But his tuneful companions who had less vital power have lain like some

ancient cemetery or buried city, in which antiquaries have been for a

long age digging and searching for some fragment of intellectual

treasure.

One book, and that the most read of all, was hedged by a sort of

divinity which protected it, so far as that was practicable, from the

dilapidating effects of use. The Bible seems to have been ever touched

with reverent gentleness, and, when the sordid effects of long handling

had become inevitably conspicuous, to have been generally removed out of

sight, and, as it were, decently interred. Hence it is that, of the old

editions of the Bible, the copies are so comparatively numerous and in

such fine preservation. Look at those two folios from the types of

Guttenburg and Fust, running so far back into the earliest stage of the

art of printing, that of them is told the legend of a combination with

the devil, which enabled one man to write so many copies identically the

same. See how clean and spotless is the paper, and how black, glossy,

and distinct the type, telling us how little progress printing has made

since the days of its inventors, in anything save the greater rapidity

with which, in consequence of the progress of machinery, it can now be

executed.

The reason of the extreme rarity of the books printed by the early

English printers is that, being very amusing, they were used up,

thumbed out of existence. Such were Caxton's Book of the Ordre of

Chyualry; his Knyght of the Toure; the Myrour of the World; and the

Golden Legende; Cocke Lorell's Bote, by De Worde; his Kalender of

Shepeherdes, and suchlike. If any one feels an interest in the process

of exhaustion, by which such treasures were reduced to rarity, he may

easily witness it in the _débris_ of a circulating library; and perhaps

he will find the phenomenon in still more distinct operation at any

book-stall where lie heaps of school-books, odd volumes of novels, and a

choice of Watts's Hymns and Pilgrim's Progresses. Here, too, it is

possible that the enlightened onlooker may catch sight of the

book-hunter plying his vocation, much after the manner in which, in some

ill-regulated town, he may have beheld the _chiffonniers_, at early

dawn, rummaging among the cinder heaps for ejected treasures. A ragged

morsel is perhaps carefully severed from the heap, wrapped in paper to

keep its leaves together, and deposited in the purchaser's pocket. You

would probably find it difficult to recognise the fragment, if you

should see it in the brilliancy of its resuscitation. A skilled and

cautious workman has applied a bituminous solvent to its ragged edges,

and literally incorporated, by a sort of paper-making process, each

mouldering page into a broad leaf of fine strong paper, in which the

print, according to a simile used for such occasions, seems like a

small rivulet in a wide meadow of margin. This is termed inlaying, and

is a very lofty department in the art of binding. Then there is,

besides, the grandeur of russia or morocco, with gilding, and tooling,

and marbling, and perhaps a ribbon marker, dangling out with a

decoration at its end--all tending, like stars, and garters, and

official robes, to stamp the outer insignia of importance on the book,

and to warn all the world to respect it, and save it from the risks to

which the common herd of literature is liable. The French have, as

usual, dignified the process which restores diseased books to health and

condition by an appropriate technical name--it is Bibliuguiancie; and

under that title it will be found fitly and appropriately discussed in

the Dictionnaire de Bibliologie of Peignot, who specially mentions two

practitioners of this kind as having conferred lustre on their

profession by their skill and success--Vialard and Heudier.[62]

[Footnote 62: There is something exceedingly curious, not only in its

bearing on the matter of the text, but as a record of some peculiar

manners and habits of the fourteenth century, in Richard of Bury's

injunctions as to the proper treatment of the manuscripts which were

read in his day, and the signal contrast offered by the practice both of

the clergy and laity to his decorous precepts:--

"We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes

of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first

handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places

and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their

purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in

their repositories. Truly, next to the vestments and vessels dedicated

to the body of the Lord, holy books deserve to be most decorously

handled by the clergy, upon which injury is inflicted as often as they

presume to touch them with a dirty hand. Wherefore, we hold it expedient

to exhort students upon various negligencies which can always be

avoided, but which are wonderfully injurious to books.

"In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and

closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous

haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for

it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than

a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not

restrained by the rule of their superiors, are puffed up with infinite

absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presumption, judge of

everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything.

"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his

study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold,

his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his

handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile

dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of

his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with stinking filth,

with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He

distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in

sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain.

These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which

nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure,

and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not

ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his

empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag

at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never

ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he

adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the

book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What

is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short

study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he

twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the

volume. He goes out in the rain, and now flowers make their appearance

upon our soil. Then the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather

than the inspector of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets,

roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with

sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all

over with his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with

his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the

holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a

month, and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it

will not yield to the efforts of the closer.

"But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with

books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, if

copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become

incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin

about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their

unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other frivolous thing

whatever that occurs to their imagination. There the Latinist, there the

sophist, there every sort of unlearned scribe tries the goodness of his

pen, which we have frequently seen to have been most injurious to the

fairest volumes, both as to utility and price. There are also certain

thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins

for letter-paper (leaving only the letters or text), or the fly-leaves

put in for the preservation of the book, which they take away for

various uses and abuses, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited

under a threat of anathema.

"But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholar that washing

should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from his

meals to study, before his fingers, besmeared with grease, loosen a

clasp or turn over the leaf of a book. Let not a crying child admire the

drawings in the capital letters, lest he pollute the parchment with his

wet fingers, for he instantly touches whatever he sees.

"Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look at a book

turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its natural order,

are altogether unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk also

take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from the pots, do not touch

the leaves of books unwashed; but he who enters without spot shall give

his services to the precious volumes.

"The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules could not

be clerical characteristics, might also be most important, as well to

books as to scholars, who, as often as they perceive defects in books,

should attend to them instantly, for nothing enlarges more quickly than

a rent, as a fracture neglected at the time will afterwards be repaired

with increased trouble."--Philobiblion, p. 101.]

I have recourse to our old friend Monkbarns again for a brilliant

description of the prowler among the book-stalls, in the performance of

the function assigned to him in the dispensation of things,--renewing my

already recorded protest against the legitimacy of the commercial part

of the transaction:--

"'Snuffy Davie bought the game of Chess, 1474, the first book ever

printed in England, from a stall in Holland, for about two groschen, or

twopence of our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty pounds, and as

many books as came to twenty pounds more. Osborne resold this inimitable

windfall to Dr Askew for sixty guineas. At Dr Askew's sale,' continued

the old gentleman, kindling as he spoke, 'this inestimable treasure

blazed forth in its full value, and was purchased by royalty itself for

one hundred and seventy pounds! Could a copy now occur, Lord only

knows,' he ejaculated, with a deep sigh and lifted-up hands,--'Lord only

knows what would be its ransom!--and yet it was originally secured, by

skill and research, for the easy equivalent of twopence sterling. Happy,

thrice happy, Snuffy Davie!--and blessed were the times when thy

industry could be so rewarded!'"

In such manner is it that books are saved from annihilation, and that

their preservers become the feeders of the great collections in which,

after their value is established, they find refuge; and herein it is

that the class to whom our attention is at present devoted perform an

inestimable service to literature. It is, as you will observe, the

general ambition of the class to find value where there seems to be

none, and this develops a certain skill and subtlety, enabling the

operator, in the midst of a heap of rubbish, to put his finger on those

things which have in them the latent capacity to become valuable and

curious. The adept will at once intuitively separate from its friends

the book that either is or will become curious. There must be something

more than mere rarity to give it this value, although high authorities

speak of the paucity of copies as being everything. David Clement, the

illustrious French bibliographer, who seems to have anticipated the

positive philosophy by an attempt to make bibliography, as the Germans

have named it, one of the exact sciences, lays it down with authority,

that "a book which it is difficult to find in the country where it is

sought ought to be called simply _rare_; a book which it is difficult to

find in any country may be called _very rare_; a book of which there are

only fifty or sixty copies existing, or which appears so seldom as if

there never had been more at any time than that number of copies, ranks

as _extremely rare_; and when the whole number of copies does not exceed

ten, this constitutes _excessive rarity_, or rarity in the highest

degree." This has been received as a settled doctrine in bibliography;

but it is utter pedantry. Books may be rare enough in the real or

objective sense of the term, but if they are not so in the nominal or

subjective sense, by being sought after, their rarity goes for nothing.

A volume may be unique--may stand quite alone in the world--but whether

it is so, or one of a numerous family, is never known, for no one has

ever desired to possess it, and no one ever will.

But it is a curious phenomenon in the old-book trade, that rarities do

not always remain rare; volumes seeming to multiply through some

cryptogamic process, when we know perfectly that no additional copies

are printed and thrown off. The fact is, that the rumour of scarcity,

and value, and of a hunt after them, draws them from their

hiding-places. If we may judge from the esteem in which they were once

held, the Elzevirs must have been great rarities in this country; but

they are now plentiful enough--the heavy prices in the British market

having no doubt sucked them out of dingy repositories in Germany and

Holland--so that, even in this department of commerce the law of supply

and demand is not entirely abrogated. He who dashes at all the books

called rare, or even very rare, by Clement and his brethren, will be apt

to suffer the keen disappointment of finding that there are many who

participate with him in the possession of the same treasures. In fact,

let a book but make its appearance in that author's Bibliothèque

Curieuse, Historique, et Critique, ou Catalogue Raisonné des Livres

difficiles à trouver; or in Graesses's Trésor des Livres Rares et

Précieux; or in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique des Livres Rares,

published by Caileau--or let it be mentioned as a rarity in Eibert's

Allgemeines Bibliographisches Lexicon, or in Debure, Clement, Osmont, or

the Repertorium Bibliographicum,--such proclamation is immediate notice

to many fortunate possessors who were no more aware of the value of

their dingy-looking volumes than Monsieur Jourdain knew himself to be in

the habitual daily practice of talking prose.

So are we brought again back to the conclusion that the true book-hunter

must not be a follower of any abstract external rules, but must have an

inward sense and literary taste. It is not absolutely that a book is

rare, or that it is run after, that must commend it to him, but

something in the book itself. Hence the relics which he snatches from

ruin will have some innate merits to recommend them. They will not be of

that unhappy kind which nobody has desired to possess for their own

sake, and nobody ever will. Something there will be of original genius,

or if not that, yet of curious, odd, out-of-the-way information, or of

quaintness of imagination, or of characteristics pervading some class

of men, whether a literary or a polemical,--something, in short, which

people desirous of information will some day or other be anxious to

read,--such are the volumes which it is desirable to save from

annihilation, that they may find their place at last in some of the

great magazines of the world's literary treasures.

Librarians.

It will often be fortunate for these great institutions if they obtain

the services of the hunter himself, along with his spoils of the chase.

