the extent which is termed book-madness; but none more remarkable than
that of Mr. Richard Heber, half-brother to the celebrated Bishop of
Calcutta of the same name. Mr. Heber inherited property which permitted
him to spend immense sums in the purchase of books; and he received an
education which enabled him to appreciate the books when purchased. He
was not therefore, strictly speaking, a _bibliomaniac_, and nothing
more, though his exertions in _collecting_ amounted to eccentricities.
He would make excursions from the family seats in Yorkshire and
Shropshire to London, to attend book sales; and when the termination
of the war in 1815 opened the Continent to English travellers, Heber
visited France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and made large purchases
of books in each country. He cared for nothing but books. He kept up a
correspondence with all the great dealers in old books throughout the
kingdom. On hearing of a curious book, he was known to have put himself
into a mail-coach, and travelled three or four hundred miles to obtain
it, fearful to entrust his commission to any agent. He was known to say
seriously to his friends, on their remarking on his many duplicates,
"Why, you see, sir, no man can do comfortably without _three_ copies
of a work. One he must have for a _show_ copy, and he will, probably,
keep it at his country-house. Another he will require for his 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."
Mr. Hill Burton, in his _Book-hunter_, relates the following incident
of Heber's experience in the rarity-market. A celebrated dealer in old
books was passing a chandler's shop, where he was stopped by a few
filthy old volumes in the window. One of them he found to be a volume
of old English poetry, which he--a practised hand in that line--saw was
utterly unknown as existing, though not unrecorded. Three and sixpence
was asked; he stood out for a half-a-crown, on first principles, but,
not succeeding, he paid the larger sum, and walked away, book in
pocket, to a sale, where the first person he saw was Heber. Him the
triumphant bookseller drew into a corner, with "Why do you come to
auctions to look for scarce books, when you can pick up such things as
this in a chandler's shop for three and sixpence?" "Bless me, ----,
where did you get this?" "That's tellings! I may get more there."
"----, I must have this." "Not a penny under thirty guineas!" A cheque
was drawn, and a profit of 17,900 per cent. cleared by the man who had
his eyes about him, in whose estimation such a sum was paltry compared
with the triumph over Heber.
Mr. Heber's taste strengthened as he grew older. Not only was his
collection of old English literature unprecedented, but he brought
together a larger number of fine copies of Latin, Greek, French,
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese books than had ever been possessed
by a private individual. His house at Hodnet, in Shropshire, was
nearly all library. His house in Pimlico (where he died in 1833) was
filled with books from top to bottom: every chair, table, and passage
containing "piles of erudition." A house in York Street, Westminster,
was similarly filled. He had immense collections of books in houses
rented merely to contain them, at Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels,
and Ghent. When he died, curiosity was naturally excited to know what
provision he had made in reference to his immense store of books;
but when his will was discovered, after a long and almost hopeless
search among bills, notes, memoranda, and letters, it was found, to the
astonishment of every one on reading it, that the library _was not even
mentioned_! It seemed as if Heber cared nothing what should become of
the books, or who should possess them, after his decease; and as he was
never married, or influenced greatly by domestic ties, his library was
considered by the executors of his will as merely so much "property,"
to be converted into cash by the aid of the auctioneer. What was the
number of books possessed by him or the amount of money paid for them,
appears to have been left in much doubt. Some estimated the library at
150,000 volumes, formed at a cost of 100,000_l._; others reckoned it at
500,000 volumes, at an aggregate value of 250,000_l._ The truth was,
his executors did not know in how many foreign towns his collections
of books were placed. Thus it could not accurately be ascertained what
portion of the whole was sold by auction in London in 1834-6; but
the mere catalogue of that portion fills considerably more than two
thousand printed octavo pages. The sales were conducted by Mr. Evans,
Messrs. Sotheby, and other book-auctioneers, and occupied two hundred
and two days, extending through a period of upwards of two years from
April 10, 1834, to July 9, 1836. One copy of the catalogue has been
preserved, with marginal manuscript notes, relating to almost every
lot; and from this a summary of very curious information is deducible.
