The Book-Hunter Part 11

That the uninitiated reader may form some practical conception of my meaning, I propose to set down a few items from the weekly contents of a compositor's "bill-book," slightly enlarging his brief entries with the view of rendering them the more intelligible.

"1. A time job--viz., inserting, as per author's proof, 50 'hear hears'

and 20 'great cheerings' in report of speech to be delivered by Alderman Noddles at the great meeting on the social system.

"2. Picking out all the 'hear hears' and 'great cheerings' from said speech, in respect it was not permitted to be delivered, the meeting having dispersed when the alderman stood up; and breaking up the same into pages, with t.i.tle, 'A plan for the immediate and total extirpation of intemperance by prohibiting the manufacture of bottles.'

"3. A sheet of a volume of poems, t.i.tled 'Life thoughts by a Life thinker,' beginning--

"'Far I dipt beneath the surface, through the texture of the earth, Till my heart's triumphant musings dreamt the dream of that new birth, When the engineer's deep science through the mighty sphere shall probe, And the railway trains to Melbourne sweep the centre of the globe, And the electro-motive engine renders it no more absurd That a human being should be in two places like a bird.'

"Item--Introduction, explaining the difficulties in the way of the poet's success, in an age devoted to forms and superficialities, by reason of his muscular originality, impulsive grasping at the infinite, and resolute disdain of popular and conventional models; but expressing opinion that, as he turns round on the pivot of his own individual idiosyncrasy, he will come out all right.

"4. Advertis.e.m.e.nt by a disinterested draper, beginning, 'awful sacrifices,' and ending, 'early application necessary to prevent disappointment.'

"5. Two sticks of prayer for a devotional work which has had an unexpected run, and is largely distributed over the office for an expeditious issue of a new edition.

"6. Part of an accountant's report, containing 45 schemes for the ranking of the creditors on ten bankrupt estates, each of which has drawn accommodation bills on all the others.

"7. Signature YY of 'A treatise on the form and material of the sickle used by the Welsh Druids in cutting the mistletoe,' being a series of quotations in Arabic, Hindoo, Greek, German, and Gaelic, cemented together by thin lines of English. This is a stock job which keeps the office going like a balance-wheel when there is nothing else specially pressing, and is rather popular, as it contains a good many ethnological and etymological tables, implying scheme-work, which the compositors who are adepts in that department contemplate with great satisfaction as they put it together."

It is surely pleasant to suppose that the compositor has acquired the faculty of pa.s.sing such dizzying whirls of heterogeneous elements without absorbing them all, and that, when his day's labour is over, he may find his own special intellectual food in his Milton or his Locke.

In this view, his apathy to the literary matter pa.s.sing through his hands may be contemplated as among the special beneficences in the providential order of things, like the faculty of healthy vitality to throw off morbid influences; and perhaps it has still closer a.n.a.logy to that professional coolness which separates the surgeon from a nervous sympathy with the sufferings of those on whom he operates--a phenomenon which, though sometimes denounced as professional callousness, is one of the most beneficent specialties in the lot of mankind.

In the several phases of the book-hunter, he whose peculiar glory it is to have his books ill.u.s.trated--the Grangerite, as he is technically termed--must not be omitted. "Ill.u.s.trating" a volume consists in inserting in or binding up with it portraits, landscapes, and other works of art bearing a reference to its contents. This is materially different from the other forms of the pursuit, in as far as the quarry hunted down is the raw material, the finished article being a result of domestic manufacture. The Ill.u.s.trator is the very Ishmaelite of collectors--his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against him. He destroys unknown quant.i.ties of books to supply portraits or other ill.u.s.trations to a single volume of his own; and as it is not always known concerning any book that he has been at work on it, many a common book-buyer has cursed him on inspecting his own last bargain, and finding that it is deficient in an interesting portrait or two. Tales there are, fitted to make the blood run cold in the veins of the most sanguine book-hunter, about the devastations committed by those who are given over to this special pursuit. It is generally understood that they received the impulse which has rendered them an important sect, from the publication of Granger's Biographical History--hence their name of Grangerites. So it has happened that this industrious and respectable compiler is contemplated with mysterious awe as a sort of literary Attila or Gengis Khan, who has spread terror and ruin around him. In truth the ill.u.s.trator, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to become excited with his work, and to go on ever widening the circle of his purveyances, and opening new avenues toward the raw material on which he works. To show how widely such a person may levy contributions, I propose to take, not a whole volume, not even a whole page, but still a specific and distinguished piece of English literature, and describe the way in which a devotee of this peculiar practice would naturally proceed in ill.u.s.trating it. The piece of literature to be ill.u.s.trated is as follows:--

"How doth the little busy bee Improve each s.h.i.+ning hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower!"

