ENVOI.

The Rowfant books,—ah magical

As famed Armida’s “golden looks,”

They hold the rhymer for their thrall,

The Rowfant books.

_TO F. L._

I MIND that Forest Shepherd’s saw,

For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he,

“It’s a’ that’s bricht, and a’ that’s braw,

But Bourhope’s guid eneuch for me!”

Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills

That guard Saint Mary’s Loch it lies,

The silence of the pasture fills

That shepherd’s homely paradise.

Enough for him his mountain lake,

His glen the burn went singing through,

And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,

May well seem good enough for you.

For all is old, and tried, and dear,

And all is fair, and round about

The brook that murmurs from the mere

Is dimpled with the rising trout.

But when the skies of shorter days

Are dark and all the ways are mire,

How bright upon your books the blaze

Gleams from the cheerful study fire,

On quartos where our fathers read,

Enthralled, the book of Shakespeare’s play,

On all that Poe could dream of dread,

And all that Herrick sang of gay!

Fair first editions, duly prized,

Above them all, methinks, I rate

The tome where Walton’s hand revised

His wonderful receipts for bait!

Happy, who rich in toys like these

Forgets a weary nation’s ills,

Who from his study window sees

The circle of the Sussex hills!

_SOME JAPANESE BOGIE-BOOKS_.

THERE is or used to be a poem for infant minds of a rather Pharisaical

character, which was popular in the nursery when I was a youngster. It

ran something like this:—

I thank my stars that I was born

A little British child.

Perhaps these were not the very words, but that was decidedly the

sentiment. Look at the Japanese infants, from the pencil of the famous

Hokusai. Though they are not British, were there ever two jollier,

happier small creatures? Did Leech, or Mr. Du Maurier, or Andrea della

Robbia ever present a more delightful view of innocent, well-pleased

childhood? Well, these Japanese children, if they are in the least

inclined to be timid or nervous, must have an awful time of it at night

in the dark, and when they make that eerie “northwest passage” bedwards

through the darkling house of which Mr. Stevenson sings the perils and

the emotions. All of us who did not suffer under parents brought up on

the views of Mr. Herbert Spencer have endured, in childhood, a good deal

from ghosts. But it is nothing to what Japanese children bear, for our

ghosts are to the spectres of Japan as moonlight is to sunlight, or as

water unto whisky. Personally I may say that few people have been

plagued by the terror that walketh in darkness more than myself. At the

early age of ten I had the tales of the ingenious Mr. Edgar Poe and of

Charlotte Brontë “put into my hands” by a cousin who had served as a

Bashi Bazouk, and knew not the meaning of fear. But I _did_, and perhaps

even Nelson would have found out “what fear was,” or the boy in the Norse

tale would have “learned to shiver,” if he had been left alone to peruse

‘Jane Eyre,’ and the ‘Black Cat,’ and the ‘Fall of the House of Usher,’

as I was. Every night I expected to wake up in my coffin, having been

prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by light,

unsteady footsteps on the stairs, and then to see a lady all in a white

shroud stained with blood and clay stagger into my room, the victim of

too rapid interment. As to the notion that my respected kinsman had a

mad wife concealed on the premises, and that a lunatic aunt, black in the

face with suppressed mania, would burst into my chamber, it was

comparatively a harmless fancy, and not particularly disturbing. Between

these and the ‘Yellow Dwarf,’ who (though only the invention of the

Countess D’Aulnoy) might frighten a nervous infant into hysterics, I

personally had as bad a time of it in the night watches as any happy

British child has survived. But our ogres are nothing to the bogies

which make not only night but day terrible to the studious infants of

Japan and China.

[Picture: Japanese Children. Drawn by Hokusai]

Chinese ghosts are probably much the same as Japanese ghosts. The

Japanese have borrowed most things, including apparitions and awesome

sprites and grisly fiends, from the Chinese, and then have improved on

the original model. Now we have a very full, complete, and

horror-striking account of Chinese _harnts_ (as the country people in

Tennessee call them) from Mr. Herbert Giles, who has translated scores of

Chinese ghost stories in his ‘Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio’ (De la

Rue, 1880). Mr. Giles’s volumes prove that China is the place for

Messrs. Gurney and Myers, the secretaries of the Psychical Society.

Ghosts do not live a hole-and-corner life in China, but boldly come out

and take their part in the pleasures and business of life. It has always

been a question with me whether ghosts, in a haunted house, appear when

there is no audience. What does the spectre in the tapestried chamber do

when the house is _not_ full, and no guest is put in the room to bury

strangers in, the haunted room? Does the ghost sulk and complain that

there is “no house,” and refuse to rehearse his little performance, in a

conscientious and disinterestedly artistic spirit, when deprived of the

artist’s true pleasure, the awakening of sympathetic emotion in the mind

of the spectator? We give too little thought and sympathy to ghosts, who

in our old castles and country houses often find no one to appear to from

year’s end to year’s-end. Only now and then is a guest placed in the

“haunted room.” Then I like to fancy the glee of the lady in green or

the radiant boy, or the headless man, or the old gentleman in

snuff-coloured clothes, as he, or she, recognises the presence of a

spectator, and prepares to give his or her best effects in the familiar

style.

Now in China and Japan certainly a ghost does not wait till people enter

the haunted room: a ghost, like a person of fashion, “goes everywhere.”

Moreover, he has this artistic excellence, that very often you don’t know

him from an embodied person. He counterfeits mortality so cleverly that

he (the ghost) has been known to personate a candidate for honours, and

pass an examination for him. A pleasing example of this kind,

illustrating the limitations of ghosts, is told in Mr. Giles’s book. A

gentleman of Huai Shang named Chou-t‘ien-i had arrived at the age of

fifty, but his family consisted of but one son, a fine boy, “strangely

averse from study,” as if there were anything strange in _that_. One day

the son disappeared mysteriously, as people do from West Ham. In a year

he came back, said he had been detained in a Taoist monastery, and, to

all men’s amazement, took to his books. Next year he obtained is B.A.

degree, a First Class. All the neighbourhood was overjoyed, for Huai

Shang was like Pembroke College (Oxford), where, according to the poet,

“First Class men are few and far between.” It was who should have the

honour of giving his daughter as bride to this intellectual marvel. A

very nice girl was selected, but most unexpectedly the B.A. would not

marry. This nearly broke his father’s heart. The old gentleman knew,

according to Chinese belief, that if he had no grandchild there would be

no one in the next generation to feed his own ghost and pay it all the

little needful attentions. “Picture then the father naming and insisting

on the day;” till K‘o-ch‘ang, B.A., got up and ran away. His mother

tried to detain him, when his clothes “came off in her hand,” and the

bachelor vanished! Next day appeared the real flesh and blood son, who

had been kidnapped and enslaved. The genuine K‘o-ch‘ang was overjoyed to

hear of his approaching nuptials. The rites were duly celebrated, and in

less than a year the old gentleman welcomed his much-longed-for grand

child. But, oddly enough, K‘o-ch‘ang, though very jolly and universally

beloved, was as stupid as ever, and read nothing but the sporting

intelligence in the newspapers. It was now universally admitted that the

learned K‘o-ch‘ang had been an impostor, a clever ghost. It follows that

ghosts can take a very good degree; but ladies need not be afraid of

marrying ghosts, owing to the inveterate shyness of these learned

spectres.

[Picture: A Storm-fiend]

The Chinese ghost is by no means always a malevolent person, as, indeed,

has already been made clear from the affecting narrative of the ghost who

passed an examination. Even the spectre which answers in China to the

statue in ‘Don Juan,’ the statue which accepts invitations to dinner, is

anything but a malevolent guest. So much may be gathered from the story

of Chu and Lu. Chu was an undergraduate of great courage and bodily

vigour, but dull of wit. He was a married man, and his children (as in

the old Oxford legend) often rushed into their mother’s presence,

shouting, “Mamma! mammal papa’s been plucked again!” Once it chanced

that Chu was at a wine party, and the negus (a favourite beverage of the

Celestials) had done its work. His young friends betted Chu a

bird’s-nest dinner that he would not go to the nearest temple, enter the

room devoted to coloured sculptures representing the torments of

Purgatory, and carry off the image of the Chinese judge of the dead,

their Osiris or Rhadamanthus. Off went old Chu, and soon returned with

the august effigy (which wore “a green face, a red beard, and a hideous

expression”) in his arms. The other men were frightened, and begged Chu

to restore his worship to his place on the infernal bench. Before

carrying back the worthy magistrate, Chu poured a libation on the ground

and said, “Whenever your excellency feels so disposed, I shall be glad to

take a cup of wine with you in a friendly way.” That very night, as Chu

was taking a stirrup cup before going to bed, the ghost of the awful

judge came to the door and entered. Chu promptly put the kettle on,

mixed the negus, and made a night of it with the festive fiend. Their

friendship was never interrupted from that moment. The judge even gave

Chu a new heart (literally) whereby he was enabled to pass examinations;

for the heart, in China, is the seat of all the intellectual faculties.

For Mrs. Chu, a plain woman with a fine figure, the ghost provided a new

head, of a handsome girl recently slain by a robber. Even after Chu’s

death the genial spectre did not neglect him, but obtained for him an

appointment as registrar in the next world, with a certain rank attached.

The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of bureaucracy,

patent places, jobs, mandarins’ buttons and tails, and, in short, the

heaven of officialism. All civilised readers are acquainted with Mr.

Stockton’s humorous story of ‘The Transferred Ghost.’ In Mr. Stockton’s

view a man does not always get his own ghostship; there is a vigorous

competition among spirits for good ghostships, and a great deal of

intrigue and party feeling. It may be long before a disembodied spectre

gets any ghostship at all, and then, if he has little influence, he may

be glad to take a chance of haunting the Board of Trade, or the Post

Office, instead of “walking” in the Foreign Office. One spirit may win a

post as White Lady in the imperial palace, while another is put off with

a position in an old college library, or perhaps has to follow the

fortunes of some seedy “medium” through boarding-houses and third-rate

hotels. Now this is precisely the Chinese view of the fates and fortunes

of ghosts. _Quisque suos patimur manes_.

In China, to be brief, and to quote a ghost (who ought to know what he

was speaking about), “supernaturals are to be found everywhere.” This is

the fact that makes life so puzzling and terrible to a child of a

believing and trustful character. These Oriental bogies do not appear in

the dark alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross-roads, or in

gloomy woods. They are everywhere: every man has his own ghost, every

place has its peculiar haunting fiend, every natural phenomenon has its

informing spirit; every quality, as hunger, greed, envy, malice, has an

embodied visible shape prowling about seeking what it may devour. Where

our science, for example, sees (or rather smells) sewer gas, the Japanese

behold a slimy, meagre, insatiate wraith, crawling to devour the lives of

men. Where we see a storm of snow, their livelier fancy beholds a comic

snow-ghost, a queer, grinning old man under a vast umbrella.

[Picture: A Snow-bogie]

The illustrations in this paper are only a few specimens chosen out of

many volumes of Japanese bogies. We have not ventured to copy the very

most awful spectres, nor dared to be as horrid as we can. These native

drawings, too, are generally coloured regardless of expense, and the

colouring is often horribly lurid and satisfactory. This embellishment,

fortunately perhaps, we cannot reproduce. Meanwhile, if any child looks

into this essay, let him (or her) not be alarmed by the pictures he

beholds. Japanese ghosts do not live in this country; there are none of

them even at the Japanese Legation. Just as bears, lions, and

rattlesnakes are not to be seriously dreaded in our woods and commons, so

the Japanese ghost cannot breathe (any more than a slave can) in the air

of England or America. We do not yet even keep any ghostly zoological

garden in which the bogies of Japanese, Australians, Red Indians, and

other distant peoples may be accommodated. Such an establishment is

perhaps to be desired in the interests of psychical research, but that

form of research has not yet been endowed by a cultivated and progressive

government.

The first to attract our attention represents, as I understand, the

common ghost, or _simulacrum vulgare_ of psychical science. To this

complexion must we all come, according to the best Japanese opinion.

Each of us contains within him “somewhat of a shadowy being,” like the

spectre described by Dr. Johnson: something like the Egyptian “Ka,” for

which the curious may consult the works of Miss Amelia B. Edwards and

other learned Orientalists. The most recent French student of these

matters, the author of ‘L’Homme Posthume,’ is of opinion that we do not

all possess this double, with its power of surviving our bodily death.

He thinks, too, that our ghost, when it does survive, has but rarely the

energy and enterprise to make itself visible to or audible by

“shadow-casting men.” In some extreme cases the ghost (according to our

French authority, that of a disciple of M. Comte) feeds fearsomely on the

bodies of the living. In no event does he believe that a ghost lasts

much longer than a hundred years. After that it mizzles into spectre,

and is resolved into its elements, whatever they may be.