It appears that, whatever may have been the number of volumes sold by
auction, or otherwise got rid of abroad, those sold at this series of
auctions in London were 117,613 in number, grouped into 52,672 lots.
As regards the ratio borne by the prices obtained, to those which Mr.
Heber had paid for the books in question, the account as rendered
showed that the auctioneer's hammer brought 56,775_l._ for that which
had cost 77,150_l._ It would appear, therefore, that the losses
accruing to Mr. Heber's estate through his passion for book-collecting,
amounted to upwards of 20,000_l._, and this irrespective of the fate
of the continental libraries.
Sir John Soane Lampooned.
Sir John Soane, who bequeathed to the country his Museum in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, which cost him upwards of 50,000_l._, was the son of a
bricklayer, and was born at Reading in 1753; he was errand-boy to
Dance, the architect, and subsequently his pupil. He rose to great
eminence, grew rich and liberal; he gave for Belzoni's elaborate
sarcophagus in the Soane Museum, 2,000 guineas; paid large sums for art
rarities; subscribed 1,000_l._ for the Duke of York's monument, was
contended with his knighthood, and declined to receive a baronetcy.
Yet he was a man of overweening vanity, and was much courted by
legacy-hunters; whilst his alienation from his son assisted in raising
up many enemies, in addition to those which Soane's remarkable success
brought against him. From the latter section may have proceeded the
following curious and popular squib of the day, said to have been found
under the plates at one of the artistic or academic dinners. It is
headed:--
"THE MODERN GOTH.
"Glory to thee, great Artist! soul of taste!
For mending pigsties where a plank's misplaced:
Whose towering genius plans from deep research
Houses and temples fit for Master Birch
To grace his shop on that important day,
When huge twelfth-cakes are raised in bright array.
Each pastry pillar shows thy vast design--
Hail! then, to thee, and all great works of thine.
Come, let me place thee, in the foremost rank,
With him whose dullness discomposed the bank;
[_A line illegible._]
Thy style shall finish what his style begun.
Thrice happy Wren! he did not live to see
The dome that's built and beautified by thee.
Oh! had he lived to see thy blessed work,
To see plaster scored like loins of pork;
To see the orders in confusion move:
Scrolls fixed below, and pedestals above:
To see defiance hurled at Rome and Greece,
Old Wren had never left the world in peace.
Look where I will, above, below, is shown
A pure disordered order of thine own;
Where lines and circles curiously unite,
A base, confounded, compound Composite:
A thing from which, in truth it may be said,
Each lab'ring mason turns abash'd his head;
Which Holland reprobates, and Dance derides,
Whilst tasteful Wyatt holds his aching sides.
Here crawl, ye spiders! here, exempt from cares,
Spin your fine webs above the bulls and bears!
Secure from harm enjoy the charnell'd niche:
No maids molest you, for no brooms can reach;
In silence build from models of your own,
But never imitate the works of Soane!"
Soane is described by his biographer as "one of the vainest and most
self-sufficient of men, who courted praise and adulation from every
person and source, but dreaded, and was even maddened by, anything like
impartial and discriminating criticism." But he grew so disgusted with
his flatterers, that a short time before his death he shut himself up
in a house at Richmond, to get out of the way of their attentions.
[Illustration: Jedediah Buxton. Ætat. 49.
_Numeros memini._ VIRGIL.]
Extraordinary Calculators.
On the 3rd of July, 1839, some of the eminent members of the Academy
of Sciences at Paris, including MM. Arago, Lacroix, Libri, and Sturm,
met to examine a remarkable boy whose powers of mental calculation were
deemed quite inexplicable. This boy, named Vito Mangiamele, a Sicilian,
was the son of a shepherd, and was about eleven years old. The
examiners asked him several questions which they knew, under ordinary
circumstances, to be tedious of solution--such as, the cube root of
3,796,416, and the 10th root of 282,475,249; the first of these he
answered in half-a-minute, the second in three minutes. One question
was of the following complicated character--"What number has the
following proportions, that if its cube is added to 5 times its square,
and then 42 times the number, and the number 42 be subtracted from the
result, the remainder is equal to 0 or zero." M. Arago repeated this
question a second time, but while he was finishing the last word, the
boy replied--"The number is 5!"
