 
 nown, whose genial drolleries led to these notices. 
 Scott printed, as a contribution to his favourite 
 club, the record of the trial of two Highlanders for 
 murder, which brought forth some highly character- 
 istic incidents. The victim was a certain Sergeant 
 Davis, who had charge of one of the military parties 
 or guards dispersed over the Highlands to keep 
 them in order after the '45. Davis had gone from 
 his own post at Braemar up Glen Clunie to meet 
 the guard from Glenshee. He chose to send his 
 men back and take a day's shooting among the 
 wild mountains at the head of the glen, and was 
 seen no more. How he was disposed of could 
 easily be divined in a general way, but there were 
 no particulars to be had. It happened, however, 
 that there was one Highlander who, for reasons 
 best known to himself — they were never got at — 
 had come to the resolution of bringing his brother 
 Highlanders, who had made away with the ser- 
 geant, to justice. It was necessary for his own 
 
 ^ See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. 
 By Joseph Ritson. 
 
Some Book- Club Men. 291 
 
 safety, however, that he should be under the pres- 
 sure of a motive or impulse sufficient to justify so 
 heartless and unnatural a proceeding, otherwise he 
 would himself have been likely to follow the ser- 
 geant's fate. Any reference to his conscience, the 
 love of justice, respect for the laws of the land, or 
 the like, would of course have been received with 
 well -merited ridicule and scorn. He must have 
 some motive which a sensible Highlander could 
 admit as probable in itself, and sufficient for its 
 purpose. 
 
 Accordingly the accuser said he had been visited 
 by the sergeant's ghost, who had told him every- 
 thing, and laid on him the heavy burden of bring- 
 ing his slaughterers in the flesh to their account. 
 If that were not done, the troubled spirit would 
 not cease to walk the earth, and so long as he 
 walked would the afflicted denouncer continue to 
 be the victim of his ghostly visits. The case was 
 tried at Edinburgh, and though the evidence was 
 otherwise clear and complete, the Lowland jury 
 were perplexed and put out by the supernatural 
 ■episode. A Highland story, with a ghost acting 
 witness at second-hand, roused all their Saxon 
 prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties 
 by declining to convict. A point was supposed to 
 have been malde, when the counsel for the defence 
 asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who 
 -was English wheft in the flesh, spoke to the High- 
 
292 His Club. 
 
 lander, who knew not that language ; and the wit- 
 ness answered, through his interpreter, that the 
 spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard 
 in Lochaber. Sir Walter Scott, however, remarks 
 that there was no incongruity in this, if we once 
 get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It 
 is curious that Scott does not seem to have woven 
 the particulars of this affair into any one of his 
 novels. 
 
 Among those who contributed to place the stamp 
 of a higher character on the labours of the book 
 clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir Alex- 
 ander Boswell. A time there was, unfortunately, 
 when his name could not easily be dissociated from 
 exasperating political events ; but now that the 
 generation concerned in them has nearly passed 
 away, it becomes practicable, even from the side 
 of his political opponents, to glance at his literary 
 abilities and accomplishments without recalling ex- 
 citing recollections. He was a member of the Rox- 
 burghe, and though he did not live to see the im- 
 provement in the issues of that institution, or the 
 others which kept pace with it, he, alone and 
 single-handed; set the example of printing the 
 kind of books which it was afterwards the merit 
 of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them, 
 in fact, their tone. He had at his paternal home 
 of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare books 
 and manuscripts ; one of these afforded the text 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 293 
 
 from which the romance of Sir Tristrem was 
 printed. He reprinted from the one remaining 
 copy in his own possession the disputation be- 
 tween John Knox and Quentin Kennedy, a priest 
 who came forward against the great Reformer as 
 the champion of the old religion. From the Auch- 
 inleck press came also reprints of Lodge's Fig for 
 Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, the Book 
 of the Chess, Sir James Dier's Remembrancer of 
 the Life of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Dialogus inter 
 Deum et Evam, and others. 
 
 The possession of a private printing-press is, no 
 doubt, a very appalling type of bibliomania. Much 
 as has been told us of the awful 'scale on which 
 drunkards consume their favoured poison, one is 
 not accustomed to hear of their setting up private 
 stills for their own individual consumption. There 
 is a Sardanapalitan excess in this bibliographical 
 luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other 
 vulgar mortals in the common harvest of the public 
 press, but must itself minister to its own tastes and 
 demands. The owner of such an establishment 
 is subject to no extraneous caprices' about breadth 
 of margins, size of type, quarto or folio, leaded or 
 unleaded lines ; he dictates his own terms ; he is 
 master of the situation, as the French say ; and is 
 the true autocrat of literature. There have been 
 several renowned private presses: Walpole's, at 
 Strawberry Hill ; Mr Johnes's^ at Hafod ; Allan's, 
 
294 -^^-^ Club. 
 
 at the Grange ; and the Lee Priory Press. None 
 of these, however, went so distinctly into the groove 
 afterwards followed by the book clubs as Sir Alex- 
 ander Boswell's Auchinleck Press. In the Biblio- 
 graphical Decameron is a brief history, by Sir 
 Alexander himself, of the rise and progress of his 
 press. He tells us how he had resolved to print 
 Knox's Disputation : " For this purpose I was con- 
 strained to purchase two small fonts of black-letter, 
 and to have punches cut for eighteen or twenty 
 double letters and contractions. I was thus en- 
 listed and articled into the service, and being in- 
 fected with the type fever, the fits have periodically 
 returned. In the year 1 8 1 5, having viewed a port- 
 able press invented by Mr John Ruthven, an ingeni- 
 ous printer in Edinburgh, I purchased one, and 
 commenced compositor. At this period, my brother 
 having it in contemplation to present Bamfield to 
 the Roxburghe Club, and not aware of the poverty 
 and insignificance of my establishment, expressed 
 a wish that his tract should issue from the Auchin- 
 leck Press. I determined to gratify him, and the 
 portable .press being too small for general purposes, 
 I exchanged it for one of Mr Ruthven's full-sized 
 ones; and having increased my stock to eight small 
 fonts, roman and italic, with the necessary appur- 
 tenances, I placed the whole in a cottage, built 
 originally for another purpose, very pleasantly situ- 
 ated on the bank of a rivulet, and, although con- 
 
Some Book-Chib Men. 295 
 
 cealed from view by the surrounding wood, not a 
 quarter of a mile from my house." ^ 
 
 To show the kind of man who co-operated with 
 Scott in such frivolities, let me say a word or two 
 more about Sir Alexander. He was the son, ob- 
 serve, of Johnson's Jamie Boswell, but he was about 
 as like his father as an eagle might be to a peacock. 
 To use a common colloquial phrase, he was a man 
 of genius, if ever there was one. Had he been a 
 poorer and socially humbler man than he was— rhad 
 he had his bread and his position to make— he 
 would probably have achieved immortality. Some 
 of his songs are as familiar to the world as those 
 of Burns, though their author is forgotten, — as, for 
 instance, the song of parental farewell, beginning — 
 
 " Good-night, and joy be wi' ye a' ; 
 Your harmless mirth has cheered my heart," 
 
 and ending with this fine and genial touch — 
 
 " The auld win speak, the young ma,un hear ; 
 
 Be canty, but be good and leal ; 
 Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear, 
 
 Another's aye hae heart to feel : 
 So, ere I set I'll see you shine, 
 
 I'll see you triumph ere I fa' ; 
 My parting breath shall boast you mine. 
 
 Good-night, and joy be wi' you a'. " 
 
 His "Auld Gudeman, ye're a drucken carle," 
 "Jenny's Bawbee," and "Jenny dang the Weaver," 
 
 ^ Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 454. . 
 
296 His Club. 
 
 are of another kind, and perhaps fuller of the pecu- 
 liar spirit of the man. This consisted in hitting off 
 the deeper and typical characteristics of Scottish 
 life with an easy touch that brings it all home at 
 once. His lines do not seem as if they were com- 
 posed by an effort of talent, but as if they were the 
 spontaneous expressions of nature. 
 
 Take the following specimen of ludicrous pompos- 
 ity, which must suffer a little by being quoted from 
 memory: it describes a Highland procession : — 
 
 " Come the Grants o' Tullochgorum, 
 Wi' their pipers on afore 'em ; 
 Proud the mithers are that bore 'em, 
 Fee fuddle, fan fum. 
 
 Come the Grants o' Rothiemurchus, 
 Ilka ane his sword an' durk has, 
 Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is, 
 Fee fuddle, fau fum." 
 
 To comprehend the spirit of this, one must en- 
 dow himself with the feelings of a Lowland Scot 
 before Waverley and Rob Roy imparted a glow 
 of romantic interest to the Highlanders. The pom- 
 pous and the ludicrous were surely never more 
 happily interwoven. One would require to go 
 further back still to appreciate the spirit of " Skel- 
 don Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted." It is a picture 
 of old Ayrshire feudal rivalry and hatred. The 
 Laird of Bargainy resolved to humiliate his neigh- 
 bour and enemy, the Laird of Kerse, by a forcible 
 
Some Book- Club Men. 297 
 
 occupation of part of his territory. For the purpose 
 of making this aggression flagrantly insulting, it 
 was done by tethering or staking a female pig on 
 the domain of Kerse. The animal was, of course, 
 attended by a sufficient body of armed men for her 
 protection. It was necessary for his honour -that the 
 Laird of Kerse should drive the animal and her 
 attendants away, and hence came a bloody battle 
 about "the flitting of the sow.'' In the contest, 
 Kerse's eldest son and hope, Jock, is killed, and the 
 point or moral of the narrative is, the contempt with 
 which the old laird looks on that event, as compared 
 with the grave affair of flitting the sow. A retainer 
 who comes to tell him the result of the battle stam- 
 mers in his narrative on account of his grief for 
 Jock, and is thus pulled up by the laird — 
 
 " ' Is the sow flitted ? ' cries the carle ; 
 ' Gie me an answer, short and plain — 
 Is the sow flitted, yammerin' wean ? ' " 
 
 To which the answer is — 
 
 ' ' ' The sow, deil talc her, 's ower the water, 
 And at her back the Crawfords clatter ; 
 The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted. ' " 
 
 Hereupon the laird's exultation breaks forth, — 
 
 " 'My thumb for Jock — the sow's flitted I ' " 
 
 Another man of genius and learning, whose name 
 is a household one among the book clubs, is Robert 
 
298 His Club. 
 
 Surtees, the historian of Durham. You may hunt 
 for it in vain among the biographical dictionaries. 
 Let us hope that this deficiency will be well sup- 
 plied in the Biographia Britannica, projected by Mr 
 Murray. Surtees was not certainly among those 
 who flare their qualities before the world — he was to 
 a peculiar degree addicted, as we shall shortly see, 
 to hiding his light under a bushel ; and so any little 
 notice of him in actual flesh and blood, such as this 
 left by his friend, the Rev. James Tate, master of 
 Richmond School, interests one : — 
 
 " One evening I was sitting alone — it was about 
 nine o'clock in the middle of summer — there came 
 a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself, 
 and a gentleman said with great modesty, ' Mr Tate, 
 I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine beg- 
 ged I would call upon you.' ' The master of Rich- 
 mond School is delighted to see you,' said I ; 'pray 
 walk in.' ' No, thank you, sir ; I have ordered a 
 bit of supper ; perhaps you will walk up with me ? ' 
 ' To be sure I will ; ' and away we went. As we 
 went along, I quoted a line from the Odyssey. 
 What was my astonishment to hear from Mr Sur- 
 tees, not the next only, but line after line of the 
 passage I had touched upon. Said I to myself, 
 ' Good Master Tate, take heed ; it is not often you 
 catch such a fellow as this at Richmond.' I never 
 spent such an evening in my life." What a pity, 
 then, that he did not give us more of the evening, 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 299 
 
 which seems to have left joyful memories to both : 
 for Surtees himself thus commemorated it in maca- 
 ronics, in which he was an adept : — 
 
 " Doctus Tatius hie residet, 
 Ad Coronam prandet ridet, 
 Spargit sales cum cachinno, 
 Lepido ore et concinno, 
 Ubique cams inter bonos 
 Rubei mentis prsesens honos." 
 
 In the same majestic folio in which this anecdote 
 may be found — the Memoir prefixed to the History 
 of Durham — we are likewise told how, when at 
 college, he was waiting on a Don on business ; and, 
 feeling coldish, stirred the fire. " Pray, Mr Sur- 
 tees," said the great man, "do you think that any 
 other undergraduate in the college would have taken 
 that liberty?" "Yes, Mr Dean," was the reply — 
 " any one as cool as I am ! " This would have been 
 not unworthy of Brummell. The next is not in 
 Brummell's line. Arguing with a neighbour about 
 his not going to church, the man said, "Why, sir, 
 the parson and I have quarrelled about the tithes." 
 "You fool," was the reply, "is that any reason why 
 you should go to hell?" Yet another. A poor 
 man, with a numerous family, lost his only cow. 
 Surtees was collecting a subscription to replace the 
 loss, and called on the Bishop of Lichfield, who was 
 Dean of Durham, and owner of the great tithes in 
 the parish, to ascertain what he would give. " Give ! " 
 said the bishop ; " why, a cow, to be sure. Go, Mr 
 
300 His Club. 
 
 Surtees, to my steward, and tell him to give you as 
 much money as will buy the best cow you can find." 
 Surtees, astonished at this unexpected generosity, 
 said — "My Lord, I hope you will ride to heaven 
 upon the back of that cow." A while afterwards he 
 was saluted in the college by the late Lord Barring- 
 ton, with — " Surtees, what is the absurd speech that 
 I hear you have been making to the dean?" "I 
 see nothing absurd in it," was the reply ; " when the 
 dean rides to heaven on the back of that cow, many 
 of you prebendaries will be glad to lay hold of her 
 tail ! " 
 
 I have noted these innocent trifles concerning one 
 who is chiefly known as a deep and dry investi- 
 gator, for the purpose of propitiating the reader in 
 his favour, since the sacred cause of truth renders it 
 necessary to refer to another affair in which his con- 
 duct, however trifling it might be, was not innocent 
 He was addicted to literary practical jokes of an 
 audacious kind, and carried his presumption so far 
 as to impose on Sir Walter Scott a spurious ballad 
 which has a place in the Border Minstrelsy. Nor 
 is it by any means a servile imitation, which might 
 pass unnoticed in a crowd of genuine and better 
 ballads ; but it is one of the most spirited and one 
 of the most thoroughly endowed with individual 
 character in the whole collection. This guilty com- 
 position is known as "The Death of Featherston- 
 haugh," and begins thus : — 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 301 
 
 " Hoot awa', lads, hoot awa' ; 
 Ha' ye heard how the Ridleys, and Thlrlwalls, and a', 
 Ha' set upon Albany Featherstonhaugh, 
 And taken his life at the Dead Man's Haugh ? 
 
 There was Williemoteswick 
 
 And Hardriding Dick, 
 And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will of the Wa', 
 
 I canna tell a', I canna tell a', 
 And many a mair that the deil may knaw. 
 
 The auld man went down, but Nicol his son 
 Ran awa' afore the fight was begun ; 
 
 And he run, and he run. 
 
 And afore they were done 
 There' was many a Featherston gat sic a stun, 
 As never was seen since the world begun. 
 
 I canna tell a', I canna tell a', 
 
 Some got a skelp and some got a claw. 
 
 But they gar't the Featherstons baud their jaw. 
 Some got a hurt, and some got nane, 
 Some had harness, and some got staen.'' 
 
 This imposture, professing to be taken down from 
 the recitation of a woman eighty years old, was 
 accompanied with some explanatory notes, charac- 
 teristic of the dry antiquary, thus : " Hardriding 
 Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, 
 but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat 
 of another family of that name, which, in the time 
 of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses in- 
 curred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the imme- 
 diate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o' the 
 Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so 
 called from its situation on the great Roman wall. 
 Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls de- 
 rived their name, is situated on the small river of 
 
302 His Club. 
 
 Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumber- 
 land. It is near the wall, and takes its name from 
 the rampart having been thirled — that is, pierced or 
 breached — in its vicinity." 
 
 In the Life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime 
 is thus dryly set forth, in following up a statement 
 of the transmission of the manuscript, and of its 
 publication : " Yet all this was a mere figment of 
 Surtees's imagination, originating probably in some 
 whim of ascertaining how far he could identify him- 
 self with the stirring times, scenes, and poetical 
 compositions which his fancy delighted to dwell on. 
 This is proved by more than one copy among his 
 papers of this ballad, corrected and interlined, in 
 order to mould it to the' language, the manners, 
 and the feelings of the period and of the district to 
 which it refers. Mr Surtees jno doubt had wished 
 to have the success of his attempt tested by the 
 unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the 
 subject ; and the result must have been gratifying 
 to him." 
 
 In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution, 
 printed also in the Life of Surtees, there are some 
 words that must have brought misgivings and fear 
 of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott, 
 without apparently allowing doubts to enter his 
 mind, yet marked some peculiarities in the piece, in 
 which it differed from others. "Your notes upon 
 the parties concerned give it all the interest of 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 303 
 
 authority, and it must rank, I suppose, among 
 those half-serious, half- ludicrous songs, in which the 
 poets of the Border delighted to describe what they 
 considered as the sport of swords. It is perhaps 
 remarkable, though it may be difficult to guess a 
 reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a differ- 
 ent stanza and character, and obviously sung to a 
 different kind of music, from those on the northern 
 Border. The gentleman who collected the words 
 may perhaps be able to describe the tune." 
 
 There is perhaps no system of ethics which lays 
 down with perfect precision the moral code on 
 literary forgeries, or enables us to judge of the 
 exact enormity of such offences. The world looks 
 leniently on them, and sometimes sympathises with 
 them as good jokes. Allan Cunningham, who, like 
 Ramsay, was called "honest Allan," did not lose 
 that character by the tremendous " rises " which he 
 took out of Cromek about those remains of Niths- 
 dale and Galloway song — a case in point so far 
 as principle goes, but differing somewhat in the 
 intellectual rank of the victim to the hoax. The 
 temptation to commit such offences is often ex- 
 tremely strong, and the injury seems slight, while 
 the offender probably consoles himself with the 
 reflection that he can immediately counteract it by 
 confession. Vanity, indeed, often joins conscien- 
 tiousness in hastening on a revelation. Surtees, 
 however, remained in obdurate silence, and I am 
 
304 His Club. 
 
 not aware that any edition of the Minstrelsy draws 
 attention to his handiwork. Lockhart seems not 
 only to have been ignorant of it, but to have been 
 totally unconscious of the risk of such a thing, since 
 he always speaks of its author as a respectable local 
 antiquary, useful to Scott as a harmless drudge. 
 Perhaps Surtees was afraid of what he had done, 
 like that teller in the House of Commons who is 
 said by tradition to have attempted to make a bad 
 joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by 
 counting a fat man as ten, and, seeing that the 
 trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the measure, 
 became afraid to confess it. 
 
 The literary history of " The Death of Feather- 
 stonhaugh" naturally excited uneasiness about the 
 touching ballad of " Barthram's Dirge," also contrib- 
 uted to the Minstrelsy as the fruit of the indus- 
 trious investigations of Surtees. Most readers will 
 remember this : — 
 
 " They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig, 
 Beside the headless cross, 
 And they left him lying in his blood, 
 Upon the moor and moss. " 
 
 After this stanza, often admired for its clearness 
 as a picture, there is a judicious break, and then 
 come stanzas originally deficient of certain words, 
 which, as hypothetically supplied by Surtees, were 
 good-naturedly allowed to remain within brackets, 
 as ingenious suggestions : — 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 305 
 
 ' They made a bier of the broken bough, 
 The sauch and the aspine grey, 
 And they bore him to the Lady Chapel, 
 And waked him there all day. 
 
 A lady came to that lonely bower, 
 
 And threw her robes aside ; 
 She tore her ling [long] yellow hair. 
 
 And knelt at Barthram's side. 
 
 She bathed him in the Lady Well, 
 
 His wounds sae deep and sair. 
 And she plaited a garland for his breast. 
 
 And a garland for his hair. " 
 
 A glance at the reprint of the Life of Surtees for 
 the book club called after his name, confirms the 
 suspicions raised by the exposure of the other ballad 
 — this also is an imposition.^ 
 
 Altogether, such affairs create an unpleasant un- 
 certainty about the paternity of that delightful 
 department of literature, our ballad poetry. Where 
 next are we to be disenchanted? Of the way in 
 which ancient ballads have come into existence, 
 there is one sad example within my own knowledge. 
 Some mad young wags, wishing to test the critical 
 powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new- 
 
 1 The editor of the Life prints the following note by Mr Raine, the 
 coadjutor of Surtees in his investigations into the history of the North 
 of England : "I one evening in looking tlirough Scott's Minstrelsy 
 wrote opposite to this dirge, Aut Sobertus aut Diabolus. Surtees 
 called shortly after, and, pouncing upon the remark, justified me by 
 his conversation on the subject, in adding to my note, Ita, teste seipso." 
 —P. 87. 
 
 U 
 
3o6 His Club. 
 
 made ballad, which they had been enabled to secure 
 only in a fragmentary form. To the surprise of its 
 fabricator, it was duly printed ; but what naturally 
 raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to 
 him a secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment, 
 but a complete ballad, — the collector, in the course 
 of his industrious inquiries among the peasantry, 
 having been so fortunate as to recover the missing 
 fragments ! It was a case where neither could say 
 anything to the other, though Cato might wonder 
 quod non rideret haruspex, haruspicem, cum vidisset. 
 This ballad has been printed in more than one col- 
 lection, and admired as an instance of the inimitable 
 simplicity of the genuine old versions ! 
 
 It may perhaps do something to mitigate Surtees's 
 offence in the eye of the world, that it was he who 
 first suggested to Scott the idea of improving the 
 Jacobite insurrections, and, in fact, writing Waver- 
 ley. In the very same letter, quoted above, where 
 Scott acknowledges the treacherous gift, he also 
 acknowledges the hints he has received ; and, men- 
 tioning the Highland stories he had imbibed from 
 old Stewart of Invernahyle, says : " I believe there 
 never was a man who united the ardour of a soldier 
 and tale-teller — or man of talk, as they call it in 
 Gaelic— in such an excellent degree ; and as he was 
 as fond of telling as I was of hearing, I became a 
 violent Jacobite at the age of ten years old ; and 
 even since reason and reading came to my assist- 
 
Some Book-Club Men. 307 
 
 ance, I have never got rid of the impression which 
 the gallantry of Prince Charles made on my imag- 
 ination. Certainly I will not renounce the idea of 
 doing something to preserve these stories, and the 
 memory of times and manners which, though exist- 
 ing as it were yesterday, have so strangely vanished 
 from our eyes." 
 
 So much for certain men of mark whose pur- 
 suits or hobbies induced them to cluster round the 
 cradle of this new literary organisation. When it 
 was full grown it gathered about it a large body 
 of systematic workers, who had their own special 
 departments in the great republic of letters. To 
 offer a just and discriminating account of these 
 men's services would draw me through an exten- 
 sive tract of literary biography. 
 
 There is a shallow prejudice very acceptable to 
 all blockheads, that men who are both learned and 
 laborious must necessarily be stupid. It is best to 
 meet the approach of such a prejudice at once, by 
 saying that the editors of club books are not mere 
 dreary drudges, seeing the works of others accur- 
 ately through the press, and attending only to dates 
 and headings. Around and throughout the large 
 library of volumes issued by these institutions, there 
 run prolific veins of fresh literature pregnant with 
 learning and ability. The style of work thus set 
 agoing has indeed just the other day been incor- 
 porated into a sort of department of state literature 
 
3o8 His Club. 
 
 since the great collection called The Chronicles and 
 Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during 
 the Middle Ages, of which the Master of the Rolls 
 accepts the responsibility, is carried out in the very 
 spirit of the book clubs, in which indeed most of the 
 editors of the Chronicles have been trained. 
 
 Without prejudice to others, let me just name a 
 few of those to whom the world is under obligation 
 for services in this field of learned labour. For 
 England, there are James Orchard Halliwell, Sir 
 Frederic Madden, Beriah Botfield, Sir Henry Ellis, 
 Alexander Dyce, Thomas Stapleton, William J. 
 Thoms, Crofton Croker, Albert Way, Joseph Hun- 
 ter, John Bruce, Thomas Wright, John Gough 
 Nichols, Payne Collier, Joseph Stevenson, and 
 George Watson Taylor, who edited that curious 
 and melancholy book of poems, composed by the 
 Duke of Orleans while he was a prisoner in Eng- 
 land after the battle of Agincourt — poems com- 
 posed, singularly enough, in the English language, 
 and at a period extremely deficient in native ver- 
 nacular literature. 
 
 In Scotland, it was in the earlier issues of the 
 Bannatyne that Thomas Thomson, too indolent or 
 fastidious to commit himself to the writing of a 
 book, left the most accessible vestiges of that power 
 of practically grasping historical facts and condi- 
 tions, which Scott admired so greatly, and acknow- 
 ledged so much benefit from. He was followed by 
 
Some Book-Club Men. , 309 
 
 Professor Innes, who found and taught the secret 
 of extracting from ecclesiastical chartularies, and 
 other early records, the light they throw upon the 
 social condition of their times, and thus collected 
 matter for the two pleasant volumes which have 
 become so popular. The Bannatyne Club, lately 
 finding no more to do, wound up with a graceful 
 compliment to David Laing — the man to whom, 
 after Scott, it has been most indebted. And, lastly, 
 it is in the Scotch book clubs that Joseph Robertson 
 has had the opportunity of exercising those subtle 
 powers of investigation and critical acumen, pecu- 
 liarly his own, which have had a perceptible and 
 substantial effect in raising archaeology out of that 
 quackish repute which it had long to endure under 
 the name of antiquarianism. For Ireland, of which 
 I have something farther to say at length, let it 
 suffice in the mean time to name Dean Butler, Dr 
 Reeves, Mr O'Donovan, Mr Eugene Curry, and 
 Dr Henthorn Todd. 
 