A somewhat similar and (to my own mind) probably sound theory of ghosts

prevails among savage tribes, and among such peoples as the ancient

Greeks, the modern Hindoos, and other ancestor worshippers. When

feeding, as they all do, or used to do, the ghosts of the ancestral dead,

they gave special attention to the claims of the dead of the last three

generations, leaving ghosts older than the century to look after their

own supplies of meat and drink. The negligence testifies to a notion

that very old ghosts are of little account, for good or evil. On the

other hand, as regards the longevity of spectres, we must not shut our

eyes to the example of the bogie in ancient armour which appears in

Glamis Castle, or to the Jesuit of Queen Elizabeth’s date that haunts the

library (and a very nice place to haunt: I ask no better, as a ghost in

the Pavilion at Lord’s might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman.

With these _instantiæ contradictoriæ_, as Bacon calls them, present to

our minds, we must not (in the present condition of psychical research)

dogmatise too hastily about the span of life allotted to the _simulacrum

vulgare_. Very probably his chances of a prolonged existence are in

inverse ratio to the square of the distance of time which severs him from

our modern days. No one has ever even pretended to see the ghost of an

ancient Roman buried in these islands, still less of a Pict or Scot, or a

Palæolithic man, welcome as such an apparition would be to many of us.

Thus the evidence does certainly look as if there were a kind of statute

of limitations among ghosts, which, from many points of view, is not an

arrangement at which we should repine.

[Picture: The Simulacrum Vulgare]

The Japanese artist expresses his own sense of the casual and fluctuating

nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if the model

had given the artist the horrors. This _simulacrum_ rises out of the

earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into shape above the spade

with which all that is corporeal of its late owner has been interred.

Please remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the _simulacrum_.

We must remember that the ghost or “Ka” is not the “soul,” which has

other destinies in the future world, good or evil, but is only a shadowy

resemblance, condemned, as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in the tomb

and hover near it. The Chinese and Japanese have their own definite

theory of the next world, and we must by no means confuse the eternal

fortunes of the permanent, conscious, and responsible self, already

inhabiting other worlds than ours, with the eccentric vagaries of the

semi-material tomb-haunting larva, which so often develops a noisy and

bear-fighting disposition quite unlike the character of its proprietor in

life.

[Picture: A Well and Water bogie]

The next bogie, so limp and washed-out as he seems, with his white,

drooping, dripping arms and hands, reminds us of that horrid French

species of apparition, “la lavandière de la nuit,” who washes dead men’s

linen in the moonlit pools and rivers. Whether this _simulacrum_ be

meant for the spirit of the well (for everything has its spirit in

Japan), or whether it be the ghost of some mortal drowned in the well, I

cannot say with absolute certainty; but the opinion of the learned tends

to the former conclusion. Naturally a Japanese child, when sent in the

dusk to draw water, will do so with fear and trembling, for this limp,

floppy apparition might scare the boldest. Another bogie, a terrible

creation of fancy, I take to be a vampire, about which the curious can

read in Dom Calmet, who will tell them how whole villages in Hungary have

been depopulated by vampires; or he may study in Fauriel’s ‘Chansons de

la Grèce Moderne’ the vampires of modern Hellas.

Another plan, and perhaps even more satisfactory to a timid or

superstitious mind, is to read in a lonely house at midnight a story

named ‘Carmilla,’ printed in Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘In a Glass Darkly.’

That work will give you the peculiar sentiment of vampirism, will produce

a gelid perspiration, and reduce the patient to a condition in which he

will be afraid to look round the room. If, while in this mood, some one

tells him Mr. Augustus Hare’s story of Crooglin Grange, his education in

the practice and theory of vampires will be complete, and he will be a

very proper and well-qualified inmate of Earlswood Asylum. The most

awful Japanese vampire, caught red-handed in the act, a hideous, bestial

incarnation of ghoulishness, we have carefully refrained from

reproducing.

[Picture: Raising the wind]

Scarcely more agreeable is the bogie, or witch, blowing from her mouth a

malevolent exhalation, an embodiment of malignant and maleficent sorcery.

The vapour which flies and curls from the mouth constitutes “a sending,”

in the technical language of Icelandic wizards, and is capable (in

Iceland, at all events) of assuming the form of some detestable

supernatural animal, to destroy the life of a hated rival. In the case

of our last example it is very hard indeed to make head or tail of the

spectre represented. Chinks and crannies are his domain; through these

he drops upon you. He is a merry but not an attractive or genial ghost.

Where there are such “visions about” it may be admitted that children,

apt to believe in all such fancies, have a youth of variegated and

intense misery, recurring with special vigour at bed-time. But we look

again at our first picture, and hope and trust that Japanese boys and

girls are as happy as these jolly little creatures appear.

[Picture: A Chink and Crevice Bogie]

_GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY_.

SUPPOSE, when now the house is dumb,

When lights are out, and ashes fall—

Suppose their ancient owners come

To claim our spoils of shop and stall,

Ah me! within the narrow hall

How strange a mob would meet and go,

What famous folk would haunt them all,

Octavo, quarto, folio!

The great Napoleon lays his hand

Upon this eagle-headed N,

That marks for his a pamphlet banned

By all but scandal-loving men,—

A libel from some nameless den

Of Frankfort,—_Arnaud à la Sphère_,

Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,

Lies o’er the loves of Molière. {66}

Another shade—he does not see

“Boney,” the foeman of his race—

The great Sir Walter, this is he

With that grave homely Border face.

He claims his poem of the chase

That rang Benvoirlich’s valley through;

And _this_, that doth the lineage trace

And fortunes of the bold Buccleuch; {67a}

For these were his, and these he gave

To one who dwelt beside the Peel,

That murmurs with its tiny wave

To join the Tweed at Ashestiel.

Now thick as motes the shadows wheel,

And find their own, and claim a share

Of books wherein Ribou did deal,

Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert. {67b}

What famous folk of old are here!

A royal duke comes down to us,

And greatly wants his Elzevir,

His Pagan tutor, Lucius. {67c}

And Beckford claims an amorous

Old heathen in morocco blue; {67d}

And who demands Eobanus

But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou! {67e}

They come, the wise, the great, the true,

They jostle on the narrow stair,

The frolic Countess de Verrue,

Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre,

The new and elder dead are there—

The lords of speech, and song, and pen,

Gambetta, {68a} Schlegel {68b} and the rare

Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. {68c}

Ah, and with those, a hundred more,

Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:

Brave “Smiths” and “Thompsons” by the score,

Scrawled upon many a shabby “lot.”

This playbook was the joy of Pott {68d}—

Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves.

Our names, like his, remembered not,

Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!

At least in pleasant company

We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;

A man may turn a page, and sigh,

Seeing one’s name, to think of it.

Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit,

May ope our book, and muse awhile,

And fall into a dreaming fit,

As now we dream, and wake, and smile!

_LITERARY FORGERIES_.

IN the whole amusing history of impostures, there is no more diverting

chapter than that which deals with literary frauds. None contains a more

grotesque revelation of the smallness and the complexity of human nature,

and none—not even the records of the Tichborne trial, nor of general

elections—displays more pleasantly the depths of mortal credulity. The

literary forger is usually a clever man, and it is necessary for him to

be at least on a level with the literary knowledge and critical science

of his time. But how low that level commonly appears to be! Think of

the success of Ireland, a boy of eighteen; think of Chatterton; think of

Surtees of Mainsforth, who took in the great Sir Walter himself, the

father of all them that are skilled in ballad lore. How simple were the

artifices of these ingenious impostors, their resources how scanty; how

hand-to-mouth and improvised was their whole procedure! Times have

altered a little. Jo Smith’s revelation and famed ‘Golden Bible’ only

carried captive the polygamous _populus qui vult decipi_, reasoners a

little lower than even the believers in Anglo-Israel. The Moabite

Ireland, who once gave Mr. Shapira the famous MS. of Deuteronomy, but did

not delude M. Clermont-Ganneau, was doubtless a smart man; he was,

however, a little too indolent, a little too easily satisfied. He might

have procured better and less recognisable materials than his old

“synagogue rolls;” in short, he took rather too little trouble, and came

to the wrong market. A literary forgery ought first, perhaps, to appeal

to the credulous, and only slowly should it come, with the prestige of

having already won many believers, before the learned world. The

inscriber of the Phoenician inscriptions in Brazil (of all places) was a

clever man. His account of the voyage of Hiram to South America probably

gained some credence in Brazil, while in England it only carried captive

Mr. Day, author of ‘The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel.’ But the

Brazilians, from lack of energy, have dropped the subject, and the

Phoenician inscriptions of Brazil are less successful, after all, than

the Moabite stone, about which one begins to entertain disagreeable

doubts.

The motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed; but they may,

perhaps, be analysed roughly into piety, greed, “push,” and love of fun.

Many literary forgeries have been pious frauds, perpetrated in the

interests of a church, a priesthood, or a dogma. Then we have frauds of

greed, as if, for example, a forger should offer his wares for a million

of money to the British Museum; or when he tries to palm off his

Samaritan Gospel on the “Bad Samaritan” of the Bodleian. Next we come to

playful frauds, or frauds in their origin playful, like (perhaps) the

Shakespearian forgeries of Ireland, the _supercheries_ of Prosper

Mérimée, the sham antique ballads (very spirited poems in their way) of

Surtees, and many other examples. Occasionally it has happened that

forgeries, begun for the mere sake of exerting the imitative faculty, and

of raising a laugh against the learned, have been persevered with in

earnest. The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable,

though it is difficult to forgive the young archæologist who took in his

own father with false Greek inscriptions. But this story may be a mere

fable amongst archæologists, who are constantly accusing each other of

all manner of crimes. Then there are forgeries by “pushing” men, who

hope to get a reading for poems which, if put forth as new, would be

neglected. There remain forgeries of which the motives are so complex as

to remain for ever obscure. We may generally ascribe them to love of

notoriety in the forger; such notoriety as Macpherson won by his dubious

pinchbeck Ossian. More difficult still to understand are the forgeries

which real scholars have committed or connived at for the purpose of

supporting some opinion which they held with earnestness. There is a

vein of madness and self-deceit in the character of the man who

half-persuades himself that his own false facts are true. The Payne

Collier case is thus one of the most difficult in the world to explain,

for it is equally hard to suppose that Mr. Payne Collier was taken in by

the notes on the folio he gave the world, and to hold that he was himself

guilty of forgery to support his own opinions.

The further we go back in the history of literary forgeries, the more (as

is natural) do we find them to be of a pious or priestly character. When

the clergy alone can write, only the clergy can forge. In such ages

people are interested chiefly in prophecies and warnings, or, if they are

careful about literature, it is only when literature contains some kind

of title-deeds. Thus Solon is said to have forged a line in the Homeric

catalogue of the ships for the purpose of proving that Salamis belonged

to Athens. But the great antique forger, the “Ionian father of the

rest,” is, doubtless, Onomacritus. There exists, to be sure, an Egyptian

inscription professing to be of the fourth, but probably of the

twenty-sixth, dynasty. The Germans hold the latter view; the French,

from patriotic motives, maintain the opposite opinion. But this forgery

is scarcely “literary.”

I never can think of Onomacritus without a certain respect: he began the

forging business so very early, and was (apart from this failing) such an

imposing and magnificently respectable character. The scene of the error

and the detection of Onomacritus presents itself always to me in a kind

of pictorial vision. It is night, the clear, windless night of Athens;

not of the Athens whose ruins remain, but of the ancient city that sank

in ashes during the invasion of Xerxes. The time is the time of

Pisistratus the successful tyrant; the scene is the ancient temple, the

stately house of Athenê, the fane where the sacred serpent was fed on

cakes, and the primeval olive-tree grew beside the well of Posidon. The

darkness of the temple’s inmost shrine is lit by the ray of one earthen

lamp. You dimly discern the majestic form of a venerable man stooping

above a coffer of cedar and ivory, carved with the exploits of the

goddess, and with _boustrophedon_ inscriptions. In his hair this archaic

Athenian wears the badge of the golden grasshopper. He is Onomacritus,

the famous poet, and the trusted guardian of the ancient oracles of

Musaeus and Bacis.

What is he doing? Why, he takes from the fragrant cedar coffer certain

thin stained sheets of lead, whereon are scratched the words of doom, the

prophecies of the Greek Thomas the Rhymer. From his bosom he draws

another thin sheet of lead, also stained and corroded. On this he

scratches, in imitation of the old “Cadmeian letters,” a prophecy that

“the Isles near Lemnos shall disappear under the sea.” So busy is he in

this task, that he does not hear the rustle of a chiton behind, and

suddenly a man’s hand is on his shoulder! Onomacritus turns in horror.

Has the goddess punished him for tampering with the oracles? No; it is

Lasus, the son of Hermiones, a rival poet, who has caught the keeper of

the oracles in the very act of a pious forgery. (Herodotus, vii. 6.)