In the same year, Master Bassle, who was only thirteen years of age,
went through an extraordinary mnemonic performance at Willis's Rooms,
London. Five large sheets of paper, closely printed with tables of
dates, specific gravities, velocities, planetary distances, &c., were
distributed among the visitors, and every one was allowed to ask Master
Bassle a question relating to these tables, to which was received a
correct answer. He would also name the day of the week on which any day
of the month had fallen in any particular year. He could repeat long
series of numbers backwards and forwards, and point out the place of
any number in the series; and to prove that his powers were not merely
confined to the rows of numbers in the printed tables, he allowed the
whole company to form a long series, by contributing each two or three
digits in the order in which they sat; and then, after studying this
series for a few minutes, he committed it to memory, and repeated it
entire, both backwards and forwards, from the beginning to the end.
These performances are believed to have been not the result of any
natural mnemonic power, but of a method to be acquired by any person in
the course of twelve lessons.
Zerah Colburn, who excited much interest in London in 1812, was a
native of Vermont, in the United States. At six years old, he suddenly
showed extraordinary powers of mental calculation. By processes which
seemed to be almost unconscious to himself, and were wholly so to
others, he answered arithmetical questions of considerable difficulty.
When eight years old, he was brought to London, where he astonished
many learned auditors and spectators by giving correct solutions to
such problems as the following: raise 8 up to the 16th power; give
the square root of 106,929; give the cube root of 268,336,125; how
many seconds are there in 48 years? The answers were always given in
very few minutes--sometimes in a few seconds. He was ignorant of the
ordinary rules of arithmetic, and did not know how or why particular
modes of process came into his mind. On one occasion, the Duke of
Gloucester asked him to multiply 21,734 by 543. Something in the boy's
manner induced the Duke to ask how he did it, from which it appeared
that the boy arrived at the result by multiplying 65,202 by 181,
an equivalent process; but why he made this change in the factors,
neither he nor any one else could tell. Zerah Colburn was unlike other
boys also in this, that he had more than the usual number of toes and
fingers; a peculiarity observable also in his father and in some of his
brothers.
An exceptional instance is presented in the case of Mr. Bidder, of
this faculty being cultivated to a highly useful purpose. George
Parker Bidder, when six years old, used to amuse himself by counting
up to 100, then to 1,000, then to 1,000,000: by degrees he accustomed
himself to contemplate the relations of high numbers, and used to
build up peas, marbles, and shot, into squares, cubes, and other
regular figures. He invented processes of his own, distinct from those
given in books on arithmetic, and could solve all the usual questions
mentally more rapidly than other boys with the aid of pen and paper.
When he became eminent as a civil engineer, he was wont to embarrass
and baffle the parliamentary counsel on contested railway bills, by
confuting their statements of figures almost before the words were out
of their mouths. In 1856, he gave to the Institution of Civil Engineers
an interesting account of this singular arithmetical faculty--so far,
at least, as to show that _memory_ has less to do with it than is
generally supposed; the processes are actually worked out _seriatim_,
but with a rapidity almost inconceivable.
The most famous calculator in the last century was Jedediah Buxton,
who, in 1754, resided for several weeks at St. John's Gate, Smithfield.
This man, though he was the son of a schoolmaster, and the grandson
of the vicar of his native parish, Elmeton, in Derbyshire, had never
learned to write, but he could conduct the most intricate calculations
by his memory alone; and such was his power of abstraction that
no noise could disturb him. One who had heard of his astonishing
ability as a calculator, proposed to him for solution the following
question:--In a body whose three sides measure 23,145,789 yards,
5,642,732 yards, and 54,965 yards, how many cubical eighths-of-an-inch
are there? This obtuse reckoning he made in a comparatively short time,
although pursuing the while, with many others, his labours in the
fields. He could walk over a plot of land and estimate its contents
with as much accuracy as if it had been measured by the chain. His
knowledge was, however, limited to figures. In 1754, Buxton walked to
London, with the express intention of obtaining a sight of the King
and Queen, for beyond figures, royalty formed the only subject of his
curiosity. In this intention he was disappointed: he was, however,
introduced to the Royal Society, whom he called the "volk of the Siety
Court." They tested his powers, and dismissed him with a handsome
gratuity.
