CHAPTER VII.

THE END.

_Sale of library--Letters from Shetland and Aberdeen--Winter

illness--Charities--Recovery--Magazine articles again--Literary

executorship of late Mr Edward Ellice--Rev. James White of

Methlick--Last illness and death--Concluding remarks--Burial at

Dalmeny._

Would that in biography, as in romance, the story might end at its

brightest point! But the true tale must follow its subject through the

valley of the shadow of death, and on to his grave.

The remainder of '79 and beginning of '80 were spent at Morton in

finishing the 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne;' but the work did not

go on with the ease and pleasure of former works, and on its conclusion,

Dr Burton formed the resolution to sell his library. This determination

was combated by his family and friends, as well as by his friendly

publisher, with all the arguments in their power, but in vain. Dr Burton

never would allow that parting with his treasured volumes, the

collection of which had been the pride of his life, cost him a pang. He

had done with his books, he said. They were no book-hunter's library,

but a collection made for use, and, that use over, had better be again

turned into money. Dr Burton did not contemplate undertaking any other

great work; and the possession of so extensive a library forced him to

live in a larger house than was convenient, and rendered leaving it very

troublesome. In the proceeds of its sale Dr Burton was again

disappointed. But before it could be brought to sale, while he was

engaged in the laborious task of cataloguing his books for sale, he

refreshed himself by a summer trip to Shetland, taking Aberdeen on his

return journey, where he had the gratification of being present at the

baptism of his little grandchild, the daughter of Dr and Mrs Rodger.

He wrote from Lerwick, 8th July 1880:--

"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am not in what might be called an interesting

country--low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty--but a new

country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I

saw a valuable archæological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads

were all paved, and went straight over hill and across

valley--never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where

the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have

been fully identified. But there, as well as in other places, where

it has been questioned if the Romans ever were--any road strewn or

surfaced with stones that have been laid down in the paving of the

road, is adopted as a Roman road. I have often supposed that this

conclusion was too readily adopted. And to-day I walked for some

distance on a road that has all the requisites--yet no one is wild

enough to say that the Romans were in Shetland. The weather to-day

was warmer than I have yet known it, the sun, such as he is, having

nearly the whole twenty-four hours to do his work in. The next

stage will be Kirkwall, then Wick.

"I shall intimate my motions as I find them coming up for

consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind

demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne'

pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather

too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came

immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very

severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to

grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and

idleness.--Yours, my dear love, J.H. BURTON."

The next is dated merely _Sunday_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... The weather here has been divine, with

daylight, one may say, for twenty-four hours. The people are kind

and cleanly, and all the necessaries of life are abundant. I do not

know when I have enjoyed better health. There is nothing abnormal

about me, except the extent of my appetite. Walking thirty miles

here, is less fatiguing than from Morton to Edinburgh.

"Love to all the household, and remembrances to guests, from yours

affectionately, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"DOUGLAS HOTEL, ABERDEEN,

_14th July 1880_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of

people I detest--those who, because a man has been studious, and

has written books, count that he is public property, who may be

hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.

"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the

tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge

Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of

smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and

I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the

bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good

cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of

school and college friends.--Love to all, from your affectionate

"J.H. BURTON.

"_P.S._--On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went

a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled

some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse

Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs;

her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on

about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."

[Footnote 21: A rather amusing comment on this letter is conveyed

in the following extract from one addressed to Dr Burton's

publishers, by Mr George M'Crie, a grandson of the eminent Scotch

divine of the same name:--

"In the month of July last year, I happened to be travelling

southward, in the steamer St Magnus, from Orkney. Before calling at

Wick, and while the tourists on board were gazing at John o'

Groat's House, I was spoken to by an elderly gentleman, on the

'bridge,' regarding some of the steamer's arrangements. I satisfied

his curiosity as well as I was able, and thought no more of the

matter. We had a large number of passengers, and I did not notice

him again until we were coming out together in a boat, after a

ramble on shore at Pulteneytown. A fellow-passenger, who had

previously noticed the elderly gentleman and myself in

conversation, then whispered to me, 'A celebrated literary man

that, sir, with whom you were speaking before we went ashore; no

other than the famous Judge Haliburton of America, the author of

"Sam Slick."' Some doubt, I must confess, crossed my mind at this

stage. I surely had heard of the Judge's death some years before,

but thinking, very pardonably, that I must be mistaken, I replied,

'Oh, indeed!' and viewed my late acquaintance with some curiosity.