The first thing to be done is to collect every engraved portrait of the author, Isaac Watts. The next, to get hold of any engravings of the house in which he was born, or houses in which he lived. Then will come all kinds of views of Southampton--of its Gothic gate, and its older than Gothic wall. Any sc.r.a.p connected with the inauguration of the Watts statue must of course be scrupulously gathered. To go but a step beyond such commonplaces--there is a traditional story about the boyhood of Isaac which has been told as follows. He took precociously to rhyming: like Pope, he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. It happened that this practice was very offensive to his father, a practical man, who, finding his admonitions useless, resolved to stop it in an effectual manner. He accordingly, after the practice of his profession--being a schoolmaster--a.s.sailed with a leathern thong, duly prepared, the cuticle of that portion of the body which has from time immemorial been devoted to such inflictions. Under torture, the divine songster abjured his propensity in the following very hopeful shape--

"Oh, father, do some pity take, And I will no more verses make."

It is not likely that this simple domestic scene has been engraved either for the Divine Hymns, or the Improvement of the Mind. The ill.u.s.trator will therefore require to get a picture of it for his own special use, and will add immensely to the value of his treasure, while he gives scope to the genius of a Cruikshank or a Doyle.

We are yet, it will be observed, only on the threshold. We have next to ill.u.s.trate the substance of the poetry. All kinds of engravings of bees Attic and other, and of bee-hives, will be appropriate, and will be followed by portraits of Huber and other great writers on bees, and views of Mount Hybla and other honey districts. Some Scripture prints ill.u.s.trative of the history of Samson, who had to do with honey and bees, will be appropriate, as well as any ill.u.s.trations of the fable of the Bear and the Bees, or of the Roman story of the _Sic vos non vobis_.

A still more appropriate form of ill.u.s.tration may, however, be drawn upon by remembering that a periodical called The Bee was edited by Dr Anderson; and it is important to observe that the name was adopted in the very spirit which inspired Watts. In both instances the most respected of all winged insects was brought forward as the type of industry. Portraits, then, of Dr Anderson, and any engravings that can be connected with himself and his pursuits, will have their place in the collection. It will occur, perhaps, to the intelligent ill.u.s.trator, that Dr Anderson was the grandfather of Sir James Outram, and he will thus have the satisfaction of opening his collection for all ill.u.s.trations of the career of that distinguished officer. Having been aptly called the Bayard of the Indian service, the collector who has exhausted him and his services will be justified by the principles of the craft in following up the chase, and picking up any woodcuts or engravings referring to the death of the false Bourbon, or any other scene in the career of the knight without fear or reproach. Here, by a fortunate and interesting coincidence, through the Bourbons the collector gets at the swarms of bees which distinguish the insignia of royalty in France.

When the ill.u.s.trator comes to the last line, which invites him to add to what he has already collected a representation of "every opening flower," it is easy to see that he has indeed a rich garden of delights before him.

In a cla.s.sification of book-hunters, the aspirants after large-paper copies deserve special notice, were it only for the purpose of guarding against a common fallacy which confounds them with the lovers of tall copies. The difference is fundamental, large-paper copies being created by system, while tall copies are merely the creatures of accident; and Dibdin bestows due castigation in a celebrated instance in which a mere tall copy had, whether from ignorance or design, been spoken of as a large-paper copy. This high development of the desirable book is the result of an arrangement to print so many copies of a volume on paper of larger size than that of the bulk of the impression. The tall copy is the result of careful cutting by the binder, or of no cutting at all. In this primitive shape a book has separate charms for a distinct cla.s.s of collectors who esteem rough edges, and are willing, for the sake of this excellence, to endure the martyrdom of consulting books in that condition.[33]

[Footnote 33:

"But devious oft, from ev'ry cla.s.sic muse, The keen collector meaner paths will choose: And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, Pure, snowy, broad, the type of n.o.bler joys.

In vain might Homer roll the tide of song, Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng; If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade, Or too oblique, or near the edge, invade, The Bibliomane exclaims, with haggard eye, 'No margin!'--turns in haste, and scorns to buy."

--Ferriar's Bibliomania, v. 34-43.]