The leaders in the German wars often found it an exceedingly sound

policy to subsidise into their own service some captain of free lances,

who might have been a curse to all around him. Your great

game-preservers sometimes know the importance of taking the most

notorious poacher in the district into pay as a keeper. So it is

sometimes of the nature of the book-hunter, if he be of the genial sort,

and free of some of the more vicious peculiarities of his kind, to make

an invaluable librarian. Such an arrangement will sometimes be found to

be like mercy twice blessed,--it blesseth him that gives and him that

takes. The imprisoned spirit probably finds freedom at last, and those

purchases and accumulations which, to the private purse, were profuse

and culpable recklessness, may become veritable duty; while the wary

outlook and the vigilant observation, which before were only leading a

poor victim into temptation, may come forth as commendable attention and

zealous activity.

Sometimes mistakes have been made in selections on this principle, and a

zeal has been embarked which has been found to tend neither to profit

nor edification; for there have been known, at the head of public

libraries, men of the Cerberus kind, who loved the books so dearly as to

be unable to endure the handling of them by the vulgar herd of readers

and searchers--even by those for whose special aid and service they are

employed. They who have this morbid terror of the profanation of the

treasures committed to their charge suffer in themselves the direst

torments--something like those of a cat beholding her kittens tossed by

a dog--whenever their favourites are handled; and the excruciating

extent of their agonies, when any ardent and careless student dashes

right into the heart of some _editio princeps_ or tall copy, or perhaps

lays it open with its face on the table while he snatches another

edition that he may collate a passage, is not to be conceived. It is

then the dog _worrying_ the kittens. Such men will only give

satisfaction in great private libraries little disturbed by their

proprietors, or in monastic or other corporate institutions, where it

is the worthy object of the patrons to keep their collection in fine

condition, and, at the same time, to take order that it shall be of the

least possible service to education or literature. Angelo Maï, the great

librarian of the Vatican, who made so many valuable discoveries himself,

had the character of taking good care that no one else should make any

within his own strictly preserved hunting grounds.

In the general case, however, a bibliophile at the head of a public

library is genial and communicative, and has a pleasure in helping the

investigator through the labyrinth of its stores. Such men feel their

strength; and the immense value of the service which they may sometimes

perform by a brief hint in the right direction which the inquiry should

take, or by handing down a volume, or recommending the best directory to

all the learning on the matter in hand, has laid many men of letters

under great obligations to them.

The most eminent type of this class of men was Magliabecchi, librarian

to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, who could direct you to any book in any

part of the world, with the precision with which the metropolitan

policeman directs you to St Paul's or Piccadilly. It is of him that the

stories are told of answers to inquiries after books, in these terms:

"There is but one copy of that book in the world. It is in the Grand

Seignior's library at Constantinople, and is the seventh book in the

second shelf on the right hand as you go in." His faculties were, like

those of all great men, self-born and self-trained. So little was the

impoverished soil in which he passed his infancy congenial to his

pursuits in after life, that it was not within the parental intentions

to teach him to read, and his earliest labours were in the shop of a

greengrocer. Had his genius run on natural science, he might have fed it

here, but it was his felicity and his fortune to be transferred to the

shop of a patronising bookseller. Here he drank in an education such as

no academic forcing machinery could ever infuse. He devoured books, and

the printed leaves became as necessary to his existence as the

cabbage-leaves to the caterpillars which at times made their not welcome

appearance in the abjured greengrocery. Like these verdant reptiles,

too, he became assimilated to the food he fed on, insomuch that he was

in a manner hot-pressed, bound, marble-topped, lettered, and shelved. He

could bear nothing but books around him, and would allow no space for

aught else; his furniture, according to repute, being limited to two

chairs, the second of which was admitted in order that the two together

might serve as a bed.

Another enthusiast of the same kind was Adrien Baillet, the author, or,

more properly speaking, the compiler, of the Jugemens des Savans. Some

copies of this book, which has a quantity of valuable matter scattered

through it, have Baillet's portrait, from which his calm scholarly

countenance looks genially forth, with this appropriate motto, "Dans une

douce solitude, à l'abri du mensonge et de la vanité, j'adoptai la

critique, et j'en fis mon étude, pour découvrir la vérité." Him,

struggling with poverty, aggravated with a thirst for books, did

Lamoignon the elder place at the head of his library, thus at once

pasturing him in clover. When the patron told his friend, Hermant, of

his desire to find a librarian possessed of certain fabulous

qualifications for the duty, his correspondent said, "I will bring the

very man to you;" and Baillet, a poor, frail, attenuated, diseased

scholar, was produced. His kind patron fed him up, so far as a man who

could not tear himself from his books, unless when nature became

entirely exhausted, could be fed up. The statesman and his librarian

were the closest of friends; and on the elder Lamoignon's death, the

son, still more distinguished, looked up to Baillet as a father and

instructor.

Men of this stamp are generally endowed with deep and solid learning.

For any one, indeed, to take the command of a great public library,

without large accomplishments, especially in the languages, is to put

himself in precisely the position where ignorance, superficiality, and

quackery are subjected to the most potent test, and are certain of

detection. The number of librarians who have united great learning to a

love of books, is the best practical answer to all sneers about the two

being incompatible. Nor, while we count among us such names as Panizzi,

Birch, Halkett, Naudet, Laing, Cogswell, Jones, Pertz, and Todd, is the

race of learned librarians likely to decay.

It will be worth while for the patrons of public libraries, even in

appointments to small offices, to have an eye on bookish men for filling

them. One librarian differs greatly from another, and on this difference

will often depend the entire utility of an institution, and the question

whether it is worth keeping it open or closing its door. Of this class

of workman it may be said quite as aptly as of the poet, that he is

born, not made. The usual testimonies to qualification--steadiness,

sobriety, civility, intelligence, &c.--may all be up to the mark that

will constitute a first-rate book-keeper in the mercantile sense of the

term, while they are united in a very dreary and hopeless keeper of

books. Such a person ought to go to his task with something totally

different from the impulses which induce a man to sort dry goods or make

up invoices with eminent success. In short, your librarian would need to

be in some way touched with the malady which has been the object of

these desultory remarks.

Bibliographies.

A passing remark is due to the place and function in literature of those

books which act the part of gentleman-usher towards other books, by

introducing them to the notice of strangers. The talk about librarians,

in fact, brings these naturally before us by the law of association,

since the duties of the librarian are congenial to this special

department of the literary world, the work of which has indeed been

chiefly performed by eminent librarians.

The best general name for the class of books which I refer to, is that

of Bibliographies, given to them by the French. Like most other products

of human ingenuity, they are varied in their objects and their merits.

At the one end of the scale is the Leipsic Bibliotheca Horatiana,

ambitious only of commemorating the several editions of Horace, or

Kuster's Bibliotheca Historica Brandenburgica, sacred to the histories

of that duchy; while the other extremity aims at universality, an object

which has not yet been accomplished, and seems every day fleeing farther

off from those who are daring enough to pursue it. In 1545, when the

world of literature was rather smaller than it now is, Conrade Gesner,

in his Bibliotheca, made the first attempt at a universal bibliography.

The incompleteness of the result is confessed in the Epitome of the

Bibliotheca, printed five years afterwards, which professes only to

record _nearly_ all the books written since the world began, and yet

boasts of adding more than two thousand names of authors to the number

mentioned in the original Bibliotheca.[63]

[Footnote 63: Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be

found, as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the

heart of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it: "Thomas

Leirmant, vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica quædam, et

ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est. Vixit anno 1286."]

Of what any list of all the books that have appeared in the world might

be, one may form some conception by the effort of Dr Watt, accomplished

nearly fifty years ago. The work is said to have killed him; and no one

who turns over the densely printed leaves of his four quartos, can feel

surprised at such a result. It is by no means perfect or complete, even

as a guide to books in the compiler's native tongue, yet stands in

honourable contrast with the failure of several efforts to continue this

portion of it down to later days. The voluminous France Littéraire of

Quérard confesses its imperfections even to accomplish its limited

object, by professing to devote its special attention to books of the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As to bibliographies of the present century aiming at universality, the

Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon of Jöcher--when accompanied by Adelung's

supplement, which is its better-half--for scholarship and completeness

casts into shade anything produced either in France or here. It is a

guide which few people consult without passing a compliment either

internally or aloud on the satisfactory result. That it contains an

account of every, or nearly every, book is at once contradicted by its

bulk, yet it is often remarked that no one appeals to it in vain--a

specialty which seems to have arisen from the peculiar capacity of its

editors to dive, as it were, into the hearts of those likely to seek

their aid.

Naturally, the most satisfactory of bibliographies are those limited to

books of a special class. These are frequent in law and divinity, but

are most numerous in history. Hence have we such valued guides as

Lelong, Dupin, Dufresnoy, and our own dynasty of historical

bibliographers, which, including Leland, Bale, Pitts, and Tanner,

reached its climax in Bishop Nicholson, whose introduction to the

sources of British history, hitherto so valuable, will be superseded for

most practical purposes on the completion of Mr Duffus Hardy's

Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great

Britain and Ireland. Science, though it can boast of the great

compilations of Haller, and of other sources of reference to its

literature, takes less aid from such guides than other departments of

intellectual labour, for the obvious reason that, except to the few who

are pursuing its history through its dawn and progress, the latest books

on any department generally supersede their predecessors. They are, in

fact, themselves the guides which show the scientific inquirer his work,

not lying like that of the historian and divine in old books, but in

existing things and practical experiments. Of books intended to show

what is to be found in others, an extremely curious history attaches to

one, the Bibliotheca of Photius. It is known of course to all divines,

but not necessarily, perhaps, to every other person, that this turbulent

and ambitious patriarch, during what he calls his embassy to Syria,

occupied himself in taking down notes of the contents of theological

treatises by his predecessors and contemporaries, with his judgments on

their merits. Being a man of controversial propensities, he selected for

criticism the works of the authors with whom he was at war. Ranking

himself among the orthodox, he thus collected notes of the works of

heterodox writers, and, among these, of several eminent Arians; and the

rather startling result of his labours is, that a considerable quantity

of Arian literature has thus been preserved, which, but for the

exertions of the man who intended to exterminate it by his censure,

would have been entirely lost to the world.

There are among bibliographers many highly meritorious leaders through

the mysteries of occult literature--as, for instance, those who, like

Placcius, Mylius, Barbière, and Melzi, have devoted themselves to the

discovery and publication of the authorship of anonymous works. Their

function is, on the whole, a rather cruel one, and suggests that those

who betake themselves to it are men of austere character. Sometimes, to

be sure, it falls to their lot to place the laurel wreath of fame on the

deserving brow, but very seldom before the grave has closed over it. The

resuscitation of books which have passed unnoticed because they were

beyond their age, or failed to touch its sympathies, has been the class

of instances in which honour has been thus conferred; and it has seldom

fallen to the lot of the living, for the reason that it is the nature of

the human being not very resolutely to conceal from an inquiring public

those of his actions which receive the approval of his own conscience

and taste. In dealing with the living, and often the recently departed,

it is the function of this class of investigators to expose the

weaknesses and inconsistencies of the wise and great. It is they who

have told the world about the youthful Jacobitism of the eminent pillar

of the constitution; of the early Radicalism of the distinguished

Conservative; of the more than questionable escapades of the popular,

yet sedate divine, whose works are the supreme model of decorous piety.