I am imaginative, but it was difficult, in truth, to connect this

staid and sober personage with the idea of the American satirist,

however proverbially dissimilar authors may be to their own

creations. However, I am no hunter after celebrities, literary or

otherwise, and I would not, in all likelihood, have taken any steps

to further conversation with the one in question, had he not, by

chance, been seated close beside me on the quarterdeck when we

resumed our journey south. The steamer was rolling heavily, and his

seat was not a comfortable one. I gave him a camp-stool which I had

secured, and in return he kindly again entered into conversation

with me. We talked about many things, but I could not help thinking

that the American author seemed well informed, for a transatlantic

stranger, regarding the coast, the route generally, and, singularly

enough, regarding Scottish antiquities. At last an observation,

which I timidly hazarded regarding the United States, showed me, in

the reply it received, that I was hopelessly at sea regarding my

fellow-passenger's identity. Before we came to Aberdeen he had told

me that his name was John Hill Burton. The similarity of the sound

of the names had misled my too easily persuaded informant and my

own credulous self. I had taken the author of the 'Book-hunter' for

the author of the 'Clockmaker'!

"Dr Hill Burton most kindly continued to converse with me for

several hours after we had exchanged cards. My own is a name not

unconnected with Scottish ecclesiastical history, and this, to him,

was a sufficient topic. Being an Edinburgh man by birth, I ought to

have known him by sight, but I have been absent from my native city

for many years, and may be excused for not recognising one of

Edinburgh's most distinguished dwellers, now unhappily lost to us.

"G.M. M'C."]

* * * * *

"BANCHORY, _16th July 1880_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am here in the scene of many recollections going

back to boyhood, and the interest of them takes a zest from knowing

that you, too, must have stored up associations with the spot,

though of a later period. I think the avenue trees at Blackhall

were cut down before your day. They are not now much missed in the

general landscape. The lapse of half a century has given such a

growth to the surrounding plantations, that where I remember bare

hills, or freshly planted and uglier than bare, there are now great

stretches deserving to be called forest land."

* * * * *

Dr Burton returned from this pleasant little trip well, and in good

spirits, but the winter was one of illness.

On the 8th of November it was found necessary to call in medical advice

on account of a severe exoema affecting chiefly one leg. The doctor

ordered confinement to bed, besides other remedies. On the 8th of

December these had proved successful, and Dr Burton was able to be up,

and, at Christmas, to assist his wife in carrying gifts to all their

poor neighbours--a plan substituted that year for the first time instead

of a Christmas-tree for the same class of people.

Dr Burton was always much interested in the Christmas-tree, and used to

contribute largely to it what he called _trash_--_i.e._, cheap fancy

articles, if he happened to be in London before Christmas-time, or money

if he did not. His mode of visiting poor people was peculiar. He no

sooner heard of any plan of benevolence towards them than he was

determined it should be immediately carried out, and utterly impatient

of all preparations. He chose to carry a basket, the heavier the better,

but would on no account enter a cottage, still less speak to an inmate.

He preferred such expeditions in the dark, that he might successfully

hide himself outside while his wife went in to distribute his bounty.

On the 8th of January 1881 a recurrence of the former symptoms again

obliged him to take to bed. On the 8th of February he was able to rise

and go down to the library.

On the 8th of March he again became ill, and towards the end of that

month had an alarming attack of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs.

Slight hope was entertained of his recovery for some days, but this

illness appeared a turning-point, and by the 8th of April he was able to

come down-stairs. No more 8ths were marked by disaster or recovery till

again the 8th of August.

During the summer Dr Burton appeared to have recovered completely. He

wrote several articles for 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and took regular

walks, first with his wife, and, when his walking power improved so as

to exceed hers, with his son. He also began to edit the literary remains

of the late Mr Edward Ellice, to whom he was joint literary executor

along with Mrs Ellice.

At the time of the General Assembly Dr Burton had the pleasure of seeing

once more his valued friend, the Rev. James White, minister of Methlick.