 There is another and distinct class of services 
 which have been performed through the medium 
 of the club books. The Roxburghe having been 
 founded on the principle that each member should 
 print a volume, to be distributed among his col- 
 leagues, an example was thus set to men of easy 
 fortune and scholarly tastes, which has been fol- 
 lowed with a large liberality, of which the public 
 have probably but a faint idea. Not only in those 
 
3IO His Club. 
 
 clubs founded on the reciprocity system of each 
 member distributing and receiving, but in those to 
 be presently noticed, where the ordinary members 
 pay an annual sum, to be expended in the printing 
 of their books, have individual gentlemen come for- 
 ward and borne the expense of printing and distrib- 
 uting costly volumes. In some instances valuable 
 works have thus been presented to the members at 
 the cost of those who have also undergone the liter- 
 ary labour of editing them. 
 
 There is something extremely refined and gentle- 
 manlike in this form of liberality. The recipient of 
 the bounty becomes the possessor of a handsome 
 costly book without being subjected in any way to 
 the obligation of receiving a direct gift at the hands 
 of the munificent donor ; for the recipient is a sort 
 of corporation — a thing which the lawyers say has 
 no personal responsibility and no conscience, and 
 which all the world knows to have no gratitude. 
 
PART IV.— BOOK-CLUB LITERATURE. 
 
 ffiETieraUttea. 
 
 I EARLY a quarter of a century after 
 the birth of the first book club, 
 a new era was ushered in by its 
 brother, the Camden, estabhshed 
 for the printing of books and docu- 
 ments connected with the early civil, ecclesiastical, 
 and literary history of the British Empire. It dis- 
 carded the rule which threw on each member the 
 duty of printing and distributing, a book, and tried 
 the more equitable adjustment of an annual sub- 
 scription to create a fund for defraying the expense 
 of printing volumes to be distributed among the 
 members. These, at first limited to looo, expanded 
 to 1 200. Clubs with various objects now thickly 
 followed. Any attempt to classify them as a whole, 
 is apt to resemble Whately's illustration of illogical 
 
312 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 division — "e.g., if you were to divide 'book' into 
 'poetical, historical, folio, quarto, French, Latin,'" 
 &c. One of the systems of arrangement is topo- 
 graphical, as the Chetham, " for the purpose of 
 publishing biographical and historical books con- 
 nected with the counties palatine of Lancaster and 
 Chester."^ The Surtees, again, named after our 
 friend the ballad-monger, affects "those parts of 
 England and Scotland included in the east between 
 the Humber and the Firth of Forth, and in the west 
 between the Mersey and the Clyde — a region which 
 constituted the ancient kingdom of Northumber- 
 land." The Maitland, with its headquarters in 
 Glasgow, gives a preference to the west of Scot- 
 land, but^ has not been exclusive. The Spalding 
 Club, established in Aberdeen, the granite capital 
 of the far north, is the luminary of its own district, 
 and has produced fully as much valuable historical 
 matter as any other club in Britain. Then there 
 is the Irish Archaeological — perhaps the most 
 learned of all — with its casual assistants, the Ossi- 
 anic, the Celtic, and the lona. The ^Slfric may 
 be counted their ethnical rival, as dealing with the 
 productions of the Anglo-Saxon enemies of the 
 Celt. The Camden professes, as we have seen, to 
 be general to the British Empire. The name of 
 
 ^ Among other volumes of interest, the Chetham has issued a very 
 valuable and amusing collection of documents about the siege of 
 Preston, and other incidents of the insurrection of 1715 in Lancashire. 
 
Generalities. 313 
 
 the club called "The Oriental Translation Fund," 
 tells its own story. 
 
 There are others, too, with no topographical con- 
 nection, which express pretty well their purpose in 
 their names — as the Shakespeare, for the old drama 
 — the Percy, for old ballads and lyrical pieces. The 
 Hakluyt has a delightful field — old voyages and 
 travels. The Ray Society sticks to zoology and 
 botany ; and the Wernerian, the Cavendish, and 
 the Sydenham, take the other departments in 
 science, which the names given to them readily 
 indicate. 
 
 In divinity and ecclesiastical history we have the 
 Parker Society, named after the archbishop. Its 
 tendencies are " Low," or, at all events, " Broad ; " 
 and as it counted some seven thousand members, 
 it could not be allowed the run of the public mind 
 without an antidote being accessible. Hence " The ^ 
 Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology," the tendency 
 of which was not only shown in its name, but in 
 its possessing among its earliest adherents the Rev. 
 E. B. Pusey and the Rev. John Keble. The same 
 party strengthened themselves by a series of vol- 
 umes called the "Library of the Fathers of the 
 Holy Catholic Church anterior to the Division of 
 the East and West, translated by Members of the 
 English Church." In Scotland, the two branches 
 which deny the supremacy of Rome (it would give 
 offence to call them both Protestant) are well rep- 
 
314 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 resented by the Spottiswoode, already referred to 
 as the organ of Episcopacy ; and the more prolific 
 Wodrow, which, named after the zealous historian 
 of the Troubles, was devoted to the history of Pres- 
 byterianism, and the works of the Presbyterian 
 fathers. 
 
 Thus are the book clubs eminently the republic 
 of letters, in which no party or class has an absolute 
 predominance, but each enjoys a fair hearing. And 
 whereas if we saw people for other purposes than 
 literature combining together according to eccle- 
 siastical divisions, as High Church or Low, Episco- 
 palian or Presbyterian, we should probably find that 
 each excluded from its circle all that do not spiritu- 
 ally belong to it, we are assured it is quite other- 
 wise in the book clubs— that High Churchmen or 
 Romanists have not been excluded from the Parker, 
 or Evangelical divines prohibited from investing in 
 the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. Nay, the 
 most zealous would incline to encourage the com- 
 munication of their own peculiar literary treasures 
 to their avowed theological opponents, as being 
 likely to soften their hearts, and turn them towards 
 the truth. Some adherents of these theological 
 clubs there also are of slightly latitudinarian pro- 
 pensities, to whom the aspirations of honest re- 
 ligious zeal, and the records of endurance and mar- 
 tyrdom for conscience' sake, can never be void of 
 interest, or fail in summoning up feelings of re- 
 
Generalities. 315 
 
 spectful sympathy, whatever be the denominational 
 banner under which they have been exhibited. 
 Some of these clubs now rest from their labours, 
 the literary strata in which they were employed 
 having been in fact worked out. Whether dead or 
 living, however, their books are now a considerable 
 and varied intellectual garden, in which the literary 
 busy bee may gather honey all the day and many 
 a day. 
 
 It will be readily supposed from the different and 
 utterly separate grooves in which they run, and is 
 very well known to the prowler among club books, 
 that although these volumes profess to be printed 
 from old manuscripts, or to be mere reprints of rare 
 books, they take a considerable portion of their tone 
 and tendency from the editor. In fact, the editor 
 of a club book is, in the general case, a sort of 
 literary sportsman, who professes to follow entirely 
 his own humour or caprice, or, say, his own taste 
 and enjoyment, in the matter which he selects, and 
 the manner in which he lays it before his friends. 
 Hence, many of these volumes, heavy and unim- 
 pressible as they look, yet are stamped strongly with 
 the marks of the individuality, or of the peculiar 
 intellectual cast, of living men. Take down, for 
 instance, the volume of the Camden called "De 
 Antiquis Legibus Liber," otherwise, "Cronica Ma- 
 jorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum," printed from 
 " a small folio, nine inches and a half in length 
 
3i6 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 and seven inches in breadth, the binding of white 
 leather covering wooden backs, and containing 159 
 leaves of parchment, paged continuously with Arabic 
 cyphers." It is partly a record of the old municipal 
 laws of the city of London, partly a chronicle of 
 events. Had it fallen to be edited by a philoso- 
 phical inquirer into the origin and principles of 
 jurisprudence, or an investigator of the rise and 
 progress of cities, or a social philosopher of any 
 kind, it is hard to say what might have been made 
 of it — easy to say that it would have been made 
 something very different from what it is. The 
 editor was an illustrious genealogist. Accordingly, 
 early in his career as expositor of the character of 
 the volume, he alights upon a proper name, not 
 entirely isolated, but capable of being associated 
 with other names. Thus, he is placed on a groove, 
 and off he goes travelling in the fashion following 
 over 220 pages of printed quarto : " Henry de 
 Cornhill, husband of Alice de Courcy, the heiress 
 of the Barony of Stoke Courcy Com. Somerset, and 
 who, after his decease, re - married Warine Fitz- 
 Gerald the king's chamberlain, leaving by each an 
 only daughter, co-heirs of this Barony, of whom 
 Joan de Cornhill was the wife of Hugh de Neville, 
 Proto Forester of England, wife first of Baldwine 
 de Riviers, eldest son and heir-apparent of William 
 de Vernon, Earl of Devon, deceased in his father's 
 lifetime ; and, secondly, of the well-known favourite 
 
Generalities. 3 1 7 
 
 of King John, Fulk de Breaute, who had name 
 from a commune of the Canton of Goderville, ar- 
 rondissement of Le Havre, department of La Seine 
 Inf^rieure, rendered accompt of this his debt in the 
 same roll ; " and so on over the remainder of the 220 
 pages. If you turn over a few of them you will 
 find the same sort of thing : " Agnes, the first 
 daughter, was married to William de Vesey, of 
 whom John de Vesey, issueless, and William de 
 Vesey, who had issue, John de Vesey, who died 
 before his father ; and afterwards the said William 
 de Vesey, the father, without heir of his body ; " 
 and so on. 
 
 The reader whose fortune it has been to pass a 
 portion of his early days among venerable Scottish 
 gentlewomen of the old school, will perhaps experi- 
 ence an uneasy consciousness of having encountered 
 matter of this description before. It may recall to 
 him misty recollections of communications which fol- 
 lowed a course something like this : " And so ye see, 
 auld Pittoddles, when his third wife deed, he got 
 married upon the laird o' Blaithershin's aughteenth 
 daughter, that was sister to Jemima, that was mar- 
 ried intil Tam Flumexer, that was first and second 
 cousin to the Pittoddleses, whase brither became 
 laird afterwards, and married Blaithershin's Baubie — 
 and that way Jemima became in a kind o' way her 
 ain niece and her aiii aunty, an' as we used to say, 
 her gude-brither was married to his ain grannie." 
 
3i8 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 But there is the deep and the shallow in geneal- 
 ogy, as in other arts and sciences, and, incoherent 
 as it may sound to the uninitiated, the introduction 
 to the Liber de Antiquis Legibus is no old woman's 
 work, but full of science and strange matter.^ It 
 all grows, however, in genealogical trees, these being 
 the predominant intellectual growth in the editor's 
 mind. In fact, your thorough genealogist is quite a 
 peculiar intellectual phenomenon. He is led on by 
 a special and irresistible internal influence or genius. 
 If he should for some time endeavour to strive after 
 a more cosmopolite intellectual vitality, the ruling 
 spirit conquers all other pursuits. The organism of 
 the tree resumes its predominance, and if he have 
 healthy sturdy brains, whatever other matter they 
 may have collected is betimes dragged into the 
 growth, and absorbed in the vitality of the majestic 
 bole and huge branches. There is perhaps no pur- 
 suit more thoroughly absorbing. The reason is this : 
 No man having yet made out for himself an articu- 
 late pedigree from Adam — Sir Thomas Urquhart, the 
 
 ^ I remember hearing of an instance at u jury trial in Scotland, 
 where counsel had an extremely subtle point of genealogy to make 
 out, and no one but a ploughman witness, totally destitute of the 
 genealogical faculty, to assist him to it. His plan — and probably a 
 very judicious one in the general case — was to get the witness on a 
 table-land of broad unmistakable principle, and then by degrees lure 
 him farther on. Thus he got the witness readily to admit that his 
 own mother was older than himself, but no exertion of ingenuity 
 could get his intellect a step beyond that broad admission. 
 
Generalities. 319 
 
 translator of Rabelais, to be sure, made one for him- 
 self, but he had his tongue in his cheek all the while 
 — no clear pedigree going back to the first of men, 
 every one, whether short or long, Celtic or Saxon, 
 comes into the clouds at last. It is when a pedigree 
 approaches extinction that the occasion opens for 
 the genealogist to exercise his subtlety and skill, 
 and his exertions become all the more zealous and 
 exciting that he knows he must be baffled some- 
 where. The pursuit is described as possessing some- 
 thing like the same absorbing influence which is 
 exercised over certain minds by the higher mathe- 
 matics. The devotees get to think that all human 
 knowledge centres in their peculiar science and the 
 cognate mysteries and exquisite scientific manipula- 
 tions of heraldry, and they may be heard talking 
 with compassionate contempt of some one so grossly 
 ignorant as not to know a bar-dexter from a bend- 
 sinister, or who asks what is meant by a cross potent 
 quadrate party per pale. 
 
 These are generally great readers — reading is ab- 
 solutely necessary for their pursuit ; but they have 
 a faculty of going over literary ground, picking up 
 the proper names, and carrying them away, uncon- 
 scious of anything else, as pointers go over stubble 
 fields and raise the partridges, without taking any 
 heed of the valuable examples of cryptogamic botany 
 or palaeozoic entomology they may have trodden 
 over. A certain writer on logic and metaphysics 
 
320 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 was once as much astonished as gratified by an 
 eminent genealogical antiquary's expression of in- 
 terest in a discovery which his last book contained. 
 The philosopher thought his views on the sub- 
 jectivity of the nominalists and the objectivity of 
 the realists had at last been appreciated ; but the 
 discovery was merely this, that the name of a person 
 who, according to the previously imperfect science 
 of the genealogist, ought not to have existed then 
 and there, was referred to in a letter from Spinoza, 
 cited in defence of certain views upon the absolute. 
 
 The votaries of this pursuit become powers in the 
 world of rank and birth, from the influence they 
 are able to bring upon questions of succession and 
 inheritance. Hence they are, like all great influ- 
 ences, courted and feared. Their ministry is often 
 desired and sometimes necessary; but if is received 
 with misgiving and awe, since, like the demons of 
 old summoned by incantation, they may destroy the 
 audacious mortal who demands their services. The 
 most sagacious and sceptical men are apt to be 
 mildly susceptible to conviction in the matter of 
 their own pedigrees, and, a little conscious of their 
 weakness, they shrink from letting the sacred tree 
 be handled by relentless and unsympathising adepts. 
 One of these intellectual tyrants, a man of great 
 ability, when he quarrelled with any one, used to 
 threaten to "bastardise" him, or to find the bend- 
 sinister somewhere in his ancestry ; and his experi- 
 
Generalities. 321 
 
 ence in long genealogies made him feel assured, in 
 the general case, of finding what he sought if he 
 went far enough back for it. 
 
 The next volume you, lay hand on is manifestly 
 edited by an Ecclesiologist, or a votary of that recent 
 addition to the constituted "ologies," which has come 
 into existence as the joint offspring of the revival 
 of Gothic architecture and the study of primitive- 
 church theology. Through this dim religious light 
 he views all the things in heaven and earth that 
 are dealt with in his philosophy. His notes are 
 profusely decorated with a rich array of rood screens, 
 finial crockets, lavatories, aumbries, lecterns, lych 
 sheds, albs, stoups, sedilia, credence tables, pixes, 
 hagioscopes, baudekyns, , and squenches. It is evi- 
 dent that he keeps a Bestiaryj. or record of his 
 experiences in bestiology, otherwise called bestial 
 eikonography ; and if he be > requested to give a 
 more explicit definition, of the article, he will per- 
 haps inform you that it is a record of the types of 
 the, ecclesiological symbolisation of beasts. If you 
 prevail on him to exhibit to you this solemn record, 
 which he will open with befitting reverence, the 
 faintest suspicion of a smile curling on your lip will 
 suffuse him with a lively sorrow for your lost con- 
 dition, mijfed with righteous r indignation towards 
 the irreverent folly whereof you have been guilty. 
 He finds a great deal beyond sermons in stones, 
 and can point out to you a certain piece of rather 
 
 X 
 
32 2 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 confused - looking architecture, which he terms a 
 symbolical epitome of all knowledge, human and 
 divine — an eikonographic encyclopaedia. 
 
 If you desire an antidote to all this, you may 
 find it in the editor in true blue who so largely refers 
 to the Book of the Universal Kirk, The Hynd Let 
 Loose, The Cloud of Witnesses, Naphtali, and Faith- 
 ful Witness- Bearing Exemplified, and is great in 
 his observations on the Auchinshauch Testimony, 
 the Sanquhar Declaration, and that fine amalgama- 
 tion of humility and dogmatism, the Informatory 
 Vindication.^ 
 
 There is no occasion for quarrelling with these 
 specialties. They are typical of a zeal often prolific 
 both in amusement and instruction ; and when a 
 man has gone through the labour of rendering many 
 hundreds of pages from a crabbed old manuscript, 
 or of translating as much from a nearly unknown 
 tongue, it would be hard to deny him the recreation 
 of a few capers on his own hobby. Keep in mind 
 that everything of this kind is outside the substance 
 of the book. The editor has his swing in the intro- 
 duction and appendix, and the notes ; perhaps also 
 in the title and index, if he can make anything of 
 them. But it is a principle of honour throughout 
 the clubs that the purity of the text shall not be 
 
 1 "An Informatory yindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented 
 remnant of the suffering anti-popish, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, anti- 
 sectarian, only true church of Christ in Scotland." 
 
Generalities. 323 
 
 tampered with ; and so, whether dark or light, faint 
 or strong, it is a true impression of the tinmes, as 
 the reader will perhaps find in the few specimens 
 I propose to show him. As touching the literary 
 value of what is thus restored, there are some who 
 will say, and get applause for doing so, that there 
 are too many bad or second-rate books in existence 
 already ; that every work of great genius finds its 
 way to the world at once ; and that the very fact of 
 its long obscurity proves a piece of literature to be 
 of little value. For all this, and all that can be 
 added to it, there are those who love these recovered 
 relics of ancestral literature, and are prepared to 
 give reasons for their attachment. In the first place, 
 and apart from their purely literary merits, they 
 are records of the intellect and manners of their age. 
 Whoever desires to be really acquainted with the 
 condition of a nation at any particular time — say 
 with that of England during Elizabeth's reign, or 
 the Commonwealth — will not attain his object by 
 merely reading the most approved histories of the 
 period. He must endeavour as far as he can to live 
 back into the times, and to do this most effectually 
 he had better saturate himself to the utmost with 
 its fugitive literature, reading every scrap he may 
 lay hand on until he can find no more. 
 
 Looking at these relics, on the other hand, as 
 pure literature, no doubt what is recalled out of the 
 past loses the freshness and the fitness to surround- 
 
324 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 ing conditions which gave it pungency and emphasis 
 in its own day, while it has not that hold on our 
 sympathies and attachment possessed by the house- 
 hold literature which generation after generation 
 has been educated to admire, and which, indeed, 
 has made itself a part of our method of thought 
 and our form of language. But precisely because 
 it wants this qualification has resuscitated literature 
 a peculiar value of its own. It breaks in with a 
 new light upon the intellect of the day, and its 
 conventional forms and colours. There is not in 
 the intellectual history of mankind any so effective 
 and' brilliant an awakening as the resuscitation of 
 classical literature. It was not one solitary star 
 arising after another at long intervals and far apart 
 in space, but a sudden blazing forth of a whole 
 firmament of light. But that is a phenomenon to 
 all appearance not to be repeated, or, more correctly 
 speaking, not to be completed, since it broke up 
 unfinished, leaving the world in partial darkness. 
 Literature has been ever since wailing the loss of 
 the seventy per cent of Livy's History, of the eighty 
 per cent of Tacitus and of Euripides, of the still 
 larger' proportion of ^schylus and Sophocles,- of the 
 mysterious triumphs of Menander, and of the whole 
 apparatus of the literairy renown of Varro and of 
 Atticlis.^ What would the learned world give for 
 
 * The applicability of this to Varro has been questioned. It is a 
 matter in which every brie iS entitled to hold his own opinion. - To 
 
Generalities. 325 
 
 the restoration of these thjngs? It may safely offer 
 an indefinite reward, for so well has its surface been 
 ransacked for them that their existence is hardly 
 possible, though some sanguine people enjoy the 
 expectation of finding them in some obscure back- 
 shelves in the Sultan's library. The literary results 
 of the costly and skilful scientific process for restor- 
 ing the baked books found in Herculaneum were so 
 appallingly paltry, as to discourage the pursuit of 
 the lost classics. The best thing brought to light 
 
 say nothing of the other extant shreds of his writings — and I never 
 found any one who had anything to say for them — I cannot account 
 even the De Re Riistica as much higher in literary, rank than a 
 Farmers' and Gardeners' Calendar. No doubt it is valuable, as any 
 such means of insight into the practical life of the Egyptians or the 
 Phrenicians would be,' eveil were it leSs methodical than what we 
 have from Varro. But this," or other writing like it, will hardly ac- 
 count for his great fame among' contemporaries. Look, for instance, 
 to Cicero at the outset of the Academics: "Tu ^tatem patriae, tu 
 descriptiones lempormri, tu sacrorum jura, tu sacerdotum munera, tu 
 domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedem regionum et locorum, 
 tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera officia, 
 causas aperuiste : plurimuraque poetis nostris omninoque latinis, et 
 Uteris luniinis attulisti, et verbis : atque ipse varium et elegans omni 
 fere numero poema fecisti, : philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti — 
 ad impellenduin satis, ad edocendum parum. " Laudation ' could 
 scarcely be pitched in higher tone , towards the works of the great 
 Youatt, or Mr Huxtable's contributions to the department .of litera- 
 ture devoted to manure and pigs. The De Re Rustica, written when 
 its author was eighty years old, seems to. have* been about- the last of 
 what he ca>lls his seven times seventy works, and it is natural to sup- 
 pose that somewhere in the remaining four hundred and eighty-nine lay 
 the merits which excited such encomiums. The story about Gregory 
 the Great suppressing the best of Varro's works to hide St Augus- 
 tine's pilferings from them, would be a valuable curiosity of literature 
 if it could be established. "' 
 
326 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 during the present century, indeed, is that Institute 
 of Gains which cost Angelo Mai such a world of 
 trouble, and was the glory and boast of his life ; but 
 it is not a very popular or extensively read book 
 after all. The manuscripts that have been extracted 
 from the dirty greedy fingers of the Armenian and 
 Abyssinian monks, are the most valuable pieces of 
 literature that have been rescued from the far past. 
 Important light on the early history of Eastern 
 Christianity will no doubt be extracted from them ; 
 but they are written in those Oriental tongues which 
 are available only to the privileged few. 
 
 Unlikely as the treasures opened by the revival 
 of classic literature are to be to any extent in- 
 creased, let us not despise the harvest of our own 
 home gleaners. They do not find now and then 
 a buried Hamlet, or Paradise Lost, or Hudibras — 
 though, by the way, the Poetical Remains of Butler, 
 which in wit and sarcasm are second only to his 
 great work, were rescued from oblivion by the 
 drudging antiquary Thyer, who was so conceited 
 of the performance that he had the portrait of his 
 own respectable and stupid face engraved beside 
 that of Butler, in order perhaps that all men might 
 see how incapable he was of fabricating the pieces 
 to which it is prefixed. There is a good deal of 
 the poetry of the club books of which it may at 
 least be said, that worse is printed and praised as 
 the produce of our contemporaries. 
 
Generalities. 327 
 
 It is not so much, however, in Poetry or the 
 Drama as in Historical literature that the clubs 
 develop their strength. It is difficult to estimate 
 the greatness of the obligations of British history 
 to these institutions. They have dug up, cleansed, 
 and put in order for immediate inspection and use, 
 a multitude of written monuments bearing on the 
 greatest events and the most critical epochs in the 
 progress of the empire. The time thus saved to 
 investigators is great and priceless. In no other de- 
 partment of knowledge can the intellectual labourer 
 more forcibly apply the Latin proverb which warns 
 him that his work is indefinite, but his life brief In 
 the ordinary sciences the philosopher may and often 
 does content himself with the well-rounded and pro- 
 fessedly completed system of the day. But no one 
 can grapple with history without feeling its inex- 
 haustibleness. Its final boundaries seem only to 
 retreat to a farther distance the more ground we 
 master, as Mr Buckle found, when he betook him- 
 self, like another Atlas, to grapple with the history 
 of the whole world. 
 
 The more an investigator finds his materials 
 printed for him, the farther he can go. No doubt 
 it is sometimes desirable, even necessary, to look 
 to some manuscript authority for the clearing -up 
 of a special point; but too often the profession of 
 having perused a great mass of manuscript author- 
 ities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who 
 
328 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 searches for and finds the truth in any considerable 
 portion of history, performs too great an achieve- 
 ment to care for the praise of deciphering a few 
 specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the 
 sense hidden in certain words couched in obsolete 
 spelling. If casual discoveries of this kind do really 
 help him to great truths, it is well ; but it too often 
 happens that he exaggerates their value, because 
 they are his own game, shot on his own manor. 
 Until he has exhausted all that is in print, the 
 student of history wastes his time in struggling with 
 manuscripts. Hence the value of the services of 
 the book clubs in immensely widening the arena 
 of his immediate materials. To him their volumes 
 are as new tools to the mechanic, or new machinery 
 to the manufacturer. They economise, as it is 
 termed, his labour : more correctly speaking, they 
 increase its productiveness. 
 