Pisistratus expelled the learned Onomacritus from Athens, but his conduct

proved, in the long run, highly profitable to the reputations of Musaeus

and Bacis. Whenever one of their oracles was not fulfilled, people said,

“Oh, _that_ is merely one of the interpolations of Onomacritus!” and the

matter was passed over. This Onomacritus is said to have been among the

original editors of Homer under Pisistratus. {73} He lived long, never

repented, and, many years later, deceived Xerxes into attempting his

disastrous expedition. This he did by “keeping back the oracles

unfavourable to the barbarians,” and putting forward any that seemed

favourable. The children of Pisistratus believed in him as spiritualists

go on giving credit to exposed and exploded “mediums.”

Having once practised deceit, it is to be feared that Onomacritus

acquired a liking for the art of literary forgery, which, as will be seen

in the case of Ireland, grows on a man like dram-drinking. Onomacritus

is generally charged with the authorship of the poems which the ancients

usually attributed to Orpheus, the companion of Jason. Perhaps the most

interesting of the poems of Orpheus to us would have been his ‘Inferno,’

or, Κατάβασις ὲς ᾄδου, in which the poet gave his own account of his

descent to Hades in search of Eurydice. But only a dubious reference to

one adventure in the journey is quoted by Plutarch. Whatever the exact

truth about the Orphic poems may be (the reader may pursue the hard and

fruitless quest in Lobeck’s ‘Aglaophamus’ {74}), it seems certain that

the period between Pisistratus and Pericles, like the Alexandrian time,

was a great age for literary forgeries. But of all these frauds the

greatest (according to the most “advanced” theory on the subject) is the

“Forgery of the Iliad and Odyssey!” The opinions of the scholars who

hold that the Iliad and Odyssey, which we know and which Plato knew, are

not the epics known to Herodotus, but later compositions, are not very

clear nor consistent. But it seems to be vaguely held that about the

time of Pericles there arose a kind of Greek Macpherson. This ingenious

impostor worked on old epic materials, but added many new ideas of his

own about the gods, converting the Iliad (the poem which we now possess)

into a kind of mocking romance, a Greek Don Quixote. He also forged a

number of pseudo-archaic words, tenses, and expressions, and added the

numerous references to iron, a metal practically unknown, it is asserted,

to Greece before the sixth century. If we are to believe, with Professor

Paley, that the chief incidents of the Iliad and Odyssey were unknown to

Sophocles, Æschylus, and the contemporary vase painters, we must also

suppose that the Greek Macpherson invented most of the situations in the

Odyssey and Iliad. According to this theory the ‘cooker’ of the extant

epics was far the greatest and most successful of all literary impostors,

for he deceived the whole world, from Plato downwards, till he was

exposed by Mr. Paley. There are times when one is inclined to believe

that Plato must have been the forger himself, as Bacon (according to the

other hypothesis) was the author of Shakespeare’s plays. Thus “Plato the

wise, and large-browed Verulam,” would be “the first of those who” forge!

Next to this prodigious imposture, no doubt, the false ‘Letters of

Phalaris’ are the most important of classical forgeries. And these

illustrate, like most literary forgeries, the extreme worthlessness of

literary taste as a criterion of the authenticity of writings. For what

man ever was more a man of taste than Sir William Temple, “the most

accomplished writer of the age,” whom Mr. Boyle never thought of without

calling to mind those happy lines of Lucretius,—

Quem tu, dea, tempore in omni

Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.

Well, the ornate and excellent Temple held that “the Epistles of Phalaris

have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any

others he had ever seen, either ancient or modern.” So much for what

Bentley calls Temple’s “Nicety of Tast.” The greatest of English

scholars readily proved that Phalaris used (in the spirit of prophecy) an

idiom which did not exist to write about matters in his time not

invented, but “many centuries younger than he.” So let the Nicety of

Temple’s Tast and its absolute failure be a warning to us when we read

(if read we must) German critics who deny Homer’s claim to this or that

passage, and Plato’s right to half his accepted dialogues, on grounds of

literary taste. And farewell, as Herodotus would have said, to the

Letters of Phalaris, of Socrates, of Plato; to the Lives of Pythagoras

and of Homer, and to all the other uncounted literary forgeries of the

classical world, from the Sibylline prophecies to the battle of the frogs

and mice.

Early Christian frauds were, naturally, pious. We have the apocryphal

Gospels, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which were not

exposed till Erasmus’s time. Perhaps the most important of pious

forgeries (if forgery be exactly the right word in this case) was that of

‘The False Decretals.’ “Of a sudden,” says Milman, speaking of the

pontificate of Nicholas I. (_ob._ 867 A.D.), “Of a sudden was

promulgated, unannounced, without preparation, not absolutely

unquestioned, but apparently over-awing at once all doubt, a new Code,

which to the former authentic documents added fifty-nine letters and

decrees of the twenty oldest Popes from Clement to Melchiades, and the

donation of Constantine, and in the third part, among the decrees of the

Popes and of the Councils from Sylvester to Gregory II., thirty-nine

false decrees, and the acts of several unauthentic Councils.” “The whole

is composed,” Milman adds, “with an air of profound piety and reverence.”

The False Decretals naturally assert the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.

“They are full and minute on Church Property” (they were sure to be

that); in fact, they remind one of another forgery, pious and Aryan, ‘The

Institutes of Vishnu.’ “Let him not levy any tax upon Brahmans,” says

the Brahman forger of the Institutes, which “came from the mouths of

Vishnu,” as he sat “clad in a yellow robe, imperturbable, decorated with

all kinds of gems, while Lakshmi was stroking his feet with her soft

palms.” The Institutes took excellent care of Brahmans and cows, as the

Decretals did of the Pope and the clergy, and the earliest Popes had

about as much hand in the Decretals as Vishnu had in his Institutes.

Hommenay, in ‘Pantagruel,’ did well to have the praise of the Decretals

sung by _filles belles_, _blondelettes_, _doulcettes_, _et de bonne

grace_. And then Hommenay drank to the Decretals and their very good

health. “O dives Décretales, tant par vous est le vin bon bon trouvé”—“O

divine Decretals, how good you make good wine taste!” “The miracle would

be greater,” said Pantagruel, “if they made bad wine taste good.” The

most that can now be done by the devout for the Decretals is “to palliate

the guilt of their forger,” whose name, like that of the Greek

Macpherson, is unknown.

If the early Christian centuries, and the Middle Ages, were chiefly

occupied with pious frauds, with forgeries of gospels, epistles, and

Decretals, the impostors of the Renaissance were busy, as an Oxford

scholar said, when he heard of a new MS. of the Greek Testament, “with

something really important,” that is with classical imitations. After

the Turks took Constantinople, when the learned Greeks were scattered all

over Southern Europe, when many genuine classical manuscripts were

recovered by the zeal of scholars, when the plays of Menander were seen

once, and then lost for ever, it was natural that literary forgery should

thrive. As yet scholars were eager rather than critical; they were

collecting and unearthing, rather than minutely examining the remains of

classic literature. They had found so much, and every year were finding

so much more, that no discovery seemed impossible. The lost books of

Livy and Cicero, the songs of Sappho, the perished plays of Sophocles and

Æschylus might any day be brought to light. This was the very moment for

the literary forger; but it is improbable that any forgery of the period

has escaped detection. Three or four years ago some one published a book

to show that the ‘Annals of Tacitus’ were written by Poggio Bracciolini.

This paradox gained no more converts than the bolder hypothesis of

Hardouin. The theory of Hardouin was all that the ancient classics were

productions of a learned company which worked, in the thirteenth century,

under Severus Archontius. Hardouin made some exceptions to his sweeping

general theory. Cicero’s writings were genuine, he admitted, so were

Pliny’s, of Virgil the Georgics; the satires and epistles of Horace;

Herodotus, and Homer. All the rest of the classics were a magnificent

forgery of the illiterate thirteenth century, which had scarce any Greek,

and whose Latin, abundant in quantity, in quality left much to be

desired.

Among literary forgers, or passers of false literary coin, at the time of

the Renaissance, Annius is the most notorious. Annius (his real

vernacular name was Nanni) was born at Viterbo, in 1432. He became a

Dominican, and (after publishing his forged classics) rose to the

position of Maître du Palais to the Pope, Alexander Borgia. With Cæsar

Borgia it is said that Annius was never on good terms. He persisted in

preaching “the sacred truth” to his highness and this (according to the

detractors of Annius) was the only use he made of the sacred truth.

There is a legend that Cæsar Borgia poisoned the preacher (1502), but

people usually brought that charge against Cæsar when any one in any way

connected with him happened to die. Annius wrote on the History and

Empire of the Turks, who took Constantinople in his time; but he is

better remembered by his ‘Antiquitatum Variarum Volumina XVII. cum

comment. Fr. Jo. Annii.’ These fragments of antiquity included, among

many other desirable things, the historical writings of Fabius Pictor,

the predecessor of Livy. One is surprised that Annius, when he had his

hand in, did not publish choice extracts from the ‘Libri Lintei,’ the

ancient Roman annals, written on linen and preserved in the temple of

Juno Moneta. Among the other discoveries of Annius were treatises by

Berosus, Manetho, Cato, and poems by Archilochus. Opinion has been

divided as to whether Annius was wholly a knave, or whether he was

himself imposed upon. Or, again, whether he had some genuine fragments,

and eked them out with his own inventions. It is observed that he did

not dovetail the really genuine relics of Berosus and Manetho into the

works attributed to them. This may be explained as the result of

ignorance or of cunning; there can be no certain inference. “Even the

Dominicans,” as Bayle says, admit that Annius’s discoveries are false,

though they excuse them by averring that the pious man was the dupe of

others. But a learned Lutheran has been found to defend the

‘Antiquitates’ of the Dominican.

It is amusing to remember that the great and erudite Rabelais was taken

in by some pseudo-classical fragments. The joker of jokes was hoaxed.

He published, says Mr. Besant, “a couple of Latin forgeries, which he

proudly called ‘Ex reliquiis venerandæ antiquitatis,’ consisting of a

pretended will and a contract.” The name of the book is ‘Ex reliquiis

venerandæ antiquitatis. Lucii Cuspidii Testamentum. Item contractus

venditionis antiquis Romanorum temporibus initus. _Lugduni apud

Gryphium_ (1532).’ Pomponius Lætus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently

authors of the hoax.

Socrates said that he “would never lift up his hand against his father

Parmenides.” The fathers of the Church have not been so respectfully

treated by literary forgers during the Renaissance. The ‘Flowers of

Theology’ of St. Bernard, which were to be a primrose path _ad gaudia

Paradisi_ (Strasburg, 1478), were really, it seems, the production of

Jean de Garlande. Athanasius, his ‘Eleven Books concerning the Trinity,’

are attributed to Vigilius, a colonial Bishop in Northern Africa. Among

false classics were two comic Latin fragments with which Muretus beguiled

Scaliger. Meursius has suffered, posthumously, from the attribution to

him of a very disreputable volume indeed. In 1583, a book on

‘Consolations,’ by Cicero, was published at Venice, containing the

reflections with which Cicero consoled himself for the death of Tullia.

It might as well have been attributed to Mrs. Blimber, and described as

replete with the thoughts by which that lady supported herself under the

affliction of never having seen Cicero or his Tusculan villa. The real

author was Charles Sigonius, of Modena. Sigonius actually did discover

some Ciceronian fragments, and, if he was not the builder, at least he

was the restorer of Tully’s lofty theme. In 1693, François Nodot,

conceiving the world had not already enough of Petronius Arbiter,

published an edition, in which he added to the works of that lax though

accomplished author. Nodot’s story was that he had found a whole MS. of

Petronius at Belgrade, and he published it with a translation of his own

Latin into French. Still dissatisfied with the existing supply of

Petronius’ humour was Marchena, a writer of Spanish books, who printed at

Bâle a translation and edition of a new fragment. This fragment was very

cleverly inserted in a presumed _lacuna_. In spite of the ironical style

of the preface many scholars were taken in by this fragment, and their

credulity led Marchena to find a new morsel (of Catullus this time) at

Herculaneum. Eichstadt, a Jena professor, gravely announced that the

same fragment existed in a MS. in the university library, and, under

pretence of giving various readings, corrected Marchena’s faults in

prosody. Another sham Catullus, by Corradino, a Venetian, was published

in 1738.