In this wise, indeed, the function of the bibliographer of the anonymous

much resembles the detective's. Like that functionary, he must not let

feelings of delicacy or humanity interfere with the relentless execution

of his duty, for of those who have achieved eminence as public teachers,

all that they have ever told the world is the world's property. Whatever

mercy may be shown to the history of their private life, cannot be

claimed for the sayings which they have made or tried to make public. If

they have at other times uttered opinions different from those which

have achieved for them fame and eminence, those early utterances are an

effective test of the value and sincerity of the later, and were it for

this object only, the world is entitled to look at them. This is one of

the penalties which can only be escaped by turning aside from the path

to eminence.[64]

[Footnote 64: It will be agreeable news to the severely disposed, to

know that a wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to

hide their deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work having been

undertaken, as police reports say, by "a thoroughly efficient officer of

indomitable activity."]

Passing from this class of interesting though rather unamiable

elucidations, I come to another class of bibliographies, of which it is

difficult to speak with patience--those which either profess to tell

you how to find the best books to consult on every department of

learning, or undertake to point out to you the books which you should

select for your library, or for your miscellaneous reading. As to those

which profess to be universal mentors, at hand to help you with the best

tools for your work, in whichever department of intellectual labour it

may happen to be, _they_ break down at once. Whoever has set himself to

any special line of investigation, cannot open one of those books

without discovering its utter worthlessness and incapacity to aid him in

his own specialty. As to the other class of bibliographers, who profess

to act the guide, philosopher, and friend to the collector and the

reader, I cannot imagine anything more offensively audacious than the

function they assume. It is an attempt of the pedagogue to assert a

jurisdiction over grown intellects, and hence such books naturally

develop in flagrant exaggeration the pragmatical priggism which is the

pedagogue's characteristic defect. I would except from this condemnation

a few bibliographers, who, instead of sitting in the schoolmaster's

chair and dictating to you what it is proper that you should read,

rather give you a sly hint that they are going a-vagabondising through

the byways of literature, and will take you with them if you like. Among

these I would chiefly be inclined to affect the company of Peignot,

whose wild and wayward course of reading provides for you something like

to a ramble over the mountains with an Alpine hunter, the only kind of

guide to whom the thorough pedestrian wanderer should give up his

freedom. One of Peignot's books, called Predicatoriana, ou Révélations

Singulières et Amusantes sur les Prédicateurs, brings one into scenes

apt to shock a mind not tolerably hardened by eclectic reading. It is an

anonymous publication, but has been traced home by the literary

detectives. It may be characterised as a collection of the Buffooneries

of Sermons. A little book enlivened by something like the same spirit,

called The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, is known among ourselves; and

there is an answer to it assailing the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in

a tone which decidedly improves on the lesson of sarcasm and malignity

taught by the other side. Both writers are dishonest in the statements

they make and the passages they quote from their adversaries, and both

are grotesque and profane. Peignot, not being influenced by polemical

rancour, is no doubt honest in his quotations, and tells you that the

persons who preached the passages quoted by him uttered them in all

religious sincerity. Yet wide as the Christian world stretches beyond

our corner of it, by so far does the Frenchman's book in grotesqueness

and profanity out-shadow the attempts of the Scottish polemical

combatants.

Of that highly patrician class of bibliographies which offer their

services exclusively to the collectors of rare, curious, and costly

books, there are so many notices dotted over this volume, that I shall

only stop here to mark the recentness of their appearance in literature.

To judge from the title-page, one might trace them as far back as 1676,

in John Hallervord's Bibliotheca Curiosa, in which the editor professes

to indicate many authors which are very rare and known to few; but this

book would give no satisfaction to pure rarity seekers. Hallervord takes

curious in its old sense, which corresponds in some measure with the

present use of the word interesting; and the specialty of the books

being known to few, seems to refer to their profundity and the rarity of

learning sufficient to sound their depths. Nor does the list published a

few years later by the London bookseller Hartley, though it professes to

signalise very rare books, show that nice sense which discriminates game

of a high order from the vulgar and useful.[65] I suspect that before we

reach the dawn of this class of literature proper, we must descend at

once to the year 1750, distinguished by the simultaneous appearance of

Clement's Bibliothèque Curieuse, and Freytag's Analecta de Libris

Rarioribus.[66]

[Footnote 65: Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque

insignium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley,

Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn dicto.

MDCXCIX.]

[Footnote 66: Of course the Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each

other, and bibliographical notices of Bibliographies abound. Le Brun

sets aside a department for them, but the most handy reference to them

that has come my way is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire

Bibliographique, ou Nouveau Manuel du Libraire, by M. P*****--identified

by his brother detectives as M. Psaume.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

_PART III.--HIS CLUB._

Clubs in General.

An author of the last generation, professing to deal with any branch of

human affairs, if he were ambitious of being considered philosophical,

required to go at once to the beginning of all things, where, finding

man alone in the world, he would describe how the biped set about his

own special business, for the supply of his own wants and desires; and

then finding that the human being was, by his instincts, not a solitary

but a social animal, the ambitious author would proceed in well-balanced

sentences to describe how men aggregated themselves into hamlets,

villages, towns, cities, counties, parishes, corporations, select

vestries, and so on. I find that, without the merit of entertaining any

philosophical views, I have followed, unconsciously, the same routine.

Having discussed the book-hunter as he individually pursues his object,

I now propose to look in upon him at his club, and say something about

its peculiarities, as the shape in which he takes up the pursuit

collectively with others who happen to be like-minded to himself.

Those who are so very old as to remember the Episcopal Church of

Scotland in that brief period of stagnant depression when the repeal of

the penal laws had removed from her the lustre of martyrdom, and she had

not yet attained the more secular lustre which the zeal of her wealthy

votaries has since conferred on her, will be familiar with the name of

Bishop Robert Jolly. To the ordinary reader, however, it may be

necessary to introduce him more specifically. He was a man of singular

purity, devotedness, and learning. If he had no opportunity of attesting

the sincerity of his faith by undergoing stripes and bondage for the

Church of his adoption, he developed in its fulness that unobtrusive

self-devotion, not inferior to martyrdom, which dedicates to obscure

duties the talent and energy that, in the hands of the selfish and

ambitious, would be the sure apparatus of wealth and station. He had no

doubt risen to an office of dignity in his own Church--he was a bishop.

But to understand the position of a Scottish bishop in those days, one

must figure Parson Adams, no richer than Fielding has described him, yet

encumbered by a title ever associated with wealth and dignity, and only

calculated, when allied with so much poverty and social humility, to

deepen the incongruity of his lot, and throw him more than ever on the

mercy of the scorner. The office was indeed conspicuous, not by its

dignities or emoluments, but by the extensive opportunities it afforded

for self-devotion. One may have noticed his successor of later times

giving lustre to newspaper paragraphs as "The Lord Bishop of Moray and

Ross." It did not fall to the lot of him of whom I write to render his

title so flagrantly incongruous. A lordship was not necessary, but it

was the principle of his Church to require a bishop, and in him she got

a bishop. In reality, however, he was the parish clergyman of the small

and poor remnant of the Episcopal persuasion who inhabited the

odoriferous fishing-town of Fraserburgh. There he lived a long life of

such simplicity and abstinence as the poverty of the poorest of his

flock scarcely drove them to. He had one failing to link his life with

this nether world--he was a book-hunter. How with his poor income, much

of which went to feed the necessities of those still poorer, he should

have accomplished anything in a pursuit generally considered expensive,

is among other unexplained mysteries. But somehow he managed to scrape

together a curious and interesting collection, so that his name became

associated with rare books, as well as with rare Christian virtues.

When it was proposed to establish an institution for reprinting the

works of the fathers of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, it was

naturally deemed that no more worthy or characteristic name could be

attached to it than that of the venerable prelate who, by his learning

and virtues, had so long adorned the Episcopal chair of Moray and Ross,

and who had shown a special interest in the department of literature to

which the institution was to be devoted. Hence it came to pass that,

through a perfectly natural process, the association for the purpose of

reprinting the works of certain old divines was to be ushered into the

world by the style and title of THE JOLLY CLUB.

There happened to be amongst those concerned, however, certain persons

so corrupted with the wisdom of this world, as to apprehend that the

miscellaneous public might fail to trace this designation to its true

origin, and might indeed totally mistake the nature and object of the

institution, attributing to it aims neither consistent with the ascetic

life of the departed prelate, nor with the pious and intellectual

objects of its founders. The counsels of these worldly-minded persons

prevailed. The Jolly Club was never instituted,--at least, as an

association for the reprinting of old books of divinity, though I am not

prepared to say that institutions more than one so designed may not

exist for other purposes. The object, however, was not entirely

abandoned. A body of gentlemen united themselves together under the name

of another Scottish prelate, whose fate had been more distinguished, if

not more fortunate; and the Spottiswoode Society was established. Here,

it will be observed, there was a passing to the opposite extreme; and so

intense seems to have been the anxiety to escape from all excuse for

indecorous jokes or taint of joviality, that the word Club, wisely

adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was abandoned, and this one

called itself a Society. To that abandonment of the _medio tutissimus_

has been attributed its early death by those who contemn the taste of

those other communities, essentially Book Clubs, which have taken to the

devious course of calling themselves "Societies."

In fact, all our _societies_, from the broad-brimmed Society of Friends

downwards, have something in them of a homespun, humdrum, plain,

flat--not unprofitable, perhaps, but unattractive character. They may be

good and useful, but they have no dignity or splendour, and are quite

destitute of the strange meteoric power and grandeur which have

accompanied the career of _Clubs_. Societies there are, indeed, which

identify themselves through their very nomenclature with misfortune and

misery, seeming proudly to proclaim themselves victims to all the

saddest ills that flesh is heir to--as, for instance, Destitute Sick

Societies, Indigent Blind Societies, Deaf and Dumb Societies, Burial

Societies, and the like. The nomenclature of some of these benevolent

institutions seems likely to test the etymological skill of the next

generation of learned men. Perhaps some ethnological philosopher will

devote himself to the special investigation and development of the

phenomenon; and if such things are done then in the way in which they

are now, the result will appear in something like the following shape:--

"Man, as we pursue his destiny from century to century, is still found

inevitably to resolve himself into a connected and antithetic series of

consecutive cycles. The eighteenth century having been an age of

individuative, the nineteenth necessarily became an age of associative

or coinonomic development. He, the man--to himself the _ego_, and to

others the mere _homo_--ceased to revolve around the centre of gravity

of his own personality, and, following the instincts of his adhesive

nature, resolved himself into associative community. In this necessary

development of their nature all partook, from the congresses of mighty

monarchs down to those humbler but not less majestic types of the

predominant influence, which, in the expressive language of that age,

were recognised as twopenny goes. It is known only to those whose

researches have led them through the intricacies of that phase of human

progress, how multifarious and varied were the forms in which the inner

spirit, objectively at work in mankind, had its external subjective

development. Not only did associativeness shake the monarch on his

throne, and prevail over the counsels of the assembled magnates of the

realm, but it was the form in which each shape and quality of humanity,

down even to penury and disease, endeavoured to express its instincts;

and so the blind and the lame, the deaf and dumb, the sick and poor,

made common stock of their privations, and endeavoured by the force of

union to convert weakness into strength," &c.