 These books are fortunately rich in memorials of 
 the great internal contest of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. The notes, for instance, of the proceedings 
 of the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, 
 edited for the Camden by Mr Bruce, come upon 
 us fresh from that scene of high debate, carrying 
 with them the very marks of strife. The editor 
 informs us that the manuscript is written almost 
 entirely in pencil on slips of foolscap paper, which 
 seem to have been so folded as to be conveniently 
 placed on the knee, and transferred to the pocket 
 
Generalities. 329 
 
 as each was completed. " They are," he says, " full 
 of abrupt terminations, as if the writer occasionally 
 gave up the task of following a rapid^ speaker who 
 had got beyond him, and began his note afresh. 
 When they relate to resolutions of the House, they 
 often contain erasures, alterations, or other marks 
 of the haste with which the notes were jotted down, 
 and of the changes which took place in the subject- 
 matter during the progress towards cornpletion. On 
 several important occasions, and especially in the 
 instance of the debate on the Protestation [as to 
 the impeachment of Strafford], the confusion and ir- 
 regularity of the notes give evidence to the excite- 
 ment of the House; and when the public discord 
 rose higher, the notes become more brief and less 
 personal, and speeches are less frequently assigned 
 to their speakers, either from greater difficulty in 
 reporting, or from an increased feeling of the danger 
 of the time, and the possible use that might be 
 made of notes of violent remarks. On several of 
 the sheets there are marks evidently made by the 
 writer's pencil having been forced upwards sud- 
 denly, as if by some one, in a full House, pressing 
 hastily against his elbow while he was in the act of 
 taking his note." 
 
330 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Sojfti Spattimg. 
 
 |OOKING from the opposite end of the 
 island, and from a totally different 
 social position, another watchful obser- 
 ver recorded the events of the great 
 contest. This was John Spalding, commonly sup- 
 posed to have been Commissary-Clerk of Aberdeen, 
 but positively known in no other capacity than as 
 author of the book aptly entitled The Troubles, 
 or, more fully, " Memorials of the Troubles in Scot- 
 land and in England," from 1624 to 1645. Little, 
 probably, did the Commissary-Clerk imagine, when 
 he entered on his snug quiet office, where he re- 
 corded probates of wills and the proceedings in 
 questions of marriage law, that he was to witness 
 and record one of the most momentous conflicts 
 that the world ever beheld — that contest which has 
 been the prototype of all later European convul- 
 sions. Less still could he have imagined that fame 
 would arise for him after two hundred years — that 
 vehement though vain efforts should be made to 
 endow the simple name of John Spalding with the 
 antecedents and subsequents of a biographical ex- 
 istence, and that the far-off descendants of many 
 of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he 
 noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument 
 
yohn Spalding. 331 
 
 to his memory in an institution called by his name. 
 He was evidently a thoroughly retiring man, for he 
 has left no vestige whatever of his individuality. 
 Some specimens of his formal official work might 
 have been found in the archives of his ofifice — these 
 would have been especially valuable for the identi- 
 fication of his handwriting and the settlement of 
 disputed questions about the originality of manu- 
 scripts ; but these documents, as it happens, were 
 all burnt early in last century with the building 
 containing them. So ardent and hot has been the 
 chase after vestiges of this man, that the fact was 
 once discovered that with his own hand he had 
 written a certain deed concerning a feu -duty or 
 rent-charge of ^^25, 7s. 4d., bearing date 31st Jan- 
 uary 1663 ; but in spite of the most resolute efforts, 
 this interesting document has not been found. 
 
 It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve, 
 which has shrouded his very identity, that we owe 
 the valuable peculiarities of the Commissary-Clerk's 
 chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took 
 no ostensible side, and must have kept his own 
 thoughts to himself, otherwise he would have had 
 to bear record of his own share of troubles. In this 
 calm serenity — folding the arms of resignation on 
 the bosom of patience, as the Persians say — he took 
 ills notes of the wild contest that raged around him, 
 setting down each event, great or small, with sys- 
 tematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental 
 
332 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 philosopher watching the phenomena of an eclipse 
 or an eruption. Hence nowhere, perhaps, has it 
 been permitted to a mere reader to have so good a 
 peep behind the scenes of the mighty drama of war. 
 We have plenty of chroniclers of that epoch — 
 marching us with swinging historic stride on from 
 battle unto battle — great in describing in long 
 sentences the musterings, the conflicts, and the re- 
 treats. In Spalding, however, we shall find the 
 numbers and character of the combatants, their 
 arms, their dresses, the persons who paid for these, 
 and the prices paid — the amount they obtained in 
 pay, and the amount they were cheated out of — 
 their banners, distinguishing badges, watchwords, 
 and all other like particulars, set down with the 
 minuteness of a bailiff making an inventory of 
 goods on which he has taken execution. He is 
 very specific in what one may term the negative 
 side of the characteristics of war — the misery and 
 desolation it spreads around. The losses of this 
 " gudeman " and that lone widow are stated as if 
 he were their law agent, making up an account to 
 go to a jury for damages for the " spulzie of outside 
 and inside plenishing, nolt, horse, sheep, cocks and 
 hens, hay, corn, peats, and fodder." He specifies 
 all the items of mansions and farm-houses attacked 
 and looted, or "harried," as he calls it — the doors 
 staved in, the wainscoting pulled down — the win- 
 dows smashed^— the furniture made firewood of — 
 
yohn Spalding. 333 
 
 the pleasant plantations cut down to build sleeping- 
 huts — the linen, plate, and other valuables carried 
 off: he will even, perchance, tell how they were 
 distributed — who it was that managed to feather 
 his nest with the plunder, and who it was that was 
 disappointed and cheated. 
 
 He had opportunities of bestowing his descriptive 
 powers to good purpose. Besides its ordinary share 
 in the vicissitudes and calamities of the war, his 
 town of Aberdeen was twice pillaged by Montrose, 
 with laudable impartiality — once for the Cove- 
 nanters and once for the Royalists. Here is his 
 first triumphant entry: — 
 
 " Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in 
 order of battle, being well armed both on horse and 
 foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least, 
 whereof he had ane carbine in his hand, two pistols 
 by his sides, and other two at his saddle-torr ; the 
 pikemen in their ranks with pike and sword ; the 
 musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket- 
 staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. 
 Ilk company, both horse and foot, had their cap- 
 tains, ' lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other 
 officers and commanders, all for the most part in 
 buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours 
 or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Morltrose had one 
 having his motto drawn in letters, 'For .Religion, 
 the Covenant, and the Countrie.' ' The Earl Mare- 
 chal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn had one, and 
 
334 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 the town of Dundee had two. They had trum- 
 peters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers 
 to ilk company of footmen. They had their meat, 
 drink, and other provisions, bag and baggage, car- 
 ried with them, done all by advice of his Excellency 
 Field-Marshal Leslie, whose counsel General Mon- 
 trose followed in this business. Then, in seemly 
 order and good array, this army came forward and 
 entered the burgh of Aberdeen about ten hours in 
 the morning, at the Over Kirk gateport, syne came 
 down through the Broadgate, through the Castle- 
 gate, over at the Justice Port to the Queen's Links 
 directly. Here it is to be noted that few or none 
 of this haill army wanted ane blue ribbon hung 
 about his craig [viz., neck] under his left arm, whilk 
 they called ' the Covenanters' ribbon,' because the 
 Lord Gordon and some other of the Marquis's 
 bairns had ane ribbon, when he was dwelling in 
 the toun, of ane red flesh colour, which they wore 
 in their hats, and called it 'the royal ribbon,' as a 
 sign of their love and loyalty to the King. In 
 dispite or dirision whereof this blue ribbon was 
 worn and called 'the Covenanters' ribbon' by the 
 haill soldiers of this army." 
 
 The well-ordered army passed through, levying 
 a fine on the Malignants, and all seemed well ; but 
 because the citizens had not resisted Montrose, the 
 loyal barons in the neighbourhood fell on them and 
 plundered them ; and because they had submitted 
 
John Spalding. 335 
 
 to be so plundered, the Covenanting army came 
 back and plundered them also. "Many of this 
 company went and brack up the Bishop's yetts, set 
 on good fires of his peats standing within the close : 
 they masterfully broke up the haill doors and win- 
 dows of this stately house ; they brake down beds, 
 boards, aumries, glassen windows, took out the iron 
 stauncheons, brake in the locks, and such as they 
 could carry had with them, and sold for little or 
 nothing ; but they got none of the Bishop's plenish- 
 ing to speak of, because it was all conveyed away 
 before their coming." On Sunday, Montrose and 
 the other leaders duly attended the devotional ser- 
 vices of the eminent Covenanting divines they had 
 brought with them. "But," says Spalding, "the 
 renegate soldiers, in time of both preachings, is 
 abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully, 
 without regard to God or man ; " and he goes on 
 in his specific way, describing the plundering until 
 he reaches this climax : " No foul — cock or hen — 
 left unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messens, and 
 whelps within Aberdeen felled and slain upon the 
 gate, so that neither hound nor messen or other 
 dog was left that they could see." . But there was 
 a special reason for this. The ladies of Aberdeen, 
 on the retiring of Montrose's army, had decorated 
 all the vagabond street-dogs with the blue ribbon 
 of the Covenant 
 
 This was in 1639. Five years afterwards Mon- 
 
33^ Book- Club Literature. 
 
 trose came back on them in more terrible guise still, 
 to punish the town for having yielded to the Cove- 
 nant. In Aberdeen, Cavalier principles generally- 
 predominated ; but after bejng overrun and plun- 
 dered successively by either party, the Covenanters, 
 having the acting government of the country at 
 their back, succeeded in establishing a predom- 
 inance in the councils of the exhausted community. 
 Spalding had no respect for the civic and rural 
 forces they attempted to embody, and speaks of a 
 petty bailie " who brought in ane drill - master to 
 learn our poor bodies to handle their arms; who 
 had more need to handle the plough and win their 
 livings." Montrose had now with him his cele- 
 brated army of Highlanders — or Irish, as Spalding 
 calls them — who broke at a rush through the feeble 
 force sent out of the town to meet them. Montrose 
 "follows the chase to Aberdeen, his men hewing 
 and cutting down all manner of men they could 
 overtake within the town, :upon the streets, or in 
 their houses, and round about the town, as our men 
 were fleieing, with broadswords, but mercy or remeid. 
 These cruel Irish, seeing a man well clad, would first 
 tyr \i.e., strip] hifn and' save, the clothes ,unspoiled, 
 then kill the man ; . . . nothing heard but pitiful 
 howling, crying, weeping, mourning, through all the 
 streets. , . . It is lamentable to hear how thir 
 Irishes, who had gotten the spoil of the town, did 
 abuse thesamin. The men that they killed they 
 
John Spalding. 337 
 
 would not suffer to be buried, but tirled them of 
 their clothes, syne left their naked bodies lying 
 above the ground. The wife durst not cry nor 
 weep at her husband's slaughter before her eyes, 
 nor the mother for her son — which if they were 
 heard, then they were presently slain also ; . . . 
 and none durst bury the dead. Yea, and I saw 
 two corpses carried to the burial through the old 
 town with women only, and not ane man amongst 
 them, so that the naked corpses lay unburied 
 so long as these limmers were ungone to the 
 camp." 
 
 The Commissary-Clerk was on Montrose's side, 
 but he had the hatred of a Lowlander of that day 
 for the Highlanders. He has a great many amus- 
 ing episodes describing the light-fingered lads from 
 the hills coming down, and in the general confusion 
 of the times plundering Cavalier and Covenanter 
 alike ; and on these occasions he drops his usual 
 placidity and becomes rabid and abusive, as the 
 best-tempered Americans are said to become when 
 they speak of niggers, and deals out to them the 
 terms limmers, thieves, robbers, cut-throats, master- 
 ful vagrants, and so forth, with great volubility. Of 
 some of their chiefs, renowned in history, he speaks 
 as mere robber-leaders, and when they are known 
 by one name in their own country and another in 
 the Lowlands, he puts an alias between the two. 
 The very initial words of his chronicle are, " Efter 
 
 Y 
 
338 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 the death and burial of Angus Macintosh of Auld- 
 terlie, alias Angus Williamson." 
 
 Montrose having departed, Argyle's troops com- 
 menced to plunder the district for having submitted 
 to his enemy, and these, being doubly offensive as 
 Covenanters and Highlanders, are treated accord- 
 ingly. But it is necessary to be impartial ; and 
 having bestowed so much on the Cavalier annalist, 
 let us take a glimpse at the other side. 
 
 fiROM the collections of the Reverend 
 Robert Wodrow, the historian of The 
 Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, 
 a rich harvest has- been reaped by the 
 northern clubs, one of which appropriately adopted 
 his name. He was a voluminous writer and an 
 inexhaustible collector. It is generally classed 
 among the failings of the book -hunter that he 
 looks only to the far past, and disregards the con- 
 temporary and the recent. Wodrow was a valu- 
 able exception to this propensity. Reversing the 
 spirit of the selfish bull which asks what posterity 
 has done for us, he stored up contemporary litera- 
 ture for subsequent generations ; and he thus left, 
 at the commencement of the eighteenth century, 
 such a library as a collector of the nineteenth. 
 
Robert Wodrow, 339 
 
 could he have sent a caterer before him, would 
 have prepared to await his arrival in the world. 
 The inestimable value of the great collection of the 
 civil-war pamphlets made by George Thomason, 
 and fortunately preserved in the British Museum, 
 is very well known. Just such another of its kind 
 is Wodrow's, made up of the pamphlets, broadsides, 
 pasquinades, and other fugitive pieces of his own 
 day, and of the generation immediately preceding. 
 These are things easily obtained in their freshness, 
 but the term fugitive is too . expressive of their 
 nature, and, after a generation or two they have 
 all flown away, save those which the book-hunter 
 has exorcised into the vaults of some public col- 
 lection. There is perhaps too little done in our 
 own day in preserving for posterity these mute 
 witnesses of our sayings and doings. They are 
 too light and volatile to be caught by the Copy- 
 right Act, which so carefully deposits our quartos 
 and octavos in the privileged libraries. It is pleas- 
 ant, by the way, at this moment, to observe that 
 the eminent scholar who has charge of the chief 
 portion of Wodrow's gatherings, as keeper of the 
 Advocates' Library, is following his example, by 
 preserving a collectijon of the pamphlets of the 
 present century which will keep our posterity in 
 employment, if they desire to unwind the intri- 
 cacies of all our civil and ecclesiastical sayings and 
 doings. 
 
340 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Wodrow carried on an active correspondence 
 about matters of contemporary policy, and the 
 special inquiries connected with his History : selec- 
 tions from this mass have furnished three sturdy 
 volumes. Besides pamphlets, he scraped together 
 quantities of other people's manuscripts — some of 
 them rising high enough in importance to be 
 counted State papers. How the minister of the 
 quiet rural parish of Eastwood could have got his 
 hands on them is a marvel, but it is fortunate that 
 they were saved from destruction ; and it is nearly 
 equally fortunate that they have been well ran- 
 sacked by zealous club-book makers, who have by 
 this time probably exhausted the better part of 
 their material. In the next place, Wodrow left 
 behind several biographies of eminent members of 
 his own Church, its saints and martyrs ; and 
 goodly masses out of this storehouse have also 
 been printed. 
 
 But by far the most luxurious morsel in the 
 worthy man's intellectual larder was not intended 
 to reach the profane vulgar, but destined for his 
 own special rumination. It consists in the veritable 
 contents of his private note-books, containing his 
 communings with his own heart and his imagina- 
 tion. They were written on small slips of paper, 
 in a hand direly cramped and nlinute ; and lest 
 this should not be a sufficient protection to their 
 privacy, a portion was committed to certain ciphers. 
 
Robert Wodrow. 341 
 
 which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to 
 be utterly impregnable. In stenography, however, 
 the art of lock-rpicking always keeps ahead of the 
 art of locking, as that of inventing destructive 
 missiles seems to outstrip that of forging impene- 
 trable plates. Wodrow's trick was the same as 
 that of Samuel Pepys, and productive of the same 
 consequences — the excitement of a rabid curiosity, 
 which at last found its way into the recesses of his 
 secret communings. They are now printed, in the 
 fine type of the Maitland Club, in four portly 
 quartos, under the title, Wodrow's Analecta. Few 
 books would hold out so much temptation to a 
 commentator, but their editor is dumb, faithfully 
 reprinting the whole, page by page, and abstaining 
 both from introduction and explanatory foot-note. 
 
 Perhaps in the circumstances this was a prudent 
 measure. Those who enjoy the weaknesses of the 
 enthusiastic historian have them at full length. As 
 to others partially like-minded with him, but more 
 worldly, who would rather that such a tissue of 
 absurdities had not been revealed, they are bound 
 over to silence, seeing that a word said against the 
 book is a word of reproach against its idolised 
 author — :for as to the editor, he may repeat after 
 Macbeth, " Thou canst not say I did it." 
 
 Mr Buckle's ravenous researches into the most 
 distant recesses of literature revealed to him this 
 pose. He has taken some curious specimens out 
 
342 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 of it, but he might have made his anthology still 
 richer had he been in search of the picturesque and 
 ludicrous, instead of seeking solid support for his 
 great theory of positivism. What he chiefly amuses 
 one with in this part of the world, however, is the 
 solemn manner in which he treats the responsibility 
 of giving increased publicity to such things, and 
 invokes the Deity to witness that his objects are 
 sincere, and he is influenced by no irreverence. 
 This feeling may arise: from a very creditable source, 
 but a native of Scotland has difficulty in under- 
 standing it. In this country, being, as many of us 
 have been, within the very skirts of the great con- 
 tests that have shaken the realm — Jacobitism on 
 the one hand and Covenantism on the other — we 
 are roughened and hardened, and what shocks our 
 sensitive neighbours is very good fun to ourselves. 
 
 It appears that Wodrow had intended to publish 
 a book on remarkable special providences — some- 
 thing of a scientific character it was to be, contain- 
 ing a classification of their phenomena, perhaps a 
 theory of their connection with revealed religion. 
 The natural laws by which they are ruled, he could 
 not, of course, have sought to discover, since the 
 principle on which he set out predicated the non- 
 existence of such laws. The advantage of the peep 
 enjoyed into his private note-book is, that we have 
 his incompleted inquiries containing the stories as 
 to which even he — a very poor adept at scepticism 
 
Robert Wodrow. 343 
 
 — required some confirmation. It is quite evident 
 that we thus have something more valuable to 
 philosophy, and infinitely more amusing, than his 
 completed labours would have been. Here, for 
 instance, is one of his break ^downs — :an interest- 
 ing phenomenon, but not irrefragably proved. 
 
 "This day I have an accompt from Marion 
 Stevenson, who says' she had it from one who was 
 witness to it, that near Dunglass there was a child 
 found upon the highway by some shearers, to their 
 uptaking lately born ; and they brought it to the 
 next house, where the woman putting on the pan 
 to make some meat for it, the pan filled full of corn ; 
 and when she turned it out and put it on the second 
 time, it filled full of bear; and when put on the 
 third time, it filled full of blood ; and upon this the 
 child began to alter its shapes some way, and to 
 speak, and told them this year should have great 
 plenty, and the next year also, but the third the 
 land should be filled with blood and fire and sword ! 
 and the child desired it might 'be taken to the place 
 where it was found, and left there. I hear not yet 
 what was done with it. This is so incredible, that 
 I set it down only, for after trial and inquiry about 
 it — no confirmation." 
 
 His wife tells him a story which in her youth she 
 had heard narrated by Mr Andrew Reid, minister of 
 Kirkbean. It is a case of true love crossed by the 
 interference of cruel relations. The swain leaves the 
 
344 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 country for several years^ — gets on — remembers the 
 old love, and returns to fulfil his vows. It happens 
 that on the day of his return the loved one dies. 
 He is on his way to her house in the dusk of eve 
 when he meets an old man, who tells him that he 
 is going on a bootless errand — ^he will find a dead 
 corpse for the warm living heart he expected. The 
 stranger, however, pitying his distress, tells him 
 there is a remedy — hands to the lover certain pills, 
 and says, " If you will give her these, she will re- 
 cover." So it turned out, and they were happily 
 married. A certain visitor at the house, however, 
 "a very eminent Christian," refused to salute the 
 lady with the usual courtesies. He takes the hus- 
 band aside, "and tells him that he was very much 
 persuaded his wife was a devil, and indeed he could 
 not salute her ; and after some discourse prevailed 
 so far with him as to follow his advice, which was 
 to go with her and take her to that room where he 
 found her, and lay her down upon the bed where he 
 found her, and quit her of a devil. Which he did, 
 and immediately she became a dead corpse half con- 
 sumed." "This had need," says cautious Wodrow, 
 "to be weel attested, and I have writ to Mr Reid 
 anent it." Curiosity urged me to look for and find 
 among Wodrow's manuscripts Mr Reid's answer. 
 He says he often heard the story from his father as 
 a truth, but had been unaccountably negligent in 
 noting the particulars of it ; and then he favours his 
 
Robert Wodrow. 345 
 
 correspondent with some special providences anent 
 himself, which appear not to have been sufficiently- 
 pungent for Wodrow's taste. 
 
 A philosophical investigator of the established 
 national superstitions would find excellent types of 
 all of them in the Analecta. In the department of 
 second-sight, for instance, restricted, with due obser- 
 vance to geographical propriety, within the High- 
 land line, a guest disturbs a convivial meeting at 
 Blair-Athol by exclaiming that he beholds a dirk 
 sticking in the breast of their entertainer. That 
 night he is stabbed to the heart ; and even while 
 the seer beheld the visionary dagger, a bare-leg- 
 ged gilly was watching outside to execute a long- 
 cherished Highland vengeance. The Marquess of 
 Argyle, who was afterwards beheaded, was playing 
 with some of his clan at bowls, or bullets, as Wod- 
 row calls them, for he was not learned in the nomen- 
 clature of vain recreations. "One of the players, 
 when the Marquess stooped down to lift the bullet, 
 fell pale, and said to them about him, ' Bless me ! 
 what is that I see? — my Lord with the head off, 
 and all his shoulders full of blood.'" > 
 
 In the department of fairy tricks, the infant of 
 Thomas Paton, " a very eminent Christian," in its 
 first use of speech, rattles out a volley of terrific 
 oath.s, then eats two cheeses, and attempts to cut 
 its brother's throat. This was surely sufficient evi- 
 dence to satisfy the most sceptical that it was a 
 
346 Book-Club Litercti^re. 
 
 changeling, even had it not, as the result of certain 
 well -applied prayers, "left the house with an ex- 
 traordinary howling and crying." 
 
 Ghost and witch stories abound. The following 
 is selected on account of the eminence of its hero, 
 Gilbert Rule, the founder and first Principal of the 
 University of Edinburgh : He was travelling on 
 the dreary road across the Grampians, called the 
 Cairn o' Mont, on which stood a lone desolate inn. 
 It has now disappeared, but I remember it in its 
 dreary old age, standing alone on the moor, with its 
 grim gables and its loupin'-on stane, — ^just , the sort 
 of place where, in the romances, the horrified tra- 
 veller used to observe a trap-door in his bedroom 
 floor, and at supper picked the finger of a murdered 
 man out of a mutton-pie. There Rule arrived late 
 at night seeking accommodation, but he could get 
 none — the house was crammed. The only alterna- 
 tive was to make a bed for him in an empty house 
 close by ; it had been unoccupied for thirty years, 
 and had a bad repute. He had to sleep there alone, 
 for his servant would not go with him. Let Wod- 
 row himself tell what came to pass. 
 
 "He walked some time in the room, and com- 
 mitted himself to God's protection, and went to 
 bed. There were two candles left on the table, and 
 these he put out. There was a -large bright fire 
 remaiiiing. He had not been long in bed till the 
 room door is opened, and an apparition, in shape 
 
Robert Wodrow. 347 
 
 of a CQuntry tradesman, came in and opened the 
 curtains without speaking a word. Mr Rule was 
 resolved to do nothing till it should speak or attack 
 him, but lay still with full composure, committing 
 himself to the Divine protection and conduct. The 
 apparition went to the table, lighted the two candles, 
 brought them to the bedside, and made some steps 
 toward the door, looking still to the bed, as if he 
 would have Mr Rule rising and following. Mr 
 Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further 
 cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time 
 spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doc- 
 tor. He carried back the candles to the table, and 
 went to the fire, and with the tongs took down 
 the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal cham- 
 ber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise 
 and put on his clothes, in the time of which the 
 spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and, 
 going to the table, lifted the candles and went to 
 the door, opened it, still looking to the Principal as 
 he would have him following the candles, which he 
 now, thinking there was something extraordinary 
 in the case, after looking to God for direction, in- 
 clined to do. The apparition went down some 
 steps with the candles, and carried them into a 
 long trance, at the end, of which there was a stair 
 which carried down, to a low room. This the spectre 
 went down, and stooped, and set down the lights on 
 the lowest step of the, stair, and straight disappears." 
 