The most famous forgeries of the eighteenth century were those of

Macpherson, Chatterton, and Ireland. Space (fortunately) does not permit

a discussion of the Ossianic question. That fragments of Ossianic legend

(if not of Ossianic poetry) survive in oral Gaelic traditions, seems

certain. How much Macpherson knew of these, and how little he used them

in the bombastic prose which Napoleon loved (and spelled “Ocean”), it is

next to impossible to discover. The case of Chatterton is too well known

to need much more than mention. The most extraordinary poet for his

years who ever lived began with the forgery of a sham feudal pedigree for

Mr. Bergum, a pewterer. Ireland started on his career in much the same

way, unless Ireland’s ‘Confessions’ be themselves a fraud, based on what

he knew about Chatterton. Once launched in his career, Chatterton drew

endless stores of poetry from “Rowley’s MS.” and the muniment chest in

St. Mary Redcliffe’s. Jacob Bryant believed in them and wrote an

‘Apology’ for the credulous. Bryant, who believed in his own system of

mythology, might have believed in anything. When Chatterton sent his

“discoveries” to Walpole (himself somewhat of a mediæval imitator), Gray

and Mason detected the imposture, and Walpole, his feelings as an

antiquary injured took no more notice of the boy. Chatterton’s death was

due to his precocity. Had his genius come to him later, it would have

found him wiser, and better able to command the fatal demon of intellect,

for which he had to find work, like Michael Scott in the legend.

The end of the eighteenth century, which had been puzzled or diverted by

the Chatterton and Macpherson frauds, witnessed also the great and famous

Shakespearian forgeries. We shall never know the exact truth about the

fabrication of the Shakespearian documents, and ‘Vortigern’ and the other

plays. We have, indeed, the confession of the culprit: _habemus

confitentem reum_, but Mr. W. H. Ireland was a liar and a solicitor’s

clerk, so versatile and accomplished that we cannot always trust him,

even when he is narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary

but wide and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the

disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning are (or a hundred

years ago were) worth very little as literary touchstones. A polished

and learned society, a society devoted to Shakespeare and to the stage,

was taken in by a boy of eighteen. Young Ireland not only palmed off his

sham prose documents, most makeshift imitations of the antique, but even

his ridiculous verses on the experts. James Boswell went down on his

knees and thanked Heaven for the sight of them, and, feeling thirsty

after these devotions, drank hot brandy and water. Dr. Parr was not less

readily gulled, and probably the experts, like Malone, who held aloof,

were as much influenced by jealousy as by science. The whole story of

young Ireland’s forgeries is not only too long to be told here, but forms

the topic of a novel (‘The Talk of the Town’) by Mr. James Payn. The

frauds in his hands lose neither their humour nor their complicated

interest of plot. To be brief, then, Mr. Samuel Ireland was a gentleman

extremely fond of old literature and old books. If we may trust the

‘Confessions’ (1805) of his candid son, Mr. W. H. Ireland, a more

harmless and confiding old person than Samuel never collected early

English tracts. Living in his learned society, his son, Mr. W. H.

Ireland, acquired not only a passion for black letters, but a desire to

emulate Chatterton. His first step in guilt was the forgery of an

autograph on an old pamphlet, with which he gratified Samuel Ireland. He

also wrote a sham inscription on a modern bust of Cromwell, which he

represented as an authentic antique. Finding that the critics were taken

in, and attributed this new bust to the old sculptor Simeon, Ireland

conceived a very low and not unjustifiable opinion of critical tact.

Critics would find merit in anything which seemed old enough. Ireland’s

next achievement was the forgery of some legal documents concerning

Shakespeare. Just as the bad man who deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira

forged his ‘Deuteronomy’ on the blank spaces of old synagogue rolls, so

young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent rolls. He next bought up

quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on this ancient paper he

indicted a sham confession of faith, which he attributed to Shakespeare.

Being a strong “evangelical,” young Mr. Ireland gave a very Protestant

complexion to this edifying document. And still the critics gaped and

wondered and believed.

Ireland’s method was to write in an ink made by blending various liquids

used in the marbling of paper for bookbinding. This stuff was supplied

to him by a bookbinder’s apprentice. When people asked questions as to

whence all the new Shakespeare manuscripts came, he said they were

presented to him by a gentleman who wished to remain anonymous. Finally,

the impossibility of producing this gentleman was one of the causes of

the detection of the fraud. According to himself, Ireland performed

prodigies of acuteness. Once he had forged, at random, the name of a

contemporary of Shakespeare. He was confronted with a genuine signature,

which, of course, was quite different. He obtained leave to consult his

“anonymous gentleman,” rushed home, forged the name again on the model of

what had been shown to him, and returned with this signature as a new

gift from his benefactor. That nameless friend had informed him (he

swore) that there were two persons of the same name, and that both

signatures were genuine. Ireland’s impudence went the length of

introducing an ancestor of his own, with the same name as himself, among

the companions of Shakespeare. If ‘Vortigern’ had succeeded (and it was

actually put on the stage with all possible pomp), Ireland meant to have

produced a series of pseudo-Shakespearian plays from William the

Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth. When busy with ‘Vortigern,’ he was

detected by a friend of his own age, who pounced on him while he was at

work, as Lasus pounced on Onomacritus. The discoverer, however,

consented to “stand in” with Ireland, and did not divulge his secret. At

last, after the fiasco of ‘Vortigern,’ suspicion waxed so strong, and

disagreeable inquiries for the anonymous benefactor were so numerous,

that Ireland fled from his father’s house. He confessed all, and,

according to his own account, fell under the undying wrath of Samuel

Ireland. Any reader of Ireland’s confessions will be likely to

sympathise with old Samuel as the dupe of his son. The whole story is

told with a curious mixture of impudence and humour, and with great

plausibility. Young Ireland admits that his “desire for laughter” was

almost irresistible, when people—learned, pompous, sagacious

people—listened attentively to the papers. One feels half inclined to

forgive the rogue for the sake of his youth, his cleverness, his humour.

But the ‘Confessions’ are, not improbably, almost as apocryphal as the

original documents. They were written for the sake of money, and it is

impossible to say how far the same mercenary motive actuated Ireland in

his forgeries. Dr. Ingleby, in his ‘Shakespeare Fabrications,’ takes a

very rigid view of the conduct, not only of William, but of old Samuel

Ireland. Sam, according to Dr. Ingleby, was a partner in the whole

imposture, and the confession was only one element in the scheme of

fraud. Old Samuel was the Fagin of a band of young literary Dodgers. He

“positively trained his whole family to trade in forgery,” and as for Mr.

W. H. Ireland, he was “the most accomplished liar that ever lived,” which

is certainly a distinction in its way. The point of the joke is that,

after the whole conspiracy exploded, people were anxious to buy examples

of the forgeries. Mr. W. H. Ireland was equal to the occasion. He

actually forged his own, or (according to Dr. Ingleby) his father’s

forgeries, and, by thus increasing the supply, he deluged the market with

sham shams, with imitations of imitations. If this accusation be

correct, it is impossible not to admire the colossal impudence of Mr. W.

H. Ireland. Dr. Ingleby, in the ardour of his honest indignation,

pursues William into his private life, which, it appears, was far from

exemplary. But literary criticism should be content with a man’s works;

his domestic life is matter, as Aristotle often says, “for a separate

kind of investigation.” Old Ritson used to say that “every literary

impostor deserved hanging as much as a common thief.” W. H. Ireland’s

merits were never recognised by the law.

How old Ritson would have punished “the old corrector,” it is “better

only guessing,” as the wicked say, according to Clough, in regard to

their own possible chastisement. The difficulty is to ascertain who the

apocryphal old corrector really was. The story of his misdeeds was

recently brought back to mind by the death, at an advanced age, of the

learned Shakespearian, Mr. J. Payne Collier. Mr. Collier was, to put it

mildly, the Shapira of the old corrector. He brought that artist’s works

before the public; but _why_? how deceived, or how influenced, it is once

more “better only guessing.” Mr. Collier first introduced to the public

notice his singular copy of a folio Shakespeare (second edition), loaded

with ancient manuscript emendations, in 1849. His account of this book

was simple and plausible. He chanced, one day, to be in the shop of Mr.

Rudd, the bookseller, in Great Newport Street, when a parcel of

second-hand volumes arrived from the country. When the parcel was

opened, the heart of the Bibliophile began to sing, for the packet

contained two old folios, one of them an old folio Shakespeare of the

second edition (1632). The volume (mark this) was “much cropped,”

greasy, and imperfect. Now the student of Mr. Hamilton’s ‘Inquiry’ into

the whole affair is already puzzled. In later days, Mr. Collier said

that his folio had previously been in the possession of a Mr. Parry. On

the other hand, Mr. Parry (then a very aged man) failed to recognise his

folio in Mr. Collier’s, for _his_ copy was “cropped,” whereas the leaves

of Mr. Collier’s example were _not_ mutilated. Here, then (‘Inquiry,’

pp. 12, 61), we have two descriptions of the outward aspect of Mr.

Collier’s dubious treasure. In one account it is “much cropped” by the

book-binder’s cruel shears; in the other, its unmutilated condition is

contrasted with that of a copy which has been “cropped.” In any case,

Mr. Collier hoped, he says, to complete an imperfect folio he possessed,

with leaves taken from the folio newly acquired for thirty shillings.

But the volumes happened to have the same defects, and the healing

process was impossible. Mr. Collier chanced to be going into the

country, when in packing the folio he had bought of Rudd he saw it was

covered with manuscript corrections in an old hand. These he was

inclined to attribute to one Thomas Perkins, whose name was written on

the fly-leaf, and who might have been a connection of Richard Perkins,

the actor (_flor._ 1633) The notes contained many various readings, and

very numerous changes in punctuation. Some of these Mr. Collier

published in his ‘Notes and Emendations’ (1852), and in an edition of the

‘Plays.’ There was much discussion, much doubt, and the folio of the old

corrector (who was presumed to have marked the book in the theatre during

early performances) was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries. Then

Mr. Collier presented the treasure to the Duke of Devonshire, who again

lent it for examination to the British Museum. Mr. Hamilton published in

the _Times_ (July, 1859) the results of his examination of the old

corrector. It turned out that the old corrector was a modern myth. He

had first made his corrections in pencil and in a modern hand, and then

he had copied them over in ink, and in a forged ancient hand. The same

word sometimes recurred in both handwritings. The ink, which looked old,

was really no English ink at all, not even Ireland’s mixture. It seemed

to be sepia, sometimes mixed with a little Indian ink. Mr. Hamilton made

many other sad discoveries. He pointed out that Mr. Collier had

published, from a Dulwich MS., a letter of Mrs. Alleyne’s (the actor’s

wife), referring to Shakespeare as “Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe.” Now

the Dulwich MS. was mutilated and blank in the very place where this

interesting reference should have occurred. Such is a skeleton history

of the old corrector, his works and ways. It is probable that—thanks to

his assiduities—new Shakespearian documents will in future be received

with extreme scepticism; and this is all the fruit, except acres of

newspaper correspondence, which the world has derived from Mr. Collier’s

greasy and imperfect but unique “corrected folio.”

The recency and (to a Shakespearian critic) the importance of these

forgeries obscures the humble merit of Surtees, with his ballads of the

‘Slaying of Antony Featherstonhaugh,’ and of ‘Bartram’s Dirge.’ Surtees

left clever _lacunæ_ in these songs, ‘collected from oral tradition,’ and

furnished notes so learned that they took in Sir Walter Scott. There are

moments when I half suspect “the Shirra himsel” (who blamelessly forged

so many extracts from ‘Old Plays’) of having composed ‘Kinmont Willie.’

To compare old Scott of Satchell’s account of Kinmont Willie with the

ballad is to feel uncomfortable doubts. But this is a rank impiety. The

last ballad forgery of much note was the set of sham Macedonian epics and

popular songs (all about Alexander the Great, and other heroes) which a

schoolmaster in the Rhodope imposed on M. Verkovitch. The trick was not

badly done, and the imitation of “ballad slang” was excellent. The ‘Oera

Linda’ book, too, was successful enough to be translated into English.

With this latest effort of the tenth muse, the crafty muse of Literary

Forgery, we may leave a topic which could not be exhausted in a ponderous

volume. We have not room even for the forged letters of Shelley, to

which Mr. Browning, being taken in thereby, wrote a preface, nor for the

forged letters of Mr. Ruskin, which occasionally hoax all the newspapers.

_BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE_.

THE love of books for their own sake, for their paper, print, binding,

and for their associations, as distinct from the love of literature, is a

stronger and more universal passion in France than elsewhere in Europe.

In England publishers are men of business; in France they aspire to be

artists. In England people borrow what they read from the libraries, and

take what gaudy cloth-binding chance chooses to send them. In France

people buy books, and bind them to their heart’s desire with quaint and

dainty devices on the morocco covers. Books are lifelong friends in that

country; in England they are the guests of a week or of a fortnight. The

greatest French writers have been collectors of curious editions; they

have devoted whole treatises to the love of books. The literature and

history of France are full of anecdotes of the good and bad fortunes of

bibliophiles, of their bargains, discoveries, disappointments. There

lies before us at this moment a small library of books about books,—the

‘Bibliophile Français,’ in seven large volumes, ‘Les Sonnets d’un

Bibliophile,’ ‘La Bibliomanie en 1878,’ ‘La Bibliothèque d’un

Bibliophile’ (1885) and a dozen other works of Janin, Nodier, Beraldi,

Pieters, Didot, great collectors who have written for the instruction of

beginners and the pleasure of every one who takes delight in printed

paper.

