Be bold, my book, nor be abashed, or fear
The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe;
But by the Muses swear, all here is good,
If but, well read or ill read, understood.
Blonds=blond laces, produced from unbleached silk.
All the works mentioned have been identified. The _Innocent Adultery_ is
the alternative title of Sotherne's _Fatal Marriage_; _The Whole Duty of
Man_ was by Allestree, once Provost of Eton; the 'admirable Mrs.
Chapone', an admirer of Richardson, and a contributor to the _Rambler_;
'Under the most repulsive exterior that any woman ever possessed she
concealed very superior attainments and extensive knowledge'; Fordyce
was Johnson's friend, and his sermons were specially addressed to young
women.
P. 216. _Chaucer._--holwe=hollow; courtepy=short upper coat of a coarse
material; fithele=fiddle; sautrye=psaltery; hente=borrow; yaf=gave;
scoleye=to attend school; sentence=sentiment; souninge in=conducing to.
P. 216. _Brant._--Sebastian Brant's _Narrenschiff_, published in 1497,
at Basle, was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous
events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French
knights. Barclay's translation, Professor Max Müller points out, 'was
not made from the original but from Locher's Latin translation. It
reproduces the matter, but not the marrow of the original satire ... in
some parts his translation is an improvement on the original.' _The Ship
of Fools_ in its original form, and in numerous translations, had an
enormous success, edition after edition being printed.
aparayle=apparatus.
P. 219. _Young._--T--n=Tonson.
P. 220. _Ferriar._--The first edition of this poem was issued as a
quarto pamphlet in 1809. It is reprinted in the second volume of the
second edition of Ferriar's _Illustrations of Sterne, and other Essays_,
1812, with some 140 additional lines.
'He, whom chief the laughing Muses own' is Aristophanes; the lines that
follow refer to the fire of London. D--n=Dryden.
'On one of these occasions [a book-auction] a succession of valuable
fragments of early English poetry brought prices so high and far beyond
those of ordinary expensive books in the finest condition, that it
seemed as if their imperfections were their merit; and the auctioneer,
momentarily carried off with this feeling, when the high prices began to
sink a little, remonstrated thus, "Going so low as thirty shillings,
gentlemen,--this curious book--so low as thirty shillings--and _quite
imperfect_!"'--J. H. BURTON. _The Book-Hunter._
Ferriar mentions incidentally most of the famous printers of olden time.
Aldine editions were those printed by Aldo Manuzio and his family in
Venice from 1490 to 1597. The Elzevir family became famous on account of
its duodecimos.
P. 225. _Beresford._--_Bibliosophia; or Book-wisdom_, by the Rev. J.
Beresford, was written as 'a feeling remonstrance against the _prose_
work, lately published by the Reverend T. F. Dibdin under the title of
_Bibliomania; or Book-madness_', quoted in successive pages.
P. 226. _d'Israeli._--The verse is imitated from the Latin of 'Henry
Rantzau, a Danish gentleman, the founder of the great library at
Copenhagen, whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading', who
'discovers his taste and ardour in the following elegant effusion'.
P. 227. _d'Israeli._--'An allusion and pun which occasioned the French
translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled no doubt by
my _facetiously_, he translates "mettant comme on l'a _très
judicieusement_ fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef". The
book, and the author alluded to, quite escaped him.'--I. D'ISRAELI.
_Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania, note._
P. 228. _Dibdin._--Magliabechi was born at Florence, October 29, 1633.
'He had never learned to read; and yet he was perpetually poring over
the leaves of old books that were used in his master's shop. A
bookseller, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who had often observed
this, and knew the boy could not read, asked him one day "what he meant
by staring so much on printed paper?" Magliabechi said that he did not
know how it was, but that he loved it of all things. The consequence was
that he was received, with tears of joy in his eyes, into the
bookseller's shop; and hence rose, by a quick succession, into posts of
literary honour, till he became librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.'