This gentleman had been his schoolfellow at the Grammar School in

Aberdeen. The two old friends spent a pleasant summer evening together

at Morton. On the Saturday before his own death Dr Burton learned that

of Mr White. "Ah! so Jamie White's gone," he said, "and _without the

catalogues_." The last part of his sentence referred to old class lists

in which Joannes Burton and Jacobus White's names appear next each

other. They believed themselves the last survivors of their Grammar

School class.

On Tuesday, 2d August, he walked into Edinburgh and out again as usual,

though his family drove in at the same time that he walked, and drove

out again also at the same time, in the hope that he would avail himself

of a seat in the pony-carriage, at least for part of the way. His

aversion to driving clung to him. He did not appear fatigued, declared

himself the better for the walk, and even next day still boasted of the

advantage which he thought he always gained from a long walk. On

Thursday, 4th August, he became very hoarse, and complained of sore

throat. On Friday these complaints were better. On Saturday, 6th, he

slept almost the whole day, rousing himself to take food when required,

and always intending to rise, but as the shades of evening fell

announcing his intention of "making a day of it," and being very active

and down in good time next day.

On Sunday, 7th, he did come down as early as usual, and did not

complain, but appeared languid, lying on the sofa the greater part of

the day,--a thing he had never done before. He read and talked as usual.

He sat at table with his family at dinner for the last time. It was

observed that he looked ill, so ill that his wife resolved to send for

the doctor as soon as possible next day, which was Monday, again the

8th, of August. The night had passed quietly, but on the doctor's

arrival he pronounced the case very grave. The lungs were much

congested, and the heart's action weak. The day brought no aggravation

of the symptoms; again the night was quiet.

On Tuesday, 9th August, there was a slight improvement, which continued

throughout the night.

On Wednesday, 10th, the improvement seemed more marked till about ten

A.M. About that time a change in the countenance was observed. On the

doctor's visit about twelve he pronounced the case all but hopeless, and

five hours later life was extinct. Consciousness remained till almost

the last moment. The illness was attended by no bodily pain, little even

of uneasiness, and the mind was calm and placid throughout.

Since the beginning of illness, nine months before, the natural

irritability, or impatience of temper, had been diminishing. Dr Burton

was by no means, as all his friends seemed to suppose, a fretful or

unreasonable invalid. With but few exceptions he was gentle and grateful

to his attendants, especially to his wife. He was perfectly aware of his

own condition, though never directly told it. His friend Mr Belcombe,

the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Morningside, called for him on

Tuesday, 9th August, was received by him with pleasure, and spent some

time with him. Dr Burton had been brought up an Episcopalian, and

continued attached to the Moderate party in that Church through life.

It can hardly be expected that the writer should offer a critical

estimate of one so lately dead, and so nearly related to her. In the

preceding sketch she has endeavoured to inform the public on all

particulars in which they might be supposed interested in the life of a

man who served them during life with considerable acceptance. His

voluminous works may speak for themselves, or find a more competent

exponent than the present writer. She has endeavoured to give a picture

of himself.

John Hill Burton can never have been handsome, and he so determinedly

neglected his person as to increase its natural defects. His greatest

mental defect was an almost entire want of imagination. From this cause

the characters of those nearest and dearest to him remained to his

life's end a sealed book.

He was fond of talking, and still fonder of writing, about character;

but even his liveliest pictures, such as that of De Quincey the

opium-eater, are but a collection of external habits or peculiarities,

not necessarily bearing at all on the real nature--the inner man. His

was the sort of mind which more naturally classifies than

individualises, in this agreeing with the late Mr Buckle, who

appreciated Dr Burton's historical labours, and was in his turn

appreciated by him. To both, individual character seemed a small subject

not worth study.

The characters of women, especially, were by Dr Burton all placed in the

same category. He conceived of them all as baby-worshippers,

flower-lovers, &c.--all alike.

Dr Burton was excessively kind-hearted within the limits placed by this

great want. To any sorrow or suffering which he could understand he

craved with characteristic impatience to carry immediate relief; and the

greatest enjoyment of his life, especially of its later years, was to

give pleasure to children, poor people, or the lower animals. Many

humble folks will remember the bunches of flowers he thrust silently

into their hands, and the refreshment he never failed to press on their

acceptance in his own peculiar manner.