When the history of clubs is fully written, let us hope that it will be

in another fashion. If it sufficiently abound in details, such a history

would be full of marvels, from the vast influences which it would

describe as arising from time to time by silent obscure growth out of

nothing, as it were. Just look at what clubs have been, and have done; a

mere enumeration is enough to recall the impression. Not to dwell on the

institutions which have made Pall Mall and its neighbourhood a

conglomerate of palaces, or on such lighter affairs as "the

Four-in-Hand," which the railways have left behind, or the "Alpine,"

whose members they carry to the field of their enjoyment: there was the

Mermaid, counting among its members Shakespeare, Raleigh, Beaumont,

Fletcher, and Jonson; then came the King's Head; the October; the

Kit-Cat; the Beef-Steak; the Terrible Calves Head; Johnson's club,

where he had Bozzy, Goldie, Burke, and Reynolds; the Poker, where Hume,

Carlyle, Ferguson, and Adam Smith took their claret.

In these, with all their varied objects--literary, political, or

convivial--the one leading peculiarity was the powerful influence they

exercised on the condition of their times. A certain club there was with

a simple unassuming name,--differing, by the way, only in three letters

from that which would have commemorated the virtues of Bishop Jolly. The

club in question, though nothing in the eye of the country but an easy

knot of gentlemen who assembled for their amusement, cast defiance at a

sovereign prince, and shook the throne and institutions of the greatest

of modern states. But if we want to see the club culminating to its

highest pitch of power, we must go across the water and saturate

ourselves with the horrors of the Jacobin clubs, the Breton, and the

Feuillans. The scenes we will there find stand forth in eternal protest

against Johnson's genial definition in his Dictionary, where he calls a

club "an assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions."

The Structure of the Book Clubs.

There has been an addition, by no means contemptible, to the influence

exercised by these institutions on the course of events, in the Book

Clubs, or Printing Clubs as they are otherwise termed, of the present

day. They have within a few years added a department to literature. The

collector who has been a member of several may count their fruit by the

thousand, all ranging in symmetrical and portly volumes. Without

interfering either with the author who seeks in his copyrights the

reward of his genius and labour, or with the publisher who calculates on

a return for his capital, skill, and industry, the book clubs have

ministered to literary wants, which these legitimate sources of supply

have been unable to meet.

I hope no one is capable of reading so far through this book who is so

grossly ignorant as not to know that the Book Clubs are a set of

associations for the purpose of printing and distributing among their

members certain books, calculated to gratify the peculiar taste which

has brought them together and united them into a club. An opportunity

may perhaps be presently taken for indulging in some characteristic

notices of the several clubs, their members, and their acts and

monuments: in the mean time let me say a word on the utilitarian

efficiency of this arrangement--on the blank in the order of terrestrial

things which the Book Club was required to fill, and the manner in which

it has accomplished its function.

There is a class of books of which the production has in this country

always been uphill work;--large solid books, more fitted for authors and

students than for those termed the reading public at large--books which

may hence, in some measure, be termed the raw materials of literature,

rather than literature itself. They are eminently valuable; but, since

it is to the intellectual manufacturer who is to produce an article of

saleable literature that they are valuable, rather than to the general

consumer, they do not secure an extensive sale. Of this kind of

literature the staple materials are old state papers and letters--old

chronicles--specimens of poetic, dramatic, and other literature, more

valuable as vestiges of the style and customs of their age than for

their absolute worth as works of genius--massive volumes of old

divinity--disquisitions on obsolete science, and the like.

It is curious, by the way, that costly books of this sort seem to

succeed better with the French than with us, though we do not generally

give that people credit for excelling us in the outlay of money. Perhaps

it is because they enjoy the British market as well as their own that

they are enabled to excel us; but they certainly do so in the

publication, through private enterprise, of great costly works, having a

sort of national character. The efforts to rival them in this country

have been considerable and meritorious, but in many instances signally

unfortunate. Take, for instance, the noble edition of Hollingshed and

the other chroniclers, published in quarto volumes by the London trade;

the Parliamentary History, in thirty-six volumes, each containing about

as much reading as Gibbon's Decline and Fall; the State Trials; Sadler's

and Thurlow's State Papers; the Harleian Miscellany, and several other

ponderous publications of the same kind. All of them are to be had

cheap, some at just a percentage above the price of waste paper. When an

attempt was made to publish in the English language a really thorough

Biographical Dictionary, an improvement on the French Biographie

Universelle, it stuck in letter A, after the completion of seven dense

octavo volumes--an abortive fragment bearing melancholy testimony to

what such a work ought to be. Publications of this kind have, in several

instances, caused great losses to some, while they have brought

satisfaction to no one concerned in them. A publisher has just the same

distaste as any other ordinary member of the human family to the loss of

five or ten thousand pounds in hard cash. Then, as touching the

purchasers,--no doubt the throwing of a "remnant" on the market may

sometimes bring the book into the possession of one who can put it to

good use, and would have been unable to purchase it at the original

price. But the rich deserve some consideration as well as the poor. It

will be hard to find the man so liberal and benevolent that he will

joyfully see his neighbour obtain for thirty shillings the precise

article for which he has himself paid thirty pounds; nor does there

exist the descendant of Adam who, whatever he may say or pretend, will

take such an antithesis with perfect equanimity. Even the fortunate

purchasers of portions of "the remnant," or "the broken book," as

another pleasant technicality of the trade has it, are not always

absolutely happy in their lot. They have been tempted by sheer cheapness

to admit some bulky and unwieldy articles into their abodes, and they

look askance at the commodity as being rather a sacrifice to mammon than

a monument of good taste.

It has been the object of the machinery here referred to, to limit the

impressions of such works to those who want and can pay for them--an

extremely simple object, as all great ones are. There is, however, a

minute nicety in the adjustment of the machinery, which was not obvious

until it came forth in practice--a nicety without which the whole system

falls to pieces. It was to accomplish this nicety that the principle of

the club was found to be so well adapted. A club is essentially a body

to which more people want admission than can gain it; if it do not

manage to preserve this characteristic, it falls to pieces for want of

pressure from without, like a cask divested of its hoops. To make the

books retain their value, and be an object of desire, it was necessary

that the impressions should be slightly within the natural

circulation--that there should be rather a larger number desirous of

obtaining each volume than the number that could be supplied with it.

The club effected this by its own natural action. So long as there were

candidates for vacancies and the ballot-box went round, so long were the

books printed in demand and valuable to their possessors. If there were

110 or 120 people willing to possess and pay for a certain class of

books, the secret of keeping up the pressure from without and the value

of the books, was to limit the number of members and participators to

100. There is nothing noble or disinterested in this. The arrangement

has no pretension to either of these qualities; nor, when we come to the

great forces which influence the supply and demand of human wants,

whether in the higher or the humbler departments, will we find these

qualities in force, or indeed any other motive than common selfishness.

It is a sufficient vindication of the arrangement that it produced its

effect. If there were ten or twenty disappointed candidates, the

hundred were possessed of the treasures which none could have obtained

but for the restrictive arrangements. Scott used to say that the

Bannatyne Club was the only successful joint-stock company he ever

invested in--and the remark is the key-note of the motives which kept

alive the system that has done so much good to literature.

To understand the nature and services of these valuable institutions, it

is necessary to keep in view the limits within which alone they can be

legitimately worked. They will not serve for the propagation of standard

literature--of the books of established reputation, which are always

selling. These are merchandise, and must follow the law of trade like

other commodities, whether they exist in the form of copyright

monopolies, or are open to all speculators. No kind of co-operation will

bring the volumes into existence so cheaply as the outlay of trade

capital, which is expected to replace itself with a moderate profit

after a quick sale. The perfection of this process is seen in the

production and sale of that book which is ever the surest of a

market--the Bible; and when a printer requires the certain and

instantaneous return of his outlay, that is the shape in which he is

most secure of obtaining it.

On the other hand, the clubs will not avail for ushering into the world

the books of fresh ambitious authors. That paradise of the geniuses, in

which their progeny are to be launched full sail, where they are to

encounter no risks, and draw all the profits without discount or

percentage, as yet exists only in the imagination. It would not work

very satisfactorily to have a committee decreeing the issues, and the

remuneration to be paid to each aspirant--ten thousand copies of

Poppleton's Epic, and a cheque for a thousand pounds handed over out of

the common stock, to begin with--half the issue, and half the

remuneration for the Lyrics of Astyagus, as a less robust and manful

production, but still a pleasant, murmuring, meandering, earnest little

dream-book, fresh with the solemn purpose of solitude and silence. No,

it must be confessed our authors and men of letters would make sad work

of it, if they had the bestowal of the honours and pecuniary rewards of

literature in their hands, whether these were administered by an

intellectual hierarchy or by a collective democracy. Hence the clubs

have wisely confined their operations to books which are not the works

of their members; and to keep clear of all risk of literary rivalries,

they have been almost exclusively devoted to the promulgation of the

works of authors long since dead, whether by printing from original

manuscripts or from rare printed volumes.

It has been pleaded that this machinery might have been rendered

influential for the encouragement of living authorship. It has been,

for instance, observed, with some plausibility, that he who has the

divine fervour of the author in him, will sacrifice all he has to

sacrifice--time, toil, and health--so that he can but secure a hearing

by the world; and institutions of the nature of the book clubs might

afford him this at all events, leaving him to find his way to wealth and

honours, if the sources of these are in him. No doubt the history of

book-publishing shows how small are the immediate inducements and the

well-founded hopes that will set authors in motion, and, indeed, a very

large percentage of valueless literature proves that the barriers

between the author and the world are not very formidable, or become

somehow easily removable. This, in fact, furnishes the answer to the

pleading here alluded to; and it may further be safely said, where the

book demanding an introduction professes to be a work of genius,

addressing itself to all mankind, that if it really be what it

professes, the market will get it. No production of the kind is liable

to be lost to the world.