P. 234. _Longfellow._--Bayard Taylor, born 1825, died 1878. The allusion
is to the famous monument of the Emperor Maximilian in the Franciscan
church, or Hofkirche, at Innsbruck, where a kneeling figure of
Maximilian is surrounded by statues of his contemporaries and ancestors.
The emperor is buried actually at Wiener-Neustadt. Taylor published
_Prince Deukalion: a lyrical drama_, in 1878.
P. 236. _Browning._--Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis 'is apparently', Mrs.
Orr says, without adding to our store of knowledge, 'the name of an old
pedant who has written a tiresome book.'
P. 239. _de Bury._--J. H. Burton, in _The Book-Hunter_, tells the
following story:--It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the leaves
with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured
him of the proprieties. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active
mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated
James's indolent, dreamy, 'feckless' character with impatient disgust.
When the first of _The Seasons_--_Winter_ it was, I believe--had been
completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph
over his uncle's scepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had
the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked
what the book was about, but turning it round and round with his fingers
in gratified admiration, exclaimed: 'Come, is that really our Jamie's
doin' now? Weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft
to do the like!'
P. 246. _H. Coleridge._--See Roscoe's poem to his books on parting with
them, p. 9.
P. 247. _Dibdin._--'There are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces
set to sale; who shall prohibit them? shall twenty licensers?'--MILTON.
_Areopagitica._
P. 249. _Burns._--Mr. Andrew Lang states that Burns saw a splendidly
bound but sadly neglected copy of Shakespeare in the library of a
nobleman in Edinburgh, and he wrote these lines on the ample margin of
one of its pages, where they were found long after the poet's death.
P. 250. _Parnell._--'It was supposed that a binding of Russian leather
secured books against insects, but the contrary was recently
demonstrated at Paris by two volumes pierced in every direction. The
first bookbinder in Paris, Bozerian, told me he knew of no remedy except
to steep the blank leaves in muriatic acid.'--PINKERTON'S _Recollections
of Paris_. Parnell's poem is translated from Theodore Beza.
'Smith was very comical about a remedy of Lady Holland's for the
bookworms in the library at Holland House, having the books washed with
some mercurial preparation. He said it was Sir Humphry Davy's opinion
that the air would become charged with the mercury, and that the whole
family would be salivated, adding, "I shall see Allen some day, with his
tongue hanging out, speechless, and shall take the opportunity to stick
a few principles into him."'--_Bon-Mots_ of Sydney Smith, edited by W.
Jerrold.
John Allen, M.D., was the librarian, described by Byron as 'the best
informed and one of the ablest men I know--a perfect Magliabechi; a
devourer, a _heluo_ of books'. His scepticism earned him the title of
'Lady Holland's atheist'.
P. 252. _King._--This is from J. Nichols's Collection of Poems, vol.
iii, _Bibliotheca_, and is ascribed 'upon conjecture only' to Dr. W.
King. _See_ p. 311.
P. 253. _d'Arblay._--Macaulay notes that Miss Burney 'describes this
conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, with her
literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing in how magnificent a
manner the greatest lady in the land encouraged literature'. The
conversation took place at Windsor in December, 1785.
P. 255. _Lamb._--Walter Pater says of Charles Lamb: 'He was a true
"collector", delighting in the personal finding of a thing, in the
colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which
attest previous ownership. Wither's _Emblems_, "that old book and
quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less
because a child had coloured the plates with his paints.'
P. 256. _Milton._--'The call for books was not in Milton's age what it
is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither
traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house
supplied with a closet of knowledge.'--DR. JOHNSON.
P. 257. _Browning._--The statue referred to is that of Giovanni delle
Bande Nere, father of Cosimo de' Medici, in the Piazza San Lorenzo. The
imaginative Sienese is Ademollo; the 'Frail one of the Flower' will be
recognized as _La Dame aux Camélias_. Browning 'translates' the
title-page of his 'find' thus:--
A Roman murder-case:
Position of the entire criminal cause
Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay,
Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
At Rome on February Twenty Two,
Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:
Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape
The customary forfeit.'