348 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 The learned Principal, whose courage and cool- 
 ness deserve the highest commendation, lighted him- 
 self back to bed with the candles, and took the 
 remainder of his rest undisturbed. Being a man of 
 great sagacity, on ruminating over his adventure, 
 he informed the sheriff of the county " that he was 
 much of the mind there was murder in the case." 
 The stone whereon the candles were placed was 
 raised, and there "the plain remains of a human 
 body were found, and bones, to the conviction of 
 all." It was supposed to be an old affair, however, 
 and no traces could be got of the murderer. Rule 
 undertook the functions of the detective, and pressed 
 into the service the influence of his own profession. 
 He preached a great sermon on the occasion, to 
 which all the neighbouring people were summon- 
 ed ; and behold, " in the time of his sermon, an 
 old man near eighty years was awakened, and fell 
 a-weeping, and before all the whole company ac- 
 knowledged that, at the building of that house, he 
 was the murderer." 
 
 In Wodrow's note-book the devil often cuts a 
 humiliating figure, and is treated with a deal of 
 rude and boisterous jeering. A certain " exercised 
 Christian," probably during a fit of indigestion, was 
 subjected to a heavy wrestling with doubts and 
 irreconcilable difficulties, which raised in his mind 
 horrible suggestions. The devil took occasion to 
 put in a word or two for the purpose of increasing 
 
Robert Wodrow. 349 
 
 the confusion, but it had the directly opposite 
 effect, and called forth the remark that, "on the 
 whole the devil is a great fool, and outshoots him- 
 self oft when he thinks he has poor believers on 
 the haunch." On another occasion the devil per- 
 formed a function of a very unusual kind, one 
 would think. He is known to quote Scripture 
 for his purposes, but who ever before heard of 
 his writing a sermon — and, as it seems, a sound 
 and orthodox one ? There was, it appears, a youth 
 in the University of St Andrews, preparing to un- 
 dergo his trials as a licentiate, who had good reason 
 to fear that he would be plucked. He found he 
 could make nothing whatever of the trial sermon, 
 and was wandering about by lonely ways, seeking 
 in vain for inspiration. At last " there came up to 
 him a stranger, in habit like a minister, in black 
 coat and band, and who addressed the youth very 
 courteously." He was mighty inquisitive, and at 
 length wormed out the secret grief " I have got 
 a text from the Presbytery. I cannot for my life 
 compose a discourse on it, so I shall be affronted." 
 The stranger replied — " Sir, I am a minister ; let 
 me hear the text?" He told him. "Oh, then, I 
 have an excellent sermon on that text in my 
 pocket, which you may peruse and commit to 
 your memory. I engage, after you have delivered 
 it before the Presbytery, you will be greatly ap- 
 proven and applauded." The youth received it 
 
350 Book- Club Literutnre. 
 
 thankfully ; but one good turn deserves another. 
 The stranger had an eccentric fancy that he should 
 have a written promise from the youth to do him 
 afterwards any favour in his power; and there being 
 no other liquid conveniently at hand for the signa- 
 ture of the document, a drop of the young man's 
 blood was drawn for the purpose. Note now what 
 followed. "Upon the Presbytery day the youth 
 delivered an excellent sermon upon the text ap- 
 pointed him, which pleased and amazed the Pres- 
 bytery to a degree ; only Mr Blair smelt out some- 
 thing in it which made him call the youth aside to 
 the corner of the church, and thus he began with- 
 him : ' Sir, you have delivered a nate sermon, every 
 way well' pointed. The matter was profound, or 
 rather sublime ; your style was fine and your method 
 clear ; and, no doubt, young men at the beginning 
 must make use of helps, which I doubt not you 
 have done.' So beginning, Blair, who was a man 
 of mighty gifts and repute, pressed on so close with 
 repeated questions that the awful truth at last 
 came out." There was nothing for it but that the 
 Presbytery must engage in special exercise for the 
 penitent youth. They prayed each in succession to 
 no purpose, till it came to Blair's turn. "In time 
 of his prayer there came a violent rushing of wind 
 upon the church — so great that they thought the 
 church should have fallen down about their ears 
 — and with that the youth's paper and covenant 
 
Robert Wodrow. 351 
 
 drops down from the roof of the church among the 
 ministers." 
 
 A large proportion of Wodrow's special provi- 
 dences are performed for the benefit of the clergy, 
 either to provide them with certain worldly neces- 
 saries of which they may happen to be in want, 
 or to give effect to their pious indignation, or, 
 as some might be tempted to call it, their vindic- 
 tive spite, again those who revile them. Perhaps 
 an interdicted pastor, wandering over the desolate 
 moors where he and his hunted flock seek refuge, 
 is sorely impeded by some small want of the flesh, 
 and gives expression to his wishes concerning it ; 
 when forthwith he is miraculously supplied with a 
 shoulder of mutton or a pair of trousers, according 
 to the nature of his necessities. He encounters 
 ridicule or personal insult, and instantly the blas- 
 phemer is struck dead, or idiotic, or dumb, after the 
 example of those who mocked EHsha's bald head ; 
 and Wodrow generally winds up these judgments 
 with an appropriate admonitory text, as, for in- 
 stance, "Touch not His anointed, and do His pro- 
 phets no harm." As the persons for whom these 
 special miracles are performed generally happen to 
 be sorely beset by worldly privations and dangers^, 
 which are at their climax at the very time when, 
 they are able to call in supernatural intervention, 
 a logician might be inclined to ask why, if the 
 operations, and, as it were, the very motives, of the 
 
352 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Deity are examined in respect of those events which 
 are propitious to His favourite, they should not also 
 be examined with the same critical pertinacity as to 
 the greatly predominating collection of events which 
 are decidedly unpropitious to him, so as to bring 
 out the reason why the simpler course of saving 
 him from all hardships and persecution had not 
 been followed, instead of. the circuitous plan of 
 launching heavy calamities against him, and then 
 issuing special miraculous powers to save him from 
 a small portion of these calamities. But such logic 
 would probably be unprofitably bestowed, and it is 
 wiser to take the narratives as they stand and 
 make the best use of them. Whoever looks at 
 them with a cold scientific eye, will at once be 
 struck by the close analogy of Wodrow's vaticina- 
 tions and miracles to those of other times and 
 places, and especially to those credited to the saints 
 of the early Catholic Church, to which many of 
 them, indeed, bear a wonderfully exact resemblance. 
 
 CJie 3Earlg WflrtfjEtn Saints. 
 
 [|ARRIED on by the power of associa- 
 tion, we are thus brought to the door 
 of an exceedingly interesting depart- 
 ment of book-club literature, — the res- 
 toration of the true text of the early lives of the 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 353 
 
 saints — a species of literature now recognised and 
 separated from others by the title of Hagiology. 
 Everybody knows, or ought to know, that the great 
 library of this kind of literature, published by the 
 Bollandists, begins with the beginning of the year, 
 and gives the life of each saint successively accord- 
 ing to his day in the calendar. Ignorance is more 
 excusable on the question what constitutes saint- 
 ship, and, supposing you to have found your saint, 
 on the criterion by which the day of his festival 
 should be adjusted in the calendar. Technically, 
 to make a saint, there should be an act of pontifical 
 jurisdiction, all the more solernn than any secular 
 judicial act as the interests affected are more mo- 
 mentous ; but only a small number of the saints 
 stand on record in the proceedings of the Vatican. 
 In fact, the great body of them were in the enjoy- 
 ment of their honours hundreds of years before the 
 certifying process was adopted, and to investigate 
 all their credentials was far too weighty a task to be 
 attempted. It is taken for granted that they have 
 been canonised, and if it be difficult to prove that 
 they have gone through this ceremony, they hold 
 their ground through the still greater difficulty of 
 proving that they have not. Some of those whose 
 sanctity is established by this kind of acclamation 
 are so illustrious, that it would be ludicrous to sup- 
 pose even the Vatican capable of adding to their 
 eminence — more so, to imagine any process by 
 
 z 
 
354 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 which they could be unsanctified ; such are St Pat- 
 rick, St George, and St Kentigern. But there is 
 a vast crowd of village or parochial saints firmly 
 established within their own narrow circles, but as 
 unknown at the court of Rome as any obscure 
 curate working in some distant valley, or among 
 the poor of some great city. In such a crowd there 
 will naturally be questionable personages. St Val- 
 entine, St Fiacre, St Boniface, St Lupus, St Mac- 
 cesso, St Bobbio, St Fursy, and St Jingo, have 
 names not endowed with a very sanctimonious 
 sound, but they are well-established respectable 
 saints. Even Alban Butler, however, has hard work 
 in giving credit to St Longinus, St Quirinus, St 
 Mercurius, St Hermes, St Virgil, St Plutarch, and 
 St Bacchus. It is the occurrence of such names 
 that makes Moreri speak of the Bollandist selection 
 as rather loose, since it contains "vies des saintes 
 bonnes, mediocres, mauvaises, vrayes, douteuses, et 
 fausses." 
 
 The saint's festival-day is generally the anniver- 
 sary of his death, or " deposition," as it is technically 
 termed ; but this is by no means an absolute rule. 
 Few compilers deserve more sympathy than those 
 who try to adjust saints' days by rule and chron- 
 ology, since not only does one saint differ from 
 another in the way in which his feast is established, 
 but for the same saint there are different days in 
 different countries, and even in different ecclesiasti- 
 
The. Early Northern Saints. 355 
 
 cal; districts — the dioce;se,of Paris having, for in- 
 stance, some special saints' days of its , own, which 
 differ from , the practice throughout , thp rest of 
 Catholic Christendom. Some saints, too, have been 
 shifted about from day to day by authority. Queen 
 Margaret of Spotland, the wife of Malcolm, whose 
 real source of influence was that she represented 
 the old Saxon line of England, h^-d two great days, 
 — that of her deposition on July the 8th, and that 
 of her translation on July the 19th ; but, by a papal 
 ordinance imnjediately after th,e Revolution, her 
 festival was established upon the ipth of June. 
 This was ratlier a remarkable day in Britain, being 
 that on which the poor infant son of the last of the 
 Jameses, afterwards jknown in Parliamentary lan- 
 guage as the Pretender, was born. The adjustment 
 of Queen Margaret's day to that event was a stroke 
 of policy for the purpose of rendering the poor child 
 respectable, and removing all doubts about warming- 
 pans and other disagreeables; but it is not known 
 that the measure exercised, the slightest influence on 
 the British ; Parliame;it., 
 
 BoUandus, who was the , first seriously to lay his 
 hand to the great work called after him, was a 
 Belgian Jesuit. He had got through January and 
 February, -in five folio volumes, when he died in 
 1658. Under the auspices of his successor, Daniel 
 Papebroch, March appeared in 1668 and April in 
 167s, each in three , volumes. So the great work 
 
356 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 crept on day by day and year by year, absorbing 
 the whole lives of many devoted labourers, con- 
 spicuous among whom are the unmelodious names 
 of Peter Boschj John Stilting, Coristantine Suysk- 
 hen, Urban Sticken, Cornelius Bye, James Bue, and 
 Ignacius Huben^. In 1762, a hundred and four 
 years after January, September was completed. It 
 filled eight volumes, for the work accumulated like 
 a snow-ball as it rolled, each month being larger 
 than its predecessor. Here the ordinary copies 
 stop in forty-seven volumes, for the evil days of 
 the Jesuits were coming on, and the new literary oli- 
 garchy, where Voltaire, Montesquieu, and D'Alem- 
 bert held sway, had not been propitious to hagi- 
 ology. A part of October was accomplished under 
 the auspices of Maria Theresa, the Empress Queen, 
 but for some reason or other it came within the 
 category of rare books, and was not to 'be easily 
 obtained until it was lately reprinted. 
 
 Whatever effect such a phenomenon may have on 
 some denominations of the religious world, it can 
 afford nothing but pure satisfaction to all historical 
 investigators to know that this great work has been 
 resumed' in this middle of the nineteenth century. 
 I have before me the ninth volume for October, 
 embracing the twentieth and twenty-first days of 
 that month, and containing about as much matter 
 as the five volumes of Macaulay's' History. On the 
 2 1 St of October there is, to be sure, a very heavy 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 357 
 
 job to be got through- in St Ursula and her eleven 
 thousand virgins, whose bones may be seen in musty 
 presses in the, Church of the Ursulines in Cologne ; 
 but still as it moves forward, it is evident that the 
 mighty work continues to enlarge its proportions. 
 The winter is coming on too, a period crowded 
 with the memorials of departed saints, as being 
 unprppitious to men of highly ascetic habits, so 
 that J those who have undertaken the completion 
 of the Bollandist enterprise have their work before 
 them. 
 
 There is a marvellous uniformity in all the ar- 
 rangements of this array of volumes which have 
 thus appeared at intervals' throughout two cen- 
 turies. They dealt with matter too sublimely sep- 
 arated from the temporal doings of men to be 
 affected by political events, yet could they not 
 entirely escape some slight touches i from the con- 
 vulsions that had recast the whole order and con- 
 ditions of society. When October was begun, 
 Belgium, where the work is published, was attached 
 to the Austrian Empire, and the French Revolution 
 had not yet come. The Jesuits, though not favour- 
 ites among monarchs, profess a decorous loyalty, 
 and the earlier volumes of the month have portraits 
 of the Empress Queen, and others of the Imperial 
 family, in the most elaborate court costume of the 
 days before the Revolution ; while the later vol- 
 umes, still loyal, are illustrated by the family circle 
 
358 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 of the Protestant King of constitutional Belgium, 
 whose good-natured face and plain broad-cloth coat 
 are those doubtless of the right man, though one 
 cannot help imagining that he feels himself' some- 
 how in the wrong place. 
 
 The crowds of saints who come sometimes swarm- 
 ing in on a single day to these teeming volumes, 
 give one an almost oppressive notion of the quan- 
 tity of goodness that muSt have, after all, existed in 
 this wicked world. The labours of the BoUandists, 
 not only in searching through all available litera- 
 ture, but in a special correspondence established 
 with their Jesuit brethren throughout the world, 
 are absolutely astounding. Their conscientious 
 minuteness is wonderful ; and many a one who 
 thinks he is master of the ecclesiastical lore of 
 his own parish, which he has made his specialty, 
 has been petrified to find what he thbiight his dis- 
 coveries all laid down with carfeful precision- as 
 matters of ordinary knowledge in some corner of 
 these mighty ' volumes. The BoUandists obtained 
 their irfformation from the spot, and it is on the 
 spot that this kind of literature must be worked 
 out. A thoroughly accomplished antiquary, work- 
 ing within a limited district, will thus bring 'forth 
 more full andi satisfactory results, so far as they go, 
 than even the' BoUandists have achieved, and hence 
 the great value of the services of the book clubs 
 to hagiology. ' 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 359 
 
 The writer of the letters bearing the signature 
 "Veritas," in all the newspapers, would, of course, 
 specially object to the resuscitation of this class of 
 literature, " because it is full of fabulous accounts of 
 miracles and other supernatural events which can 
 only minister to credulity and superstition." But 
 even in the extent and character of this very ele- 
 ment there is a great significance. The size of a 
 current falsehood is the measure of the size of the 
 human belief that has swallowed it, and is a com- 
 ponent part of the history of man. 
 
 The best critical writers on ancient history have 
 agreed not to throw away the cosmogony and the 
 hierology of Greece. It is part of Grecian history 
 that the creed of the people was filled with a love 
 of embodied fancies, so graceful and luxuriant. No 
 less are the revel rout of Valhalla part of the virtual 
 history of the Scandinavian tribes. But the lives 
 of our saints, independently altogether of the mo- 
 mentous change in human affairs and prospects 
 which they ushered in, have a substantial hold on 
 history, of which neither the classical nor the north- 
 ern hierology can boast. Poseidon and Aphrodite, 
 Odin and Freya, vanish into the indefinite and un- 
 discoverable at the approach of historical criticism. 
 But separately altogether from their miracles, Cuth- 
 bert and Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, had actual 
 existences. We know when they lived and' when 
 they died. The closer that historical criticism dogs 
 
360 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 their steps, the clearer it sees them, and the more 
 it knows about their actual lives and ways. Even 
 if they were not the missionaries who introduced 
 Christianity among us, — as men who, in the old 
 days before Britain became populous and affluent 
 in the fruits of advanced civilisation, trod the soil 
 that we tread, it would be interesting to know 
 about them — about the habitations they lodged in, 
 the garments they wore, the food they ate, the 
 language they spoke, their method of social inter- 
 course among each other, and the sort of govern- 
 ment under which they lived. 
 
 That by investigation and critical inquiry we can 
 know more of these things than our ancestors of 
 centuries past could know, is still a notion compara- 
 tively new which has not been popularly realised. 
 The classic literature in which our early training lies 
 has nothing in it to show us the power of historical 
 inquiry, and much to make us slight it The 
 Romans, instead of improving on the Greeks, fell 
 in this respect behind them. Father Herodotus, 
 credulous as he was, was a better antiquary than 
 any who wrote in Latin before the revival of letters. 
 Occupied entirely with the glory of their conquests, 
 and blind to the future which their selfish tyranny 
 was preparing for them, the Romans were equally 
 thoughtless of the past, unless it were exaggerated 
 and falsified into a narrative to aggrandise their 
 own glory. Their authors abdicated the duty of 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 361 
 
 leaving to the world the true narrative of the early- 
 struggles and achievements out of which the Re- 
 public and the Empire aroge. It is easy to be 
 sceptical at any time. We can cut away Romultis 
 and Remus from accepted history now, hundreds of 
 years after the Empire has ceased to govern or 
 exist. But the golden opportunity for sifting the 
 genuine out of the fabulous has long passed away. 
 It . is seldom possible to construct the infant his- 
 tories of departed nationalities. The difference be- 
 tween the facilities which a nation has for finding 
 out its own early history, and those which strangers 
 have for constructing it when the nationality has 
 allowed its deathbed to pass over without the per- 
 formance of that patriotic task, is nearly as great 
 as a _ man's own facilities for writing the history of 
 his youth, and those of the biographer who makes 
 inquiries about him after he is buried. 
 
 We are becoming wiser than the Romans in this 
 as in other matters, and are constructing the infant 
 histories of the various European nations out of 
 the materials which each possesses. The biogra- 
 phies of those saints or missionaries who first dif- 
 fused the light of the Gospel among the various 
 communities of the Christian north, form a very 
 large elenjent in these materials ; and no wonder, 
 when we remember that the Church possessed all 
 the literature, such as it was, of the age. In apply- 
 ing, however, to the British Empire, this newf source 
 
362 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 of historical information, there arose the difficulty 
 that it was chiefly supplied from Ireland. If all 
 hagiology were under a general suspicion of the 
 fabulous, Irish history was known to be a luxuriant 
 preserve of fables, and these causes of dubiety being 
 multiplied by each other in the mind, it seemed 
 almost impossible to obtain a hearing for the new 
 voice. In fact, during a long period the three 
 nations were engaged in a competition which 
 should carry its history through the longest track 
 of fictitious glory, and this was a kind of work in 
 which Ireland beat her neighbours entirely. Hence, 
 when all were pressing pretty close upon the 
 Deluge, Ireland took the leap at once and cleared 
 that gulf. As a fairish record of these successful 
 efforts; I would recommend to the reader's notice 
 a very well-conditioned and truly learned-looking 
 folio volume, called "The General History of Ire- 
 land, collected by the learned Jeffrey Keating, 
 D.D., faithfully translated from the original Irish 
 Language, with many curious Amendments taken 
 from the Psalters of Tara and Cashel, with other 
 authentic Records, by Dermod O'Connor, Anti- 
 quary to the Kingdom of Ireland." Opposite to 
 the title-page is a full-length portrait of Brian 
 Boroomh, whose ■ fame has been increased of late 
 years by the achievements of his descendant in the 
 cabbage-garden. The monarch is in full burnished 
 plate armour, with scarf and surcoat — all three 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 363 
 
 centuries at least later in fashion than the era 
 attributed to him. But that is a trifle. It would 
 involve much hard and useless work to make war 
 on the anachronisms of historical portraits, and we 
 are not to judge of historical works by their en- 
 graved decorations. Here, however, the picture is 
 sober truth itself to what the inquiring reader finds 
 in the typography. After the descriptive geo- 
 graphical introduction common in old histories, 
 the real commencement comes upon us in this 
 form : — 
 
 "Of the first invasion of Ireland before the 
 Flood ! " " Various," the author tells us, " are the 
 opinions concerning the first mortal that set a foot 
 upon this island. We are told by some that three 
 of the daughters of Cain arrived here, several 
 hundred years before the Deluge. The white 
 book, which in the Irish is called Leabhar Dhroma 
 Sneachta, informs us that the oldest of these 
 daughters was called Banba, and gave a name to 
 the whole kingdom. After these, we are told that 
 three men and fifty women arrived in the island ; 
 one of them was called Ladhra, from whom was 
 derived the name of Ardladhan. These people 
 lived forty years in the country, and at last they 
 all died of a certain distemper in a week's time. 
 From their death, it is said that the island was 
 uninhabited for the space of an hundred years, till 
 the world was drowned. We are told that the 
 
364 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 first who set foot upon the island were three fisher- 
 men that were driven thither by a storm from the 
 coast of Spain. They were pleased with the dis- 
 covery they had made, and resolved to settle in 
 the country ; but they agreed first to go back for 
 their wives, and in their return were unfortunately 
 drowned by the waters of the Deluge at a place 
 called Tuath Inbhir. The names of these three 
 fishermen were Capa, Laighne, and Luasat. Others, 
 again, are of opinion that Ceasar, the daughter of 
 Bith, was the first that came into the island before 
 the Deluge. . . . When Noah was building the 
 ark to preserve himself and his family from the 
 Deluge, Bith, the father of Ceasar, sent to desire 
 an apartment for him and his daughter, to save 
 them from the approaching danger., : Noah, having 
 no authority from Heaven to receive them into the 
 ark, denied his request. Upon this repulse, Bith 
 Fiontan, the husband of Ceasar, and Ladhra her 
 brother, consulted among themselves what measures 
 they should take in this extremity." 
 
 The result was, that, like the Laird of Macnab, 
 they "built a boat o' their ain," but on a much larger 
 scale, being a fair match with the ark itself. But 
 justice should be done to every one. The learned 
 Dr Keating does not give us all this as veritable 
 history ; on the contrary, being of a sceptical turn 
 of mind, he has courage enough to stem the national 
 prejudice, and throw doubt on the narrative.' He 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 365 
 
 even rises up into something like eloquent scorn 
 when he discusses the manner in which some ante- 
 diluvian annals were said to be preserved. Thus : — 
 
 " As for such of them who say that Fiontan was 
 drowned in the Flood, and afterwards came to life, 
 and lived to publish the antediluvian history of the 
 island — what can they propose by such chimerical 
 relations, but to amuse the ignorant with strange 
 and romantic tales, to corrupt and perplex the 
 original annals, and to raise a jealousy that no 
 manner of credit is to be given to the true and 
 authentic chronicles of that kingdom ? " 
 
 I shall quote no more until after the doctor, 
 having exhausted his sceptical ingenuity about the 
 antediluvian stories, finds himself again on firm 
 ground, prepared to afford his readers, without any 
 critical misgivings, " an account of the first inhabit- 
 ants of Ireland after the Flood." He now tells us 
 with simple and dignified brevity that "the king- 
 dom of Ireland lay waste and uninhabited for the 
 space of three hundred years after the Deluge, till 
 Partholanus, son of Seara, son of Sru, son of Easru, 
 son of Framant, son of Fathochda, son of Magog, 
 son of Japhet, son of Noah, arrived there with his 
 people." From such a patriarchal nomenclature the 
 reader of Keating is suddenly introduced t6 a story 
 of domestic scaridal, in which a "footman" and a 
 " favourite greyhound " make their frequent appear- 
 ance. Then follow many great epochs^-the arrival 
 
366 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 of the Firbolgs, the dynasty of the Tuatha dq 
 Danans, with revolutions and battles countless, be- 
 fore we come to the commencement of a settled 
 dynasty of kings, of whom more than ninety reigned 
 before the Christian era. It is, after all, more sad 
 than ridiculous to remember that within the. present 
 generation many historians believed not only what 
 Keating thus tells as truth, but also what he ven- 
 tured to doubt ; and if the English antiquaries, 
 according to their wont, called for records,— did 
 these not exist abundantly, if they could be got at, 
 in those authentic genealogies, which were from 
 time to time adjusted and collated with so much 
 skill and scrupulous accuracy by the official anti- 
 quaries who met in the Hall of Tara ? The reader 
 unacquainted with such an out-of-the-way and rather 
 weedy corner of literature, niay think this vague 
 exaggeration ; and I shall finish it by quoting the 
 latest printed, so far as I know, of the numerous 
 solemn and methodical statements about the manner 
 in which the records of these very distant matters 
 were authenticated. 
 
 "When the said princes got the kingdom into 
 their hands, they assigned large territories to their 
 antiquaries and their posterity to preserve their 
 pedigree, exploits, actions, &c. ; and so very strict 
 they were on this point, that they established a 
 triennial convention at Tara, where the chief kings 
 of Ireland dwelt, where all the antiquaries of the 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 367 
 
 nation met every third year to have their chronicles 
 and antiquities examined before the king of Ireland, 
 the four provincial kings, the king's antiquary-royal, 
 &c. ; the least forgery in the antiquary was punished 
 with death, and loss of estate to his posterity for 
 ever — so very exact they were in preserving their 
 venerable monuments, and leaving them to poster- 
 ity truly and candidly ; so that even at this day 
 (though our nation lost estate and all almost) there 
 is not an ancient name of Ireland, of the blood- 
 royal thereof descended, but we can bring, from 
 father to father, from the present man in being to 
 Adam — and I, Thaddy O' Roddy, who wrote this, 
 have written all the families of the Milesian race 
 from this present age to Adam."^ 
 
 To all this preposterous, ^pd now scarcely credible 
 extravagance of fiction, there attaches a melancholy 
 political moral. Poor Ireland, trodden by a dom- 
 inant party whose hand was strengthened by her 
 potent neighbour, sought relief from the gloom of 
 the present, by looking far back into the fabulous 
 glories of the past — and it seemed the last drop in 
 her cup of bitterness when thrs pleasant vista was 
 also to be closed by the hard utilitarian hand of the 
 unsympathising. Saxon. 
 
