The Book-hunter, Etc (Google eBook)

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Prefatory Note

TO THIS EDITION.

ROM the beginning books have been reckoned almost among the necessaries of life by the people of this country. Of later years they have become objects of taste and luxury, and of collection for the purpose of special study. This disposition to possess books other than standard works of reference and the miscellaneous literature of the day is increasing rapidly among us ; and the desire is very generally accompanied, at least in a certain degree, by the means for its gratification. To all those who have this taste, and to many who have it not, the following desultory dissertation on books, book-collecting, and book-collectors, cannot fail to be welcome for its always interesting, often serviceable, and sometimes amusing, information. Its influence upon those whose brains are touched with bibliomania cannot fail to be good ; for it deals firmly, though gently, with their cherished folly,

VI

PREFATORY NOTE.

and leads them away from that petty dilettanteism into which a love of rare and beautiful books is apt to fall, toward a manly and sensible indulgence of their inclination. The true book-lover will delight in the outside as well as the inside of his treasures ; and he is more than mortal, if he does not glory a little in their accumulation, 44 for to have meny is a plesaunt thynge ; ” but he has passed a perilous line whose books have become to him other than the means and signs of culture, or the loved companions of his solitude. Against that danger there is in the following pages many a wholesome warning.

It must be confessed, however, that there is much in this book which, though good in itself, is very wide of its main purpose. Not to speak of previous pages, the connection of the chapters upon John Spalding and Robert Wodrow with a dissertation upon bibliomania is of the slenderest ; while the thread which served as the author’s clue in passing to the curious and interesting accounts of the Early Northern Saints and the Early British Church Architecture is to my eye quite invisible. The 44 etc.” of the title-page must be accepted in its widest meaning. 44 The Book-Hunter and other things ” is certainly a title broad enough to shelter any and all of the

PREFATORY NOTE .

vii topics that have been treated under it ; for in fact it stops only just short of de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis . The author, conscious of this, half apologizes for making the book so large and so discursive ; and if he had reason, how much more have I, who have added to its length and even to its discursiveness ! But as he had concerned himself not a little with the social and literary condition of this country, and had almost always led his reader to false conclusions, it was thought that in an edition intended for the United States these should be corrected. The doing of this naturally led to the doing of a little mcfre ; the occupation beguiled hours of suffering when more serious and exacting duties could not be attended to ; and the result may perhaps be deemed not entirely superfluous, except by that sort of men who would regard it as the greatest glory of the compilers of the Justinian Pandects that they reduced three millions of lines in the works of their predecessors to one hundred and fifty thousand. An excellent work, truly ; and they who did it, public benefactors, and worthy of all the praise which their record of the feat silently solicited and artfully won. Yet in the interests of us all there must be some limit to the spare diet of words upon which some folk would have literature exist ;

Vlll

PREFATORY NOTE .

else, being reduced to its one straw, it will cease from off the earth, and the functions of author and reader will cease together with it : — a catastrophe sufficiently remote, however, to allow our solicitude to slumber. And had I possessed the needful information before the body of the book was put in type, instead of one less, I should have written one more note, to say that among the Mighty Book-Hunters of whom the author gives such lively sketches, Thomas Papaverius, the most interesting of them all, is intended for Thomas De Quincey ; who, indeed, seems rather to have been a robber, a ravisher, and a destroyer of books than a collector or even a hunter of them, — a very Ishmaelite, against whom, in spite of what he was and what he wrote, all book-lovers had common cause. He on the one side and the Irish Vampire on the other furnish extreme examples of what the book-hunter should not be. None of the other sketches have yet been publicly identified by the British critics.

For the Index which adds value to this edition the reader is indebted to F. F. Heard, Esq., of the Boston Bar. The additional notes are inclosed in brackets, and signed with the last initial of their writer. R. G. W.

A D VER TISEMENT.

| HIS book owes its existence to a concurrence of accidents. The Author had the honor of contributing to Blackwood’s Magazine some sketches of the ways of book-collectors, scholars, literary investigators, desultory readers, and other persons whose pursuits revolve round books and literature. Some friendly criticisms having induced him to reflect on what he had written, he saw, as will generally happen in such cases, that were he to go over the ground again, he would find much that he would desire to alter, and many things that might be added. He therefore resolved to recast the whole and expand it to the compass

X

ADVERTISEMENT.

of a thin volume. The thin volume, hpwever, fattened as it approached maturity, until it reached the respectable dimensions in which it now awaits the appreciation of any reader who may think it worthy of his attention.

SooK = 3^unt0c.

— —

Contents

$art I,— Wm Nature.

A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS . . .12

REMINISCENCES 56

PART I. — HIS NATURE. Jntrobttctorg

HE Title under which the discursive contents of the following pages are ranged, has no better justification than that it suited myself. I hope it may also suit the reader. If they laid any claim to a scientific character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of 1

HIS NATURE .

a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use o( a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its culinary merits ; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster-sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very reverence it is held in — the strong disinclination on the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who uses it — makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student once into palaeozoology, and he takes your other hard names — your ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron — for granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be described as swncategorematic, one may take up a very absolute positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going, slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful

INTRODUCTORY .

protection and called itself Archaeology. An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems, as it were, to be rescued from the heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If there be any remains of sculpture on the stone, it becomes a lythoglyph or a hieroglyph ; and if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of title of honor, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.