He was liberal of money to a fault. He never refused any application

even from a street beggar. He quite allowed that these ought not to be

encouraged, but he urged that the municipality ought to take charge of

them, and prevent their appealing to the compassion of the public, who

could not, as he said, be expected to perform the disagreeable task of

disciplining vagrants at the wages of a penny a case. No printer's devil

or other chance messenger failed to receive his sixpence or shilling,

besides a comfortable meal. It was his constant custom to ask his sons

if any of their wants were unsupplied, if they required money for

furnishing their workshop or laboratory, or for any of their studies or

amusements. It is but just to them to add that the question was almost

always answered in the negative.

Many of the "motley crew" along with whom Dr Burton received his

education fell into difficulties in the course of their lives. An

application from one of them always met with a prompt response. To send

double the amount asked on such occasions was his rule, if money was the

object desired. In his earlier life he would also spare no trouble in

endeavouring to help these unfortunates to help themselves. As he grew

old he was less zealous, probably from being less sanguine of success,

in this service.

On Saturday the 13th of August the mortal remains of John Hill Burton

were laid beside those of his infant child in the lovely little

churchyard of Dalmeny. It had been at first intended that he should be

buried in the Dean Cemetery, where his mother and his first wife were

interred, and where his valued friend William Brodie[22] had erected a

beautiful monument over their graves; but after orders had been given to

this effect, his wife became strongly possessed by the wish to carry out

his repeatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.

[Footnote 22: Since deceased--October 30, 1881--and also buried there.]

KATHARINE BURTON.

MORTON, _20th September 1881_.

[Illustration: _Dalmeny Church._]

[Illustration: A Nook in the Author's Library.]

[Illustration]

THE BOOK-HUNTER.

_PART I.--HIS NATURE._

Introductory.

Of 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 contain 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 productions which might appear to

have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections

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 derivative 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 instrument for silencing inquiry and

handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student

once into palæozoology, and he takes your other hard names--your

ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron--for

granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or

devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is

categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be

described as _sun_categorematic, one may take up a very absolute

positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit,

has sought this all-powerful protection, and called itself Archæology.

An obliterated 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 muirland acres, finding them

described in a learned work as "richly megalithic," became suddenly

excited by hopes which were quickly extinguished when the import of the

term was fully explained to him. Should there be any remains of

sculpture on such a stone, it becomes a lithoglyph or a hieroglyph; and

if the nature and 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 honour, the absoluteness 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

frequently 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 designations 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 discourse, 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 even liked, by readers of the kind I am most

ambitious of pleasing.[23]

[Footnote 23: 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 definitions,

as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux

Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avisés 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 minutiæ 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 bibliotaphe,

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 bibliopée, "_l'art d'écrire ou de composer des

livres_," or, as the unlearned would say, the 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:--

"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

would appear that all subjects should come under the consideration of

the bibliographe; languages, logic, criticism, philosophy, eloquence,

mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are no strangers 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 makes 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 which are

recommended by talented authors; he runs through libraries and cabinets

to increase the sum of his knowledge; he studies authors who have

treated of the science of books, he points 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 keep

himself well up to the discoveries of his age, and compare them 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

_Bibliographe_." This reminds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly

defined their own science as the knowledge of things human and divine.]

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 questioned, 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 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 discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking

of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the

clouds of theology or of ethics, 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 unfortunate

experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these

self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of

intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all

uncharitableness, 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,--just as complaints about poverty, and inability to

buy this and that, come from the fat lips of 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

fantastic 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 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

proposes 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 wonderful criminal trial.[24]

[Footnote 24: It has often been observed that it is among the Society of

Friends, who keep 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 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 generation, 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 persuasion, 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 hinder 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.]

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 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.[25] 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 conversation with broad

descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her

own "was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, 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 bearing 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 filled 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.

[Footnote 25: In the renowned Dame aux Camélias, the respectable, rigid,

and rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous

ayez une maîtresse, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un galant

homme doit payer l'amour d'une fille 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 l'ombre d'une tache sur le nom honorable que je

vous ai donné--voilà ce qui ne peut être, voilà 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 Mephistopheles 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 master of having

indulged, once at least, if not oftener, in brandy-and-water!]