 After " this sort of thing " it was naturally diffi- 
 cult to get sensible men to listen to proposals for 
 
 > Mjscel. of Irish Arch. Soc.', i. 120. 
 
368 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 opening valuable new sources of early history in 
 Irefland. In fact, down to the time when Moore 
 wrote his History in 1835, no one could venture to 
 look another in the face when speaking of the early 
 Irish annals, and the consequence was that that 
 accomplished author wilfully shut his eyes to the 
 rich supply of historical materials in which he 
 might have worked to brilliant effect. 
 
 Yet, upon the general face of history, it must on 
 examination have been fairly seen that Ireland is 
 the natural place where a great proportion of what- 
 ever is to be known about the primitive Church in 
 the British Islands was to be found. Indeed, in the 
 history of Christianity, not the least wonderful chap-, 
 ter contains the episode of the repose in the West, 
 where a portion of the Church, having settled down, 
 grew up in calm obscurity, protected by distance 
 from the desolating contest which was breaking up 
 the empire of the world, and raged more or less 
 wherever the Roman sway had penetrated. Of the 
 southern Britons it could no longer be said, as in 
 the days of Augustus, that they were cut off from 
 all the world. England was an integral part of the 
 empire, where, if the pi'oconSul or legionary com- 
 mander had not the hot sun and blue sky of Italy, 
 there were partial compensations in the bracing air 
 which renewed his wasted strength, the new and 
 peculiar luxuries in the shape of shellfish and 
 wildfowl that enriched his table, and the facilities 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 369 
 
 which his insular authority afforded him for strength- 
 ening his political position, and plotting for a frag- 
 ment of the disintegrating empire. An admiral of 
 the Roman fleet had at one time established his 
 power in Britain, where he set up as Caesar, and 
 sought to create a new imperial centre. Thus the 
 southern part of Britain was a province of the 
 true Roman empire awaiting the coming of the 
 wild hordes who were gathering for the general 
 overthrow, and was not the place where either the 
 Christian Church or Italian civilisation could find 
 permanent refuge. The destined destroyer was in- 
 deed close at hand. Though the Romans had their 
 walls, their roads, their forts, and even a few villas 
 in Scotland, yet one going northward at that time 
 through the territories of the Gadeni and the Ota- 
 deni, would observe the Romanised character of the 
 country gradually decreasing, until he found himself 
 among those rough independent northern tribes, 
 who, under the name of Picts and Scots, drove the 
 Romanised Britons into the sea, and did for the 
 insular portion of the empire what the hordes who 
 were called Goths, Franks, and Alemanni, were 
 doing in the Roman provinces of the Continent. 
 
 Behind the scene of this destructive contest, Chris- 
 tianity, having been planted, flourished in peaceful 
 poverty. It grew here and there over Ireland, and 
 in a small portion of the remote part of Scotland ; 
 and the distance from the scene of warfare necessary 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 for its safety is shown by the fate of St Ninian's 
 little church in the Mull of Galloway. It was too 
 near the field of strife to live. The isolation in 
 which the western Christians thus arose, was pro- 
 ductive of ecclesiastical conditions very remarkable 
 in themselves, but perfectly natural as the effects 
 of their peculiar causes. The admirable organisa- 
 tion for carrying out the civil government of the 
 Roman empire, was a ready - made hierarchy for 
 carrying out the ecclesiastical supremacy of the 
 Bishop of Rome. It was far from the object of 
 those who seized on the power of the Caesars to 
 abolish that power. On the contrary, they desired 
 to work it on their own account, and thus the 
 machinery of the empire lived, exercising more or 
 less vitality and power, down to the first French 
 Revolution. 
 
 No part of its civil organisation, however, retained 
 the comprehensive vitality which the learning and 
 subtlety of the priesthood enabled them to preserve, 
 or rather restore, to its spiritual branch. Hence, 
 wherever the conquerors of Rome held sway, there 
 the priests of Rome obtained a sway also. But the 
 one little fragment of the primitive Church, which 
 had been so curiously cut off during the great con- 
 test, was beyond the sway of the conquerors of 
 Rome, as it had been beyond the sway of the 
 Emperors themselves. Hence, while the Church, 
 as united to Rome, grew up in one great uniform 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 371 
 
 hierarchy, the small, isolated Church in the West 
 grew up with different usages and characteristics ; 
 and when afterwards those who followed them were 
 charged with schism, they asserted that they had 
 their canons and usages directly from the apostles, 
 from whom they had obtained the Gospel and the 
 regulations of the Church pure and undefiled. Thus 
 arose the renowned contest between the early Scot- 
 tish Church and the rest of Christendom about the 
 proper period of observing Easter, and about the 
 form of the tonsure. Hence, too, arose the debates 
 about the peculiar discipline of the communities 
 called Culdees, who, having to frame their own 
 system of church government for themselves, hum- 
 ble, poor, and isolated as they were, constructed it 
 after a different fashion from the potent hierarchy of 
 Rome. The history of these corporations possesses 
 extreme interest, even to those who follow it without 
 a predetermined design to identify every feature of 
 their arrangements with a modern English diocese, 
 or with a modern Scottish presbytery ; and not the 
 least interesting portion of this history is its conclu- 
 sion, in the final absorption, not without a struggle, 
 of these isolated communities within the expanding 
 hierarchy of the Popes. 
 
 In a few humble architectural remains, these 
 primitive bodies have left vestiges of their peculiar 
 character to the present day. Neither deriving the 
 form of their buildings nor their other observances 
 
372 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 from Rome, they failed to enter with the rest of 
 the Church on that course of construction which led 
 towards Gothic architecture. The earliest Christian 
 churches on the Continent were constructed on the 
 plan of the Roman basilica, or court of justice, and 
 wherever the Church of Rome spread, this method 
 of construction went with her. The oldest style of 
 church-building — that which used to be called 
 Saxon, and is now sometimes termed Norman, 
 and sometimes Romanesque — degenerated directly 
 from the architecture of Rome. There are ecclesi- 
 astical buildings in France and Italy, of which it 
 might fairly be debated, from their style, whether 
 they were built by the latest of the classical, or the 
 earliest of the Gothic architects. The little Church 
 in the West had not the benefit of such models. 
 Places of worship, and cells, or oratories, were built 
 of timber, turf, or osiers. The biographer of Col- 
 umba, describes his followers as collecting wattles 
 for the construction of their first edifice. But they 
 had also a few humble dwellings of stone, which, 
 naturally enough, had no more resemblance to the 
 proud fanes of the Romish hierarchy, than the 
 primitive edifices of Mexico and New Zealand had 
 to those of modern Europe. They were first found 
 in Ireland ; more lately, they have been traced in 
 the Western Isles. They are small rude domes of 
 rough stone ; and if it may seem strange that the 
 form adapted to the grandest of all architectural 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 373 
 
 achievements should be accomplished by those 
 rude masons who could not make a Roman arch, 
 it must be remembered, that while the arch cannot 
 be constructed without artificial support or scaffold- 
 ing, a dome on a small scale may, and is indeed the 
 form to which rude artists, with rude stones, and 
 no other materials, would naturally be driven. It 
 is that in which boys build their snow-houses. I 
 shall not easily forget how, once, accompanying a 
 piscatorial friend on the Loch of Curran, near Bally- 
 skelligs, in Kerry, I stepped on a small island to 
 visit a Norman ruin there, and saw, besides the 
 ruin and a stone cross, one of these small rough 
 domes, testifying, by its venerable simplicity, that 
 it had stood there centuries before the Norman 
 church beside it. But the peculiar characteristics 
 of the architecture of the West did not stop short 
 with these simple types. It advanced, carrying in 
 its advance its own significant character, until it 
 became mingled with the architecture propagated 
 from Rome, as the Christian community which 
 worshipped within the buildings became absorbed 
 in the hierarchy. The Oratory of Galerus, in 
 Kerry, is a piece of solid, well-conditioned ma- 
 sonry, built after a plan of no mean symmetry 
 and proportion, yet with scarcely a feature in 
 common with the early Christian churches of the 
 rest of Europe. Like the ruder specimens, it strug- 
 gles for as much solidity and spaciousness as it can 
 
374 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 obtain in stonework without the help of the arch, 
 and it makes a good deal out of the old Egyptian 
 plan of gradually narrowing the courses of stones 
 inwardsj until they come so near that large slabs 
 of stone can be thrown across the opening. Some 
 buildings of the same sort have been lately revealed 
 in the island of Lewis : one is named Teampul 
 Rona, and another, which is dedicated to St Flan- 
 nan, Teampul Beannachadh.^ The specialty of both 
 these, as well as of the Irish buildings, is that they 
 are edifices beyond all question raised for Christian 
 worship, that they have been built with pains and 
 skill, and yet that they have no vestige of that 
 earlier type of Christian architecture which Europe 
 in general obtained from Rome. 
 
 In offering a few stray remarks on the lives of 
 the saints, or, more properly speaking, the mission- 
 aries, whose labours lay in the British Isles, it would 
 be pedantic to cite the precise document, printed 
 generally for one or other of the book clubs, which 
 supplies the authority for each sentence. I must, 
 however, mention one authority which stands su- 
 preme among its brethren — the edition of Adamnan's 
 Life of St Columba, edited by Dr Reeves, under the 
 joint patronage of the Irish Archaeological and the 
 Bannatynie Clubs. The original work has long been 
 
 ^ See Mr Muir's.very curious volume on "Characteristics of Old 
 Church Architecture in the Mainland and Western Islands of Scot- 
 land."' 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 375 
 
 accepted as throwing a light on the Christianising 
 of the North, second only to that shed by the in- 
 valuable morsels in Bede. With wonderful industry 
 and learning, the editor has incorporated the small 
 book of Adamnan in a mass of new mattei', every 
 word of which is equally instructive and. interesting 
 to the student. 
 
 There is no doubt that the' saints of Irish origin 
 supply by far the more important portion , of our 
 hagiology. They are countless. Taking merely a 
 topographical estimate of them — jlooking, that is, to 
 ihe names of places which have been dedicated to 
 them, or otherwise bear their names — we find< them 
 crowding Ireland, and swarming over the Highlands 
 of Scotland and the north of England into London 
 itself, where . St Bride's Well has given a gloomy 
 perpetuity to the name of the first and greatest of 
 Ir'.sh feniale saints. Some people would be content 
 to attribute the frequentness of sain tship among the 
 Irish and the Highlanders to the opportunities en- 
 joyed by them in consequence of the early Church 
 haying found a refuge in Ireland. Others would 
 attribute the phenomenon to the extreme suscepti- 
 bility of the Celtic race to religious enthusiasm, 
 and would illustrate their views by referring to 
 the present Celtic population in Ireland under the 
 dominion of the priests, and their brethren of the 
 West of Scotland equally under the dominion of 
 the doctrinal antipodes of the priests; while the 
 
376 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 parallel might be illustrated by a reference to those 
 Highland Franciscans called " The Men," whose 
 belcher neckcloths represent the cord, and their 
 Kilmarnock bonnets the cbwl. 
 
 At the commencement of Christianity the dif- 
 ference between the religious Celt and the religious 
 Saxon was naturally far more conspicuous than it 
 is now. Bede's description of the thoughtful calm- 
 ness with which Ethelbert studied the preaching 
 of Augustin, with all the consequences which the/ 
 adoption of the new creed must bring upon his 
 kingdom, is still eminently characteristic of the 
 Saxon nature. In the life of St Wilbrord a sceni 
 is described which is not easily alluded to with due 
 reverence. The saint had prevailed on a Frisian 
 Prince to acknowledge Christianity, and be bap- 
 tised. Standing by the font, with one foot in tMe 
 water, a misgiving seized on him, and he inquired 
 touching his ancestors, whether the greater numrer 
 of them were in the regions of the blessed, or in 
 those of the spirits doomed to everlasting perdition. 
 On being abruptly told by the honest saint tiat 
 they were all, without exception, in the latter region, 
 he withdrew his fool; — he would not desert his n.ce 
 —he would go to the place where he would find lis 
 dead ancestors. 
 
 The conversion of the Picts by Columba seems to 
 have proceeded deliberately. We find him, in ihe 
 narrative of his life, exercising much influence bn 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 377 
 
 Brud their king, and occasionally enjoying a visit 
 to the royal lodge on the pleasant banks of Loch- 
 ness. There he is seen commending his friend and 
 fellow-labourer St Cormac to the good offices of 
 the Regulus of the Orkney Islands, who is also at 
 the court of Brud, to whom he owes something akin 
 to allegiance ; for Columba looks to Brud as well 
 as to the Orcadian guest for the proper attention 
 being paid to Cormac. Still, honoured and re- 
 spected as he is in the court of the Pictish mon- 
 arch, Columba is not that omnipotent person which 
 he finds himself to be in Dalriada and in ,Ireland. 
 There still sits an unpleasant personage at the 
 king's gate. A Magus, as he is called — a priest 
 of the old heathen religion — is in fact well received 
 at court, where, although doomed to be superseded 
 by the Christian missionary, he yet seems to have 
 been retained by the king, as a sort of protest that 
 he had not put himself entirely under the control of 
 the priests of the new doctrine. 
 
 It was indeed among their own people, the Celts 
 of Ireland and of the Irish colony in the west of 
 Scotland, that the reign of these saints was ab- 
 solute. But if we count this ecclesiastical influence 
 a feature of the Celtic nation, either the Welsh must 
 not be counted as Celts, or they must be looked on 
 as exceptions from this spiritual dominion. They 
 were the people among whom, of all the tribes who 
 inhabited Britain between the days of Julius Caesar 
 
378 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 and those of William of Normandy, it might have 
 been primarily expected that we would find the 
 most vital Christianity and the greatest missionary 
 force. They professed to have carried with them 
 into their mountains the traditions and the nation- 
 ality of that very important portion of the Chris- 
 tianised Roman Empire which was called Britannia. 
 When the heart of the Empire became paralysed, 
 this branch, doubtless after a long harassing con- 
 test with the Picts and the Irish of the north, was 
 broken, and partly subjected, partly driven away by 
 the Saxons. That they should have failed, through 
 all their revolutions and calamities, to preserve any 
 remnants of Roman social habits, is not perhaps 
 wonderful. But that they should have failed to 
 preserve enough of Christian influence to second 
 and support the missions sent to the Saxons, so 
 soon after these had superseded the British power, 
 looks like an exception to the usual rule of Chris- 
 tian progress. The Welsh antiquaries, through 
 meritorious efforts, . strive in vain to establish the 
 existence of Welsh ecclesiarchs during the time 
 when the countless saints of Ireland were swarming 
 over Scotland and penetrating into England. They 
 point to a stone said to commemorate a victory 
 gained over' the Picts and the Saxons by the 
 Britons, not through their courage or their skill in 
 fight, but by the Halleluiahs raised by two saints 
 who were present in their host. These saints, how- 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 379 
 
 ever, Garmon and Lupus, were, as Bede tells us. 
 Frenchmen, missionaries from the Gallican Church 
 to correct the errors of the Britons. The venerable 
 Bede scolds these Britons roundly for not having kept 
 up the faith planted among them, and for not hav- 
 ing been prepared to help Augustin and his followers 
 in the very hard task of converting the Saxons. 
 It is a pity that we do not know something more of 
 Roman Christianity, and indeed of Roman civilisa- 
 tion generally in Britain, before the Saxon days. 
 There appears to have been among the Romanised 
 British Christians little zeal and a good deal of 
 controversy and dissent, and we hear a great deal 
 more of the influence of the Pelagian heresy among 
 them than of the influence of Christianity itself 
 
 The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman 
 Christianity in Britain is the more to be regretted, 
 because it would have been very interesting to 
 compare its manifestations with those of the Church 
 which found refuge in the West during the dark 
 days of Rome^the days when the temporal empire 
 was crushed, and the spiritual enipire had not 
 arisen. Ais we might expect; from the. ecclesiastical 
 conditions already noticed, the persons who first 
 exercise ecclesiastical authority in the two islands 
 did not derive their strength from any foreign 
 hierarchy, and' had no connection with Rome. Any 
 reference, indeed, to the influence of a Roman pon- 
 tiff, either actual or prospective, in the life of any 
 
380 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 of our early saints, will prepare the critic for finding 
 that the life has been written centuries after the 
 era of the saint, or has been tampered with. In 
 Adamnan's Life of Columba, Rome is mentioned 
 once or twice as a vzry great city, but there is 
 no allusion throughout that remarkable biography 
 to any spiritual central authority exercised by the 
 bishop there over the presbyters in Scotland and 
 Ireland. This is, of course, nothing more than the 
 statement of what the reader of a book has not 
 found in it. Any other reader may find allusions 
 to the supremacy of the popedom over these early 
 Christian communities, if he can. But I think he 
 is likely to find none ; and any one who desires to 
 study the real history of the rise and progress of 
 the spiritual dominion of Rome would, with more 
 profit, take up the books and records referring to 
 events three or four hundred years after the age 
 of Columba. 
 
 Self-sustained as they were, these isolated com- 
 munities had a very strong vitality. The picture 
 exhibited in the hagiographies is truly the reign 
 of the saints. Their power was of an immediate, 
 abrupt, and purely despotic kind, which would have 
 been neutralised or weakened by anything like a 
 central control. Prompt and blind obedience to the 
 commands of the saint-superior was the rule of Hy 
 or lona, and of all the other religious communities 
 of the West. Perhaps there were even here feuds, 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 381 
 
 disputes, and mutinies of which no record has been 
 preserved. The hagiographer can only commemo- 
 rate those which were suppressed by some terrible 
 manifestation of Divine power, for the person whose 
 life he commemorates is only conventionally and 
 nominally to be spoken of as a mortal ; he is in 
 reality superhuman, wielding, whenever he pleases, 
 the thunderbolts of the Deity, annihilating dissent 
 and disobedience to himself, as if it were blasphemy 
 in the Deity's own presence, and crushing by an 
 immediate miracle any effort to oppose his will, 
 were it even about the proper hour of setting off on 
 a journey, or the dinner to be ordered for the day. 
 
 The rank which those primitive clergy of Ireland 
 and the Highlands occupy is almost invariably that 
 of the saint, a rank as far separated from that which 
 can be conferred by any human hierarchy as heaven 
 is from earth. They were, as we have seen, inde- 
 pendent of Rome from the beginning, and this great 
 host of saints had lived and left their biographies 
 to the world long before the system of judicial 
 canonisation. How a boundary is professed to be 
 drawn between the genuine and the false among 
 these saints of the North, cannot be easily under- 
 stood. No one seems to object -to any of them as 
 spurious. Many of them are so very obscure that 
 only faint and fragmentary traces of them can be 
 found, yet it seems never to be questioned that they 
 occupied the transcendent spiritual rank usually 
 
382 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 attributed to them. Of others nothing is known 
 but the bare name, yet it is never doubted that 
 the owner was entitled to his attribute of saint. 
 
 The brethren at lona seem sometimes to have 
 lived well, for we hear of the killing of heifers and 
 oxen. A pragmatical fellow declines to participate 
 in the meal permitted on the occasion of a relaxa- 
 tion of discipline — the saint tells him that since he 
 refuses good meat at a time when he is permitted to 
 have it, it is to be his doom to be one of a band of 
 robbers who will be glad to appease their hunger on 
 putrid horse-flesh. The ruling spirit, however, of 
 this first Christian mission, as we find it recorded, 
 is undoubtedly asceticism. The mortification of 
 the flesh is the temporal source of spiritual power. 
 Some incidents occur which put this spirit in a 
 shape bordering on the ludicrous. A saint is at 
 a loss to know how his power is waning. There 
 is some mysterious countervailing influence acting 
 against him, which manifests itself in the continued 
 success of an irreverent king or chief, whom he 
 thought he had taken the proper spiritual methods 
 to humble. He at last discovers the mystery ; the 
 king had been fasting against him — entering the 
 field of asceticism with him, in short, and not with- 
 out success. 
 
 The biography of an Asiatic despot, so far as 
 other persons are concerned, is merely the history 
 of his commands and their obedience. It is only 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 383 
 
 incidentally, therefore, that one is likely to acquire 
 any information from it about the people over 
 whom he rules. In like manner, the life of an Irish 
 saint is the history of commanding and obeying; 
 yet a few glimpses of social life may be caught 
 through occasional chinks. The relation which the 
 spiritual held towards the temporal powers is suf- 
 ficiently developed to give ground for considerable 
 inquiry and criticism. The more eminent of the 
 saints had great influence in state affairs, ruling in 
 some measure the monarchs themselves. Some 
 monarch is occasionally mentioned as the friend 
 of Columba, much as a bishop might allude to this 
 or that lay lord as among his personal friends. We 
 find him settling the succession of Aidan, the king 
 of the Dalriadic Scots, through an influence to 
 which any opposition was utterly hopeless. Send 
 your sons to me, he says to Aidan, and God will 
 show me who is to be your successor. The sign 
 falls on Eochoid Buidh, and the saint tells the king 
 that all his other sons will come to a premature 
 end, and they drop ofl" accordingly, chiefly in battle. 
 This power of fixing the evil eye, of prophesying 
 death, is found in perpetual use among the early 
 saints. It is their ultimate appeal in strife and 
 contest, and their instrument of vengeance when 
 thwarted or affronted ; and a terrible instrument it 
 must have been. Who could gainsay those believed 
 to hold in their hands the issues of life and death ? 
 
384 Book-Ctub Literature. 
 
 In our conception of the kings with whom these 
 saints were familiar, it may be well not to be misled 
 by words. We shall realise them better at the 
 present day by looking to Madagascar or the Mar- 
 quesas Islands than among the states of Europe. 
 The palace was a shanty of log or wattle, protected, 
 perhaps, by a rampart of earth or uncemented stones, 
 and the king had a stone chair with a few m5'-stic 
 decorations scratched on it, which served for his 
 throne on state occasions. The prospect of acquir- 
 ing a gold torque or a silver drinking-cup would 
 have a material influence over his imperial policy. 
 Were we to believe the fabulous historians, Ireland 
 was for centuries a compact kingdom under one im- 
 perial sovereign, who presided over subsidiary rulers 
 in the provinces. But although sometimes one pro- 
 vincial king was powerful enough to keep the others 
 in subjection, old Celtic Ireland never was a king- 
 dom, properly speaking, for it never had a nation- 
 ality. Some people maintain, not without reason, 
 that the facility with which a nationality resolves 
 itself into existence depends much, not only on 
 race, but on geological conditions. The Celtic Irish 
 seem to have always been too busy with local feuds 
 and rivalries to achieve any broad nationality. And 
 the nature of their country — a vast plain intersected 
 by morasses and rivers, and here and there edged 
 with mountain ranges — is unfavourable to the 
 growth of a nationality, since it presents no gen- 
 
The Early. Northern Saints. 385 
 
 eral centre of defence against a foreign enemy, 
 like that great central range of mountains in Scot- 
 land, which Columba's biographers call the Dor- 
 sum Britannise — the Backbone of Britain. Ireland, 
 indeed, seems to have had no conception of a 
 nationality until such a thing was suggested by 
 the Normans and the Saxons, after they had been 
 long enough there to feel patriotic. And so it has 
 generally happened that any alarming outbreaks 
 against the imperial , government have been led by 
 people of Norman or Saxon descent. 
 
 Still there is, no doubt, difficult as it may be to 
 realise the idea, that at ; the tinaes with which we 
 are dealing, Ireland enjoyed a kind of civilisation, 
 which enabled its princes and its priests to look 
 down on Pictland, and even on Saxon England, as 
 barbarian. The, Roman dominion had not pene- 
 trated among them, but the very remoteness which 
 kept the island beyond the boundaries of the Em- 
 pire, alsio kept it beyond the range of the destroyers 
 of the Empire, and made it in reality the repository 
 of the vestiges of imperial civilisation in the north. 
 Perhaps the diiference between the' two^ .grades of 
 civilisation m.ight be about the same as we could have 
 found ten years ago between Tahiti and New Zealand. 
 