The passion for books, like other forms of desire, has its changes of

fashion. It is not always easy to justify the caprices of taste. The

presence or absence of half an inch of paper in the “uncut” margin of a

book makes a difference of value that ranges from five shillings to a

hundred pounds. Some books are run after because they are beautifully

bound; some are competed for with equal eagerness because they never have

been bound at all. The uninitiated often make absurd mistakes about

these distinctions. Some time ago the _Daily Telegraph_ reproached a

collector because his books were “uncut,” whence, argued the journalist,

it was clear that he had never read them. “Uncut,” of course, only means

that the margins have not been curtailed by the binders’ plough. It is a

point of sentiment to like books just as they left the hands of the old

printers,—of Estienne, Aldus, or Louis Elzevir.

It is because the passion for books is a sentimental passion that people

who have not felt it always fail to understand it. Sentiment is not an

easy thing to explain. Englishmen especially find it impossible to

understand tastes and emotions that are not their own,—the wrongs of

Ireland, (till quite recently) the aspirations of Eastern Roumelia, the

demands of Greece. If we are to understand the book-hunter, we must

never forget that to him books are, in the first place, _relics_. He

likes to think that the great writers whom he admires handled just such

pages and saw such an arrangement of type as he now beholds. Molière,

for example, corrected the proofs for this edition of the ‘Précieuses

Ridicules,’ when he first discovered “what a labour it is to publish a

book, and how _green_ (_neuf_) an author is the first time they print

him.” Or it may be that Campanella turned over, with hands unstrung, and

still broken by the torture, these leaves that contain his passionate

sonnets. Here again is the copy of Theocritus from which some pretty

page may have read aloud to charm the pagan and pontifical leisure of Leo

X. This Gargantua is the counterpart of that which the martyred Dolet

printed for (or pirated from, alas!) Maître François Rabelais. This

woeful _ballade_, with the woodcut of three thieves hanging from one

gallows, came near being the “Last Dying Speech and Confession of

François Villon.” This shabby copy of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ is

precisely like that which Shelley doubled up and thrust into his pocket

when the prow of the piratical felucca crashed into the timbers of the

_Don Juan_. Some rare books have these associations, and they bring you

nearer to the authors than do the modern reprints. Bibliophiles will

tell you that it is the early _readings_ they care for,—the author’s

first fancies, and those more hurried expressions which he afterwards

corrected. These _readings_ have their literary value, especially in the

masterpieces of the great; but the sentiment after all is the main thing.

Other books come to be relics in another way. They are the copies which

belonged to illustrious people,—to the famous collectors who make a kind

of _catena_ (a golden chain of bibliophiles) through the centuries since

printing was invented. There are Grolier (1479–1565),—not a bookbinder,

as an English newspaper supposed (probably when Mr. Sala was on his

travels),—De Thou (1553–1617), the great Colbert, the Duc de la Vallière

(1708–1780), Charles Nodier, a man of yesterday, M. Didot, and the rest,

too numerous to name. Again, there are the books of kings, like Francis

I., Henri III., and Louis XIV. These princes had their favourite

devices. Nicolas Eve, Padeloup, Derome, and other artists arrayed their

books in morocco,—tooled with skulls, cross-bones, and crucifixions for

the voluptuous pietist Henri III., with the salamander for Francis I.,

and powdered with _fleurs de lys_ for the monarch who “was the State.”

There are relics also of noble beauties. The volumes of Marguerite

d’Angoulême are covered with golden daisies. The cipher of Marie

Antoinette adorns too many books that Madame du Barry might have welcomed

to her hastily improvised library. The three daughters of Louis XV. had

their favourite colours of morocco, citron, red, and olive, and their

books are valued as much as if they bore the bees of De Thou, or the

intertwined C’s of the illustrious and ridiculous Abbé Cotin, the

_Trissotin_ of the comedy. Surely in all these things there is a human

interest, and our fingers are faintly thrilled, as we touch these books,

with the far-off contact of the hands of kings and cardinals, scholars

and _coquettes_, pedants, poets, and _précieuses_, the people who are

unforgotten in the mob that inhabited dead centuries.

So universal and ardent has the love of magnificent books been in France,

that it would be possible to write a kind of bibliomaniac history of that

country. All her rulers, kings, cardinals, and ladies have had time to

spare for collecting. Without going too far back, to the time when

Bertha span and Charlemagne was an amateur, we may give a few specimens

of an anecdotical history of French bibliolatry, beginning, as is

courteous, with a lady. “Can a woman be a bibliophile?” is a question

which was once discussed at the weekly breakfast party of Guilbert de

Pixérécourt, the famous book-lover and playwright, the “Corneille of the

Boulevards.” The controversy glided into a discussion as to “how many

books a man can love at a time;” but historical examples prove that

French women (and Italian, witness the Princess d’Este) may be

bibliophiles of the true strain. Diane de Poictiers was their

illustrious patroness. The mistress of Henri II. possessed, in the

Château d’Anet, a library of the first triumphs of typography. Her taste

was wide in range, including songs, plays, romances, divinity; her copies

of the Fathers were bound in citron morocco, stamped with her arms and

devices, and closed with clasps of silver. In the love of books, as in

everything else, Diane and Henri II. were inseparable. The interlaced H

and D are scattered over the covers of their volumes; the lily of France

is twined round the crescents of Diane, or round the quiver, the arrows,

and the bow which she adopted as her cognisance, in honour of the maiden

goddess. The books of Henri and of Diane remained in the Château d’Anet

till the death of the Princesse de Condé in 1723, when they were

dispersed. The son of the famous Madame de Guyon bought the greater part

of the library, which has since been scattered again and again. M.

Léopold Double, a well-known bibliophile, possessed several examples.

{94}

Henry III. scarcely deserves, perhaps, the name of a book-lover, for he

probably never read the works which were bound for him in the most

elaborate way. But that great historian, Alexandre Dumas, takes a far

more friendly view of the king’s studies, and, in ‘La Dame de Monsoreau,’

introduces us to a learned monarch. Whether he cared for the contents of

his books or not, his books are among the most singular relics of a

character which excites even morbid curiosity. No more debauched and

worthless wretch ever filled a throne; but, like the bad man in

Aristotle, Henri III. was “full of repentance.” When he was not dancing

in an unseemly revel, he was on his knees in his chapel. The board of

one of his books, of which an engraving lies before me, bears his cipher

and crown in the corners; but the centre is occupied in front with a

picture of the Annunciation, while on the back is the crucifixion and the

breeding heart through which the swords have pierced. His favourite

device was the death’s-head, with the motto _Memento Mori_, or _Spes mea

Deus_. While he was still only Duc d’Anjou, Henri loved Marie de Clèves,

Princesse de Condé. On her sudden death he expressed his grief, as he

had done his piety, by aid of the _petits fers_ of the bookbinder.

Marie’s initials were stamped on his book-covers in a chaplet of laurels.

In one corner a skull and cross-bones were figured; in the other the

motto _Mort m’est vie_; while two curly objects, which did duty for

tears, filled up the lower corners. The books of Henri III., even when

they are absolutely worthless as literature, sell for high prices; and an

inane treatise on theology, decorated with his sacred emblems, lately

brought about £120 in a London sale.

Francis I., as a patron of all the arts, was naturally an amateur of

bindings. The fates of books were curiously illustrated by the story of

the copy of Homer, on large paper, which Aldus, the great Venetian

printer, presented to Francis I. After the death of the late Marquis of

Hastings, better known as an owner of horses than of books, his

possessions were brought to the hammer. With the instinct, the _flair_,

as the French say, of the bibliophile, M. Ambroise Firmin Didot, the

biographer of Aldus, guessed that the marquis might have owned something

in his line. He sent his agent over to England, to the country town

where the sale was to be held. M. Didot had his reward. Among the books

which were dragged out of some mouldy store-room was the very Aldine

Homer of Francis I., with part of the original binding still clinging to

the leaves. M. Didot purchased the precious relic, and sent it to what

M. Fertiault (who has written a century of sonnets on bibliomania) calls

the hospital for books.

Le dos humide, je l’éponge;

Où manque un coin, vite une allonge,

Pour tous j’ai maison de santé.

M. Didot, of course, did not practise this amateur surgery himself, but

had the arms and devices of Francis I. restored by one of those famous

binders who only work for dukes, millionnaires, and Rothschilds.

During the religious wars and the troubles of the Fronde, it is probable

that few people gave much time to the collection of books. The

illustrious exceptions are Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin, who possessed

a “snuffy Davy” of his own, an indefatigable prowler among book-stalls

and dingy purlieus, in Gabriel Naudé. In 1664, Naudé, who was a learned

and ingenious writer, the apologist for “great men suspected of magic,”

published the second edition of his ‘Avis pour dresser une Bibliothèque,’

and proved himself to be a true lover of the chase, a mighty hunter (of

books) before the Lord. Naudé’s advice to the collector is rather

amusing. He pretends not to care much for bindings, and quotes Seneca’s

rebuke of the Roman bibliomaniacs, _Quos voluminum suorum frontes maxime

placent titulique_,—who chiefly care for the backs and lettering of their

volumes. The fact is that Naudé had the wealth of Mazarin at his back,

and we know very well, from the remains of the Cardinal’s library which

exist, that he liked as well as any man to see his cardinal’s hat

glittering on red or olive morocco in the midst of the beautiful tooling

of the early seventeenth century. When once he got a book, he would not

spare to give it a worthy jacket. Naudé’s ideas about buying were

peculiar. Perhaps he sailed rather nearer the wind than even Monkbarns

would have cared to do. His favourite plan was to buy up whole libraries

in the gross, “speculative lots” as the dealers call them. In the second

place, he advised the book-lover to haunt the retreats of _Libraires

fripiers_, _et les vieux fonds et magasins_. Here he truly observes that

you may find rare books, _brochés_,—that is, unbound and uncut,—just as

Mr. Symonds bought two uncut copies of ‘Laon and Cythna’ in a Bristol

stall for a crown. “You may get things for four or five crowns that

would cost you forty or fifty elsewhere,” says Naudé. Thus a few years

ago M. Paul Lacroix bought for two francs, in a Paris shop, the very copy

of ‘Tartuffe’ which had belonged to Louis XIV. The example may now be

worth perhaps £200. But we are digressing into the pleasures of the

modern sportsman.

It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naudé hunted, but among the

dealers in waste paper. “Thus did Poggio find Quintilian on the counter

of a wood-merchant, and Masson picked up ‘Agobardus’ at the shop of a

binder, who was going to use the MS. to patch his books withal.” Rossi,

who may have seen Naudé at work, tells us how he would enter a shop with

a yard-measure in his hand, buying books, we are sorry to say, by the

ell. “The stalls where he had passed were like the towns through which

Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their train,—_ut non

hominis unius sedulitas_, _sed calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum

tabernas pervasisse videatur_!” Naudé had sorrows of his own. In 1652

the Parliament decreed the confiscation of the splendid library of

Mazarin, which was perhaps the first free library in Europe,—the first

that was open to all who were worthy of right of entrance. There is a

painful description of the sale, from which the book-lover will avert his

eyes. On Mazarin’s return to power he managed to collect again and

enrich his stores, which form the germ of the existing _Bibliothèque

Mazarine_.

Among princes and popes it is pleasant to meet one man of letters, and he

the greatest of the great age, who was a bibliophile. The enemies and

rivals of Molière—De Visé, De Villiers, and the rest—are always

reproaching him—with his love of _bouquins_. There is some difference of

opinion among philologists about the derivation of _bouquin_, but all

book-hunters know the meaning of the word. The _bouquin_ is the “small,

rare volume, black with tarnished gold,” which lies among the wares of

the stall-keeper, patient in rain and dust, till the hunter comes who can

appreciate the quarry. We like to think of Molière lounging through the

narrow streets in the evening, returning, perhaps, from some noble house

where he has been reading the proscribed ‘Tartuffe,’ or giving an

imitation of the rival actors at the Hôtel Bourgogne. Absent as the

_contemplateur_ is, a dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His

lace ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient

volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library that

is known to exist,—_un ravissant petit Elzevir_, ‘De Imperio Magni

Mogolis’ (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny volume, one

of the minute series of ‘Republics’ which the Elzevirs published, the

poet has written his rare signature, “J. B. P. Molière,” with the price

the book cost him, “1 livre, 10 sols.” “Il n’est pas de bouquin qui

s’échappe de ses mains,” says the author of ‘La Guerre Comique,’ the last

of the pamphlets which flew about during the great literary quarrel about

“L’École des Femmes.” Thanks to M. Soulié the catalogue of Molière’s

library has been found, though the books themselves have passed out of

view. There are about three hundred and fifty volumes in the inventory,

but Molière’s widow may have omitted as valueless (it is the foible of

her sex) many rusty _bouquins_, now worth far more than their weight in

gold. Molière owned no fewer than two hundred and forty volumes of

French and Italian comedies. From these he took what suited him wherever

he found it. He had plenty of classics, histories, philosophic

treatises, the essays of Montaigne, a Plutarch, and a Bible.