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 admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened

posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such

results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a

consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous

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 incapacity 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 coffee 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 peculiarity which may transfer them

from the class of free self-regulators to that of persons under

"treatment." 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 absolutely 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 proportion 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. Indeed, the bad name that proverbially

hangs the dog has already been given to the one under consideration, for

bibliomania 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 people who, being all

right themselves, have undertaken 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, therefore, 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 specimens of the class.

A Vision of Mighty Book-Hunters.

As the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend

Archdeacon 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 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 rare 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 anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a

well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving 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, serviceable for

professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and

hardened; and it is observable 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 abandonment to its

propensities. The Archdeacon had long passed this stage ere he crossed

my path, and had become thoroughly hardened. He was not remarkable for

local attachment; and in moving from place to place, his spoil, packed

in innumerable great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain unreleased

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 resolved, at least once in his life, to part with a

considerable proportion of his collection--better to suffer the anguish

of such an act than endure the fretting of continued restraint. There

was a wondrous 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. Before 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, and 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 confidential 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 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,

petitioning, somewhat in the tone with which an old schoolfellow down in

the world requests your assistance to help him to go to York to get an

appointment--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 collection,

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 Bibliomania, 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; and he did so to full

prolific purpose. His was a mind enriched with varied learning, which he

gave forth with full, strong, easy flow, like an inexhaustible perennial

spring coming from inner reservoirs, never dry, yet too capacious to

exhibit the 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 preserved 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

illustrations 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 departed victim--Fitzpatrick

Smart, Esq. He, too, through a long life, had been a vigilant and

enthusiastic 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, or a rough-edge

man, or an early-English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider,

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

princeps_ man; neither did he come under any of the more vulgar

classifications 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

historical 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

was 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 grudged

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 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 observation and tact were required for such an adventure. The

chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift-maker were thousands 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 no better object than disturbing the

peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such _dona

ferentes_ cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep--for what

could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he

was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid

exterior he had 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 "miscellaneous articles of vertu." He started on

his accumulating 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

collection, in which tiny sculpture and brilliant colour predominated,

he kept a sort of fairy world around him. But each one of the mob of

curious things he preserved had some story linking 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 curiosity. 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 which he could

himself have turned into admirable ridicule.

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 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 freshness of living nature is vainly

attempted to be preserved. 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

harmonised 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

conversation and manner were far from exhausting his resources. He had a

wonderful pencil--it was potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the

ridiculous; 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 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 according 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 commonplace type of the

book-hunter--it shall be Inchrule 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 inseparable pocket-companion, one of those

graduated folding measures of length which may often be seen protruding

from the moleskin pocket of the joiner. 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 significant.[26] 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 Gordonstoun, or the Heber, perhaps--or was

veritably an impostor--or was in reality a new and previously unknown

prize well worth contending for. The minuteness and precision of his

knowledge excited 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.

[Footnote 26: Of the copy of the celebrated 1635 Elzevir Cæsar, in the

Imperial Library at Paris, Brunet triumphantly informs 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 world, since other

illustrious copies put in competition with it have been found not to

exceed four inches and eight, or, at the utmost, nine, twelfths.

"Ces détails," he subjoins, "paroitront sans doute puérils à bien des

gens: mais puisque c'est la grandeur des marges de ces sorts de livres

qu'en détermine la valeur, il faut bien fixer le _maximum_ de cette

grandeur, afin que les amateurs puissent apprécier les exemplaires qui

approchent plus ou moins de la mésure donnée."]

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

inferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's and the

horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously interesting. 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 sometimes

shown in completing a highly esteemed edition with fragments from one

lightly esteemed. Sometimes 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 pursued 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 book, in the hope of finding materials for one perfect one among

them, Inchrule would remorselessly spurn from him the most voluptuously

got-up specimen (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.

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 aspire 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 mechanic, who could do many things

with his hands, and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, "feckless"

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 scepticism, 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 influenced was a mere sensible

practical respect for good workmanship. The aspirations of the

collectors, however, in this matter, go out of the boundaries of the

sphere of the utilitarian into that of the æsthetic. Their priests and

prophets, by the way, do not seem to be aware how far back this

veneration 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 workmanship 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, specimens 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 perform for himself, naturally brings about

him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his

importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated

degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant

of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in

the conversation of their employers, 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 collector. 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 authority 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 one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless

errand of inspection to a reputed collection; he was hot and indignant

"A _collection_," he sputtered 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 Pardoner 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 associations that may or may not be found out,

Thomas Papaverius. But how to make palpable to the 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 punctualities nor burdening others by

exacting them. The festivities 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--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 writing-ink, but that

Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them.