 An extensive and minute- genealogical ramifica- 
 tion, when it is authentic, is a condition of a pretty 
 far advanced state of civilisation. Abandoning the 
 old fabulous genealogies which went back among 
 
 2 B 
 
386 Book- Club Literature. 
 
 the Biblical patriarchs, the rigid antiquaries of Ire- 
 land find their way through authentic sources to 
 genealogical connections of a truly marvellous ex- 
 tent. Such illustrious men as the saints can, of 
 course, be easily traced, as all were proud to estab- 
 lish connection with them ; while Columba him- 
 self and several others were men of royal descent 
 But of the casual persons mentioned in the Life of 
 Columba, Dr Reeves hunts out the genealogy — fully 
 as successfully, one would say, as that of any per- 
 son of the country-gentleman class in Britain, living 
 at the beginning of this century, could be estab- 
 lished. There are, indeed, many characteristics in 
 the hagiologic literature bearing an analogy to 
 modern social habits so close as to be almost 
 ludicrous ; and it is not easy to deal with these 
 conditions of a very distant age, brought to us as 
 they are through the vehicle of a language which is 
 neither classical nor vernacular, but conventional — 
 the corrupt Latin in which the biographers of the 
 saints found it convenient to write. It would appear 
 that when he was in Ireland, St Columba kept his 
 carriage, and the loss of the lynch-pin on one oc- 
 casion is connected with a notable miracle. Dr 
 Reeves, as appropriate to this, remarks that "the 
 memoirs of St Patrick in the Book of Armagh 
 make frequent mention of his chariot, and even 
 name his driver." It is difficult to suppose such a 
 vehicle ever becoming available in lona ; but there 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 387 
 
 Columba seems to have been provided with abund- 
 ance of vessels, and he could send for a friend, in 
 the way in which MacGillicallum's " carriage," in the 
 form of a boat, was sent for Johnson and BoswelL 
 
 There are many other things in these, books 
 which have a sound more familiar to us than any 
 sense which they really convey. Here the saint 
 blesses the store of a "homo plebeius cum uxore 
 et filiis" — a poor man with a wife and family — a 
 term expressively known in this day among all who 
 have to deal with the condition of their fellow-men, 
 from the chancellor of the exchequer to the reliev- 
 ing-officer. In the same chapter we are told " de 
 quodam viro divite tenacissimo "— of a very hard- 
 fisted rich fellow-^a term thoroughly significant in 
 civilised times. He is doomed, by the way, to 
 become bankrupt, and fall into such poverty that 
 his offspring will be found dead in a ditch — a fate 
 also intelligible in the nineteenth century. In 
 another place we have among the saint's suitors 
 "plebeius pauperrinlius, qui in ea habitabat regione 
 quae Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The 
 "Stagnum Aporicum" is Lochaber; so here we 
 have a pauper from the neighbourhood of Lochaber 
 — a designation which I take to be familiarly known 
 at "the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the 
 Poor in Scotland." We are told, too,, of the saint 
 being at a plebeian feast, and of a plebeius in the 
 island of Raghery quarrelling with his wife. 
 
388 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 The thoughtful student will find a more distin- 
 guished analogy with the habits of later civilisation 
 in the literature of these early churchmen. The 
 subject of the introduction of letters into Ireland, 
 and the very early literature of that country, is too 
 large to be handled here. It is certain that in 
 Columba's era, the middle of the sixth century, 
 books were written and used in Ireland. The re- 
 spect paid to a book in that age was something be- 
 yond that of the most ardent book-hiinter. Many 
 of the most exciting of the saintly miracles have 
 for. their end; the preservation of a book in fire or 
 in water. The custody of the Book of Armagh, 
 containing St Patrick's canons, was a great hered- 
 itary office ; and the princely munificence which 
 piiovided the book with a suitable case or, shrine 
 in the tenth century is recorded in Irish history. 
 Besides their costly shriines already referred to, 
 these books often had for an outer covering a 
 bag or satchel, in which the sacred deposit was 
 carried from place to place. The heart must be 
 dead to all natural sensations that does not sym- 
 pathise with Dr Reeves in the following triumphant 
 announcement : — 
 
 "Of leather cases the cover of the Book of 
 Armagh is the most interesting example now re- 
 maining. It .came, together, with its inestimable 
 enclosure, into the writer's possession at the end of 
 1853, and is now lying before him. It is formed 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 389 
 
 of a single piece of strong leather, 36 inches long 
 and 12 broad, folded in such a way as to form a 
 six-sided case 12 inches long, 12^ broad, and 254^, 
 thick, having a flap, which doubles over in front, 
 and is furnished with a' rude lock and eight staples, 
 admitted through perforations in the flap, for shdrt 
 iron rods to enter and meet at the lock. The whole 
 outer Surface, which has become perfectly black 
 from age, is covered with figures and interfacings 
 of the Irish pattern in relief, which appear to have 
 been produced by subjecting the leather, in a damp 
 state, before it was folded, to pressure upon' a block 
 of the whole size, having a depressed pattern, and 
 allowing it to remain until the impression became 
 indelible." 
 
 A pleasing peculiarity in the personal habits of 
 these recliises is their frequent communion with 
 birds and the gentler kind of beasts. Their legend- 
 ary histories speak of these animals as ipt mediums 
 of vaticination and miraculous intervention ; but we 
 must be content, in the present age, to suppose that 
 their frequent appearance, their familiar intercourse 
 with the saints, and the quaint and amiable inci- 
 dents in which they figure, are in reality character- 
 istic memorials of the kindly feelings and the in- 
 nocent pursuits natural to men of gentle dispbsition 
 and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives 
 directions to a brother to be on the watch at a 
 certain point in the island of lona, for there, by 
 
390 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork 
 will alight and drop down, utterly fatigued with her 
 journey across the ocean. That stork the brother 
 is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the 
 nearest house, and feed and tend for three days, 
 after which she will take wing and fly away to the 
 sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had 
 wandered. And this the brother is to do because 
 the bird is a guest from their own beloved native 
 land. The brother departs, and returns at the 
 proper time. Columba asks no questions — he 
 knows what has taken place, and commends the 
 obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered 
 and tended the wanderer. 
 
 Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of 
 intercourse with certain cranes. They went about 
 in a large body, destroying the corn in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint 
 went and delivered on oration to them on the 
 unreasonablieness of their conduct, and forthwith, 
 penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into 
 the air and went their way. " St Cuthbert's ducks " 
 acquired: a long celebrity. When that reverenced 
 ascetic went to take up his residence in the wave- 
 bounded sqlitude of the Fame Islands, he found 
 the solan-geese there imbued with the wild habits 
 common to their storm-nurturSd race, and totally 
 unconscious of. the civilisation and refinement of 
 their kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 391 
 
 at children and dogs. St Cuthbert tamed them 
 through his miraculous powers, and made them 
 as obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled. 
 The geese went before him in regular platoons, 
 following the word of command, and doing what 
 he ordered — whether it might be the most ordinary 
 act of the feathered biped, or some mighty miracle. 
 Under his successors their conduct seems to have 
 been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar ; 
 for we are told that they built their nests on the 
 altar, and around the altar, a,nd in all the houses 
 of the island ; farther, that, during the celebration 
 of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest 
 and his assistants with their bills. It is curious 
 enough that the miraculous education of these birds 
 makes its appearance in a Scottish legal or official 
 document at the close of the fifteenth century. It 
 is an instrument recording an attestation to the 
 enormous value of the down of these renowned 
 birds ; and seems, indeed, to be an advertisement 
 or puff by merchants dealing in the ware, though 
 its ponderous Latin ity is in curious contrast with 
 the neat examples of that kind of literature to 
 which we are accustomed in these days;^ 
 
 One of the prettiest of the stories about birds is 
 divided between St Serf, the founder of a monastery 
 in Loch Leven,' and St Kentigern, the patron of 
 
 ^ " Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Guthberti." — Spalding Club. 
 
392 .Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Glasgow, where he is better known as St MungOi 
 Kentigern was one among a parcel of neophyte 
 boys whom the worthy old Serf, or Servarius, was 
 perfecting in the knowledge of the truth. Their 
 teacher had a feathered pet — " quaedam a.vicula quae 
 vulgo ob ruborem corpusculi rubisca nuncupatur " — 
 a robin-redbreast, in fact, an animal whose good for- 
 tune it is never to be mentioned without some 
 kindly reference to his universal popularity, and 
 the decoration which renders him so easily recog- 
 nised wherever he appears. St Serfs, robin was a 
 wonderful bird ; he not only took food from his 
 master's hand and pecked about him according to 
 the fashion of tame and familiar birds, but took a 
 lively interest in his devotions and studies by flap- 
 ping his wings arid crowing in his own little way, 
 so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint. 
 The old man enjoyed this extremely ; and his bio- 
 grapher, with more geniality than hagiographers 
 usually show, sympathises with this innocent re- 
 creation, applying the example of the bow that 
 was not always bent, in a manner suggestive of 
 suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted 
 with profane letters. One day, when the saint 
 had retired to his devotions, the boys, amu.sed 
 themselves with his little , pet ; and a struggle 
 arising among them for its possession, the head 
 was torn from the body — altogether a natural in- 
 cident. Thereupon, says the narrator, fear was 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 393 
 
 turned to grief, and the avenging birch — " plagas 
 virgarum quae puerorum gravissima tormenta esse 
 Solent" — arose terribly in their sight. It was at 
 this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Ken- 
 tigern — a new boy, apparently — a stranger who had 
 not taken in good-fellowship to the rest of the 
 school, but was addicted to solitary meditation, 
 entered the guilty conclave. Their course was 
 taken — they threw the fragments of the bird into 
 his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the 
 crew are awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting 
 of his wrath. The consecrated youth, however, 
 fitting the severed parts to each other, signs the 
 crosSj raises- his pure hands to heaven, and breathes 
 an appropriate prayer — ^when lo ! robin lifts his little 
 head, -expands his wings, and hops away to meet 
 his master. In the eucharistic office of St Ken- 
 tigern's day, this event, ' along with the restoration 
 to life of a meritorious cook, and other miracles, 
 inspired a canticle which, for long subsequent ages, 
 was exultinglysung by the choristers in the saint's 
 own cathedral of Glasgow, thus : — 
 
 " Garrit ales pernecatus. 
 Cocus est resuscitatus. 
 Salit vervex trucidatus 
 Amputate capite." 
 
 A bird proper; on the shield argent of the city of 
 Glasgow; has been identified with the resuscitated pet 
 of the patron saint. The tree on which it is there 
 
394 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 perched is a commemoration of .another of the 
 saint's miracles. In a time of frost and snow his 
 enemies had extinguished his fire ; but immediately- 
 drawing on the miraculous resources ever at the 
 command of his class on such emergencies, he 
 breathed fire into a frozen branch from the forest ; 
 and it was centuries afterwards attested that the 
 green branches of that forest made excellent fire- 
 wood. 
 
 Another element in the blazon of the Venice of 
 the west is a fish, laid across the stem of the tree, 
 "in base," as the heralds say, but not, as generally 
 depicted, conformable either to their science or that 
 of the ichthyologist. This fish holds in its mouth 
 something like a dish- — ^in reality a ring — and thus 
 commemorates a miraculous feat of the same saint, 
 which has found its: way into the romances of the 
 juvenile portion of the reading public, where it is a 
 standard nuisance. Queen Cadyow, whose conduct 
 was of such a character that it is wonderful how 
 any respectable saint could have prevailed on him- 
 self to serve her, gives her bridal ring to a paramour. 
 Her husband lures the rival away to the bank of 
 the Clyde, to sleep after the fatigues of the chase, 
 and there, furtively removing the ring, pitches it 
 into the river. The reader knows the result by 
 instinct. St .' Kentigerh, appealed to, directs the 
 first salmon that can be caught in the Clyde to be 
 opened, and there, of course, is the ring in the 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 395 
 
 stomach. This miracle is as common in the " Acta 
 Sanctorum " as in the juvenile romances. It served 
 St Nathalan in such a manner as to preclude the 
 supposition that the saint had invoked it on the 
 occasion. He locked himself into iron chains, and 
 threw their key into the river Dee, in order that he 
 might be unable to open the fetterlock before he 
 had made a pilgrimage to the tombs of St Peter 
 and St Paul ; but the water did its duty, and re- 
 stored the key in the stomach of a fish. 
 
 We have naturally many fishing anecdotes con- 
 nected with the northern saints. Columba is de- 
 scribed as out a-fishing one day with a parcel of his 
 disciples, who are characterised as "strenui pisca- 
 tores," a term which would be highly applicable to 
 many a Waltonian of the present day. The saint; 
 desirous of affording them a pleasant surprise, di- 
 rects them to cast their net where a wonderful fish 
 was prepared for them ; and they drag out an 
 '■ esox " (whatever that may mean) of wonderful 
 size. 
 
 Some of the inhabitants of the deep familiar, to 
 these saints were animals of a formidable kind. 
 Columba and a band of his disciples are going to 
 cross the river Ness, when they, meet. those, who 
 bear on their shoulders the body of one whoj endea- 
 vouring to swim across the same river, had been 
 bitten to death by a monster of the deep. The 
 saint, in the face of this, gloomy procession, re- 
 
396 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 quires that one of his disciples shall swim across 
 the Ness, and bring over a boat which is on the 
 other side. A disciple named Mocumin, whom the 
 saint had miraculously cured of z. bleeding of the 
 nose, confident in the protecting power of his mas- 
 ter, pulls off all his clothes save his tunica (what- 
 ever that may be — coat, kilt, or leathern shirt), and 
 takes to the water. The monster, who is reposing 
 deep down in the stillness of the profoundest pool, 
 hears the stir of the water above, and is seen to rise 
 with a splash on the surface, and make with dis- 
 tended jaws for the swimmer. ' The saint, of course, 
 orders the beast back just at the moment when all 
 seemed over, and is instantly obeyed. The charac- 
 teristics of the monster could not be more closely 
 identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had 
 the incident been narrated in Egypt or America. 
 
 Adventures with such monsters in our northern 
 waters supply many of the triuniphs attributed to 
 the saints. St Colman of Drumore actually ex- 
 tracted a young girl alive from the stomach of an 
 " aquetalis bestia." She had been swallowed while 
 standing on the edge of a lake, "camisiam suam 
 lavantem " — washing her cheihise, poor simple soul. 
 St Molua saw a monster, of the size of a large boat, 
 in pursuit of two boys swimming unconscious of 
 danger in a lake in 'the county of Monaghan. He 
 showed good worldly sense and presence of mind 
 on the occasion ; for, instead of alarming them with 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 397 
 
 an announcement of their perilous condition, he 
 called out to them to try a race and see which 
 would reach the bank first. The beast, balked of 
 his prey, took in good part an admonition by the 
 saint, and returned no more to frighten boys. 
 
 From fishes and aquatic monsters the law of asso- 
 ciation naturally leads us to the waters themselves. 
 There are throughout the United Kingdom multi- 
 tudes of wells, still bearing the names of the saints 
 to whom they were dedicated. The legends of 
 miracles performed by their waters, through the 
 intercession of their special saints, are countless. 
 It is, perhaps, because cures effected by the use 
 of waters may be accounted for otherwise , than by 
 supernatural intervention, that modern writers of 
 the old faith speak with less reserve of the miracles 
 at fountains than of the others they have to record, 
 and even bring them down to modern times. Many 
 of them may be found recorded in his usual slip- 
 shod manner in the amiable pages of Butler — as, 
 for instance, in the life of St Winfrid (November 
 3), where we are told how " Roger Whetstone, a 
 Quaker, near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell, 
 was cured of an inveterate lameness and palsy by 
 which he was converted to the Catholic faith." 
 Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities 
 and advanced opinions, are still haunted by people 
 who believe them to be endbw/ed with supernatural 
 healing virtues. It is in Romish Ireland, of course, 
 
398 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 that this beUef has its most legitimate seat ; but 
 even in the most orthodoxly-Presbyterian districts 
 of Scotland, a lingering dubious trust in the healing 
 virtues of sanctified fountains has given much per- 
 plexity to the clergy. 
 
 Some of these fountains are in caverns, and if in 
 any one of these the well falls into a rude-hewn 
 basin like a font, we may be sure that a hermit 
 frequented the cave, and that it was the place of 
 worship of early converts. Such a cave was the 
 hiding-place, after the '45, of the worthy single- 
 minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the 
 Baron of Bradwardine. It is entered by a small 
 orifice like a fox's hole, in the face of the rugged 
 cliffs which front the German Ocean near Troup- 
 head. Gradually it rises to a noble arched cavern, 
 at the end of which is the font cut into the stone, 
 where it would catch the outpourings of a small 
 spring. When I saw it long years ago, it was 
 filled with clear living water, which, save when it 
 had been the frugal drink of the poor Jacobite 
 refugee, had probably been scarcely disturbed since 
 the early day when heathen men and women went 
 thither to throw off their idolatry and enter the 
 pale of Christendom. The unnoticeable smallness 
 of many of these consecrated wells makes their very 
 reminiscence and still semi-sacred character all the 
 more remarkable. The stranger in Ireland or the 
 Highlands of Scotland hears rumours of a distin- 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 399 
 
 guished well miles on miles off. He thinks he 
 will find an ancient edifice over it, or some other 
 conspicuous adjunct. Nothing of the kind — he has 
 been lured all that distance over rock and bog to 
 see a tiny spring bubbling out of the rock, such 
 as he may see hundreds of in a tolerable walk 
 any day. Yet, if he search in old topographical 
 authorities,; he will find that the little well has 
 ever been an important feature of the district — 
 that, century after century, it has been unforgotten ; 
 and, with diligence, he may perhaps trace it to some 
 incident in the life of the saint, dead more than 
 1200 years ago, whose name it bears. Highlanders 
 still make pilgrimages to drink the waters of such 
 fountains, which they judiciously mix with the other 
 aqua to which they are attached. They sometimes 
 mimic the spirit of the old pilgrimage, by leaving 
 behind them an offering at the fountain. I have 
 seen such offerings by the brink of remote High- 
 land springs, as well as in Ireland. The market 
 value of them would not afford an alarming esti- 
 mate of the intensity of the superstition still linger- 
 ing in this form in the land. The logic of the 
 depositors probably suggests, that the spiritual 
 guardians of the fountain, though amenable to 
 flattery and propitiation by gift, are not really 
 well informed about the market value of worldly 
 chattels, and are easily put off with rubbish. 
 A historical inquiry into the worship or consecra- 
 
4O0 Bdok-Club Literature. 
 
 tion of wells and other waters would be interesting. 
 In countries near the tropics, where sandy deserts 
 prevail, a well must ever have been a thing of mo- 
 mentous importance ; and we find among the tribes 
 of Israel the digging down a well spoken of as the 
 climax of reckless, heartless, and awful desttuctive- 
 ness. To find, however, how in watery Ireland and 
 Scotland a mere dribblet of the element so generally 
 abounding should have been an object of veneration 
 for centuries, we must look to something beyond 
 physical wants and their supply. 
 
 The principal cause of the sanctification of springs 
 must, of coiirse, be explained by the first of Chris- 
 tian ordinances. The spring close by the dwelling 
 or cell of the saint — the spring on account of which 
 he probably, selected the centre of his mission — had 
 not only washed the forefsithers of the district from 
 the stain of primeval heathenism, but had applied 
 the visible ■ 'sign by which all, from generation to 
 generation, had been admitted into the bosorti' of 
 the Church. This might seem to aiford a cause 
 sufficient in itself for the eiffect, yet it appears to 
 have beeh aided by other caused more recondite 
 and mysterious. Notwithstanding' all the trash 
 talked about Druids and other persons of this 
 kind, we know extremely little of the heathenism 
 of the British Isles. The little that we do know 
 is learned from the meagre notices which the biog- 
 raphers of the saints have furnished of that which 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 401 
 
 the saints superseded. It is not their function to 
 commemorate the abominations of heathenism ; 
 they, would rather bury it in eternal oblivion — 
 premat nox alia — but they cannot entirely tell the 
 triumphs of their spiritual heroes without some 
 reference, however faint, to the conquered enemies. 
 The earliest recorded conflicts between the new 
 and the old creed are connected with fountains. In 
 one page of the Life of Columba we find the saint, 
 on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a 
 desert place where no water was, striking the rock 
 like Moses, and drawing forth a rill, which remained 
 in perennial existence — a fountain su;rrounded by a 
 special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a 
 well in the hands of the Magi. They had put a 
 demon of theirs into it to such effect, that any 
 unfortunate person washing hinjself in the well or 
 drinking of its water, was forthwith stricken with 
 paralysis, or leprosiy, or blindness of an eye, or some 
 other corporeal calamity. The malignant powers 
 with which they had inspired this .foi;midable well 
 spread fap around the fear of the Magi, and conse- 
 quently their influence. But the Christian mission- 
 aries were to show a power of a different kind — a 
 power of beneficence, excelling and destroying the 
 power of ' malignity. The process adopted , is fully 
 described. The saint^ after, a suitable invocation, 
 washed his hands and feet in 'the water, and then 
 drank of it with his disciples. Thp Magi looked 
 
 2 c 
 
402 Boek-Club Literature. 
 
 on with a malignant smile to see the accursed well 
 produce its usual effect; but the saint and his fol- 
 lowers came away uninjured : the demon was driven 
 out of the well, and it became ever afterwards a 
 holy fountain, curing many of their infirmities. 
 Another miracle, bearing against the Magi, intro- 
 duces us to one of their number by name, and 
 gives a little of his domestic history. His name 
 is Broichan, and he is ' tutor to Brud, king of the 
 Picts, with whom he dwells on the banks of the 
 Ness. It might have relieved the mind of the 
 historical inquirer to be told that Brud built for 
 himself the remarkable vitrified fort of Craig- 
 Phadric, which rises high above the Ness, and to 
 be informed of the manner in which its calcined 
 rampart was constructed ; but nothing is said on 
 the subject, and Craig-Phadric stands on its own 
 isolated merits, still to be guessed at, without one 
 tangible word out of record or history to help any 
 theory! about its object or construction home to a 
 conclusion. One is free, however, to imagine Brud, 
 the heathen king of the' Picts, living on the scarped 
 top of the hill, in a lodging of wattled or wooden 
 houses, surrounded by a rampart of stones fused 
 by fire, as the only cement then known. Such we 
 may suppose to havd: been the "domus fegia," 
 whence the saint walked out in a very bad humour 
 to the river Ness, from the pebbles of which he 
 selected one white stone, to be turned to an im- 
 
The Early Northern Saints. 403 
 
 portant use. Broichan, the Magus, had in his pos- 
 session a female slave from Ireland. Columba, who 
 seems to have held with him such intercourse as 
 a missionary to the Chocktaws might have with 
 a great medicine - man, desired that the Magus 
 should manumit the woman, for what reason we 
 are not distinctly told ; but it is easy to suppose 
 strong grounds for intervention when a Christian 
 missionary finds a woman, of his own country and 
 creed, the slave of a heathen priest. Columba's 
 request was refused. Losing patience, he had 
 resort to threats ; and at length, driven to his ulti- 
 matum, he denounced death to Broichan if the slave 
 were not released before his own return to Ireland. 
 Columba told his disciples to expect two messen- 
 gers to come from the, king to tell of the sudden 
 and critical illness of Broichan. The messengers 
 rushed in immediately after to claim the saint's 
 intervention. Broichan had been suddenly stricken 
 by an angel sent for the purpose; and as if he had 
 been taking his dram in a modern gin-palace^ we 
 are told that the drinking-glass, or glass drinking- 
 vessel, "vitrea bibera," which he was conveying to 
 his lips, was smashed in pieces, and he himself 
 seized with deadly sickness. Columba sends the 
 consecrated pebble,^ with a prescription that the 
 water in which it is dipped is to be drunk. 
 If, before he drinks, Broichan releases his slave, 
 he is to recover ; if not^ he dies- The Magus com- l 
 
404 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 plies, and is saved. The consecrated stone, which 
 had the quality of floating in water like a nut, 
 was afterwards, as we are told, preserved in the 
 treasury of the king of the Picts. It has been lost to 
 the world, along with the saint's white robe and his 
 consecrated banner, both of which performed mir- 
 acles after his death. But the sanitary influence 
 attributed to the water in which consecrated stones 
 have been dipped, is a superstition scarcely yet up- 
 rooted in Scotland. 
 
 Sertnona m StoitEg. 
 
 NE of the clubs has lately deviated from 
 the printing of letterpress, which is the 
 established function of clubs, into pic- 
 torial art. As it threatens to repeat 
 the act on a larger scale, it is proposed to take a 
 glance at the result already afforded, in order that 
 it may be seen whether it is a failure, or a success 
 opening up a new vein for club enterprise. In dis- 
 tributing a set of pictorial prints arhong its mem- 
 bers, the club in question may be supposed .to have 
 invaded the art-unions : but its course is in another 
 direction, since its pictures are entirely subservient 
 to archaeology. The innovator in question is the 
 Spalding Club, which has already distributed among 
 its adherents a collection of portraits of the sculp- 
 
Sermons in Stones. 405 
 
 tured stones in Scotland, and now proposes to do 
 the same by the early architectural remains of the 
 north. In giving effect to such a design, it will 
 produce something like Dugdale's Monasticon and 
 the great English county histories. 
 