He was next taken by his hospitable entertainer at St. John's Gate, to
see Garrick in the character of Richard III. at Drury Lane Theatre,
when undazzled by the splendour of the stage appointments, and unmoved
by the eloquent passion of the actor, the simple rustic employed
himself in reckoning the number of words he heard, and the sum total
of the steps made by the dancers; and after the performance of a fine
piece of music, he declared that the innumerable sounds had perplexed
him.
To these feats may be added the following:--Buxton multiplied a
sum of thirty-nine places of figures into itself and even conversed
whilst performing it. His memory was so great, that he could leave
off and resume the operation at the distant period of a week, or even
several months. He said that he was _drunk_ once with reckoning by
memory from May 17 until June 16, and then recovered after sleeping
soundly for seven hours. The question which occupied him so intensely
was the reduction of a cube of upwards of 200,000,000 of miles into
barleycorns, and then into hairs'-breaths of an inch in length. He
kept an account of all the beer which he had drunk for forty years,
which was equal to five thousand one hundred and sixteen pints: of
these two thousand one hundred and thirty-two were drunk at the Duke of
Kingston's and only ten at his own house.
There was a portrait of Buxton at Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A
print of him was engraved in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, June, 1754,
with this subscription: "Jedediah Buxton. Ætat. 49.--Numeros memini.
_Virgil._" He was married and had several children, and died at the age
of 70, in the year 1777.
Charles Lamb's Cottage at Islington.
In a very pleasant paper on "Ideal Houses," in No. 4 of the _Cornhill
Magazine_, we find this clever sketch of a few of the amiable
eccentricities of our famous Essayist, Charles Lamb:--
"I believe," says the contributor, "more in the influence of dwellings
upon human character than in the influence of authority on matters
of opinion. The man may seek the house, or the house may form the
man; but in either case the result is the same. A few yards of earth,
even on this side of the grave, will make all the difference between
life and death. If our dear old friend, Charles Lamb, was now alive
(and we must all wish he was, if only that he might see how every
day is bringing him nearer the crown that belongs only to the Prince
of British Essayists), there would be something singularly jarring
to the human nerves in finding him at Dalston, but not so jarring in
finding him a little farther off at Hackney. He would still have drawn
nourishment in the Temple and in Covent Garden; but he must surely have
perished if transplanted to New Tyburnia. I cannot imagine him living
at Pentonville (I cannot, in my uninquiring ignorance, imagine who
Penton was, that he should name a _ville_?), but I can see a certain
appropriate oddity in his cottage at Colebrook Row, Islington.
[Illustration: Colebrook Cottage.]
"In the first place, we may agree that this London suburb is very odd,
without going into the vexed question of whether it was very 'merry.'
In the second place, this same Colebrook Row was built a few years
before our dear old friend was born--I believe, in 1770. In the third
place, it was called a 'Row,' though 'Lane' or 'Walk' would have been
as old and as good; but 'Terrace' or 'Crescent' would have rendered
it unbearable. The New River flowed calmly past the cottage walls--as
poor George Dyer found to his cost--bringing with it fair memories of
Isaak Walton and the last two centuries. The house itself had also
certain peculiarities to recommend it. The door was so constructed
that it opened into the chief sitting-room; and this, though promising
much annoyance, was really a source of fun and enjoyment to our
dear old friend. He was never so delighted as when he stood on the
hearth-rug receiving many congenial visitors as they came to him on
the muddiest-boot and the wettest-of-umbrella days. His immediate
neighbourhood was also peculiar.
"It was there that weary wanderers came to seek the waters of oblivion.
Suicide could pitch upon no spot so favourable for its sacrifice as the
gateway leading into the river inclosure before Charles Lamb's cottage.
Waterloo Bridge had not long been built, and was not then a fashionable
theatre for self-destruction. The drags were always kept ready in
Colebrook Row, at a small tavern a few doors from the cottage. The
landlord's ear, according to his own account, had become so sensitive
by repeated practice, that when aroused at night by a heavy splash in
the water, he could tell by the sound whether it was an accident or a
wilful plunge. He never believed that poor George Dyer tumbled in from
carelessness, though it was no business of his to express an opinion
on the matter. After the eighth suicide within a short period, Charles
Lamb began to grow restless.