Here it is plaintively argued by Philemon, that the rewards of genius

are very unequally distributed. Who can deny it? Nothing is distributed

with perfect balance like chemical equivalents in this world, at least

so far as mortal faculties are capable of estimating the elements of

happiness and unhappiness in the lot of our fellow-men; nor can one

imagine that a world, all balanced and squared off to perfection, would

be a very tolerable place to live in. Genius must take its chance, like

all other qualities, and, on the whole, in a civilised country it gets

on pretty well. Is it not something in itself to possess genius? and is

it seemly, or a good example to the uninspired world, that its owner

should deem it rather a misfortune than a blessing because he is not

also surrounded by plush and shoulder-knots? If all geniuses had a

prerogative right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and vanities of

this wicked world, could we be sure that none but genuine geniuses would

claim them, and that there would be no margin for disputation with

"solemn shams"? Milton's fifteen pounds are often referred to by him who

finds how hard it is to climb, &c.; but we have no "return," as the

blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities afforded to intellects

ambitious of arising as meteors but only showing themselves as farthing

rush-lights. On the other hand, no doubt, the wide fame and the rich

rewards of the popular author are not in every instance an exact measure

of his superiority to the disappointed aspirant. His thousand pounds do

not furnish incontrovertible evidence that he is a hundred times

superior to the drudge who goes over as much work for ten pounds, and

there may possibly be some one making nothing who is superior to both.

Such aberrations are incident to all human affairs; but in those of

literature, as in many others, they are exceptional. Here, as in other

spheres of exertion, merit will in the general case get its own in some

shape. Indeed, there is a very remarkable economic phenomenon, never, as

it occurs to me, fully examined, which renders the superfluous success

of the popular author a sort of insurance fund for enabling the obscure

adventurer to enter the arena of authorship, and show what he is worth.

Political economy has taught us that those old bugbears of the statute

law called forestallers and regraters are eminent benefactors, in as far

as their mercenary instincts enable them to see scarcity from afar, and

induce them to "hold on" precisely so long as it lasts but no longer,

since, if they have stock remaining on hand when abundance returns, they

will be losers. Thus, through the regular course of trade, the surplus

of the period of abundance is distributed over the period of scarcity

with a precision which the genius of a Joseph or a Turgot could not

achieve.

The phenomenon in the publishing world to which I have alluded has some

resemblance to this, and comes to pass in manner following. The

confirmed popular author whose books are sure to sell is an object of

competition among publishers. If he is absolutely mercenary, he may

stand forth in the public market and commit his works to that one who

will take them on the best terms for the author and the worst for

himself, like the contractor who gives in the lowest estimate in answer

to an advertisement from a public department. Neither undertaking holds

out such chances of gain as independent speculation may open, and thus

there is an inducement to the enterprising publisher to risk his capital

on the doubtful progeny of some author unknown to fame, in the hope that

it may turn out "a hit." Of the number of books deserving a better fate,

as also of the still greater number deserving none better than the fate

they have got, which have thus been published at a dead loss to the

publisher, the annals of bookselling could afford a moving history.

When an author has sold his copyright for a comparative trifle, and the

book turns out a great success, it is of course matter of regret that he

cannot have the cake he has eaten. This is one side of the

balance-sheet, and on the other stands the debit account in the author

who, through a work which proved a dead loss to its publisher, has made

a reputation which has rendered his subsequent books successful, and

made himself fashionable and rich. There have been instances where

publishers who have bought for little the copyright of a successful book

have allowed the author to participate in their gains; and I am inclined

to believe that these instances are fully as numerous as those in which

an author, owing his reputation and success to a book which did not pay

its expenses, has made up the losses of his first publisher.

If we go out of the hard market and look at the tendency of sympathies,

they are all in the author's favour. Publishers, in fact, have, though

it is not generally believed, a leaning towards good literature, and a

tendency rather to over than to under estimate the reception it may meet

with from the world. In considering whether they will take the risk of a

new publication, they have no criterion to value it by except its

literary merit, for they cannot obtain the votes of the public until

they are committed; and, indeed, there have been a good many instances

where a publisher, having a faith in some individual author and his

star, has pushed and fought a way for him with dogged and determined

perseverance, sometimes with a success of which, were all known, he has

more of the real merit than the author, who seems to have naturally,

without any external aid, taken his position among the eminent and

fortunate.

There are, at the same time, special disquisitions on matters of science

or learning intended for peculiar and limited audiences, which find

their way to publicity without the aid of the publisher. For these there

is an opening in certain institutions far older than the book clubs, and

possessed of a far higher social and intellectual position, since they

have the means of conferring titles of dignity on those they adopt into

their circle--titles which are worn not by trinkets dangling at the

button-hole, but by certain cabalistic letters strung to the name in the

directory of the town where the owner lives, or in the numberless

biographical dictionaries which are to immortalise the present

generation. So the author of an essay, especially in scholarship or

science, will, if it be worth anything, find a place for it in the

Transactions of one or other of the learned societies. It will probably

keep company with, if indeed it be not itself one of, a series of papers

which appear in the quarto volumes of the learned corporation's

Transactions, merely because they cannot get into the octavo pages of

the higher class of periodicals; but there they are, printed in the face

of the world, whose inhabitants at large may worship them if they so

please, and their authors cannot complain that they are suppressed.

Whether the authors of these papers may have been ambitious of their

appearance in a wider sphere, or are content with their appearance in

"The Transactions," it suffices for the present purpose to explain how

these volumes are a more suitable receptacle than those printed by the

book clubs for essays or disquisitions by men following up their own

specialties in literature or science; and if it be the case that some of

the essays which appear in the Transactions of learned bodies would

have gladly entered society under the auspices of some eminent

periodical, yet it is proper at the same time to admit that many of the

most valuable of these papers, concerning discoveries or inventions

which adepts alone can appreciate, could only be satisfactorily

published as they have been. And so we find our way back to the

proposition, that the book clubs have been judiciously restricted to the

promulgation of the works of dead authors.

This has not necessarily excluded the literary contributions of living

men, in the shape of editing and commenting; and it is really difficult

to estimate the quantity of valuable matter which is thus deposited in

obscure but still accessible places. A deal of useful work, too, has

been done in the way of translation; and where the book to be dealt with

is an Icelandic saga, a chronicle in Saxon, in Irish Celtic, or even in

old Norman, one may confess to the weakness of letting the original

remain, in some instances, unexamined, and drawing one's information

with confiding gratitude from the translation furnished by the learned

editor.

Let me offer one instance of the important service that may be done by

affording a vehicle for translations. The late Dr Francis Adams, a

village surgeon by profession, was at the same time, from taste and

pursuit, a profound Greek scholar. He was accustomed to read the old

authors on medicine and surgery--a custom too little respected by his

profession, of whom it is the characteristic defect to respect too

absolutely the standard of the day. As a physician, who is an ornament

to his profession and a great scholar, once observed to me, the writings

of the old physicians, even if we reject them from science, may be

perused with profit to the practitioner as a record of the diagnosis of

cases stated by men of acuteness, experience, and accuracy of

observation. Adams had translated from the Greek the works of Paul of

Ægina, the father of obstetric surgery, and printed the first volume. It

was totally unnoticed, for in fact there were no means by which the

village surgeon could get it brought under the notice of the scattered

members of his profession who desired to possess such a book. The

remainder of his labours would have been lost to the world had it not

been taken off his hands by the Sydenham Club, established for the

purpose of reprinting the works of the ancient physicians.

The Roxburghe Club.

Great institutions and small institutions have each individually had a

beginning, though it cannot always be discovered, distance often

obscuring it before it has been thought worth looking after. There is an

ingenious theory abroad, to the effect that every physical impulse, be

it but a wave of a human hand, and that every intellectual impulse,

whether it pass through the mind of a Newton or a brickmaker, goes, with

whatever strength it may possess, into a common store of dynamic

influences, and tells with some operative power, however imperceptible

and infinitesimal, upon all subsequent events, great or small, so that

everything tells on everything, and there is no one specific cause,

primary or secondary, that can be assigned to any particular event. It

may be so objectively, as the transcendentalists say, but to common

apprehensions there are specific facts which are to them emphatic as

beginnings, such as the day when any man destined for leadership in

great political events was born, or that whereon the Cape of Good Hope

was doubled, or America was discovered.

The beginning of the book clubs is marked by a like distinctness, both

in date and circumstance. The institution did not spring in full

maturity and equipment, like Pallas from the brain of Jove; it was

started by a casual impulse, and remained long insignificant; but its

origin and early progress are as distinctly and specifically its own, as

the birth and infancy of any hero or statesman are his. It is to the

garrulity of Dibdin writing before there was any prospect that this

class of institutions would reach their subsequent importance and

usefulness, that we owe many minute items of detail about the cradle of

the new system. We first slip in upon a small dinner-party, on the 4th

of June in the year 1813, at the table of "Hortensius." The day was one

naturally devoted to hospitality, being the birthday of the reigning

monarch, George III.; but this the historian passes unnoticed, the

object of all-absorbing interest being the great conflict of the

Roxburghe book-sale, then raging through its forty-and-one days. Of

Hortensius it is needless to know more than that he was a distinguished

lawyer, and had a fine library, which having described, Dibdin passes on

thus to matters of more immediate importance: "Nor is the hospitality of

the owner of these treasures of a less quality and calibre than his

taste; for Hortensius regaleth liberally--and as the 'night and day

champagnes' (so he is pleased humorously to call them) sparkle upon his

Gottingen-manufactured table-cloth, 'the master of the revels,' or (to

borrow the phraseology of Pynson) of the 'feste royalle,' discourseth

lustily and loudly upon the charms--not of a full-curled or

full-bottomed 'King's Bench' periwig--but of a full-margined

Bartholomæus or Barclay like his own."[67]

[Footnote 67: Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 28.]

After some forty pages of this sort of matter, we get another little

peep at this momentous dinner-party. "On the clearance of the

Gottingen-manufactured table-cloth, the Roxburghe battle formed the

subject of discussion, when I proposed that we should not only be all

present, if possible, on the day of the sale of the Boccaccio, but that

we should meet at some 'fair tavern' to commemorate the sale thereof."

They met accordingly on the 17th of June, some eighteen in number, "at

the St Albans Tavern, St Albans Street, now Waterloo Place." Surely the

place was symbolical, since on the 18th of June, two years afterwards,

the battle of Waterloo was fought; and as the importance attributed to

the contest at Roxburghe House on the 17th procured for it afterwards

the name of the Waterloo of book-battles, it came to pass that there

were two Waterloo commemorations treading closely one on the other's

heels.

The pecuniary stake at issue, and the consequent excitement when the

Valdarfer Boccaccio was knocked off, so far exceeded all anticipation,

that at the festive board a motion was made and carried by acclamation,

for meeting on the same day and in the same manner annually. And so the

Roxburghe Club, the parent of all the book clubs, came into existence.