The venders of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidize scholars of some kind or other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of Greek designations has just at this moment reached its climax, in an attempt to save thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.

HIS NATURE.

It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify the class of men to whom the following sketches are devoted by an appropriate scientific title, a difficulty would start up at the very beginning. As the reader will perhaps see, from the tenor of my discourse, I would find it difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad — to speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should characterize them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and shall stick to the title of “ The Book-Hunter .” 1

Few wiser things have ever been said than that remark of Byron’s, that “ man is an unfortunate fellow, and ever will be.” Perhaps the originality of the fundamental idea it expresses may be questioned, on the ground that the same warning has been enounced in far more solemn language, and from

1 To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in D ’Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chaste aux Bibliographes et Antiquaires mol adviUs of Jeon Joseph Rive :

" A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pftges and colophons, and in editions ; the place and year when printed ; the presses whence issued ; and all the minutto of a book. 1 ' — “ A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.” — M A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purseheavy." — “A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure." — “ A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases."

INTRODUCTORY .

a far more august authority. But there is originality in the vulgar, every day- world way of putting the idea ; and this makes it suit the present purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be dealt with, there is no intention to be either devout or philosophical about it, but to treat it in a thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in this temper to judge of its place among the defects and ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, if we human creatures sometimes did this, and discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics, according as our temperament and training are of the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest of criminals. But such has been my own unfortunate experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who has floundered a little out of the straight path, and, being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms which come so readily to the lips of the censors, who at heart believe themselves spotless, — just as complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this and that, come from

HIS NATURE .

the fat lips of the mittionnaire , when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, and his forcingframes.

No ; it is hard to choose between the two. The man who has no defect or crack in his character, — no tinge of even the minor immoralities, — no fantastic humor, carrying him sometimes off his feet, — no preposterous hobby — such a man, walking straight along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle, is a very dangerous character, no doubt ; of such all children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel an innate loathing. And yet it is questionable if your perfectionized Sir Charles Grandison is quite so dangerous a character as your “ miserable sinner,” vociferously conscious that he is the frailest of the frail, and that he can do no good thing of himself. And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of these two characteristics have been known so to alternate in one disposition as to render it evident that each is but the same moral nature under a different external aspect, — the mask, cowl, varnish, crust, or whatever you like to call it, having been adapted to the external conditions of the man, — that is, to the society he mixes in, the set he belongs to, the habits of the age, and the way in which he proposes to get on in life. It is when the occasion arises for the mask being thrown aside, or when the internal passions burst like a volcano through the crust, that terrible events take place, and the world throbs with the excitement of some wonderful criminal trial . 1

1 It has often been observed that it is among the Society of Friends, who keep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that these make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey, in one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man of great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded by insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the system of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, which I am not prepared either to support or contradict. After describing the system of restraint itself, he says, “ This is known, but it is not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at once, — the force of passion and of youth, — not unfrequently records its own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. And, further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases — strange and elaborate affections of the nervous system — are found exclusively among the young men and women of the Quaker Society ; that they are known and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham ; that they assume a new type and a more inveterate character in the second or third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted ; and, finally, that if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community itself — the Quaker body — does not increase, but, on the contrary, is rather on the wane.”

There exist many good stories which haye for their point the passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a north-country anecdote, preserved by Francis Douglas in his description of the east coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and the pugilist. He was a colonel in thegreat civil wars, and had seen wild work in his day ; but in his old age a change came over him, and, becoming a follower of George Fox, he retired to spend his old age on his ancestral

HIS NATURE .

The present, however, is not an inquiry into the first principles either of ethics or of physiology. The object of this rambling preamble is to win from the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards the human frailty which we are going to examine and lay bare before him, trusting that he will treat it neither with the haughty disdain of the immaculate, nor the grim charity of the “ miserable sinner that he may even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet kindly remember that, in comparison with many others, it is a failing that leans to virtue’s side. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid fathers arc permitted to exercise by the license of the existing school of French fiction . 1 Neither will it exact such extensive toleration as that of the old Aberdeen laird’s wife, who, when her sister laird-

estate in Kincardineshire. Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus : “ Friend, thou knowest that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art endeavoring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot hinder thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist ; for shouldst thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance lie may prove too strong, not only for me, but for thee, 9 * There was no use of attempting to answer such an argument.