 If that which is to be done shall rival that which 
 the club has achieved, it will be worthy of all 
 honour. No one can open the book of The Sculp- 
 tured Stones without being almost overwhelmed 
 with astonishment at the reflection that they are 
 not monuments excavated in Egypt, or Syria, or 
 Mexico, but have stood before the light of day in 
 village churchyards, or in marketplaces, or by way- 
 sides throughout our own country. As you pass 
 on, the eye becomes almost tired with the endless 
 succession of grim and ghastly human figures — of 
 distorted limbs — of preternatural beasts, birds, and 
 fishes — of dragons, centaurs, and intertwined snakes 
 — of uncouth vehicles, and warlike instruments, and 
 mystic - looking symbols — of chains of interlaced 
 knots and complex zigzags, all so crowding on 
 each other that the tired eye feels as if it had run 
 through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony 
 or Faust Sabbaths. When this field of investiga- 
 tion and speculation is surveyed in all its affluence, 
 one is not surprised to find that it has been taken 
 in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the 
 skilful appliance of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, 
 Celtic, and classical phraseology, make nonsense 
 
406 Book^Club Literature. 
 
 sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So, 
 while Rusticus will point out to you "the auld- 
 fashioned standin' stane" — on which he tells you 
 that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair 
 of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with 
 a long snout, and a man driving a gig, — Mr Urban 
 will describe to you " a hieroglyphed monolith " in 
 the terms following : — 
 
 " The Buddhist triad is conspicuously symbolised 
 by wha:t the peasantry call a pair of spectacles. It 
 consists of two circles, of which the one, having its 
 radius i^ inch wider than the other, is evidently 
 Buddha, the spiritual or divine intellectual essence 
 of the world, or the efficient underived source of 
 all; the other is Dharma, the material essence of 
 the world— the plastic derivative cause. The, liga- 
 men connecting them together, completes the sacred 
 triad with the Sangha derived from and '■ composed 
 of the two others. Here, therefore, is symbolised 
 the collective energy of spirit and matter in the 
 state of action, or the embryotic creation, the type 
 and sum of all specific forms, spotltaneously evolved 
 from the union of Buddha and Bharma. The cres- 
 cent, likened by the vulgar-minded peasantry: to a 
 cocked hat, is the embodiment of the all-J)ervading 
 •celestial influence ; and the decorated sceptres or 
 sacred wands of office, laid across it at the mystic 
 angle of forty-five degrees, represent the compre- 
 hensive discipline and cosrnopolite authority of the 
 
Sermons in Stones. 407 
 
 conquering Sarsaswete. The figure of the elephant 
 — undoubted evidence of the oriental origin of this 
 monoglyph^ — represents the embryo of organised 
 matter ; while in the chariot of the sun the never- 
 dying Inis na Bhfiodhlhadth threads the sacred 
 labyrinth, waving a branch of the Mimosa serisha, 
 which has been dipped in a sacred river, and dried 
 beneath the influence of Osiris. The figures called 
 a comb and a looking-glass are the lingal emblems 
 of the sacred Phallic worship. The whole hiero- 
 graph thus combines, in an extremely simple, and 
 instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis, Osiris, 
 Uphon, and Isis, Pha:llos, Pater ^ther, and Mater 
 Terra, Lingam and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sar- 
 saswete, with their Saktes, Yang and Yiri, Padwa- 
 devi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna 
 •and Mumbo Jumbo." 
 
 The honest transcripts in the club book clear 
 away: a great deal of that unknown which is so 
 convertible into the magnificent. It was extremely 
 perplexing to understand that the elephant was 
 ^profusely represented upon memorials familiar to 
 the eyes of the inhabitants of Scotland, at a period, 
 if we might credit some theories, anterior to the 
 time when ; Roman soldiers were appalled in the 
 Punic war by the^ sudden apparition of unknown 
 animals of monstrous size and preternatural strength. 
 The whole flobd of 1 oriental theory was let; loose by 
 this evidence: of familiarity #ith the usages of Hin- 
 
4o8 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 dostan^ But it is pretty evident, when we inspect 
 him closely, that the animal, though a strange beast 
 of some peculiar conventional type, is no elephant. 
 That spiral winding-up of his snout, which passed 
 for a trunk, is a characteristic refuge of embryo art, 
 repeated upon other parts of the animal. It is neces- 
 sitated by the difficulty which a primitive artist feels 
 in bringing out the form of an extremity, whatever 
 it may be — snout, horn, or hoof He finds that the 
 easiest termination he can make is a- whirl, and he 
 makes it accordingly. Thus the noses, the tails, 
 the feet of the characteristic monster of the sculp- 
 tured stones, all end in a whirl, as the final letter 
 of an accomplishe*d and dashing penman ends in a 
 flourish. The same difficulty is met in repeated 
 instances on these stones by another ingenious re- 
 source. Animals are united or twined together by 
 noses or tails, to enable the artist to escape the 
 difficulty of executing the extremities of each sep- 
 arately. 
 
 There is a propensity to believe that whatever is 
 old must have something holy and mysterious about 
 it. It is difficult to suppose that, in making an 
 ornament, men who would be so venerable, were 
 they alive now, as our ancestors of many centuries 
 ago, can have been in the slightest degree affected 
 by the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. 
 Hence there is never a quaint Gothic decoration, 
 floral or animal, but it must be symbolic of some 
 
Sermons in Stones. 409 
 
 great mystery. So the reticulated and geometrical 
 tracery on the sculptured stones has been invested 
 with mythic attributes, under such names as "the 
 Runic Knot." It has been counted symbolical of 
 a mysterious worship or creed, and has been asso- 
 ciated with Druids and other respectable, but not 
 very palpable, personages.^ 
 
 Good theories are such a rarity in the antiquarian 
 world, that it is a luxury to find one which, in refer- 
 ence to this sort of decoration, merits that character. 
 The buildings, both ecclesiastical and civil, of the 
 early Christians of the North were, as we have seen, 
 made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, there- 
 fore, of the architectural decorator took the direction 
 of the variations in basket-work. We know that in 
 the Gothic age those forms which were found the 
 most endurable and graceful in which stone could 
 be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms 
 which guided the carver and the painter ; so that all 
 wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination 
 of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of 
 
 ^ It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between some of 
 the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and that 
 of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very hand- 
 some country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr 
 Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the 
 native Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House— so called, doubt- 
 less, in commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on mis- 
 sionaries and others coming within Wordsworth's description of 
 
 "A being not too wise and good 
 For human nature's daily food." 
 
4IO Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Gothic architecture. It would only, then, be a pro- 
 totype of an established phenomenon were it to be 
 found that the sculptor of an earlier age adopted 
 the decorations developed by the skilful platting of 
 withes or wattles ; and accordingly, this is just the 
 character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on 
 the sculptured stones.^ But, however these may 
 have been istiggested, they show the work of the 
 undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements 
 say, " a varied assortment of the most elegant and 
 attractive patterns." 
 
 Every one who in future attempts to unravel the 
 mystery of these primitive sculptures must not only 
 in gratitude but in common justice pay homage to 
 the services of Mr John Stuart, the secretary of the 
 Antiquai'ies' Society of Scotland, to whose learning 
 and zeal he owes the; collective means of examining 
 them. It will interest many to know that Mr 
 Stuart has been at work again, and has a second 
 collection of transcripts, . in some respects even 
 more instructive than the first. These will show, 
 for instance, the point of junction between the 
 sculptures of the East and of the West, which, in 
 their extreme special features, are widely unlike 
 each other. 
 
 ' 1 See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the 
 Early" 'Interlaced' Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured 
 Stones of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. 
 French of Bolton. " ' Privately printed. 
 
Sermons in Stones. 411 
 
 In the mean time, as the. reader is perhaps tired 
 of all this talk about books, and I would fain part 
 with, him in good humour, I venture to, take him 
 on an imaginary ramble in the wilds of Argyll- 
 shire, in search of specimens of ancient native 
 sculpturej that he may have an opportunity of 
 noticing how much has yet to be gleaned off this 
 stony field. So we are off together, on a fresh 
 summer morning, along the banks of the Crinan 
 Canal, until we reach the road which turns south- 
 ward to Loch Swin and Taivalich. After ascend- 
 ing so far, we strike off by a scarcely discernible 
 track, and climb upwards among the curiously 
 broken mountains of South Knapdale. When we 
 are high enough up we look on the other side of 
 the first ridge, and see the brown heather dappled 
 with tiny lakes, looking like molten silver dropped 
 into their hollows ; while far below, one of the 
 countless branches of Loch Swin winds through a 
 narrow inlet, among rocks cushioned to the water's 
 edge with deep ' green foliage. We are not to de- 
 scend to the region of lake and woodland, betrayed 
 by this glimpse, but' to keep the wilder upland ; 
 and at last, in a secluded hollow near the small 
 tarn called Lochcolissor, we reach a deserted vil- 
 lage — a collection of roofless stone houses, looking, 
 if one judged from mere externals, as if they might 
 in their early days ,have given shelter to Columba 
 or Oran. In the centre of this group of domestic 
 
412 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 ruins is an affluent fountain of the clearest water. 
 Standing over it is the object of our search — a tall, 
 grey, profusely -lichened stone. At first it seems 
 amorphous, as geologists say ; but a closer view 
 discloses on the one side a cross incised, on the 
 other a network of floral decorations in relief. To 
 trace these in their completeness, it would be neces- 
 sary to accomplish the not easy task of removing 
 the coating of lichen-; and, by the way, if adepts 
 in the cryptogamic department of botany shall 
 succeed in finding a test of the precise age of those 
 lichens, which they believe they have proved to be 
 the growth of centuries, a key of the most valuable 
 kind will be obtained for discovering the age of 
 stone monuments.^ 
 
 Turn now in another direction. At the head of 
 Loch Fyne, near Dunderar, the grim tower of the 
 Macnaughtons— which, from some decorations on 
 it, looks hugely like as if it had been built in the 
 seventeenth century with the stones of an old 
 church — we find a tuft of trees with a dyke round 
 it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, 
 though it may not have been recently opened ; the 
 surface is uneven, and several rough stones, which 
 
 ^ Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can find 
 employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at a 
 "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruti- 
 culose, and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in 
 the 22d volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin- 
 burgh. 
 
Sermons in Stones. 4 1 3 
 
 may have been placed there at any time, stick 
 through the earth. These, after a deliberate in- 
 spection, are found to have nothing of a sculptural 
 character. But a small piece of rounded stone ap- 
 pears above the grass, and a little grubbing dis- 
 closes a font, faintly decorated with some primitive 
 fluting, on which a stone-mason would look with 
 much scorn, and a scratching of a galley, the sym- 
 bol of the Argyll family, or some other of the races 
 descended from ancient sea-kings. This gives en- 
 couragement, and a sharper glance around betrays 
 a singular-looking rounded headstone, in which are 
 two crescent-shaped holes. There are correspond- 
 ing holes on the portion under the sod, which thus 
 completes the rounded head of an ancient Scoto- 
 Irish cross. The next point is to find the shaft — 
 it lies not far off, deep in the turf And when we 
 take the grass and moss from its face, it discloses 
 some extremely curious quadrilateral decorations, 
 quite peculiar^ and not in conformity with any type 
 of form which would enable its date to be guessed 
 at within a century or two of the reality. 
 
 Passing through the rich woods of Ardkinglas, in 
 a few miles we reach the burying-ground; called of 
 old Kilmaglas, but now the well-kept churchyard, 
 in which stands the modern church of Strachur. 
 There are many who will remember the white 
 house glimmering through the trees, and lament 
 that memory is now all that it contains for them. 
 
414 Book-Club Literature. 
 
 Here are several curious specimens of sculpture. 
 Some stones, not of the oldest type, have the: 
 crossed sword, symbolical alike of the warrior 
 character of the dead and the religion of peace 
 in which he rests. There is one with a figure 
 in full chain-armour ; and others, again, of an older 
 date, ornamented with the geometric reticulations 
 already discussed. Descending a few miles farther, 
 in the small fertile delta of the Lachlan, and over- 
 shadowed almost by the old square castle of the 
 M'Lachlans, there is a bushy enclosure which may 
 be identified as the old burial-place of Kilmory. 
 A large block of hewn stone, with a square hole in 
 it, sets one in search of the cross of which it was the 
 socket. This is found in the grass, sadly mutilated, 
 but can be recognised by the stumps of the branches 
 which once exfoliated into its circular head. Beside 
 it lies a flat stone, on which a sword is surrounded 
 by graceful floral sculpture. 
 
 Let us cross over again to the valley perforated 
 by Loch Crinan. Northward of the canal there 
 is a remarkable alluvial district, through which, 
 although it seems crowded with steep mountain 
 summits, one can travel over many a mile of level 
 turf From this soil the hills and rocks rise with 
 extreme abruptness, in ridges at the border of the 
 plain, and in isolated peaks here and there through- 
 out its flat alluvial surface. Conspicuous, in a 
 minor degree, is a great barrow like a pyramid, 
 
Sermons in Stones, 41 5 
 
 with a chamber roofed with long stones in its 
 centre. Near it is one of those circles of rough 
 stones called Druidical, and farther on there is 
 another, and then another ; some of them tall pil- 
 lars, others merely peeping above ground. They 
 literally people the plain. This must have been a 
 busy neighbourhood, whatever sort of work it may 
 have been that went on around these untooled 
 fragments of the living rock, which have so dis- 
 tracted our antiquaries in later centuries. If they 
 were the means or the object of any kind of 
 heathen worship, then the existence close beside 
 them of the vestiges of early Christianity may be 
 set down as an illustration of the well-known his- 
 torical opinion, that the first Christian missionaries, 
 instead of breaking the idols and reviling the super- 
 stitions of those whom thgy went to convert, pro- 
 fessed to bring a new sanctity to their sacred places, 
 and endeavoured to turn their impure faith, with 
 the least possible violence, into the path of purity. 
 
 Our next trial is at Kilmichael, about three miles 
 from Loch Gilp. The churchyard is extremely? 
 fruitful in sculptured stones of various kinds — 
 some floral, others geometrical, with wild beasts, 
 monsters, and human figures. One of them was 
 pointed out as the tomb of a member of the house 
 of Campbell, who bore the naOie of Thomas, and 
 was a great bard, and lived in London and other 
 great cities — Thomas Campbell, in short. It seems 
 
41 6 BoohrClub Literature. 
 
 to be true that his ancestors were buried in Kil- 
 michael churchyard, but my informant seemed to 
 struggle with an idea that the stone covered with 
 the sculpture of a far-past century had been really 
 raised to his honour. The next generation will 
 probably assert this as a fact. The genesis of 
 such traditions is curious. The stone called Rob 
 Roy's tomb, which lies beside an ancient font in 
 the churchyard of Balquhidder, is a sculptured 
 stone raised for some one who had probably died 
 in wealth and honour hundreds of years before 
 Rob stole cattle. 
 
 By a slight ascent westward of the alluvial plain 
 we reach Kilmartin, a village with a large modern 
 church. Its graveyard is ; graced with many sculp- 
 tured stones^twenty- five may be counted, con- 
 spicuous for their rich carving and excellent pre- 
 servation. On one or two of the latest in date, 
 there are knightly figures clad in chain-mail. A 
 local antiquary could probably trace these home to 
 some worshipful families in the neighbourhood,, but 
 there are others beyond the i infancy of the oldest 
 authentic pedigrees. While the stones in the east- 
 ern counties are all of extremely remote antiquity, 
 offering no link of connection with later times, 
 these Highland specimens seem to carry their pecu- 
 liarities with modified variations through several 
 centuries into times comparatively late. There are 
 among them stones bearing some types of extreme 
 
Sermons in Stones. 417 
 
 antiquity, and others which undoubtedly proclaim 
 themselves as no older than the fifteenth or six- 
 teenth centuries. It is sometimes a difficult task, 
 in judging of antiquities, to make a sufficient allow- 
 ance for the spirit of imitation. There is nothing 
 certainly more natural than that a new tombstone 
 should be made after the fashion of time-honoured 
 monuments, the pride of the graveyard in which it 
 is to be placed. In Kilmartin there are two decided 
 imitations of the more ancient class of the western 
 sculptured stones. Though the symbols and deco- 
 rations which they bear are of ancient outline, the 
 heavy, and at the same time accurate and workman- 
 like, way in which they are cut, would mark them 
 indubitably as modern, even if the one did not bear 
 the date of 1707, and the other of 17 11. 
 
 But the sun is dropping behind Ben Cruachan 
 and the Jura hills. The time of holiday reading 
 and holiday rambling has come to its end ; and a 
 voice calls the wanderer back to more sedate and 
 methodical pursuits. 
 
 2 D 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aberdeen laird, an, described by 
 
 his wife, lo et seq. 
 Adams, Dr Francis, an eminent 
 
 Greek scholar^ 264 et seq. 
 Adventures of Saints, 396, 397. 
 Advertisements, reading of, 156 et 
 
 seq. — curious historical interest 
 
 of, 160 et seq. 
 Aidan and Columba, 383. 
 Ailbhe, St, and the cranes, 390.' 
 Aibania, a poem^ reprinted by I^y- 
 
 den, ig6. 
 Alexandrian Library, destruction 
 
 of, by fire, 211. • 
 
 Almanacs, as affording profitable 
 
 reading, 155 et seq. 
 Amateur book-hunters, 106 et seq. 
 Ambrosian Library, the, at Milan, 
 
 198. 
 American collections dealing with 
 
 early American history, 189 et 
 
 seq. 
 Americans duplicating old Euro- 
 pean Libraries, 174 — in relatibn 
 
 to art and letters, ib. — combating 
 
 for rarities, 17s — ransacking and 
 
 anatomising private collections, 
 
 178. ' ' ; • ' ' 
 Ancient ' literature, considerable 
 
 amount of, lost, 324. 
 
 Angelo Mai of the Vatican, 229 — 
 recovery by him of Institute of 
 Gaius, 326. 
 
 Annotating of boolis a crime and 
 a virtue, 185 et seq. 
 
 Antiquarianism known as archae- 
 ology. 3- 
 
 Architecture, Church, of the early 
 British Christians, 372. 
 
 Ardsnischen, Pastor of, buying a 
 Greek New Testament, 60. 
 
 Armagh, Book of, 388 et seq. 
 
 Assessed Taxes Department in re- 
 lation to decay of libraries, 192. 
 
 Astor, John Jacob, the bequest of, 
 174. 
 
 Astorian' Library, wealth of the, 
 176 et seq. 
 
 Atticus as a dealer and capitalist 
 publisher, 108 note. 
 
 Attorneys in Norwich, in Norfolk, 
 and in Suif0lk,'i4i etseq. 
 
 Auchinleck Press, account Of, 294 
 et seq. ''' 
 
 Auctioneers : Carfrae, '60 et seq. — 
 Evans, 93 et seq. — anecdote of a 
 Cockney auctioneer, 178. 
 
 Auction -haunter different from 
 prdwler, 88 et seq. 
 
 Authors and compositors, 77 etseq. 
 
420 
 
 Index. 
 
 Bacon commending brevity of old 
 Scots Acts, 146. 
 
 Bailiff, the, and the writ, 136 note. 
 
 Baillet, Adrian, librarian and au- 
 thor of Jugemens des Savans', 
 230 et seq. 
 
 Ballad fabricating, .306;-- :'.-/.-■- .' 
 
 Bannatyne Club, 284 eiseg. — Scott's 
 song for festivities of, 285. 
 
 Barclay, Colonel, a Quaker, anec- 
 dote of, 9 note. 
 
 Bargain hunters and their leanings, 
 162. 
 
 Baskerville, the Birmingham prin- 
 ter, inaccuracy of, 67. 
 
 Bede on the Saints, 379. 
 
 Bentham, words in one sentence of 
 an Act of Parliament couijted by, 
 144. ■-•- - - 
 
 Bethune, Rev. Dr, Waltonian Lib- 
 rary of, 87 et seq. 
 
 Bible, inaccurate editions of, 67 et 
 seq. — old editions comparatively 
 numerous, 218. 
 
 Bibliognoste, definition of, 5 note. 
 
 Bibliographe, definition of,. 5 natu 
 
 Bibliographers,, function of, a cruel 
 one, 237 et seq. — victiinising each 
 other, 242... •, ,.j : ■> , ; M 
 
 Bibliographical Qe.cameroni vari- 
 ous quotations, from, 93, 294 et . 
 seq. 
 
 Bibl,iQgr;ajphies,.i233 et seq. — on 
 special subjects, 23s — those de- 
 voted to the best books, 239. 
 
 Bibliomane, definition of, 5. 
 
 Bibliomania a. diseajse, 13. 
 
 " Bibliqmania," Dibdin's, quotas- 
 tions from, 18.— Ferriar,'s, quota- 
 tion from, 86,. 87 note. . , . . ■ 
 
 Bibliophile, definition of, S- 
 
 Bibliotaphe, , deSnitjon of, 1 5, . 
 
 Bibliothbque bleue, anecdote con- 
 nected with the, 50. 
 
 Bibliuguiancie discussed by Peig- 
 not, 220.. 
 
 " Bill-bopks " of compositors, .79 
 et seq. ,,,■, ■>,,,;■. .,' ' 
 
 Binders, famous, 28. 
 
 Bindings,, "Inchrple" Brewer's loy«. . 
 of, 28r-bindings as rplics, 30. 
 
 Boccaccio, editip prificeps^ of, 91^ 
 cause of its extreme rarity, 92 — 
 sold at the Roxburghe Library 
 sale, ^i,et seq. 
 
 Bodleian Library, origin of, 198. 
 
 Bohemian of literature, 108 et seq. 
 
 Bohun, Edmond, a Jacobite and 
 last English licenser, 208. 
 
 Bollandus, his great work on the 
 Saints, 353 «' ■!■«?• — the persistent 
 labours of his successors, 356. 
 
 Book-caterers, 20 et seq. 
 
 Book-clubs, 243 et seq. — their struc- 
 ture, 251 — advantages of, 255 et 
 seq. — confining their attention to 
 books of non-members, 257 — the 
 Sydenham Club, 265 — the Rox- 
 burghe Club, ib. et seq., &c. — • 
 their gradual growth, 266 et seq. 
 — Dibdin's description of the 
 origin of the Roxburghe Club, 
 267^ — their secrecy, 271 — the Ban- 
 natyne Club, 284 et seq. — book- 
 club men, ib. et seq. — character 
 of their editors, 307, 315 — value 
 of such clubs to history, 309 — 
 their literature, 311 — Camden 
 Club, i^.— Chetham Club, 312 
 — Surtees Club, ib. — Maitland 
 Club,, . ibi.. ^— Spalding Club, ib. 
 — Irish Archaeological and other 
 Clubs, ii. et seq. — purity of text 
 of book-club literature, and con- 
 sequent historical value, 322 et . 
 \s,eq., 327 — as art unions, 404 et 
 :seq. - 
 
 Book-hunters as creators of lib- 
 raries, 168 et seq., 197 — as pre- 
 servers of literature, 205 et seq. — 
 -as. ichijffmiers, 219 — as discover- 
 ers of valuable and curious books, 
 2247rraS'J)bi;arians, 227 et seq. — 
 their clubs, 243 et seq. — various 
 .titles of^ $■ S — ^vision, of mighty 
 book-hunters, 14 — book-hunters 
 as bibliothaptes and bibliolytes, 
 54 et j«y.-T-classification of, 64 
 et seq. — as Rubricists, 63 — as 
 I aspirants after large paper copies, 
 ,86— their place in. the dispensa- 
 tions of Providence, loi et seq. — 
 -tljB.harmlessness and advantages 
 of : their, , disease, 102 et seq. — 
 ■book-hunters and dealers, 104 — 
 :in.relatiOA,to other hobby-riders, 
 ,IQS:tt tlwar lack ,of mercenary 
 spirit, ib. et seq. — in the amateur 
 phase; 106 ^t seq.. — their freedom 
 from low company, 109 — their 
 
Index. 
 
 42-1 
 
 intellefitual advafitages, ib. et 
 seq. — from ^iheir pursuit readers 
 and scholars, 114 — their delight 
 in a new toy, 123. 
 
 Books, annotating of, a 6rime and 
 a virtue, 185 «i je^.^^their decay 
 from natural causes, mi et seq. 
 — books, large and solid, factors 
 in the acquisition of fame, 215 — 
 such only fitted for authors knd 
 students, 1252^ — books, small and 
 fragile, preserved by boiBfe-'hun- 
 ters, 215-T^rarity of old ''school- 
 books, ii. et seq. — impoi:tance 
 of amy kind of lOld books, 817-^ 
 rare books printed by early Eng- 
 lish printers, 218 et seq. — Uavid 
 Clement on rare books, 224 et 
 seq. — ratebooks not always rare, 
 22s — books as introducers of 
 books, 233-=— reproduction of old 
 and rare books by book-cliibs, 
 246 et seq. — books used in Ire- 
 land in sixth century, 388. ' ' 
 
 Boswell, Sir Alexander, as !a book- 
 club man, 292 et seq. — his- re- 
 
 - prints, 293 — his Auchinleck Press, 
 294 — his character and wsKings, 
 29s et seq. 
 
 Botfield, Beriah, his^ork, vj^fiote. 
 
 Bourdaloue, favourite reading of, 
 112. 
 
 Brewer, " inchnale,'* as a mighty 
 book-hunter, 25 et je^.— origin 
 t)f 1:113 inanae, 'a6— his love of bind- 
 ings, 28— his satellites, 31 et^eq. 
 
 Bijtish Museum, deposits of books 
 in, 194 note^origin of library, 
 197 et seq, 
 
 Brunet as an "Inchruler," 26 — 
 his description of an Elzevir 
 Ccesar, id. note. 
 
 Buckle, historical researches of, 
 
 342- 
 "Bulls," Irish, in 'unlikely books, 
 
 132 et seq. — specimen of an index 
 
 "bull," 133. ' 1 • 
 Burton, Mr, private library of, 182 
 
 ■et seq, 
 
 Butler, poetical reanains Of, <dis- 
 
 covered by the antiquaTy Thyer, 
 
 326. 
 
 Camden Club, purpose of, 311 — 
 a curiaus volume of, 315 et seq. 
 
 '"Cankdiaiii" 'niistaken use of, for 
 Candian, 74. 
 
 Carfrafe, the audtioneer, 60 et seq. — 
 selling fragments 'Of early Eng- 
 lish poetry, 61. 
 
 "Causes C^lfebres," records of 
 French and Qetaia.n crime, 149 
 •' et seq. — their fitness 'for novel- 
 makingi I'Sb. 
 