We know nothing, to the regret of bibliophiles, of Molière’s taste in

bindings. Did he have a comic mask stamped on the leather (that device

was chased on his plate), or did he display his cognizance and arms, the

two apes that support a shield charged with three mirrors of Truth? It

is certain—La Bruyère tells us as much—that the sillier sort of

book-lover in the seventeenth century was much the same sort of person as

his successor in our own time. “A man tells me he has a library,” says

La Bruyère (De la Mode); “I ask permission to see it. I go to visit my

friend, and he receives me in a house where, even on the stairs, the

smell of the black morocco with which his books are covered is so strong

that I nearly faint. He does his best to revive me; shouts in my ear

that the volumes ‘have gilt edges,’ that they are ‘elegantly tooled,’

that they are ‘of the good edition,’ . . . and informs me that ‘he never

reads,’ that ‘he never sets foot in this part of his house,’ that he

‘will come to oblige me!’ I thank him for all his kindness, and have no

more desire than himself to see the tanner’s shop that he calls his

library.”

Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile at whom

perhaps La Bruyère would have sneered. He was a collector who did not

read, but who amassed beautiful books, and looked forward, as business

men do, to the day when he would have time to study them. After Grolier,

De Thou, and Mazarin, Colbert possessed probably the richest private

library in Europe. The ambassadors of France were charged to procure him

rare books and manuscripts, and it is said that in a commercial treaty

with the Porte he inserted a clause demanding a certain quantity of

Levant morocco for the use of the royal bookbinders. England, in those

days, had no literature with which France deigned to be acquainted. Even

into England, however, valuable books had been imported; and we find

Colbert pressing the French ambassador at St. James’s to bid for him at a

certain sale of rare heretical writings. People who wanted to gain his

favour approached him with presents of books, and the city of Metz gave

him two real curiosities—the famous “Metz Bible” and the Missal of

Charles the Bald. The Elzevirs sent him their best examples, and though

Colbert probably saw more of the gilt covers of his books than of their

contents, at least he preserved and handed down many valuable works. As

much may be said for the reprobate Cardinal Dubois, who, with all his

faults, was a collector. Bossuet, on the other hand, left little or

nothing of interest except a copy of the 1682 edition of Molière, whom he

detested and condemned to “the punishment of those who laugh.” Even this

book, which has a curious interest, has slipped out of sight, and may

have ceased to exist.

[Picture: Fac-simile of binding from the Library of Grolier]

If Colbert and Dubois preserved books from destruction, there are

collectors enough who have been rescued from oblivion by books. The

diplomacy of D’Hoym is forgotten; the plays of Longepierre, and his

quarrels with J. B. Rousseau, are known only to the literary historian.

These great amateurs have secured an eternity of gilt edges, an

immortality of morocco. Absurd prices are given for any trash that

belonged to them, and the writer of this notice has bought for four

shillings an Elzevir classic, which when it bears the golden fleece of

Longepierre is worth about £100. Longepierre, D’Hoym, McCarthy, and the

Duc de la Vallière, with all their treasures, are less interesting to us

than Graille, Coche and Loque, the neglected daughters of Louis XV. They

found some pale consolation in their little cabinets of books, in their

various liveries of olive, citron, and red morocco.

A lady amateur of high (book-collecting) reputation, the Comtesse de

Verrue, was represented in the Beckford sale by one of three copies of

‘L’Histoire de Mélusine,’ of Melusine, the twy-formed fairy, and

ancestress of the house of Lusignan. The Comtesse de Verrue, one of the

few women who have really understood book-collecting, {102} was born

January 18, 1670, and died November 18, 1736. She was the daughter of

Charles de Luynes and of his second wife, Anne de Rohan. When only

thirteen she married the Comte de Verrue, who somewhat injudiciously

presented her, a _fleur de quinze ans_, as Ronsard says, at the court of

Victor Amadeus of Savoy. It is thought that the countess was less cruel

than the _fleur Angevine_ of Ronsard. For some reason the young matron

fled from the court of Turin and returned to Paris, where she built a

magnificent hotel, and received the most distinguished company.

According to her biographer, the countess loved science and art _jusqu’au

délire_, and she collected the furniture of the period, without

neglecting the blue china of the glowing Orient. In ebony bookcases she

possessed about eighteen thousand volumes, bound by the greatest artists

of the day. “Without care for the present, without fear of the future,

doing good, pursuing the beautiful, protecting the arts, with a tender

heart and open hand, the countess passed through life, calm, happy,

beloved, and admired.” She left an epitaph on herself, thus rudely

translated:—

Here lies, in sleep secure,

A dame inclined to mirth,

Who, by way of making sure,

Chose her Paradise on earth.

During the Revolution, to like well-bound books was as much as to

proclaim one an aristocrat. Condorcet might have escaped the scaffold if

he had only thrown away the neat little Horace from the royal press,

which betrayed him for no true Republican, but an educated man. The

great libraries from the châteaux of the nobles were scattered among all

the book-stalls. True sons of freedom tore off the bindings, with their

gilded crests and scutcheons. One revolutionary writer declared, and

perhaps he was not far wrong, that the art of binding was the worst enemy

of reading. He always began his studies by breaking the backs of the

volumes he was about to attack. The art of bookbinding in these sad

years took flight to England, and was kept alive by artists robust rather

than refined, like Thompson and Roger Payne. These were evil days, when

the binder had to cut the aristocratic coat of arms out of a book cover,

and glue in a gilt cap of liberty, as in a volume in an Oxford amateur’s

collection.

When Napoleon became Emperor, he strove in vain to make the troubled and

feverish years of his power produce a literature. He himself was one of

the most voracious readers of novels that ever lived. He was always

asking for the newest of the new, and unfortunately even the new romances

of his period were hopelessly bad. Barbier, his librarian, had orders to

send parcels of fresh fiction to his majesty wherever he might happen to

be, and great loads of novels followed Napoleon to Germany, Spain, Italy,

Russia. The conqueror was very hard to please. He read in his

travelling carriage, and after skimming a few pages would throw a volume

that bored him out of the window into the highway. He might have been

tracked by his trail of romances, as was Hop-o’-my-Thumb, in the fairy

tale, by the white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who

ministered to a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day,

was at his wit’s end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of

the year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he

refused, with imperial scorn, to look at them again. He ordered a

travelling library of three thousand volumes to be made for him, but it

was proved that the task could not be accomplished in less than six

years. The expense, if only fifty copies of each example had been

printed, would have amounted to more than six million francs. A Roman

emperor would not have allowed these considerations to stand in his way;

but Napoleon, after all, was a modern. He contented himself with a

selection of books conveniently small in shape, and packed in sumptuous

cases. The classical writers of France could never content Napoleon, and

even from Moscow in 1812, he wrote to Barbier clamorous for new books,

and good ones. Long before they could have reached Moscow, Napoleon was

flying homeward before Kotousoff and Benningsen.

Napoleon was the last of the book-lovers who governed France. The Duc

d’Aumale, a famous bibliophile, has never “come to his own,” and of M.

Gambetta it is only known that his devotional library, at least, has

found its way into the market. We have reached the era of private

book-fanciers: of Nodier, who had three libraries in his time, but never

a Virgil; and of Pixérécourt, the dramatist, who founded the Société des

Bibliophiles Français. The Romantic movement in French literature

brought in some new fashions in book-hunting. The original editions of

Ronsard, Des Portes, Belleau, and Du Bellay became invaluable; while the

writings of Gautier, Petrus Borel, and others excited the passion of

collectors. Pixérécourt was a believer in the works of the Elzevirs. On

one occasion, when he was outbid by a friend at an auction, he cried

passionately, “I shall have that book at your sale!” and, the other poor

bibliophile soon falling into a decline and dying, Pixérécourt got the

volume which he so much desired. The superstitious might have been

excused for crediting him with the gift of _jettatura_,—of the evil eye.

On Pixérécourt himself the evil eye fell at last; his theatre, the

Gaieté, was burned down in 1835, and his creditors intended to impound

his beloved books. The bibliophile hastily packed them in boxes, and

conveyed them in two cabs and under cover of night to the house of M.

Paul Lacroix. There they languished in exile till the affairs of the

manager were settled.

Pixérécourt and Nodier, the most reckless of men, were the leaders of the

older school of bibliomaniacs. The former was not a rich man; the second

was poor, but he never hesitated in face of a price that he could not

afford. He would literally ruin himself in the accumulation of a

library, and then would recover his fortunes by selling his books.

Nodier passed through life without a Virgil, because he never succeeded

in finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams,—a clean, uncut copy of the

right Elzevir edition, with the misprint, and the two passages in red

letters. Perhaps this failure was a judgment on him for the trick by

which he beguiled a certain collector of Bibles. He _invented_ an

edition, and put the collector on the scent, which he followed vainly,

till he died of the sickness of hope deferred.

One has more sympathy with the eccentricities of Nodier than with the

mere extravagance of the new _haute école_ of bibliomaniacs, the school

of millionnaires, royal dukes, and Rothschilds. These amateurs are

reckless of prices, and by their competition have made it almost

impossible for a poor man to buy a precious book. The dukes, the

Americans, the public libraries, snap them all up in the auctions. A

glance at M. Gustave Brunet’s little volume, ‘La Bibliomanie en 1878,’

will prove the excesses which these people commit. The funeral oration

of Bossuet over Henriette Marie of France (1669), and Henriette Anne of

England (1670), quarto, in the original binding, are sold for £200. It

is true that this copy had possibly belonged to Bossuet himself, and

certainly to his nephew. There is an example, as we have seen, of the

1682 edition of Molière,—of Molière whom Bossuet detested,—which also

belonged to the eagle of Meaux. The manuscript notes of the divine on

the work of the poor player must be edifying, and in the interests of

science it is to be hoped that this book may soon come into the market.

While pamphlets of Bossuet are sold so dear, the first edition of

Homer—the beautiful edition of 1488, which the three young Florentine

gentlemen published—may be had for £100. Yet even that seems expensive,

when we remember that the copy in the library of George III. cost only

seven shillings. This exquisite Homer, sacred to the memory of learned

friendships, the chief offering of early printing at the altar of ancient

poetry, is really one of the most interesting books in the world. Yet

this Homer is less valued than the tiny octavo which contains the

_ballades and huitains_ of the scamp François Villon (1533). ‘The

History of the Holy Grail’ (_L’Hystoire du Sainct Gréaal_: Paris, 1523),

in a binding stamped with the four crowns of Louis XIV., is valued at

about £500. A chivalric romance of the old days, which was treasured

even in the time of the _grand monarque_, when old French literature was

so much despised, is certainly a curiosity. The Rabelais of Madame de

Pompadour (in morocco) seems comparatively cheap at £60. There is

something piquant in the idea of inheriting from that famous beauty the

work of the colossal genius of Rabelais. {107}

The natural sympathy of collectors “to middle fortune born” is not with

the rich men whose sport in book-hunting resembles the _battue_. We side

with the poor hunters of the wild game, who hang over the fourpenny

stalls on the _quais_, and dive into the dusty boxes after literary

pearls. These devoted men rise betimes, and hurry to the stalls before

the common tide of passengers goes by. Early morning is the best moment

in this, as in other sports. At half past seven, in summer, the

_bouquiniste_, the dealer in cheap volumes at second-hand, arrays the

books which he purchased over night, the stray possessions of ruined

families, the outcasts of libraries. The old-fashioned bookseller knew

little of the value of his wares; it was his object to turn a small

certain profit on his expenditure. It is reckoned that an energetic,

business-like old bookseller will turn over 150,000 volumes in a year.

In this vast number there must be pickings for the humble collector who

cannot afford to encounter the children of Israel at Sotheby’s or at the

Hôtel Drouot.

Let the enthusiast, in conclusion, throw a handful of lilies on the grave

of the martyr of the love of books,—the poet Albert Glatigny. Poor

Glatigny was the son of a _garde champêtre_; his education was

accidental, and his poetic taste and skill extraordinarily fine and

delicate. In his life of starvation (he had often to sleep in omnibuses

and railway stations), he frequently spent the price of a dinner on a new

book. He lived to read and to dream, and if he bought books he had not

the wherewithal to live. Still, he bought them,—and he died! His own

poems were beautifully printed by Lemerre, and it may be a joy to him

(_si mentem mortalia tangunt_) that they are now so highly valued that

the price of a copy would have kept the author alive and happy for a

month.