The historian of the private libraries of New York makes us acquainted with a sect well known in the actually sporting world, but not heretofore familiar in the bibliological. Here is a description of the Waltonian library of the Reverend Dr Bethune. In the suns.h.i.+ne he is a practical angler, and--

"During the darker seasons of the year, when forbidden the actual use of his rod, our friend has occupied himself with excursions through sale catalogues, fis.h.i.+ng out from their dingy pages whatever tends to honour his favourite author or favourite art, so that his spoils now number nearly five hundred volumes, of all sizes and dates. Pains have been taken to have not only copies of the works included in the list, but also the several editions; and when it is of a work mentioned by Walton, an edition which the good old man himself may have seen. Thus the collection has all the editions of Walton, Cotton, and Venables in existence, and, with few exceptions, all the works referred to by Walton, or which tend to ill.u.s.trate his favourite rambles by the Lea or the Dove. Every sc.r.a.p of Walton's writing, and every compliment paid to him, have been carefully gathered and garnered up, with prints and autographs and some precious ma.n.u.scripts. Nor does the department end here, but embraces most of the older and many of the modern writers on ichthyology and angling."

The Prowler and the Auction-Haunter.

These incidental divisions are too numerous and complex for a proper cla.s.sification of book-hunters, and I am inclined to go back to the idea that their most effective and comprehensive division is into the private prowler and the auction-haunter. The difference between these is something like, in the sporting world, that between the stalker and the hunter proper. Each function has its merits, and calls for its special qualities and sacrifices. The one demands placidity, patience, caution, plausibility, and unwearied industry--such attributes as those which have been already set forth in the words of the Antiquary. The auction-room, on the other hand, calls forth courage, promptness, and the spirit of adventure. There is wild work sometimes there, and men find themselves carried off by enthusiasm and compet.i.tion towards pecuniary sacrifices which at the threshold of the temple they had solemnly vowed to themselves to eschew. But such sacrifices are the tribute paid to the absorbing interest of the pursuit, and are looked upon in their own peculiar circle as tending to the immortal honour of those who make them. This field of prowess has, it is said, undergone a prejudicial change in these days, the biddings being nearly all by dealers, while gentlemen-collectors are gradually moving out of the field. In old days one might have reaped for himself, by bold and emphatic biddings at a few auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of which the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin--a name familiarly abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin. His descriptions of auction contests are perhaps the best and most readable portions of his tremendously overdone books.

Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the sale of the Roxburghe library, perhaps the most eminent contest of that kind on record. There were of it some ten thousand separate "lots," as auctioneers call them, and almost every one of them was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of the collecting community, and had been, with special pains and care and anxious exertion, drawn into the vortex of that collection. Although it was created by a Duke, yet it has been rumoured that most of the books had been bargains, and that the n.o.ble collector drew largely on the spirit of patient perseverance and enlightened sagacity for which Monkbarns claims credit. The great pa.s.sion and pursuit of his life having been of so peculiar a character--he was almost as zealous a hunter of deer and wild swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not considered in the least peculiar--it was necessary to find some strange influencing motive for his conduct; so it has been said that it arose from his having been crossed in love in his early youth. Such crosses, in general, arise from the beloved one dying, or proving faithless and becoming the wife of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the ill.u.s.trious marriage of the sister of his elected. She was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal rank, yet there would be many countervailing advantages in the position of an affluent British d.u.c.h.ess which might reconcile a young lady, even of so ill.u.s.trious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not happened that Lord Bute and the Princess of Wales selected her younger sister to be the wife of George III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as the good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it seems, the necessity, as a matter of state and political etiquette, that the elder sister should abandon the alliance with a British subject.

So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of the Duke's bibliomania; and it is supposed to have been in the thoughts of Sir Walter Scott, when he said of him that "youthful misfortunes, of a kind against which neither wealth nor rank possess a talisman, cast an early shade of gloom over his prospects, and gave to one splendidly endowed with the means of enjoying society that degree of reserved melancholy which prefers retirement to the splendid scenes of gaiety." Dibdin, with more specific precision, after rambling over the house where the great auction sale occurred, as inquisitive people are apt to do, tells us of the solitary room occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which he slept and died: "all his migrations," says the bibliographer, "were confined to these two rooms. When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed on which this bibliomaniacal Duke had expired, I felt--as I trust I ought to have felt on the occasion." Scott attributed to an incidental occurrence at his father's table the direction given to the great pursuit of his life. "Lord Oxford and Lord Sunderland, both famous collectors of the time, dined one day with the second Duke of Roxburghe, when their conversation happened to turn upon the _editio princeps_ of Boccaccio, printed in Venice in 1474, and so rare that its very existence was doubted of." It so happened that the Duke remembered this volume having been offered to him for 100, and he believed he could still trace and secure it: he did so, and laid it before his admiring friends at a subsequent sitting. "His son, then Marquess of Bowmont, never forgot the little scene upon this occasion, and used to ascribe to it the strong pa.s.sion which he ever afterwards felt for rare books and editions, and which rendered him one of the most a.s.siduous and judicious collectors that ever formed a sumptuous library."[34] And this same Boccaccio was the point of attack which formed the climax in the great contest of the Roxburghe roup, as the Duke's fellow-countrymen called it. I am not aware that any of the English bibliographers have alluded to any special cause for this volume's extreme rarity. Peignot attributes it to a sermon preached by the Italian pulpit orator Savonarola, on the 8th of February 1497, against indecorous books, in consequence of which the inhabitants of Florence made a bonfire of their Boccaccios,--an explanation which every one who pleases is at liberty to believe.[35]

[Footnote 34: Article on Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, in the 21st vol. of Miscellaneous Prose Works.]