 Celtic Christianity, 365 et seq., 377 
 
 *!■ bt seq. '"' ''' '■ 
 
 Chetham Club, purpose of, 312. 
 
 Church architecture of early Brit- 
 ish Christians, ^"jzetseq. 
 
 Classical Uterature, incompleteness 
 of, 324 — recent 'discoveries in, of 
 paltry value, "^sS et seq, 
 
 Classificatibn 'Of book-hunters, 62. 
 
 Clement, David, illustrious French 
 bibliographer, 2S4. 
 
 ChjbS in general, S43 et seq. 
 
 Cogswell, Dr, first librarian of the 
 lAstOri&h liibrary, 174 et seq. 
 
 Collectors and their satellites, 30 
 et seq.-^&% book-re&ders, 113 et 
 seq, — in relation to llie scholar, 
 
 Colulhba, St Adamnan's life of, 
 
 374 — among the Picts, 377 — • 
 
 - settling sucfcession of Aidan, 383 
 
 — atfetdt)tes of, 387, .389, 403, 
 
 ' &&— 7-Coluinba fishing, 355. 
 
 Compositors, characteristics of, 76 
 
 ■' et seq, — their reasons for interest 
 in an author's work, 77 et seq. — 
 ""■IjiU-bookS" '6i, ■79-^their pro- 
 fessional apathiy, St. 
 
 ■Gcjpyri^t Act, value of, 191. 
 
 ^Course of reading," a so-called, 
 no. 
 
 Creation of libraries, i58 et seq, 
 
 Criteilnal trials, 'attractive interest 
 of, 148 — "illustrating" of, iso- 
 
 OathbeM, 'St, and the solan-geese, 
 390 et seq,' 
 
 Dame aux Cam^lias qubted, 10 
 
 note. 
 Dealer^ in tteif i-elations to bbok- 
 
 buyers, 107. 
 Decay of books, 211 et seq. 
 De' Qutocey 5n the Society of 
 
 Friends, 8, 9. 
 Desulteity I'e&dei', or Bohettiiin of 
 
 literature, 108 et seq. 
 
42 2 
 
 Index. 
 
 Devices of old printers, collection 
 of, 64 et seq. 
 
 Dibdin, quotation from his Bib- 
 liomania, 18 — known as, !' Fog- 
 gy Dibdin," 89 — at the Rox- 
 burghe sale, 91;— as a book-hun- 
 ter, 165 — on the cradle of the 
 book-club system, 267 — ^his 
 "Library Companion," 280 et 
 seq. ..:•■■ I 
 
 "Didot" Horace, in the Junot 
 Library, 63. ,, , , , 
 
 Dietrich, collection of theses by, 64. 
 
 Diogenes, the so-called tub of, 120 
 .note. 
 
 Directory of a city, the, as afford- 
 ing profitable reading, 155. , 
 
 Douglas, Francis, anecdotetold in 
 his description , of the east coast 
 of Scotland, 9 note. • , 
 
 ' ' Dragon " as a book-hunjer, vide 
 "Vampire." ., ; ,,!• .. ._ 
 
 Drunkenness of aiformer age, 11. 
 
 Duphcates, first buying of, 16 — 
 most virulent form of biblio- 
 mania, 173. 
 
 Early Noi;thern S,aints, .352 et 
 seq. \ 
 
 Ecchellensis, Abraham, his con- 
 troversy ■wiih Flayigny, 67. 
 
 Ecclesiastical architecture, 372 et 
 seq. , ; 
 
 Ecclesiologist, the, as editor of 
 book-club literature, 321. 
 
 Editions of the Qlassics,, typograph- 
 ical blunders in,: 68. 
 
 " Editio princepsj" adva;ntages of 
 possessing an;!; 167^- of Boc- 
 caccio, 91. 
 
 Elzevir Csesar, Brunet's measure- 
 ment of, 26— origin of its rarity, 
 66. , 
 
 Elzevirs, reason of tljeir not being 
 rare at present, 225. 
 
 Errors in the various editions of 
 the Bible, 67 et seq. 
 
 Evans, the auctioneer, 93. 
 
 Exchequer bill, purious specimen 
 of, 134 et seq. 
 
 Facsimiles, extensive manufac- 
 ture of, 27. 
 
 Farmer, Dr Richard, and Johnson, 
 I'io et seq. 
 
 1 Feuerbfich's German collection of 
 causes cilitres, 149. 
 
 Ferrier's Bibliomania, quotation 
 from, 86 note. 
 
 Fires in libraries, 210 et seq.. 
 
 Fisher, Rev. John, Bishop of Roch- 
 ester, originator of Library of St 
 John's, 204 et seq. 
 
 Flavigny's controversy with Abra- 
 ham, Ecchellensis, if]. 
 
 '. Fountains, religious controversies 
 
 connected with,, 491 et seq. 
 ■ French causes cilihres, 149 et 
 ■ seq. , . 
 
 French novels, thenlorals of, 10. 
 
 Friends, Society of, greatest crim- 
 inals found among, 8 — De Quin- 
 cey's testimony to the same effect, 
 
 ..id. et.seq. 
 
 Furniture, old, 192. 
 
 Fustian, curious statute of Henry 
 VII. concerning, 142 et seq. 
 
 Game of Chess, by Caxton, cap- 
 
 ' tured in Holland by Snuffy Davie, 
 1 222. 
 
 Genealogist, a, as editor of book- 
 club literature, 316. et seq. — his 
 influence and genius, 318. 
 
 Genealogyi Scottish peculiarities 
 in, 317-^ — extract on, from the 
 Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 318. 
 
 Genius, rewards of, unequally dis- 
 tributed, 258. 
 
 -Glasgow, the shield argent of, 393 
 etseq. . 
 
 Gleaner, the, and his harvest, 124 
 etseij.. 
 
 "Good reader," a, the bore of a 
 house, 113. 
 
 Gordon, Sir Robert, collector of 
 Gordonstoun Library, 97 et seq. 
 
 .Government and public libraries, 
 191. 
 
 Graham, Mr Lorinier, collection 
 by, 186 et seq. 
 
 Grandison, Sir Charles, his per- 
 fection a defect, 8. 
 
 " Grangerites," peculiar glory of, 
 82 et jcy. ^origin of name, ii. — 
 their mode of proceeding, 83 et 
 seq. 
 
 Greek nomenclature, abuses and 
 merits of, 2. 
 
 GroUier, a princely collector, 48. 
 
Index. 
 
 423 
 
 Hagiology, 353. 
 
 Hallervord, John, Bibliotheca Cu- 
 riosa of, 241. 
 
 Harvard Library, loss of old, igo. 
 
 Havelok the Dane reprinted by 
 Roxburghe Club, 279. 
 
 Hazlewood, Joseph, a black sheep 
 in the Roxburghe Club, 272 — 
 description of his treasures; ih. 
 et seq. — title of one of his re- 
 prints, 273 — description of an- 
 other of his^ reprints, ib. note — 
 fate of his History,' 274. 
 
 Heathenism in the British Isles, 
 400 ei seq. 
 
 Heber, Richard, origin of his 
 library, 98 et seq. — Dibdin and 
 Heber, 99 — duplicating his col- 
 lection, 173; 
 
 Hierology of Gtpeece; 359. 
 
 Highland springs, pilgrimages to, 
 299. ■ 
 
 Historical literature, reprints of, 
 327 — in manuscript, ii. et seq, 
 
 Histrio - Mastix of Prynne, its im- 
 fortunate history, 129 et seq. 
 
 Hobby, the, of book-hunting, 101 
 et seq. 
 
 Hortensius, 267. 
 
 Illustrating of criminal trials, 
 150 — its advantages to posterity, 
 tt. et seq. — at its height, 180 
 note — illustrating a folio, copy of 
 Shakespeare, ih. note. 
 
 Illustrators of books, the, known as 
 " Grangerites," 82 — their mode 
 of proceeding, 83 et seq. 
 
 Imperfect copies, completion of, 27. 
 
 Index Expurgatorius of Charles 
 Lamb, 152 note. 
 
 Inlaying, process of, 219. 
 
 lona, the saints of, 382. 
 
 Ireland, history of, in early , times 
 fabulous, 362! Keating's His- 
 tory, ib. et seq. 
 
 Ireland, primitive church in, 368 et 
 
 Irish Archaeological, and other 
 Clubs, 312 et seq. < \ 
 
 Irish " bulls," instances of, 132. 
 
 Irish statutes and Irish history, 146 
 et seq. 
 
 JoCHER, Allgemeines Gelehrten 
 Lexicon of, 235, 
 
 Johnson and Dr Richard Farmer, 
 
 130 et seq. 
 Johnston, Captain, his Lives of 
 
 Highwaymen and Pirates, 149. 
 Jolly, Bishop Robert, 244 — as a 
 
 book-hunter, 245. 
 "Jolly" Club, the, 246. 
 Jones, Sir William, reading Cicero, 
 
 III. 
 Junot, the library of, 63. 
 
 Keating, Jeffrey, D.D., his His- 
 tory of Ireland, 363 et seq. 
 
 Kent, " Chancellor, collection of, 
 184 et seq. ' 
 
 Kentigem, St, anecdotes of, 392 et 
 seq. 
 
 Knox. Vicesimus, Spirit of Des- 
 potism by, 197. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, Index Expurga- 
 torius of, 152 note. 
 
 Large-paper copies, aspirants after, 
 86. 
 
 Laurentian Library at Florence, 
 198. • - ■• 
 
 Law books, composition of, irS. 
 
 Law maxim^, absurd book on, 138 
 note. 
 
 Law papers as furnishing humor- 
 ous reading, 13s et seq. 
 
 Law technicSities, vagaries of, 136 
 et seq. 
 
 Levant monks, apathy of, with ref- 
 erence to priceless books, 209. 
 
 Librarians recruited frbm the ranks 
 of book-hunters, 227 — disadvan- 
 tages of "Cerberus" librarians, 
 228 et je^. — Angelo- Mai of the 
 Vatican, 229 — Magliabecchi, ib, 
 et ijey.— Adrien Baillet, 230 et seq. 
 — ^librariansas scholars, 231 ei^jK^. 
 
 Libraries as stimulants to intellec- 
 tual culture, lis *' ^^i- — growth 
 of great libraries, 169 — impossi- 
 bility of their being improvise.4, 
 ib. et seq. — their gradual accum- 
 ulation, Tjo et seq. — Imperial Li- 
 brary at Paris, 176, 205, &c. — 
 size of American libraries, Har- 
 vard, Astorian, Library of Con- 
 gress, Boston Athenasum, 176-^ 
 their large number in the States, 
 ib. — The Private Libraries of 
 New York, by James Wynne, 
 
424 
 
 Index. 
 
 M.D., 177 — specimen of a Nejy 
 York interior, 182 — library of 
 Chancellor. Kent, 184 et seg.-~ai 
 Mr Lorimer Graham, 186 — of 
 Rev. Dr Magoon, 187 et seq. — of 
 Mr Menzies, 189 note — Harvard 
 Library, 190 — Government and 
 public libraries, 191 — privileged 
 libraries and the Copyright Act, 
 193 note — British Museum Li- 
 brary, 197 et seq. — Ambrosian 
 Library at Milan, igS^Lauren- 
 tian Library at Florence, ib. — 
 Bodleian Library, ib. — Me- 
 moirs of-, Libraries, by Edward 
 Edwards, 199 note — Surharn 
 College Library, nucleus of Trin- 
 ity of Oxford, 203— burning of 
 Alexandrian Library, 211. 
 
 Licensing, abolition of, in England, 
 208. , 
 
 Limiting number of impressions, 
 281 et seq. 
 
 Literary forgeries, moral code of, 
 303 et seq. 
 
 Long Parliament, proceedings of, 
 328 et seq. 
 
 LucuUus, Magnus, of Grand Pri- 
 ory, 46 et seq. 
 
 I^canthropy, 279. 
 
 Magi, in their conflicts with saintg, 
 401 et seq. 
 
 Magliabecchi, the librarian, 229 ^ 
 seq. 
 
 Magoon, Rev. Dr, library of, 187 
 ei seq. 
 
 Maitland Club, 312. 
 
 Margaret, Queen of Scotland, as a 
 saint, 355. 
 
 Meadow, Archdeacon, description 
 of as a mighty book-hunter, 14 
 — at an auction, 15 — a portion 
 of his collection sold, 17 — reputed 
 to read his own books, 18 — his 
 learning, 19. 
 
 Medici, library of the, 198 et seq. 
 
 Men of the Time, printers' blun- 
 ders in, 75. 
 
 Menzies, Mi;, valuable American 
 collection of, 189 note. 
 
 Metaphysics, origin of name, 127. 
 
 Monkbarns ks a bpok-hunter, 165 
 . etseq.—\A% description of Snuffy 
 Davie's prowlings, 221 et seq, ■ 
 
 Nathalan, St, anecdote of, 395. 
 Newgatfe Calendar, interest of, 
 
 148. 
 New York, private libraries of, 177 
 
 et^ seq. 
 Nomenclature, Greek, abuses and 
 
 merits erf, 2. 
 Noy, Attorney - General, and the 
 
 Histiio-Mastix, 130. 
 
 Oeleichs, John Charles Conrad, 
 rare work by, 207. 
 
 Old writers) their careful disclaim- 
 ing of original ideas, 117. 
 
 Olio, Grose's, extract from, 54 note. 
 
 Onslow, Mr, and naming of mem- 
 bers of Parliament, 131. 
 
 Owen's Parallelograms, the nature 
 of, 13 — biographical notice of 
 Owen in Men of the Time, 75 
 €t seq. 
 
 Oxford, Bishop of, biographical 
 notice of, in Men of the 'Time, 
 75- 
 
 PAL^ffiiOGRAPHiST, meaning of the 
 name, 3. 
 
 Palimpsest, meaning of, 3. 
 
 Pamphlets, careful preservation of, 
 enforced, 339. 
 
 Panel, meaning of, in England and 
 'in Scotland, 138. 
 
 Papaverius, "Thomas, 32 et seq. — 
 his unpunctixality, '33 — his cos- 
 tiune, ib. et seq. — his eloquence, 
 35, 36— on vagrancy, 38 — ^his ir- 
 riesponsibility in pecuniary mat- 
 ters, 39 — his charity, 41 — as a 
 philosbpher of human nature, 42 
 — as a book-hunter, ib. et seq. — 
 as a borrower of books, 43 et seq. 
 —his acute sensibility, 45. 
 
 Peignot, his Dictionnaire de Bib- 
 Bdogie, ii27 note, 207 — his dic- 
 tionary of condemned books, 208 
 — as a vagabond bibliographer, 
 239 et seq. 
 
 Philobiblionof Richard of Bury, 199 
 — extract from, 220 note. 
 
 Photius, curious history of the Bib- 
 liotheca: of, 236. 
 
 Picts, St Columba among the, 
 377- 
 
 Pinkerton, John, description of, 
 28s. 
 
Index. 
 
 425 
 
 Playbills, collection of, a phase: of 
 bibliomania, 64. 
 
 Poems, and plays as relics of pure 
 literature, 5*17 et seq. 
 
 Popular authors objects of compe- 
 tition among publishers, 260 ei 
 . seq. 
 
 Preservation of literature, 205 ei seg. 
 — politics and religion, with ref- 
 erence to, 208 — wars and revolu- 
 tions with reference ' to, 209 — 
 books, in the midst of fire, 210. 
 
 Pretenders, 161 et seq. — generally 
 bargain - hunters, 162 — their de- 
 Vices, 163. 
 
 Printers' blunders serviceable to 
 literattire, ji et seq. — laughable 
 examples of, 72 et seq. — tragic 
 results of, 75 — examples of, in 
 Men of the Time, 76. 
 
 Printing press, private, an appal- 
 ling form of biblioinania, 293 — 
 possession of, by Sir Alexander 
 Boswell, 294. 
 
 Professional dealer, the, 107. 
 
 Prowler different from auction- 
 haunter, 88 et seq. ■ 
 
 Prynne and his Histrio-Mastix, 129 
 et seq. . .' 
 
 Publishers and good literature^ 262. 
 
 Quaker collector of paintings, a, 
 
 anecdote of, 103. 
 Queen Cadyow and St Kentigern, 
 
 394- 
 
 Rambles in search of sculptured^ 
 stones, 411 etseqi 
 
 Rarity, the comparative,- of certain 
 booiis, 170 et j^g'.-^ Americans 
 and the rarity of boaks, 173 et 
 seq. — rarity of works of early 
 English printers, 2i8. et.' seqi^- 
 rarity increased, by inoreasecf 
 number of copies, 282. 
 
 Rateliffe,' Dr, a physician, 69 note, - 
 
 Reading of books by book-hunters 
 and possessors of libraries, log-^— 
 impossible in^cert'ain cases, no — 
 ought to be'desultory, ii. et seq. 
 
 "tReadJug with the fingersi" a test 
 of scholarship, 116. ' ' ' 
 
 Religion and politics ih reference 
 to the preservation of literatiu'e, 
 208: 
 
 Religious hypocrites, uncharitable- 
 ness and intolerance of, 7 — their 
 development into criminals, 8. 
 
 Reminiscences of a book-hunting 
 life, 59 et seq. 
 
 "Remnants," or broken books, 
 
 2S4- 
 
 Rent-paying in Scotland, 140 note. 
 
 Resuscitated literature, peculiar 
 value of, 324 — objected to in 
 hagiology, 339. 
 
 Richard of Bury, Bishop of Dur- 
 ham, as a private collector, 199 
 et seq. — as a benefactor of pos- 
 terity, 200 et jc^.— originator of 
 Durham College Library, the 
 nucleus of Trinity of Oxford, 
 203 — on the treatment of manu- 
 
 ' scripts (quotation from the Phil- 
 obilDlion), 220 note. 
 
 Ritson, Josephi opponent of John 
 Pinkerton, 287*^ je^i^his pecu- 
 liarities, 288 et seq. 
 
 Robespierre, draft of decree before; 
 concerning the public libraries of 
 Paris, 209. , 
 
 Rbmansas .introducers of ' Christi- 
 ■ anity into Great Britain, 36a, 379' 
 —as slighters of history, 360 et 
 seq. 
 
 Rout upon Rout, by Felix Nixon, 
 
 57- 
 
 Roxburghe Club,. 97, 265 et seq. — 
 its origin, 268 — dts dinner and 
 toasts, 269 — its members, 270 — 
 its "revels," 27S^Hazlewood's- 
 connection with, it. and note et 
 seq. — reprinting by, ■ of ancient 
 books, 278 et snq. — its first seri- 
 ous efforts, 279— Dibdih as its 
 master, 280 — under the care of 
 the scholarly Botfield, ■281— .its 
 proffer of membership to Sir 
 - Walter Scott, • 283 et seq. 
 
 Roxburghe, Duke of, as a book- 
 hunter; 90,- 164— origin of his" 
 bibliomania, 90 et seq: 
 
 Roxburghe Library, sale of, 89 et 
 seq. — scenes at the auction, 92 «i 
 «^.— ^E&rliSpencer present, 93 c^ 
 seq. 
 
 Rubricists; . book-hunters as, 63. 
 
 Rule, Gilbert, ghost-story concern- 
 ing, 346 et seq. 
 
 "Runic Knot," the, 409. 
 
426 
 
 Index. 
 
 Saints, the early Northern, 352 et 
 seq. — the making of, 353 — fes- 
 tival days of, 354 et seq.- — Bol- 
 landus and bis successors on 
 saints, 355 et jej'.— value in his- 
 tory of saint literature, 358 et 
 seq. — vestiges of the peculiar 
 characteristics of early Northern 
 saints, 371 et seq.—'&sa church 
 architecture, 372 — saints of Irish 
 origin innumerable, 375 — inde- 
 pendent of Rome, 381- — mostly 
 all obscure, ib. et seq. — as pro- 
 phesiers of death, 383— personal 
 habits of, 3B9 — fishing and ma- 
 rine anecdotes of, 395 et seq. 
 
 Scholars in relation to collectors, 
 IIS et seq. 
 
 School-books, rarity of old, 215 et 
 seq. 
 
 Schoolboy life, reminiscences of, 
 conjured up by an advertise- 
 ment, 157 etseq. 
 
 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, a 
 curious book, 240. 
 
 Scots Acts, brevity of, 146. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, as a book-club 
 man, 283 — his admission to the 
 Roxburghe Club, ib. et seq. — 
 writing a song for the Bannatyne 
 Club, 285 — his reprint of a trial 
 for murder, 290 et seq. — imposed 
 on by Robert Surtees, 300 et seq. 
 — first idea of Waverley sug- 
 gested to him by Surtees, 306. 
 
 Sculptured stones in Scotland, 405 
 et seq. —description of one, 406^ 
 their character, 407 et seq. — Mr 
 John Stuart's transcripts of, 410 
 T-ramble in search of, 411 etseq. 
 —one of them at Lochcolissor, 
 ib. — others in various parts, 412 
 et seq. 
 
 Seneca commending literary mod- 
 eration, 119 note. 
 
 Serf, St, and his robin, 392. 
 
 Shakespearian criticism a branch of 
 knowledge, 69 et seq. — valuable 
 to literature, 71. 
 
 Sheepfolds, Ruskin on the con- 
 struction of, 125. 
 
 Sloane, Sir Hans, originator of 
 British Museum Library, 197. 
 
 Smart, Fitzpatrick, as a mighty 
 book-hunter, 19 — his peculiar 
 
 line known as the " Fitzpatrick 
 Smart Walk," 20 — his fancy ill 
 to please, 21 — his household 
 gods, 22 — his dress, 23 — his 
 wonderful genius, 25 — fate of his 
 collection, ib. 
 
 Smithsonian Institution, origin of, 
 174. 
 
 Snuffy Davie, a prince of book- 
 hunters, 166 — his captiure of the 
 Game of Chess, 222. 
 
 Societies, book and other, 247 c< 
 seq. — the transactions of learned, i 
 an outlet for genius, 262 et seq, 
 
 Spalding Club, 312 — as an art- 
 union, 404. 
 
 Spalding, John, value of his liter- 
 ary remains, 330 et seq. — quota- 
 tion from his "Memorials," 333 
 et seq. — characteristics of his 
 writings, 337. 
 
 Spencer, Earl, at the Roxburghe 
 Library sale, 93 et seq. — his skir- 
 mish for the Caxtons, 123. , 
 
 Spottis\YOode Society, purpose of 
 the, 247. 
 
 State trials replete with romance, 
 148. 
 
 Stated-task reader, the, 113. 
 
 Statute-making, pleasantry in, 143. , 
 
 Stuart, Mr John, and the sculp- 
 tured stones in Scotland, 410. 
 
 Superstitions, a book on, replete 
 with errors in language, 153 et 
 seq. 
 
 Surtees Club, 312. 
 
 Surtees, Robert, the historian of 
 Durham, as a book-club man, 
 298 — anecdotes of, ib. it seq. — . 
 imposing on Sir Walter Scott, 
 300 et seq. — his contributions to 
 Scott's Minstrelsy, 304 — sug- 
 gesting Waverfey to Scott, 306. 
 
 Sydenham Club, 265. 
 
 Thomson, James, and his books, 
 29 — his uncle's criticism on 
 "Winter," ib. 
 
 Thomson, Rev. William, character 
 of, 67 et seq. — his translation of 
 Cunningham's Latin History of 
 Britain, 68 note. 
 
 Title of an English Act, 143. 
 
 Title-page, a, no distinct intimation 
 of contents of book, 124— fram- 
 
Index. 
 
 427 
 
 ing of exhaustive title-page, 126 
 
 et seq. — specimen of lengthy 
 
 title-page, 127 — advantages of 
 
 such, 128. 
 Toy literature, 216 note. 
 Transactions of learned societies, 
 
 262. 
 Trinity Library, Oxford, origin of, 
 
 203. 
 Types of Guttenberg and Faust, 
 
 beauty of, 218. 
 Types, MacEwen on the, its fate at 
 
 an auction, 125. 
 Typographical blunders, 71 et seq. 
 
 United States well stocked with 
 libraries, 176 — its citizens as 
 book-hunters, 177. 
 
 "Vampire" as a book-hunter, 55 
 — ^his collection, 56 et seq. — his 
 policy at auctions, S7 't '^1- 
 
 Vellum books, 63. 
 
 Vemey, Sir Ralph, noting proceed- 
 ings of the Long Parliament, 
 328 et seq. 
 
 Vision, a, of mighty book-hunters, 
 14 et seq. 
 
 Vulgate of Sixtus V., multitude of 
 errors in, 67. 
 
 Waltonian Library, the, of Rev. 
 Dr Bethune, 87 et seq. 
 
 Wars and revolutions, factors in 
 the destruction of libraries, 209. 
 
 Watt, Dr, his bibliography, 234. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, and the "Granger- 
 ites," 83 et seq. 
 
 Wells dedicated to saints, 397 et 
 seq. 
 
 Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of 
 Oxford, humorous blunder in a 
 biographical notice concerning, 
 76. 
 
 Wilbrod, St, and the Frisian 
 Prince, 376. 
 
 William and the Wer Wolf re- 
 printed by Roxburghe Club, 279 
 et seq. 
 
 Wodrow, Rev. Robert, his liter- 
 ary remains and collections, 338 
 — his private note-books, 340 — 
 extracts from his note-books con- 
 cerning "special providences" 
 ^^^etseq. — his ghost and witch 
 stories, 346 et seq. — anecdote 
 concerning the devil's sermon, 
 349 et seq. 
 
 "Ye" and "the," common de- 
 lusion concerning, 270 note. 
 
 THE END.