[Picture: Binding with the arms of Madame de Pompadour]

_OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES_.

NOTHING can be plainer, as a rule, than a modern English title-page. Its

only beauty (if beauty it possesses) consists in the arrangement and

‘massing’ of lines of type in various sizes. We have returned almost to

the primitive simplicity of the oldest printed books, which had no

title-pages, properly speaking, at all, or merely gave, with extreme

brevity, the name of the work, without printer’s mark, or date, or place.

These were reserved for the colophon, if it was thought desirable to

mention them at all. Thus, in the black-letter example of Guido de

Columna’s ‘History of Troy,’ written about 1283, and printed at Strasburg

in 1489, the title-page is blank, except for the words,

Hystoria Troiana Guidonis,

standing alone at the top of the leaf. The colophon contains all the

rest of the information, ‘happily completed in the City of Strasburg, in

the year of Grace Mcccclxxxix, about the Feast of St. Urban.’ The

printer and publisher give no name at all.

This early simplicity is succeeded, in French books, from, say, 1510, and

afterwards, by the insertion either of the printer’s trademark, or, in

black-letter books, of a rough woodcut, illustrative of the nature of the

volume. The woodcuts have occasionally a rude kind of grace, with a

touch of the classical taste of the early Renaissance surviving in

extreme decay.

An excellent example is the title-page of ‘Les Demandes d’amours, avec

les responses joyeuses,’ published by Jacques Moderne, at Lyon, 1540.

There is a certain Pagan breadth and joyousness in the figure of Amor,

and the man in the hood resembles traditional portraits of Dante.

[Picture: Les demandes tamours auec les refpôfesioyeufes. Demáde

refponfe]

There is more humour, and a good deal of skill, in the title-page of a

book on late marriages and their discomforts, ‘Les dictz et complainctes

de trop Tard marié’ (Jacques Moderne, Lyon, 1540), where we see the

elderly and comfortable couple sitting gravely under their own fig-tree.

[Picture: Les dictz et complainctes]

Jacques Moderne was a printer curious in these quaint devices, and used

them in most of his books: for example, in ‘How Satan and the God Bacchus

accuse the Publicans that spoil the wine,’ Bacchus and Satan (exactly

like each other, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson will not be surprised to hear) are

encouraging dishonest tavern-keepers to stew in their own juice in a

caldron over a huge fire. From the same popular publisher came a little

tract on various modes of sport, if the name of sport can be applied to

the netting of fish and birds. The work is styled ‘Livret nouveau auquel

sont contenuz xxv receptes de prendre poissons et oiseaulx avec les

mains.’ A countryman clad in a goat’s skin with the head and horns drawn

over his head as a hood, is dragging ashore a net full of fishes. There

is no more characteristic frontispiece of this black-letter sort than the

woodcut representing a gallows with three men hanging on it, which

illustrates Villon’s ‘Ballade des Pendus,’ and is reproduced in Mr. John

Payne’s ‘Poems of Master Francis Villon of Paris’ (London, 1878). {119a}

Earlier in date than these vignettes of Jacques Moderne, but much more

artistic and refined in design, are some frontispieces of small octavos

printed _en lettres rondes_, about 1530. In these rubricated letters are

used with brilliant effect. One of the best is the title-page of Galliot

du Pré’s edition of ‘Le Rommant de la Rose’ (Paris, 1529). {119b}

Galliot du Pré’s artist, however, surpassed even the charming device of

the Lover plucking the Rose, in his title-page, of the same date, for the

small octavo edition of Alain Chartier’s poems, which we reproduce here.

[Picture: Les Oevvres feu maiftre Alain chartier en fon viuant Secretaire

du feu roy Charles les feptiefme du non...]

The arrangement of letters, and the use of red, make a charming frame, as

it were, to the drawing of the mediæval ship, with the Motto VOGUE LA

GALEE.

Title-pages like these, with designs appropriate to the character of the

text, were superseded presently by the fashion of badges, devices, and

mottoes. As courtiers and ladies had their private badges, not

hereditary, like crests, but personal—the crescent of Diane, the

salamander of Francis I., the skulls and cross-bones of Henri III., the

_marguerites_ of Marguerite, with mottoes like the _Le Banny de liesse_,

_Le traverseur des voies périlleuses_, _Tout par Soulas_, and the like,

so printers and authors had their emblems, and their private literary

slogans. These they changed, accordinging to fancy, or the vicissitudes

of their lives. Clément Marot’s motto was _La Mort n’y Mord_. It is

indicated by the letters L. M. N. M. in the curious title of an edition

of Marot’s works published at Lyons by Jean de Tournes in 1579. The

portrait represents the poet when the tide of years had borne him far

from his youth, far from _L’Adolescence Clémentine_.

[Picture: Le Pastissier François, MDCLV, title page]

[Picture: Le Pastissier Francois, 1655, showing a kitchen scene]

The unfortunate Etienne Dolet, perhaps the only publisher who was ever

burned, used an ominous device, a trunk of a tree, with the axe struck

into it. In publishing ‘Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses,

très illustre Royne de Navarre,’ Jean de Tournes employed a pretty

allegorical device. Love, with the bandage thrust back from his eyes,

and with the bow and arrows in his hand, has flown up to the sun, which

he seems to touch; like Prometheus in the myth when he stole the fire, a

shower of flowers and flames falls around him. Groueleau, of Paris, had

for motto _Nul ne s’y frotte_, with the thistle for badge. These are

beautifully combined in the title-page of his version of Apuleius,

‘L’Amour de Cupido et de Psyche’ (Paris, 1557). There is probably no

better date for frontispieces, both for ingenuity of device and for

elegance of arrangement of title, than the years between 1530 and 1560.

By 1562, when the first edition of the famous Fifth Book of Rabelais was

published, the printers appear to have thought devices wasted on popular

books, and the title of the Master’s posthumous chapters is printed quite

simply.

[Picture: Gargantva]

In 1532–35 there was a more adventurous taste—witness the title of

‘Gargantua.’ This beautiful title decorates the first known edition,

with a date of the First Book of Rabelais. It was sold, most

appropriately, _devant nostre Dame de Confort_. Why should so glorious a

relic of the Master have been carried out of England, at the Sunderland

sale? All the early titles of François Juste’s Lyons editions of

Rabelais are on this model. By 1542 he dropped the framework of

architectural design. By 1565 Richard Breton, in Paris, was printing

Rabelais with a frontispiece of a classical dame holding a heart to the

sun, a figure which is almost in the taste of Stothard, or Flaxman.

The taste for vignettes, engraved on copper, not on wood, was revived

under the Elzevirs. Their pretty little title-pages are not so well

known but that we offer examples. In the essay on the Elzevirs in this

volume will be found a copy of the vignette of the ‘Imitatio Christi,’

and of ‘Le Pastissier François’ a reproduction is given here (pp. 114,

115). The artists they employed had plenty of fancy, not backed by very

profound skill in design.

In the same _genre_ as the big-wigged classicism of the Elzevir

vignettes, in an age when Louis XIV. and Molière (in tragedy) wore laurel

wreaths over vast perruques, are the early frontispieces of Molière’s own

collected works. Probably the most interesting of all French title-pages

are those drawn by Chauveau for the two volumes ‘Les Oeuvres de M. de

Molière,’ published in 1666 by Guillaume de Luynes. The first shows

Molière in two characters, as Mascarille, and as Sganarelle, in ‘Le Cocu

Imaginaire.’ Contrast the full-blown jollity of the _fourbum imperator_,

in his hat, and feather, and wig, and vast _canons_, and tremendous

shoe-tie, with the lean melancholy of jealous Sganarelle. These are two

notable aspects of the genius of the great comedian. The apes below are

the supporters of his scutcheon.

The second volume shows the Muse of Comedy crowning Mlle. de Molière

(Armande Béjart) in the dress of Agnès, while her husband is in the

costume, apparently, of Tartuffe, or of Sganarelle in ‘L’Ecole des

Femmes.’ ‘Tartuffe’ had not yet been licensed for a public stage. The

interest of the portraits and costumes makes these title-pages precious,

they are historical documents rather than mere curiosities.

These title-pages of Molière are the highwater mark of French taste in

this branch of decoration. In the old quarto first editions of

Corneille’s early plays, such as ‘Le Cid’ (Paris 1637), the printers used

lax and sprawling combinations of flowers and fruit. These, a little

better executed, were the staple of Ribou, de Luynes, Quinet, and the

other Parisian booksellers who, one after another, failed to satisfy

Molière as publishers.

[Picture: Les Oeuvres de Mr Moliere]

The basket of fruits on the title-page of ‘Iphigénie,’ par M. Racine

(Barbin, Paris, 1675), is almost, but not quite, identical with the

similar ornament of De Visé’s ‘La Cocue Imaginaire’ (Ribou, Paris 1662).

Many of Molière’s plays appearing first, separately, in small octavo,

were adorned with frontispieces, illustrative of some scene in the

comedy. Thus, in the ‘Misanthrope’ (Rihou 1667) we see Alceste, green

ribbons and all, discoursing with Philinte, or perhaps listening to the

famous sonnet of Oronte; it is not easy to be quite certain, but the

expression of Alceste’s face looks rather as if he were being baited with

a sonnet. From the close of the seventeenth century onwards, the taste

for title-pages declined, except when Moreau or Gravelot drew vignettes

on copper, with abundance of cupids and nymphs. These were designed for

very luxurious and expensive books; for others, men contented themselves

with a bald simplicity, which has prevailed till our own time. In recent

years the employment of publishers’ devices has been less unusual and

more agreeable. Thus Poulet Malassis had his _armes parlantes_, a

chicken very uncomfortably perched on a rail. In England we have the

cipher and bees of Messrs. Macmillan, the Trees of Life and Knowledge of

Messrs. Kegan Paul and Trench, the Ship, which was the sign of Messrs.

Longman’s early place of business, and doubtless other symbols, all

capable of being quaintly treated in a title-page.

_A BOOKMAN’S PURGATORY_.

THOMAS BLINTON was a book-hunter. He had always been a book-hunter, ever

since, at an extremely early age, he had awakened to the errors of his

ways as a collector of stamps and monograms. In book-hunting he saw no

harm; nay, he would contrast its joys, in a rather pharisaical style,

with the pleasures of shooting and fishing. He constantly declined to

believe that the devil came for that renowned amateur of black letter, G.

Steevens. Dibdin himself, who tells the story (with obvious anxiety and

alarm), pretends to refuse credit to the ghastly narrative. “His

language,” says Dibdin, in his account of the book-hunter’s end, “was,

too frequently, the language of imprecation.” This is rather good, as if

Dibdin thought a gentleman might swear pretty often, but not “_too_

frequently.” “Although I am not disposed to admit,” Dibdin goes on, “the

_whole_ of the testimony of the good woman who watched by Steevens’s

bedside, although my prejudices (as they may be called) will not allow me

to believe that the windows shook, and that strange noises and deep

groans were heard at midnight in his room, yet no creature of common

sense (and this woman possessed the quality in an eminent degree) could

mistake oaths for prayers;” and so forth. In short, Dibdin clearly holds

that the windows did shake “without a blast,” like the banners in

Branxholme Hall when somebody came for the Goblin Page.

But Thomas Blinton would hear of none of these things. He said that his

taste made him take exercise; that he walked from the City to West

Kensington every day, to beat the covers of the book-stalls, while other

men travelled in the expensive cab or the unwholesome Metropolitan

Railway. We are all apt to hold favourable views of our own amusements,

and, for my own part, I believe that trout and salmon are incapable of

feeling pain. But the flimsiness of Blinton’s theories must be apparent

to every unbiassed moralist. His “harmless taste” really involved most

of the deadly sins, or at all events a fair working majority of them. He

coveted his neighbours’ books. When he got the chance he bought books in

a cheap market and sold them in a dear market, thereby degrading

literature to the level of trade. He took advantage of the ignorance of

uneducated persons who kept book-stalls. He was envious, and grudged the

good fortune of others, while he rejoiced in their failures. He turned a

deaf ear to the appeals of poverty. He was luxurious, and laid out more

money than he should have done on his selfish pleasures, often adorning a

volume with a morocco binding when Mrs. Blinton sighed in vain for some

old _point d’Alençon_ lace. Greedy, proud, envious, stingy, extravagant,

and sharp in his dealings, Blinton was guilty of most of the sins which

the Church recognises as “deadly.”