It must be admitted that its origin bears a curious generic resemblance

to some scenes which produce less elevating results. On the day of some

momentous race or cock-fight, a parcel of sporting devotees, "regular

bricks," perhaps, agree to celebrate the occasion in a tavern, and when

the hilarity of the evening is at its climax, some festive orator,

whose enthusiasm has raised him to the table, suggests, amidst loud

hurrahs and tremendous table-rapping, that the casual meeting should be

converted into an annual festival, to celebrate the event which has

brought them together. At such an assemblage, the list of toasts will

probably include Eclipse, Cotherstone, Mameluke, Plenipo, the Flying

Dutchman, and other illustrious quadrupeds, along with certain bipeds,

distinguished in the second degree as breeders, trainers, and riders,

and may perhaps culminate in "the turf and the stud all over the world."

With a like appropriate reference to the common bond of sympathy, the

Roxburghe toasts included the uncouth names of certain primitive

printers, as Valdarfer himself, Pannartz, Fust, and Schoeffher,

terminating in "The cause of Bibliomania all over the world."[68]

[Footnote 68: As of other influential documents, there have been various

versions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of

critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such

disputes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from

time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of

completeness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr

Hazlewood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its

original shape as the printer can give it:--

The Order of y^e Tostes.

The Immortal Memory of

John Duke of Roxburghe.

Christopher Valdarfer, Printer of the Decameron of

1471.

Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of

the Art of Printing.

William Caxton, the Father of the British Press.

Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press.

Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious

Successors of William Caxton.

The Aldine Family, at Venice.

The Giunta Family, at Florence.

The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris.

The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.

The Cause of Bibliomania all over the World.

It will be seen that this accomplished black-letterer must have been

under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but

pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious

of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this

trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in

fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter

our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers

substituted for it the letter y as most nearly resembling it in shape,

hence the "ye" which occurs sometimes in old books, but much more

frequently in modern imitations of them.

The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol of

knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their

representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open his

refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide in the

potent _vin du pays_ to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, and the

others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge successive

glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged "to fery

respectaple persons," probably to the chief landed gentry of his

entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not induce him

to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world," being unable to

foresee what influence the utterance of words so unusual and so

suspiciously savouring of demonology might exercise over his future

destiny.]

The club thus abruptly formed, consisted of affluent collectors, some of

them noble, with a sprinkling of zealous practical men, who assisted

them in their great purchases, while doing minor strokes of business for

themselves. These, who in some measure fed on the crumbs that fell from

the master's table, were in a position rather too closely resembling the

professionals in a hunt or cricket club. The circle was a very exclusive

one, however; the number limited to thirty-one members, "one black ball

excluding;" and it used to be remarked, that it was easier to get into

the Peerage or the Privy Council than into "the Roxburghe."

Nothing has done so much to secure the potent influence of clubs as the

profound secrecy in which their internal or domestic transactions have

generally been buried. The great safeguard of this secrecy will be found

in that rigid rule of our social code which prohibits every gentleman

from making public the affairs of the private circle; and if from lack

of discretion, as it is sometimes gently termed, this law is supposed to

have a lax hold on any one, he is picked off by the "one," "two," "three

black balls." It is singular that a club so small and exclusive as the

Roxburghe should have proved an exception to the rule of secrecy, and

that the world has been favoured with revelations of its doings which

have made it the object of more amusement than reverence. In fact,

through failure of proper use of the black ball, it got possession of a

black sheep, in the person of a certain Joseph Hazlewood. He had

achieved a sort of reputation in the book-hunting community by

discovering the hidden author of Drunken Barnaby's Journal. In reality,

however, he was a sort of literary Jack Brag. As that amusing creation

of Theodore Hook's practical imagination mustered himself with sporting

gentlemen through his command over the technicalities or slang of the

kennel and the turf, so did Hazlewood sit at the board with scholars and

aristocratic book-collectors through a free use of their technical

phraseology. In either case, if the indulgence in these terms descended

into a motley grotesqueness, it was excused as excessive fervour

carrying the enthusiast off his feet. When Hazlewood's treasures--for he

was a collector in his way--were brought to the hammer, the scraps and

odds and ends it contained were found classified in groups under such

headings as these--Garlands of Gravity, Poverty's Pot Pourri, Wallat of

Wit, Beggar's Balderdash, Octagonal Olio, Zany's Zodiac, Noddy's

Nuncheon, Mumper's Medley, Quaffing Quavers to Quip Queristers,

Tramper's Twattle, or Treasure and Tinsel from the Tewksbury Tank, and

the like. He edited reprints of some rare books--that is to say, he saw

them accurately reprinted letter by letter. Of these one has a name

which--risking due castigation if I betray gross ignorance by the

supposition--I think he must certainly have himself bestowed on it, as

it excels the most outrageous pranks of the alliterative age. It is

called, "Green-Room Gossip; or, Gravity Gallinipt; A Gallimaufry got up

to guile Gymnastical and Gyneocratic Governments; Gathered and Garnished

by Gridiron Gabble, Gent., Godson to Mother Goose."

The name of Joseph Hazlewood sounds well; it is gentleman-like, and its

owner might have passed it into such friendly commemoration as that of

Bliss, Cracherode, Heber, Sykes, Utterson, Townley, Markland, Hawtrey,

and others generally understood to be gentlemen, and, in virtue of their

bookish propensities, scholars. He might even, for the sake of his

reprints, have been thought an "able editor," had it not been for his

unfortunate efforts to chronicle the doings of the club he had got

into.[69] His History, in manuscript, was sold with his other treasures

after his death, and was purchased by the proprietor of the Athenæum,

where fragments of it were printed some fifteen years ago, along with

editorial comments, greatly to the amusement, if not to the edification,

of the public.

[Footnote 69: A voice from the other side of the Atlantic reveals the

portentous nature of the machinery with which Mr Hazlewood conducted his

editorial labours. The following is taken from the book on the Private

Libraries of New York, already so freely quoted:--

"A unique book of unusual interest to the bibliophile in this department

is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy,

edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1815. This is

Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decorated by him in the

most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school in which he held so

eminent a position. It is illustrated throughout with portraits, some of

which are very rare; it contains all the letters which the editor

received in relation to it from the eminent literary antiquarians of his

day; and not only these, but all the collations and memoranda of any

consequence which were made for him during its progress, frequently by

men of literary distinction. To these are added all the announcements of

the work, together with the impressions of twelve cancelled pages,

printed four in one form and eight in another, apparently by way of

experiment, with other cancelled matter; tracings of the facsimile

woodcuts of the title to Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, with a

proof of it on India paper, and three impressions of this title, one all

in black, one with the letter in black and the device in red, and the

third _vice versâ_; tracings for, and proofs of, other woodcuts; an

impression of a leaf printed to be put into a single copy of the work,

&c. &c.; for we must stop, although we have but indicated the nature

rather than the quantity of the matter, all of it unique, which gives

this book its peculiar value. But it should be remarked besides, that

the editorial part of the work is interleaved for the purpose of

receiving Mr Hazlewood's explanations and corrections, and those that he

received from literary friends, which alone would give this copy a

singular interest. It is bound by Clarke in maroon morocco."]

In these revelations we find how long a probation the system of book

clubs had to pass through, before it shook off the convivial

propensities which continued to cluster round the normal notion of a

club, and reached the dry asceticism and attention to the duties of

printing and editing, by which the greater number of book clubs are

distinguished. It was at first a very large allowance of sack to the

proportion of literary food, and it was sarcastically remarked that the

club had spent a full thousand pounds in guzzling before it had produced

a single valuable volume. We have some of the bills of fare at the

"Roxburghe Revels," as they were called. In one, for instance, there may

be counted, in the first course, turtle cooked five different ways,

along with turbot, john dory, tendrons of lamb, souchée of haddock, ham,

chartreuse, and boiled chickens. The bill amounted to £5, 14s. a-head;

or, as Hazlewood expresses it, "according to the long-established

principles of 'Maysterre Cockerre,' each person had £5, 14s. to pay."

Some illustrious strangers appear to have been occasionally invited to

attend the symposium. If the luxurious table spread for them may have

occasioned them some surprise, they must have experienced still more in

the tenor of the invitation to be present, which, coming in the name of

certain "Lions of Literature," as their historian and the author of the

invitation calls them, was expressed in these terms--"The honour of your

company is requested to dine with the Roxburghe dinner, on Wednesday the

17th instant." One might be tempted to offer the reader a fuller

specimen of the historian's style; but unfortunately its

characteristics, grotesque as they are, cannot be exemplified in their

full breadth without being also given at full length. The accounts of

the several dinners read like photographs of a mind wandering in the

mazes of indigestion-begotten nightmare.[70]

[Footnote 70: It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was

considerable within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for

himself; so, if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading

through small print, he may read the following specimen of Mr

Hazlewood's style. He would certainly himself not have objected to its

being taken as a criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of

it.

"Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts,

foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to

friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the

incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes,

or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune,

that can converse, and each willing to give and receive information,

more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered conviviality--a

social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom; combining all that Anacreon

was famed for, tempered with the reason of Demosthenes, and intersected

with the archness of Scaliger. It is true we had not any Greek verses in

praise of the grape; but we had, as a tolerable substitute, the ballad

of the 'Bishop of Hereford and Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was

of his own composing. It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing

the absentees, the cabinet council, or any other set of men; but there

was not a man present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the

cloth was removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superior

to any record of antiquity. It is true, no trace of wit is going to be

here preserved, for the flashes were too general, and what is the

critical sagacity of a Scaliger compared to our chairman? Ancients

believe it! We were not dead drunk, and therefore lie quiet under the

table for once, and let a few moderns be uppermost."

The following chronicle of the third dinner and second anniversary

records an interesting little personal incident:--

"After Lord Spencer left the chair, it was taken, I believe, by Mr

Heber, who kept it up to a late hour,--Mr Dodd very volatile and

somewhat singular, at the same time quite novel, in amusing the company

with Robin Hood ditties and similar productions. I give this on after

report, having left the room very early from severe attack of sickness,

which appeared to originate in some vile compound partook of at

dinner."]

When Dibdin protested against the publication of this record, he

described it a great deal too attractively when he called it "the

concoction of one in his gayer and unsuspecting moments--the repository

of private confidential communications--a mere memorandum-book of what

had passed at convivial meetings, and in which 'winged words' and flying

notes of merry gentlemen and friends were obviously incorporated." No!

certainly wings and flying are not the ideas that naturally associate

with the historian of the Roxburghe, although, in one instance, the

dinner is sketched off in the following epigrammatic sentence, which

startles the reader like a plover starting up in a dreary moor:

"Twenty-one members met joyfully, dined comfortably, challenged eagerly,

tippled prettily, divided regretfully, and paid the bill most

cheerfully." On another occasion the historian's enthusiasm was too

expansive to be confined to plain prose, and he inflated it in lyric

verse:--

"Brave was the banquet, the red red juice,

Hilarity's gift sublime,

Invoking the heart to kindred use,

And bright'ning halo of time."