What can be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in the

world--it consisted of the fragments of apparel 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 originally 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

thickly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. These lips are

speedily opened by some casual remark, 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 exquisitely jointed together as if they were

destined to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. Still the

hours stride over each other, and still flows on the stream of gentle

rhetoric, as if it were _labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum_. 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 civilisation, 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 inconvenience 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, and,

having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme

unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might indeed nourish

kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to which it

was appropriated, but was not a comfortable 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 proposal 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

articulate 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 themselves

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 refreshed 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 instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a

considerable 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. He had discovered a

very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very

important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from

the book 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

"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, which 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 accompany the forlorn

traveller, and lead him through the difficulties of the way--for have

not midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with all its

intricacies? 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 dimensions 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 comes from him a continued stream of talk

concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and other kindred matters.

Surely if we two were seen by any human eyes, it must have been supposed

that some gnome, or troll, or kelpie was luring the listener 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 overcoming

him, he would take his rest, wherever that happened, like some poor

mendicant. He used to denounce, with his most fervent eloquence, that

barbarous 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 not give a satisfactory account of himself--a thing which

Papaverius never could give under any circumstances. After all, I 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 passing from specific little

incidents to an estimation of the general nature of the man. The

logicians lucidly describe definition as being _per genus et

differentiam_. You have the characteristics in which all of the _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 characteristics 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

while 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 gaining admission--a

process in which he 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 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 cunning, and decline the

transaction.

He stretched till it broke the proverb that to give quickly is as good

as to give twice. His giving was quick enough on the rare occasions when

he 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 doubtless 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 gentleman 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 something 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,

Papaverius had an extraordinary insight into practical human life; not

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 mysteries 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 conveying 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

enjoyments 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

printing, 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. So of Papaverius. If his intellectual appetite were craving

after some passage in the Oedipus, or in the Medeia, or in Plato's

Republic, he would be quite contented with the most tattered and

valueless fragment 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 Encyclopédie Méthodique, 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 matter to

any vulgar-mannered acquaintance given to the unhallowed practice of

jeering, 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 Euripides or Plato--but what is that to the

rightful owner of the lost sheep?

The learned world may very 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 marvellous

boasts that, under the pressure of a call by a public library to replace

a mutilated book with a new copy, which would have cost £30, he

recovered 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 confiding

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.[27] 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 belonging to

himself or another? Nay, it is said he 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 anchorite

so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar nature removed them from

him. It may be questioned 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 quantity 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 distance 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.

[Footnote 27: "Si quis in aliena tabula pinxerit, quidam putant, tabulam

picturæ cedere: aliis videtur picturam (qualiscunque sit) tabulæ cedere:

sed nobis videtur melius esse tabulam picturæ cedere. Ridiculum est enim

picturam Apellis vel Parrhasii in accessionem vilissimæ tabulæ

cedere."--_Inst._ ii. 1. 34.]

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

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 agreeable 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

countenance looking hospitality and kindliness towards friends, and a

quiet but not easily solvable reserve towards the rest of the world. He

has no literary 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

characteristics 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 tiny

ladders--the broad-winged lecterns, with leathern cushions on the edges

to keep the wood from grazing the rich bindings--the books themselves,

each shelf uniform with its facings or rather 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; and, 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 annotation. The copies of Bayle, Moreri, the Trevoux Dictionary,

Stephens's Lexicon, Du Cange, Mabillon's Antiquities, the Benedictine

historians, the Bollandists' Lives of the Saints, Grævius and Gronovius,

and heavy books of that order, are in their old original morocco,

without a scratch or abrasure, gilt-edged, vellum-jointed, with their

backs 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, Denon's Egypt, the great French work on the arts of the middle

ages, and the like; and many is the scholar who, unable to gratify his

cravings elsewhere, 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 appearance 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 catching 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 conferred 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 invested 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 drop an ink-spot on the creamy margin of the Mentelin