"'Mary,' he said to his sister, 'I think it's high time we left this
place;' and so they went to Edmonton."
Thomas Hood.
This remarkable man of genius whose wit and humour entitle him to
high rank in English literature, was born in 1798, in the Poultry,
London, where his father was, for many years, acting partner in the
firm of Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, extensive booksellers and publishers.
"There was a dash of ink in my blood," he writes: "my father wrote
two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the
great disquietude, for a time, of an anxious parent." Thomas Hood was
sent to a school in Tokenhouse Yard, in the City, as a day-boarder.
The two maiden sisters, who kept the school, and with whom Hood took
his dinner, had the odd name of Hogsflesh, and they had a sensitive
brother, who was always addressed as "Mr. H.," and who subsequently
became the prototype of Charles Lamb's unsuccessful farce, called "Mr.
H."
In 1812, Hood was sent to a day-school, his account of which is as
follows:--"In a house formerly a suburban seat of the unfortunate Earl
of Essex, over a grocer's shop, up two pair of stairs, there was a very
select day-school, kept by a decayed Dominie, as he would have been
called in his native land. In his better days, when my brother was his
pupil, he had been master of one of those wholesale concerns in which
so many ignorant men have made fortunes, by favour of high terms, low
ushers, gullible parents, and victimized little boys. Small as was our
college, its principal maintained his state, and walked gowned and
covered. His cap was of faded velvet, of black, or blue, or purple,
or sad-green, or, as it seemed, of altogether, with a sad _nuance_ of
brown; his robe of crimson damask lined with the national tartan. A
quaint, carved, high-backed elbowed article, looking like an _émigré_
from a set that had been at home in an aristocratical drawing-room
under the _ancien régime_, was his professional chair, which, with his
desk, was appropriately elevated on a dais some inches above the common
floor. From this moral and material eminence he cast a vigilant yet
kindly eye over some dozen of youngsters: for adversity, sharpened by
habits of authority, had not soured him, or mingled a single tinge of
bile with the peculiar red-streak complexion so common to the wealthier
natives of the north...." "In a few months, my education progressed
infinitely farther than it had done in as many years under the listless
superintendence of B.A. and LL.D. and assistants. I picked up _some_
Latin, was a tolerable grammarian, and so good a French scholar, that I
earned a few guineas--my first literary fee--by revising a new edition
of _Paul et Virginie_ for the press. Moreover, as an accountant, I
could work a _summum bonum_, that is, a good sum."
Young Hood finished his education at Wanostrocht's Academy at
Camberwell; and removed thence to a merchant's counting-house in the
City, where he realized his own inimitable sketch of the boy "Just set
up in Business:"--
"Time was I sat upon a lofty stool,
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen
Began each morning at the stroke of ten
To write in Bell and Co.'s commercial school,
In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,
The favourite retreat of merchant men;
Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,
And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.
Now double entry--now a flowery trope--
Mingling poetic honey with trade wax:
Blogg, Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope--
Bristles and Hogg--Glyn, Mills, and Halifax--
Rogers and Towgood--Hemp--the Bard of Hope--
Barilla--Byron--Tallow--Burns, and Flax."
In 1824, Hood, after having contributed to some periodicals at Dundee
in 1821, obtained the situation of sub-editor of the _London Magazine_.
"My vanity," says he, "did not rashly plunge me into authorship, but
no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, _à la_
Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes."
Mr. Hood's first work was anonymous--his _Odes and Addresses to Great
People_--a little, thin, mean-looking foolscap sub-octavo of poems
with nothing but wit and humour (could it want more?) to recommend it.
Coleridge was delighted with the work, and taxed Charles Lamb by letter
with the authorship.
His next work was _A Plea for the Midsummer Fairies_, a serious poem
of infinite beauty, full of fine passages and of promise; it obtained
praise from the critics, but little favour from the public; and Hood's
experience of the unpleasant truth that
"Those who live to please must please to live,"