[Footnote 35: Predicatoriana, p. 23]

The historian of the contest terms it "the Waterloo among book-battles,"

whereto "many a knight came far and wide from his retirement, and many an unfledged combatant left his father's castle to partake of the glory of such a contest." He also tells us that the honour of the first effective shot was due to a house in the trade--Messrs Payne and Foss--by whom "the Aldine Greek Bible was killed off the first in the contest. It produced the sum of 4, 14s. 6d. Thus measuredly, and guardedly, and even fearfully, did this tremendous battle begin." The earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off when Lord Spencer bought two Caxtons for 245, a feat of which the closing scene is recorded, with a touching simplicity, in these terms:--"His Lords.h.i.+p put each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph." As every one does not possess a copy of the three costly volumes of which the Bibliographical Decameron consists--and, further, as many a one so fortunate as to possess them has not had patience and perseverance enough to penetrate to the middle of the third volume, where the most readable part is to be found--a characteristic extract, describing the heat of the contest, may not be unwelcome:--

"For two-and-forty successive days--with the exception only of Sundays--were the voice and hammer of Mr Evans heard with equal efficacy in the dining-room of the late Duke, which had been appropriated to the vendition of the books; and within that same s.p.a.ce (some thirty-five feet by twenty) were such deeds of valour performed, and such feats of book-heroism achieved, as had never been previously beheld, and of which the like will probably never be seen again. The shouts of the victors and the groans of the vanquished stunned and appalled you as you entered. The striving and press, both of idle spectators and determined bidders, was unprecedented. A sprinkling of Caxtons and De Wordes marked the first day, and these were obtained at high, but, comparatively with the subsequent sums given, moderate prices. Theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and philology chiefly marked the earlier days of this tremendous contest; and occasionally during these days, there was much stirring up of courage, and many hard and heavy blows were interchanged; and the combatants may be said to have completely wallowed themselves in the conflict. At length came poetry, Latin, Italian, and French: a steady fight yet continued to be fought; victory seemed to hang in doubtful scales--sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other side of Mr Evans, who preserved throughout (as it was his bounden duty to preserve) a uniform, impartial, and steady course; and who may be said on that occasion, if not 'to have rode the whirlwind,' at least to have 'directed the storm.'"

But the dignity and power of the historian's narrative cannot be fully appreciated until we find him in the midst of the climax of the contest--the battle, which gradually merged into a single combat, for the possession of the Venetian Boccaccio. According to the established historical practice, we have in the first place a statement of the position taken up by the respective "forces."

"At length the moment of sale arrived. Evans prefaced the putting-up of the article by an appropriate oration, in which he expatiated on its extreme rarity, and concluding by informing the company of the regret, and even anguish of heart, expressed by Mr Van Praet that such a treasure was not to be found in the Imperial collection at Paris.

Silence followed the address of Mr Evans. On his right hand, leaning against the wall, stood Earl Spencer; a little lower down, and standing at right angles with his Lords.h.i.+p, appeared the Marquess of Bland-ford.

Lord Althorp stood a little backward, to the right of his father, Earl Spencer."

The first movement of the forces gives the historian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions as to suppose that a hundred pounds or two would be of any avail in such a contest.

"The honour of firing the first shot was due to a gentleman of Shrops.h.i.+re, unused to this species of warfare, and who seemed to recoil from the reverberation of the report himself had made. 'One hundred guineas,' he exclaimed. Again a pause ensued; but anon the biddings rose rapidly to five hundred guineas. Hitherto, however, it was evident that the firing was but masked and desultory. At length all random shots ceased, and the champions before named stood gallantly up to each other, resolving not to flinch from a trial of their respective strengths. _A thousand guineas_ were bid by Earl Spencer--to which the Marquess added _ten_. You might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned--all breathing wellnigh stopped--every sword was put home within its scabbard--and not a piece of steel was seen to move or to glitter except that which each of these champions brandished in his valorous hand."