This, and a quantity of additional matter of like kind, was good fun to

the scorners, and, whether any of the unskilful laughed at it, scarcely

made even the judicious grieve, for they thought that those who had

embarked in such pompous follies deserved the lash unconsciously

administered to them in his blunders by an unhappy member of their own

order.

In fact, however, this was the youthful giant sowing his wild oats.

Along with them there lay also, unseen at first, the seed of good fruit.

Of these, was a resolution adopted at the second meeting, and thus set

forth by the historian in his own peculiar style: "It was proposed and

concluded for each member of the club to reprint a scarce piece of

ancient lore to be given to the members, one copy to be on vellum for

the chairman, and only as many copies as members."

The earliest productions following on this resolution were on a very

minute scale. One member, stimulated to distinguish himself by "a merry

conceited jest," reprinted a French morsel called "La Contenance de la

Table," and had it disposed of in such wise, that as each guest opened

his napkin expecting to find a dinner-roll, he disclosed the

typographical treasure. It stands No. 6 on the list of Roxburghe books,

and is probably worth an enormous sum. The same enthusiast reprinted in

a more formal manner a rarity called "News from Scotland, declaring the

damnable life of Dr Fian, a notable sorcerer," &c. This same morsel was

afterwards reprinted for another club, in a shape calculated almost to

create a contemptuous contrast between the infantine efforts of the

Roxburghe and the manly labours of its robust followers. It is inserted

as what the French call a _pièce justificative_ in Pitcairn's Criminal

Trials, edited for the Bannatyne, and there occupies ten of the more

than 2000 pages which make up that solid book.

It was not until the year 1827 that a step was taken by the Roxburghe

Club which might be called its first exhibition of sober manhood. Some

of the members, ashamed of the paltry nature of the volumes circulated

in the name of the club, bethought themselves of uniting to produce a

book of national value. They took Sir Frederick Madden into their

counsels, and authorised him to print eighty copies of the old metrical

romance of Havelok the Dane. This gave great dissatisfaction to the

historian, who muttered how "a MS. not discovered by a member of the

club was selected, and an excerpt obtained, not furnished by the

industry or under the inspection of any one member, nor edited by a

member; but, in fact, after much _pro_ and _con._, it was made a

complete hireling concern, truly at the expense of the club, from the

copying to the publishing."

The value of this book has been attested by the extensive critical

examination it has received, and by the serviceable aid it has given to

all recent writers on the infancy of English literature. It was followed

by another interesting old romance, William and the Wer Wolf, valuable

not only as a specimen of early literature, but for the light it throws

on the strange wild superstition dealing with the conversion of men

into wolves, which has been found so widely prevalent that it has

received a sort of scientific title in the word Lycanthropy. These two

books made the reputation of the Roxburghe, and proved an example and

encouragement to the clubs which began to arise more or less on its

model. It was a healthy protest against the Dibdinism which had ruled

the destinies of the club, for Dibdin had been its master, and was the

Gamaliel at whose feet Hazlewood and others patiently sat. Of the term

now used, the best explanation I can give is this, that in the selection

of books--other questions, such as rarity or condition, being set aside

or equally balanced--a general preference is to be given to those which

are the most witless, preposterous, and in every literary sense

valueless--which are, in short, rubbish. What is here meant will be

easily felt by any one who chooses to consult the book which Dibdin

issued under the title of "The Library Companion, or the Young Man's

Guide and the Old Man's Comfort in the choice of a Library." This, it

will be observed, is not intended as a manual of rare or curious, or in

any way peculiar books, but as the instruction of a Nestor on the best

books for study and use in all departments of literature. Yet one will

look in vain there for such names as Montaigne, Shaftesbury, Benjamin

Franklin, D'Alembert, Turgot, Adam Smith, Malebranche, Lessing, Goethe,

Schiller, Fénelon, Burke, Kant, Richter, Spinoza, Flechier, and many

others. Characteristically enough, if you turn up Rousseau in the index,

you will find Jean Baptiste, but not Jean Jacques. You will search in

vain for Dr Thomas Reid, the metaphysician, but will readily find Isaac

Reed, the editor. If you look for Molinæus or Du Moulin, it is not

there, but alphabetic vicinity gives you the good fortune to become

acquainted with "Moule, Mr, his Bibliotheca Heraldica." The name Hooker

will be found, not to guide the reader to the Ecclesiastical Polity, but

to Dr Jackson Hooker's Tour in Iceland. Lastly, if any one shall search

for Hartley on Man, he will find in the place it might occupy, or has

reference to, the editorial services of "Hazlewood, Mr Joseph."

Though the Roxburghe, when it came under the fostering care of the

scholarly Botfield, and secured the services of men like Madden, Wright,

and Taylor, outgrew the pedantries in which it had been reared, and

performed much valuable literary work, yet its chief merit is in the

hints its practice afforded to others. The leading principle, indeed,

which the other clubs so largely adopted after the example of the

Roxburghe, was not an entire novelty. The idea of keeping up the value

of a book by limiting the impression, so as to restrain it within the

number who might desire to possess it, was known before the birth of

this the oldest book club. The practice was sedulously followed by

Hearne the antiquary, and others, who provided old chronicles and books

of the class chiefly esteemed by the book-hunter. The very fame of the

restricted number, operating on the selfish jealousy of man's nature,

brought out competitors for the possession of the book, who never would

have thought of it but for the pleasant idea of keeping it out of the

hands of some one else.

There are several instances on record of an unknown book lying in the

printer's warerooms, dead from birth and forgotten, having life and

importance given to it by the report that all the copies, save a few,

have been destroyed by a fire in the premises. This is an illustration

in the sibylline direction of value being conferred by the decrease of

the commodity; but by judiciously adjusting the number of copies

printed, the remarkable phenomenon has been exhibited of the rarity of a

book being increased by an increase in the number of copies. To

understand how this may come to pass, it is necessary to recall the

precept elsewhere set forth, and look on rarity as not an absolute

quality, but as relative to the number who desire to possess the

article. Ten copies which two hundred people want constitute a rarer

book than two copies which twenty people want. Even to a sole remaining

copy of some forgotten book, lying dead, as it were, and buried in some

obscure library, may collective vital rarity be imparted. Let its owner

print, say, twenty copies for distribution--the book-hunting community

have got the "hark-away," and are off after it. In this way, before the

days of the clubs, many knowing people multiplied rarities; and at the

present day there are reprints by the clubs themselves of much greater

pecuniary value than the rare books from which they have been

multiplied.

Some Book-Club Men.

No one probably did more to raise the condition of the book clubs than

Sir Walter Scott. In 1823 the Roxburghe made proffers of membership to

him, partly, it would seem, under the influence of a waggish desire to

disturb his great secret, which had not yet been revealed. Dibdin,

weighting himself with more than his usual burden of ponderous

jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott the desire of the

club that the Author of Waverley, with whom it was supposed that he had

the means of communicating, would accept of the seat at the club vacated

by the death of Sir Mark Sykes. Scott got through the affair ingeniously

with a little coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally accepted

as the Author of Waverley's representative. The Roxburghe had, however,

at that time, done nothing in serious book-club business, having let

loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets of letterpress already

referred to. It was Scott's own favourite club, the Bannatyne, that

first projected the plan of printing substantial and valuable volumes.

At the commencement of the same year, 1823, when he took his seat at the

Roxburghe (he did not take his bottle there, which was the more

important object, for some time after), he wrote to the late Robert

Pitcairn, the editor of the Criminal Trials, in these terms: "I have

long thought that a something of a bibliomaniacal society might be

formed here, for the prosecution of the important task of publishing

_dilettante_ editions of our national literary curiosities. Several

persons of rank, I believe, would willingly become members, and there

are enough of good operatives. What would you think of such an

association? David Laing was ever keen for it; but the death of Sir

Alexander Boswell and of Alexander Oswald has damped his zeal. I think,

if a good plan were formed, and a certain number of members chosen, the

thing would still do well."[71]

[Footnote 71: Notices of the Bannatyne Club, privately printed.]

Scott gave the Bannatyners a song for their festivities. It goes to the

tune of "One Bottle More," and is a wonderful illustration of his

versatile powers, in the admirable bibulous sort of joviality which he

distils, as it were, from the very dust of musty volumes, thus:--

"John Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concerned

I can't call that worthy so candid as learned;

He railed at the plaid, and blasphemed the claymore,

And set Scots by the ears in his one volume more.

One volume more, my friends, one volume more--

Celt and Goth shall be pleased with one volume more.

As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor,

And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar,

His diet too acid, his temper too sour,

Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more.

But one volume, my friends, one volume more--

We'll dine on roast beef, and print one volume more."

I am tempted to add a word or two of prosaic gossip and comment to the

characteristics thus so happily hit off in verse. John Pinkerton was,

upon the whole, a man of simple character. The simplicity consisted in

the thorough belief that never, in any country or at any period of the

world's history, had there been created a human being destined to be

endowed with even an approach to the genius, wisdom, and learning of

which he was himself possessed. He never said a word in praise of any

fellow-being, for none had ever risen so much above the wretched level

of the stupid world he looked down upon as to deserve such a

distinction. He condescended, however, to distribute censure, and that

with considerable liberality. For instance, take his condensed notice of

an unfortunate worker in his own field, Walter Goodal, whose works are

"fraught with furious railing, contemptible scurrility, low prejudice,

small reading, and vulgar error." Thus having dealt with an unfortunate

and rather obscure author, he shows his impartiality by dealing with

Macpherson, then in the zenith of his fame, in this wise: "His

etymological nonsense he assists with gross falsehoods, and pretends to

skill in the Celtic without quoting one single MS. In short, he deals

wholly in assertion and opinion, and it is clear that he had not even an

idea what learning and science are." Nor less emphatic is his railing at

the plaid and blaspheming at the claymore. Donald and his brethren are

thus described: "Being mere savages, but one degree above brutes, they

remain still in much the same state of society as in the days of Julius

Cæsar; and he who travels among the Scottish Highlanders, the old Welsh,

or wild Irish, may see at once the ancient and modern state of women

among the Celts, when he beholds these savages stretched in their huts,

and their poor women toiling like beasts of burden for their unmanly

husbands;" and finally, "being absolute savages, and, like Indians and

negroes, will ever continue so, all we can do is to plant colonies among

them, and by this, and encouraging their emigration, try to get rid of

the breed."