1 In the renowned Dame aux Cam€lias y the respectable, rigid, and rather indignant father addresses his erring son thus : “ Que vous ayez une maitresse, c'est fort bien ; que vous la payiez comme un galant homme doit payer 1’amour d’une fllle entretenue —

INTRODUCTORY .

esses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her own “ was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, daedlin, drucken body — wi’ nae ill practices aboot him ava ! ” But all things in their own time and place. To understand the due weight and bearing of this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to remember that its happy owner had probably spent her youth in that golden age when it was deemed churlish to bottle the claret, and each filled his stoup at the fountain of the flowing hogshead ; and if the darker days of dear claret came upon her times, there was still to fall back upon the silver age of smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a really hospitable country-house were an anker of whiskey always on the spigot, a caldron ever on the bubble with boil-

So even the French novelists draw the line “ somewhere,” and in other departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than many good uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one very popular novel, the victim spends his wife’s fortune at the gaming-table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having committed forgery, plots with the Mephistopheles of the story to buy his own safety at the price of his wife’s honor. This might seem bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper, by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason to suspect his master of having indulged, once at least, if not oftener, in br&ndy-and- water !

BIS NATURE.

ing water, and a cask of sugar with a spade in it, — all for the manufacture of toddy.

But, in truth, the feeling that in some quarters might be raised by this cool way of treating such social phenomena, excites some misgivings about calling attention to any kind of human frailty or folly, since the world is full of people who are prepared to deal with and cure it, provided only that they are to have their own way with the disease and the patient, and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of locking him up, dieting him, and taking possession of his worldly goods and interests, as one who, by his irrational habits, or his outrages on the laws of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other neology, has satisfactorily established his utter incapacity to take charge of his own affairs. No I This is not a cruel age ; the rack, the wheel, the boot, the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks, have disappeared ; death-punishment is dwindling away ; and if convicts have not their full rations of cooked meat, or get damaged coffee or sour milk, or are inadequately supplied with flannels and clean linen, there will be an outcry and an inquiry, and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage of his influence, and learn to look better after the administration of patronage. But^at the same time, the area of punishment — or of “ treatment,” as it is mildly termed — becomes alarmingly widened, and people require to look sharply into themselves lest they should be tainted with any little frailty or peculiarity which may

INTRODUCTORY .

transfer them from the class of free self-regulators to that of persons 44 under treatment.” In Owen’s parallelograms there were to be no prisons : he admitted no power in one man to inflict punishment upon another for merely obeying the dictates of natural propensities which could not be resisted. But, at the same time, there were to be “hospitals” in which not only the physically diseased, but also the mentally and morally diseased, were to be detained until they were cured ; and when we reflect that the laws of the parallelogram were very stringent and minute, and required to be absolutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole machinery of society would come to pieces, like a watch with a broken spring, — it is clear that these hospitals would have contained a very large proportion of the unrationalized population.

There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of communism now among us ; and it is therefore with some little misgiving that one sets down any thing that may betray a brother’s weakness, and lay bare the diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeed, the bad name that proverbially hangs the dog has already been given to it, for bibliomania is older in the technology of this kind of nosology than dipsomania, which is now understood to be an almost established ground for seclusion, and deprivation of the management of one’s own affairs. There is one ground of consolation, however, — the people who, being all right themselves, have undertaken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the world,

HrS NATURE .

haye far too serious a task in hand to afford time for idle reading. There is a good chance, therefore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed, and the harmless class on whose peculiar frailties the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go at large.

So having spoken, I now propose to make the reader acquainted with some characteristic specimens of the class.

21 Vision of JHt$l)tg Book-^tmttrs.

S the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend, Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now — tall, straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms into benignity as he inspects a pretty little, clean Elzevir, or a tall, portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbors is only too close and awful ; for have not sometimes the female members of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency — or, it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief — to have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through their favorite taverns ? Then, again, can one forget that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a wagon containing 372 copies of rare editions of the Bible ? All were fish that came to his net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a stall; and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, and secures with frantic impetuosity, 44 at any price,” a great fish he has been patiently watching year after year. His hunting-grounds were wide and distant, and there were mysterious rumors about the numbers of copies, all identically the same in edition and minor individualities, which he possessed of certain books. I have known him, indeed, when beaten at an auction, turn round resignedly and say, 44 Well, so be it — but I dare say I have ten or twelve copies at home, if I could lay hands on them.”

It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector buys his first duplicate . It is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon — the first pawning of the silver spoons — or any other terrible first step downwards

HIS NATURE .

you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or at all events serviceable, for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and hardened ; and it is observable in the career of this class of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandonment to its propensities. The Archdeacon had long passed this stage ere he crossed my path, and had become thoroughly hardened. He was not remarkable for local attachment; and in moving from place to place, his spoil, packed in innumerable great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain unreleased during the whole period of his tarrying in his new abode, so that they were removed to the next stage of his journey through life with modified inconvenience.

Cruel as it may seem, I must yet notice another and a peculiar vagary of his malady. He had resolved, at least once in his life, to part with a considerable proportion of his collection — better to suffer the anguish of such an act than endure the fretting of continued restraint. There was a wondrous sale by auction accordingly ; it was something like what may have occurred at the dissolution of the monasteries at the Reformation, or when the contents of some time-honored public library were realized at the period of the French Revolution.