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 accumulates 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 believe that even Papaverius himself might have felt some

sympathetic touch from the spotless 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 affection, known also

to the agricultural world as affecting the wheat crop, and called "the

smut." Fortunately 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 _Bibliothèque bleue_. There is a sad story connected with this

peculiar frailty. A great and high-minded scholar of the seventeenth

century had a savage trick played on him by some mad wags, who collected

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 obtain 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 a purchaser. He is an industrious

prowler in unlikely regions, and is entitled to some reward for his

diligence 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 worthless. 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 barbarian'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 converse of those which Cassio

professed to hold about his good name, for the scrap furtively removed

is supposed 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 friend Oldenbuck of Monkbarns, the Antiquary, and what he

says has just enough of confession in it to show a consciousness that

the 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 limits 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 equivalent! 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 Cowgate, 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 poor 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 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 mysterious

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 Jonathan 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 farther.

So much for one of the debased symptoms which in very bad cases

sometimes characterise an otherwise genial failing. There is another

peculiar, and, it may be said, vicious propensity, exhibited

occasionally in conjunction with the pursuit. This propensity 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 dispossessing him. This

spirit is said to burn with still fiercer flame in the breasts of those

whose pursuit would externally seem to be the most innocent in the

world, and the least excitive of the bad passions--namely, among

flower-fanciers. From some mysterious cause, it has been known to

develop itself most flagrantly among tulip-collectors, insomuch 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

satisfaction of crushing it under the heel.[28] This line of practice is

not entirely alien to the book-hunter. Peignot tells us that it is of

rare occurrence 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

Bibliolyte 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 definitively cut off from

participating in their privileges.

[Footnote 28: "The great point of view in a collector is to possess that

not possessed by any other. It is said of a collector lately deceased,

that he used to purchase scarce prints at enormous prices in order to

destroy them, and thereby render the remaining impressions more scarce

and valuable."--Grose's Olio, p. 57. I do not know to whom Grose

alludes; but it strikes me, in realising a man given to such

propensities--taking them as a reality and not a joke--that it would be

interesting to know how, in his moments of serious thought, he could

contemplate his favourite pursuit--as, for instance, when the

conscientious physician may have 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 opportunities for the

encouragement of art as an elevator and improver of the human race.]

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 diagnosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his using

his books by reading them as out of the question, he yet was never known

to indulge in that fondling and complacent examination of their exterior

and general condition, which, to Inchrule and others of his class,

seemed to afford the highest gratification that, as sojourners through

this vale of tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuriate in

the collective pride--like that of David when he numbered his people--of

beholding how his volumes 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 warerooms, 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 collections--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 propensities, 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 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

systematic 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 accomplished scholar, desiring to

complete an epoch in literary history on 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 to those he

had so provoked the chinks in the monster's armour. He was assailable

and punishable at last, then, this potent tyrant--but the attack must be

made warily and cautiously. Accordingly, impartial bystanders, ignorant

of the plot, began to observe that he was degenerating by degrees in the

rank of his purchases, and at last becoming utterly reckless, buying, at

the prices of the sublimest rarities, common works of ordinary

literature to be found in every book-shop. Such was the result of

judiciously drawing him 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 obtained 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.

Such 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 Ballantyne, 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 from 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 said,

millions--of volumes have been decided, each carrying with it its own

little train of suspense and triumph.

More congenial, however, in my recollection, is 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 sympathetic 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

exquisite, but now, alas! too minute type. The eyesight 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 even, all have undergone

mutation, but no perceptible 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 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 pronunciation 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 excitement 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 imperfections were

their merit; and the auctioneer, momentarily 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 thunderer's hammer, too, has long been

silenced by the great quieter. One living memorial still exists of that

scene--the genial and then youthful assistant, 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, exercises a

more important influence on the destinies of literature. 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.

Classification.

Perhaps 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 might 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 classification. In

enumerating the various orders to which Fitzpatrick Smart did _not_

belong, I have mentioned many 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 among 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 weakness takes that direction.

It may be cited as a signal instance 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, "especially of ancient classics, and a

few favourite 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 purchased by the

gallant Mr George Hibbert for £140. 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. Some "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad margins. These

have all a certain amount of magnificence 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 become 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.