This fervency is all along of the question whether the Picts, or Piks,

as Pinkerton chooses to call them, were Celts or Goths. If we turn to

the books of his opponent on this question, Joseph Ritson, we find him

paid back in his own coin, and that so genuine, that, on reading about

gross ignorance, falsehood, and folly, one would think he was still

enjoying Pinkerton's own flowers of eloquence, were it not that the

tenor of the argument has somehow turned to the opposite side. I drop

into the note below a specimen from the last words of this controversy,

as characteristic of the way in which it was conducted, and a sample of

the kind of dry fuel which, when ignited by these incendiaries, blazed

into so much rage.[72]

[Footnote 72: "See Pinkerton's Enquiry, i. 173, &c., 369. He explains

the _Vecturiones_ of Marcellinus, '_Vectveriar_, or _Pikish_ men, as,'

he untruly says, 'the Icelandic writers call them in their Norwegian

seats _Vik-veriar_,' and, either ignorantly or dishonestly to

countenance this most false and absurd hypothesis, corrupts the Pihtas

of the Saxons into Pihtar, a termination impossible to their language.

It is true, indeed, that he has stumbled upon a passage in Rudbeck's

Atlantica, i. 672, in which that very fanciful and extravagant writer

speaks of the _Packar_, _Baggar_, _Paikstar_, _Baggeboar_, _Pitar_, and

_Medel Pakcar_, whom he pretends '_Britanni_ vero _Peiktar_ appellant,

et _Peictonum_ tam eorum qui in Galliis quam in Britannia resident

genitores faciunt.' He finds these Pacti also in the Argonauticks, v.

1067; and his whole work seems the composition of a man whom 'much

learning hath made mad.'"--Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, &c., i.

81.]

Ritson was a man endowed with almost superhuman irritability of temper,

and he had a genius fertile in devising means of giving scope to its

restless energies. I have heard that it was one of his obstinate

fancies, when addressing a letter to a friend of the male sex, instead

of using the ordinary prefix of Mr or the affix Esq., to use the term

"Master," as Master John Pinkerton, Master George Chalmers. The

agreeable result of this was, that his communications on intricate and

irritating antiquarian disputes were delivered to, and perused by, the

young gentlemen of the family, so opening up new little intricate

avenues, fertile in controversy and misunderstanding. But he had another

and more inexhaustible resource for his superabundant irritability. In

his numerous books he insisted on adopting a peculiar spelling. It was

not phonetic, nor was it etymological; it was simply Ritsonian. To

understand the efficacy of this arrangement, it must be remembered that

the instinct of a printer is to spell according to rule, and that every

deviation from the ordinary method can only be carried out by a special

contest over each word. General instructions on such a matter are apt to

produce unexpected results. One very sad instance I can now recall; it

was that of a French author who, in a new edition of his works, desired

to alter the old-fashioned spelling of the imperfect tense from o to a.

To save himself trouble, on the first instance occurring in each proof,

he put in the margin a general direction to change all such o's into

a's. The instruction was so literally and comprehensively obeyed, that,

happening to glance his eye over the volume on its completion, he found

the letter o entirely excluded from it. Even the sacred name of

Napoleon was irreverently printed Napalean, and the Revolution was the

Revalutian. Ritson had far too sharp a scent for any little matter of

controversy and irritating discussion to get into a difficulty like

this. He would fight each step of the way, and such peculiarities as the

following, profusely scattered over his books, may be looked upon as the

names of so many battles or skirmishes with his printers--_compileër_,

_writeër_, _wel_, _kil_, _onely_, _probablely_. Even when he

condescended to use the spelling common to the rest of the nation, he

could pick out little causes of quarrel with the way of putting it in

type--as, for instance, in using the word Ass, which came naturally to

him, he would not follow the practice of his day in the use of the long

and short ([s]s), but inverted the arrangement thus, s[s]. This strange

creature exemplified the opinion that every one must have some

creed--something from without having an influence over thought and

action stronger than the imperfect apparatus of human reason. Scornfully

disdaining revelation from above, he groped below, and found for himself

a little fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as fanatical a

devotee of vegetarianism as others have been of a middle state or adult

baptism; and, after having torn through a life of spiteful controversy

with his fellow-men, and ribaldry of all sacred things, he thus

expressed the one weight hanging on his conscience, that "on one

occasion, when temptéed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of

Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed under the roast,

nothing less repugnant to feelings being to be had."[73]

[Footnote 73: See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral

Duty. By Joseph Ritson.]

To return to the services of him of mightier renown, whose genial

drolleries led to these notices. Scott printed, as a contribution to his

favourite club, the record of the trial of two Highlanders for murder,

which brought forth some highly characteristic incidents. The victim was

a certain Sergeant Davis, who had charge of one of the military parties

or guards dispersed over the Highlands to keep them in order after the

'45. Davis had gone from his own post at Braemar up Glen Clunie to meet

the guard from Glenshee. He chose to send his men back and take a day's

shooting among the wild mountains at the head of the glen, and was seen

no more. How he was disposed of could easily be divined in a general

way, but there were no particulars to be had. It happened, however, that

there was one Highlander who, for reasons best known to himself--they

were never got at--had come to the resolution of bringing his brother

Highlanders, who had made away with the sergeant, to justice. It was

necessary for his own safety, however, that he should be under the

pressure of a motive or impulse sufficient to justify so heartless and

unnatural a proceeding, otherwise he would himself have been likely to

follow the sergeant's fate. Any reference to his conscience, the love of

justice, respect for the laws of the land, or the like, would of course

have been received with well-merited ridicule and scorn. He must have

some motive which a sensible Highlander could admit as probable in

itself, and sufficient for its purpose.

Accordingly the accuser said he had been visited by the sergeant's

ghost, who had told him everything, and laid on him the heavy burden of

bringing his slaughterers in the flesh to their account. If that were

not done, the troubled spirit would not cease to walk the earth, and so

long as he walked would the afflicted denouncer continue to be the

victim of his ghostly visits. The case was tried at Edinburgh, and

though the evidence was otherwise clear and complete, the Lowland jury

were perplexed and put out by the supernatural episode. A Highland

story, with a ghost acting witness at second-hand, roused all their

Saxon prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties by declining to

convict. A point was supposed to have been made, when the counsel for

the defence asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who was

English when in the flesh, spoke to the Highlander, who knew not that

language; and the witness answered, through his interpreter, that the

spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard in Lochaber. Sir Walter

Scott, however, remarks that there was no incongruity in this, if we

once get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It is curious

that Scott does not seem to have woven the particulars of this affair

into any one of his novels.

Among those who contributed to place the stamp of a higher character on

the labours of the book clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir

Alexander Boswell. A time there was, unfortunately, when his name could

not easily be dissociated from exasperating political events; but now

that the generation concerned in them has nearly passed away, it becomes

practicable, even from the side of his political opponents, to glance at

his literary abilities and accomplishments without recalling exciting

recollections. He was a member of the Roxburghe, and though he did not

live to see the improvement in the issues of that institution, or the

others which kept pace with it, he, alone and single-handed, set the

example of printing the kind of books which it was afterwards the merit

of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them, in fact, their tone. He

had at his paternal home of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare

books and manuscripts; one of these afforded the text from which the

romance of Sir Tristrem was printed. He reprinted from the one remaining

copy in his own possession the disputation between John Knox and Quentin

Kennedy, a priest who came forward against the great Reformer as the

champion of the old religion. From the Auchinleck press came also

reprints of Lodge's Fig for Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, the Book

of the Chess, Sir James Dier's Remembrancer of the Life of Sir Nicholas

Bacon, the Dialogus inter Deum et Evam, and others.

The possession of a private printing-press is, no doubt, a very

appalling type of bibliomania. Much as has been told us of the awful

scale on which drunkards consume their favoured poison, one is not

accustomed to hear of their setting up private stills for their own

individual consumption. There is a Sardanapalitan excess in this

bibliographical luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other vulgar

mortals in the common harvest of the public press, but must itself

minister to its own tastes and demands. The owner of such an

establishment is subject to no extraneous caprices about breadth of

margins, size of type, quarto or folio, leaded or unleaded lines; he

dictates his own terms; he is master of the situation, as the French

say; and is the true autocrat of literature. There have been several

renowned private presses: Walpole's, at Strawberry Hill; Mr Johnes's, at

Hafod; Allan's, at the Grange; and the Lee Priory Press. None of these,

however, went so distinctly into the groove afterwards followed by the

book clubs as Sir Alexander Boswell's Auchinleck Press. In the

Bibliographical Decameron is a brief history, by Sir Alexander himself,

of the rise and progress of his press. He tells us how he had resolved

to print Knox's Disputation: "For this purpose I was constrained to

purchase two small fonts of black-letter, and to have punches cut for

eighteen or twenty double letters and contractions. I was thus enlisted

and articled into the service, and being infected with the _type_ fever,

the fits have periodically returned. In the year 1815, having viewed a

portable press invented by Mr John Ruthven, an ingenious printer in

Edinburgh, I purchased one, and commenced compositor. At this period, my

brother having it in contemplation to present Bamfield to the Roxburghe

Club, and not aware of the poverty and insignificance of my

establishment, expressed a wish that his tract should issue from the

Auchinleck Press. I determined to gratify him, and the portable press

being too small for general purposes, I exchanged it for one of Mr

Ruthven's full-sized ones; and having increased my stock to _eight_

small fonts, roman and italic, with the necessary appurtenances, I

placed the whole in a cottage, built originally for another purpose,

very pleasantly situated on the bank of a rivulet, and, although

concealed from view by the surrounding wood, not a quarter of a mile

from my house."[74]

[Footnote 74: Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 454.]

To show the kind of man who co-operated with Scott in such frivolities,

let me say a word or two more about Sir Alexander. He was the son,

observe, of Johnson's Jamie Boswell, but he was about as like his father

as an eagle might be to a peacock. To use a common colloquial phrase, he

was a man of genius, if ever there was one. Had he been a poorer and

socially humbler man than he was--had he had his bread and his position

to make--he would probably have achieved immortality. Some of his songs

are as familiar to the world as those of Burns, though their author is

forgotten,--as, for instance, the song of parental farewell, beginning--

"Good-night, and joy be wi' ye a';

Your harmless mirth has cheered my heart,"

and ending with this fine and genial touch--

"The auld will speak, the young maun hear;

Be canty, but be good and leal;

Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear,

Another's aye hae heart to feel:

So, ere I set I'll see you shine,

I'll see you triumph ere I fa';

My parting breath shall boast you mine.

Good-night, and joy be wi' you a'."

His "Auld Gudeman, ye're a drucken carle," "Jenny's Bawbee," and "Jenny

dang the Weaver," are of another kind, and perhaps fuller of the

peculiar spirit of the man. This consisted in hitting off the deeper and

typical characteristics of Scottish life with an easy touch that brings

it all home at once. His lines do not seem as if they were composed by

an effort of talent, but as if they were the spontaneous expressions of

nature.