But even this exciting sort of narrative will tire one when it goes on page after page, so that we must take a leap to the conclusion. "Two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds," said Lord Spencer. "The spectators were now absolutely electrified. The Marquess quietly adds his usual _ten_" and so there an end. "Mr Evans, ere his hammer fell, made a short pause--and indeed, as if by something preternatural, the ebony instrument itself seemed to be charmed or suspended in the mid air. However, at last down dropped the hammer."

Such a result naturally created excitement beyond the book-collectors'

circle, for here was an actual stroke of trade in which a profit of more than two thousand per cent had been netted. It is easy to believe in Dibdin's statement of the crowds of people who imagined they were possessors of the identical Venetian Boccaccio, and the still larger number who wanted to do a stroke of business with some old volume, endowed with the same rarity and the same or greater intrinsic value.

The general excitement created by the dispersal of the Roxburghe collection proved an epoch in literary history, by the establishment of the Roxburghe Club, followed by a series of others, the history of which has to be told farther on.

Of the great book-sales that have been commemorated, it is curious to observe how seldom they embrace ancestral libraries acc.u.mulated in old houses from generation to generation, and how generally they mark the short-lived duration of the acc.u.mulations of some collector freshly deposited. One remarkable exception to this was in the Gordonstoun library, sold in 1816. It was begun by Sir Robert Gordon, a Morays.h.i.+re laird of the time of the great civil wars of the seventeenth century. He was the author of the History of the Earldom of Sutherland, and a man of great political as well as literary account. He laid by heaps of the pamphlets, placards, and other doc.u.ments of his stormy period, and thus many a valuable morsel, which had otherwise disappeared from the world, left a representative in the Gordonstoun collection. It was increased by a later Sir Robert, who had the reputation of being a wizard. He belonged to one of those terrible clubs from which Satan is ent.i.tled to take a victim annually; but when Gordon's turn came, he managed to get off with merely the loss of his shadow; and many a Morays.h.i.+re peasant has testified to having seen him riding forth on a sunny day, the shadow of his horse visible, with those of his spurs and his whip, but his body offering no impediment to the rays of the sun. He enriched the library with books on necromancy, demonology, and alchemy.

The largest book-sale probably that ever was in the world, was that of Heber's collection in 1834. There are often rash estimates made of the size of libraries, but those who have stated the number of his books in six figures seem justified when one looks at the catalogue of the sale, bound up in five thick octavo volumes. For results so magnificent, Richard Heber's library had but a small beginning, according to the memoir of him in the Gentleman's Magazine, where it is said, that "having one day accidentally met with a little volume called The Vallie of Varietie, by Henry Peacham, he took it to the late Mr Bindley of the Stamp-office, the celebrated collector, and asked him if this was not a curious book. Mr Bindley, after looking at it, answered, 'Yes--not very--but rather a curious book.'" This faint morsel of encouragement was, it seems, sufficient to start him in his terrible career, and the trifle becomes important as a solemn ill.u.s.tration of the _obsta principiis_. His labours, and even his perils, were on a par with those of any veteran commander who has led armies and fought battles during the great part of a long life. He would set off on a journey of several hundred miles any day in search of a book not in his collection.

Sucking in from all around him whatever books were afloat, he of course soon exhausted the ordinary market; and to find a book obtainable which he did not already possess, was an event to be looked to with the keenest anxiety, and a chance to be seized with prompt.i.tude, courage, and decision. At last, however, he could not supply the cravings of his appet.i.te without recourse to duplicates, and far more than duplicates.

His friend Dibdin said of him, "He has now and then an ungovernable pa.s.sion to possess more copies of a book than there were ever parties to a deed or stamina to a plant; and therefore I cannot call him a duplicate or a triplicate collector." He satisfied his own conscience by adopting a creed, which he enounced thus: "Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for a show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country-house; another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a third at the service of his friends."

This last necessity is the key-note to Heber's popularity: he was a liberal and kindly man, and though, like Wolsey, he was unsatisfied in getting, yet, like him, in bestowing he was most princely. Many scholars and authors obtained the raw material for their labours from his transcendent stores. These, indeed, might be said less to be personal to himself than to be a feature in the literary geography of Europe.

"Some years ago," says the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, "he built a new library at his house at Hodnet, which is said to be full. His residence at Pimlico, where he died, is filled, like Magliabechi's at Florence, with books, from the top to the bottom--every chair, every table, every pa.s.sage containing piles of erudition. He had another house in York Street, leading to Great James's Street, Westminster, laden from the ground-floor to the garret with curious books. He had a library in the High Street, Oxford, an immense library at Paris, another at Antwerp, another at Brussels, another at Ghent, and at other places in the Low Countries and in Germany."