On the very day before that of which the affecting history is now to be

told, Blinton had been running the usual round of crime. He had (as far

as intentions went) defrauded a bookseller in Holywell Street by

purchasing from him, for the sum of two shillings, what he took to be a

very rare Elzevir. It is true that when he got home and consulted

‘Willems,’ he found that he had got hold of the wrong copy, in which the

figures denoting the numbers of pages are printed right, and which is

therefore worth exactly “nuppence” to the collector. But the intention

is the thing, and Blinton’s intention was distinctly fraudulent. When he

discovered his error, then “his language,” as Dibdin says, “was that of

imprecation.” Worse (if possible) than this, Blinton had gone to a sale,

begun to bid for ‘Les Essais de Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne’ (Foppens,

MDCLIX.), and, carried away by excitement, had “plunged” to the extent of

£15, which was precisely the amount of money he owed his plumber and

gasfitter, a worthy man with a large family. Then, meeting a friend (if

the book-hunter has friends), or rather an accomplice in lawless

enterprise, Blinton had remarked the glee on the other’s face. The poor

man had purchased a little old Olaus Magnus, with woodcuts, representing

were-wolves, fire-drakes, and other fearful wild-fowl, and was happy in

his bargain. But Blinton, with fiendish joy, pointed out to him that the

index was imperfect, and left him sorrowing.

Deeds more foul have yet to be told. Thomas Blinton had discovered a new

sin, so to speak, in the collecting way. Aristophanes says of one of his

favourite blackguards, “Not only is he a villain, but he has invented an

original villainy.” Blinton was like this. He maintained that every man

who came to notoriety had, at some period, published a volume of poems

which he had afterwards repented of and withdrawn. It was Blinton’s

hideous pleasure to collect stray copies of these unhappy volumes, these

‘Péchés de Jeunesse,’ which, always and invariably, bear a gushing

inscription from the author to a friend. He had all Lord John Manners’s

poems, and even Mr. Ruskin’s. He had the ‘Ode to Despair’ of Smith (now

a comic writer), and the ‘Love Lyrics’ of Brown, who is now a permanent

under-secretary, than which nothing can be less gay nor more permanent.

He had the amatory songs which a dignitary of the Church published and

withdrew from circulation. Blinton was wont to say he expected to come

across ‘Triolets of a Tribune,’ by Mr. John Bright, and ‘Original Hymns

for Infant Minds,’ by Mr. Henry Labouchere, if he only hunted long

enough.

On the day of which I speak he had secured a volume of love-poems which

the author had done his best to destroy, and he had gone to his club and

read all the funniest passages aloud to friends of the author, who was on

the club committee. Ah, was this a kind action? In short, Blinton had

filled up the cup of his iniquities, and nobody will be surprised to hear

that he met the appropriate punishment of his offence. Blinton had

passed, on the whole, a happy day, notwithstanding the error about the

Elzevir. He dined well at his club, went home, slept well, and started

next morning for his office in the City, walking, as usual, and intending

to pursue the pleasures of the chase at all the book-stalls. At the very

first, in the Brompton Road, he saw a man turning over the rubbish in the

cheap box. Blinton stared at him, fancied he knew him, thought he

didn’t, and then became a prey to the glittering eye of the other. The

Stranger, who wore the conventional cloak and slouched soft hat of

Strangers, was apparently an accomplished mesmerist, or thought-reader,

or adept, or esoteric Buddhist. He resembled Mr. Isaacs, Zanoni (in the

novel of that name), Mendoza (in ‘Codlingsby’), the soul-less man in ‘A

Strange Story,’ Mr. Home, Mr. Irving Bishop, a Buddhist adept in the

astral body, and most other mysterious characters of history and fiction.

Before his Awful Will, Blinton’s mere modern obstinacy shrank back like a

child abashed. The Stranger glided to him and whispered, “Buy these.”

“These” were a complete set of Auerbach’s novels, in English, which, I

need not say, Blinton would never have dreamt of purchasing had he been

left to his own devices.

“Buy these!” repeated the Adept, or whatever he was, in a cruel whisper.

Paying the sum demanded, and trailing his vast load of German romance,

poor Blinton followed the fiend.

They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, Glatigny’s ‘Jour de l’An

d’un Vagabond’ was exposed.

“Look,” said Blinton, “there is a book I have wanted some time.

Glatignys are getting rather scarce, and it is an amusing trifle.”

“Nay, buy _that_,” said the implacable Stranger, pointing with a hooked

forefinger at Alison’s ‘History of Europe’ in an indefinite number of

volumes. Blinton shuddered.

“What, buy _that_, and why? In heaven’s name, what could I do with it?”

“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, “and _that_” (indicating the ‘Ilios’

of Dr. Schliemann, a bulky work), “and _these_” (pointing to all Mr.

Theodore Alois Buckley’s translations of the Classics), “and _these_”

(glancing at the collected writings of the late Mr. Hain Friswell, and at

a ‘Life,’ in more than one volume, of Mr. Gladstone).

The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along carrying the bargains under

his arm. Now one book fell out, now another dropped by the way.

Sometimes a portion of Alison came ponderously to earth; sometimes the

‘Gentle Life’ sunk resignedly to the ground. The Adept kept picking them

up again, and packing them under the arms of the weary Blinton.

The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and tried to

enter into conversation with his tormentor.

“He _does_ know about books,” thought Blinton, “and he must have a weak

spot somewhere.”

So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational style. He

talked of bindings, of Maioli, of Grolier, of De Thou, of Derome, of

Clovis Eve, of Roger Payne, of Trautz, and eke of Bauzonnet. He

discoursed of first editions, of black letter, and even of illustrations

and vignettes. He approached the topic of Bibles, but here his tyrant,

with a fierce yet timid glance, interrupted him.

“Buy those!” he hissed through his teeth.

“Those” were the complete publications of the Folk Lore Society.

Blinton did not care for folk lore (very bad men never do), but he had to

act as he was told.

Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire the ‘Ethics’ of

Aristotle, in the agreeable versions of Williams and Chase. Next he

secured ‘Strathmore,’ ‘Chandos,’ ‘Under Two Flags,’ and ‘Two Little

Wooden Shoes,’ and several dozens more of Ouida’s novels. The next stall

was entirely filled with school-books, old geographies, Livys,

Delectuses, Arnold’s ‘Greek Exercises,’ Ollendorffs, and what not.

“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and piled them

on Blinton’s head.

He tied up Ouida’s novels, in two parcels, with string, and fastened each

to one of the buttons above the tails of Blinton’s coat.

“You are tired?” asked the tormentor. “Never mind, these books will soon

be off your hands.”

So speaking, the Stranger, with amazing speed, hurried Blinton back

through Holywell Street, along the Strand, and up to Piccadilly, stopping

at last at the door of Blinton’s famous and very expensive binder.

The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of Blinton’s

treasures. Then the miserable Blinton found himself, as it were

automatically and without any exercise of his will, speaking thus:—

“Here are some things I have picked up,—extremely rare,—and you will

oblige me by binding them in your best manner, regardless of expense.

Morocco, of course; crushed levant morocco, _doublé_, every book of them,

_petits fers_, my crest and coat of arms, plenty of gilding. Spare no

cost. Don’t keep me waiting, as you generally do;” for indeed

book-binders are the most dilatory of the human species.

Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary questions,

Blinton’s tormentor had hurried that amateur out of the room.

“Come on to the sale,” he cried.

“What sale?” said Blinton.

“Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky day.”

“But I have forgotten my catalogue.”

“Where is it?”

“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of the ebony

book-case at home.”

The stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated itself till

the hand disappeared from view round the corner. In a moment the hand

returned with the catalogue. The pair sped on to Messrs. Sotheby’s

auction-rooms in Wellington Street. Every one knows the appearance of a

great book-sale. The long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles

from a little distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort

of excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct himself.

If he bids in his own person some bookseller will outbid him, partly

because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows little about books, and

suspects that the amateur may, in this case, know more. Besides,

professionals always dislike amateurs, and, in this game, they have a

very great advantage. Blinton knew all this, and was in the habit of

giving his commissions to a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally)

as if a demon had entered into him. ‘Tirante il Bianco Valorosissimo

Cavaliere’ was being competed for, an excessively rare romance of

chivalry, in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari’s library.

The book is one of the rarest of the Venetian Press, and beautifully

adorned with Canevari’s device,—a simple and elegant affair in gold and

colours. “Apollo is driving his chariot across the green waves towards

the rock, on which winged Pegasus is pawing the ground,” though why this

action of a horse should be called “pawing” (the animal notoriously not

possessing paws) it is hard to say. Round this graceful design is the

inscription ΟΡΘΩΣ ΚΑΙ ΜΗ ΑΟΞΙΩΣ (straight not crooked). In his ordinary

mood Blinton could only have admired ‘Tirante il Bianco’ from a distance.

But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into the lists, and

challenged the great Mr. —, the Napoleon of bookselling. The price had

already reached five hundred pounds.

“Six hundred,” cried Blinton.

“Guineas,” said the great Mr. —.

“Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton.

“Guineas,” replied the other.

This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. — struck his flag, with

a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said “Six thousand.” The cheers of

the audience rewarded the largest bid ever made for any book. As if he

had not done enough, the Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with

Mr. — for every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally

fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the brain,

when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless wealth, and is

determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for the last time. Blinton

owed some fifty thousand pounds, and exclaimed audibly, as the influence

of the fiend died out, “I am a ruined man.”

“Then your books must be sold,” cried the Stranger, and, leaping on a

chair, he addressed the audience:—

“Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton’s sale, which will immediately

take place. The collection contains some very remarkable early English

poets, many first editions of the French classics, most of the rarer

Aldines, and a singular assortment of Americana.”

In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room were filled with

Blinton’s books, all tied up in big lots of some thirty volumes each.

His early Molières were fastened to old French dictionaries and

school-books. His Shakespeare quartos were in the same lot with tattered

railway novels. His copy (almost unique) of Richard Barnfield’s much too

‘Affectionate Shepheard’ was coupled with odd volumes of ‘Chips from a

German Workshop’ and a cheap, imperfect example of ‘Tom Brown’s

School-Days.’ Hookes’s ‘Amanda’ was at the bottom of a lot of American

devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus and the

Aldine ‘Hypnerotomachia.’ The auctioneer put up lot after lot, and

Blinton plainly saw that the whole affair was a “knock-out.” His most

treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an

awful thing to be present at one’s own sale. No man would bid above a

few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the

plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last his

‘Adonais,’ uncut, bound by Lortic, went, in company with some old

‘Bradshaws,’ the ‘Court Guide’ of 1881, and an odd volume of the ‘Sunday

at Home,’ for sixpence. The Stranger smiled a smile of peculiar

malignity. Blinton leaped up to protest; the room seemed to shake around

him, but words would not come to his lips.

Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp shook his

shoulder,—

“Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying!”

He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep after dinner, and

Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him from his awful vision.

Beside him lay ‘L’Enfer du Bibliophile, vu et décrit par Charles

Asselineau.’ (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX.)

* * * * *

If this were an ordinary tract, I should have to tell how Blinton’s eyes

were opened, how he gave up book-collecting, and took to gardening, or

politics, or something of that sort. But truth compels me to admit that

Blinton’s repentance had vanished by the end of the week, when he was

discovered marking M. Claudin’s catalogue, surreptitiously, before

breakfast. Thus, indeed, end all our remorses. “Lancelot falls to his

own love again,” as in the romance. Much, and justly, as theologians

decry a death-bed repentance, it is, perhaps, the only repentance that we

do not repent of. All others leave us ready, when occasion comes, to

fall to our old love again; and may that love never be worse than the

taste for old books! Once a collector, always a collector. _Moi qui

parle_, I have sinned, and struggled, and fallen. I have thrown

catalogues, unopened, into the waste-paper basket. I have withheld my

feet from the paths that lead to Sotheby’s and to Puttick’s. I have

crossed the street to avoid a book-stall. In fact, like the prophet

Nicholas, “I have been known to be steady for weeks at a time.” And then

the fatal moment of temptation has arrived, and I have succumbed to the

soft seductions of Eisen, or Cochin, or an old book on Angling. Probably

Grolier was thinking of such weaknesses when he chose his devices

_Tanquam Ventus_, and _quisque suos patimur Manes_. Like the wind we are

blown about, and, like the people in the Æneid, we are obliged to suffer

the consequences of our own extravagance.

_BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE_.

THE Books I cannot hope to buy,

Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel,

They pass before the dreaming eye,

Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal.

A kind of literary reel

They dance; how fair the bindings shine!

Prose cannot tell them what I feel,—

The Books that never can be mine!

There frisk Editions rare and shy,

Morocco clad from head to heel;

Shakspearian quartos; Comedy

As first she flashed from Richard Steele;

And quaint De Foe on Mrs. Veal;

And, lord of landing net and line,

Old Izaak with his fishing creel,—

The Books that never can be mine!

Incunables! for you I sigh,

Black letter, at thy founts I kneel,

Old tales of Perrault’s nursery,

For you I’d go without a meal!

For Books wherein did Aldus deal

And rare Galliot du Pré I pine.

The watches of the night reveal

The Books that never can be mine!