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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Books and Bookmen
+
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2015  [eBook #1961]
+[This file was first posted on March 18, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BOOKS
+                                   AND
+                                 BOOKMEN
+
+
+                                    BY
+                               ANDREW LANG
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                                  LONDON
+                         LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+                                   1887
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+_To_
+_THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY_.
+
+
+   MADAME, it is no modish thing,
+   The bookman’s tribute that I bring;
+   A talk of antiquaries grey,
+   Dust unto dust this many a day,
+   Gossip of texts and bindings old,
+   Of faded type, and tarnish’d gold!
+
+   _Can ladies care for this to-do_
+   _With Payne_, _Derome_, _and Padeloup_?
+   _Can they resign the rout_, _the ball_,
+   _For lonely joys of shelf and stall_?
+
+   The critic thus, serenely wise;
+   But you can read with other eyes,
+   Whose books and bindings treasured are
+   ’Midst mingled spoils of peace and war;
+   Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost,
+   And trinkets from the Golden Coast,
+   And many things divinely done
+   By Chippendale and Sheraton,
+   And trophies of Egyptian deeds,
+   And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads,
+   Pomander boxes, assegais,
+   And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro’s days.
+
+   In this pell-mell of old and new,
+   Of war and peace, my essays, too,
+   For long in serials tempest-tost,
+   Are landed now, and are not lost:
+   Nay, on your shelf secure they lie,
+   As in the amber sleeps the fly.
+   ’Tis true, they are not “rich nor rare;”
+   Enough, for me, that they are—there!
+
+                                                                      A. L
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+THE essays in this volume have, for the most part, already appeared in an
+American edition (Combes, New York, 1886).  The Essays on ‘Old French
+Title-Pages’ and ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ take the place of ‘Book Binding’ and
+‘Bookmen at Rome;’ ‘Elzevirs’ and ‘Some Japanese Bogie-Books’ are
+reprinted, with permission of Messrs. Cassell, from the Magazine of Art;
+‘Curiosities of Parish Registers’ from the Guardian; ‘Literary Forgeries’
+from the Contemporary Review; ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ from the Fortnightly
+Review; ‘A Bookman’s Purgatory’ and two of the pieces of verse from
+Longman’s Magazine—with the courteous permission of the various editors.
+All the chapters have been revised, and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for
+his kind care in reading the proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P.,
+for a similar service to the Essay on ‘Parish Registers.’
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                        PAGE
+ELZEVIRS                                   3
+BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL             18
+CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS           20
+THE ROWFANT BOOKS                         36
+TO F. L.                                  38
+SOME JAPANESE BOGIE-BOOKS                 40
+GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY                     66
+LITERARY FORGERIES                        69
+BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE                     90
+OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES                   109
+A BOOKMAN’S PURGATORY                    121
+BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE              133
+LADY BOOK-LOVERS                         135
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+ELZEVIR SPHERES                                                      5
+ELZEVIR TITLE-PAGE OF THE ‘IMITATION’ OF                             8
+THOMAS À KEMPIS
+ELZEVIR ‘SAGE’                                                      12
+JAPANESE CHILDREN.  DRAWN BY HOKUSAI                                41
+A STORM-FIEND                                                       45
+A SNOW-BOGIE                                                        51
+THE SIMULACRUM VULGARE                                              55
+A WELL AND WATER BOGIE                                              57
+RAISING THE WIND                                                    61
+A CHINK AND CREVICE BOGIE                                           63
+FAC-SIMILE OF BINDING FROM THE LIBRARY OF                          100
+GROLIER
+BINDING WITH THE ARMS OF MADAME DE                                 108
+POMPADOUR
+OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES                           110, 111, 113–16, 119
+
+
+
+
+ELZEVIRS.
+
+
+_The Countryman_.  “You know how much, for some time past, the editions
+of the Elzevirs have been in demand.  The fancy for them has even
+penetrated into the country.  I am acquainted with a man there who denies
+himself necessaries, for the sake of collecting into a library (where
+other books are scarce enough) as many little Elzevirs as he can lay his
+hands upon.  He is dying of hunger, and his consolation is to be able to
+say, ‘I have all the poets whom the Elzevirs printed.  I have ten
+examples of each of them, all with red letters, and all of the right
+date.’  This, no doubt, is a craze, for, good as the books are, if he
+kept them to read them, one example of each would be enough.”
+
+_The Parisian_.  “If he had wanted to read them, I would not have advised
+him to buy Elzevirs.  The editions of minor authors which these
+booksellers published, even editions ‘of the right date,’ as you say, are
+not too correct.  Nothing is good in the books but the type and the
+paper.  Your friend would have done better to use the editions of
+Gryphius or Estienne.”
+
+This fragment of a literary dialogue I translate from ‘Entretiens sur les
+Contes de Fées,’ a book which contains more of old talk about books and
+booksellers than about fairies and folk-lore.  The ‘Entretiens’ were
+published in 1699, about sixteen years after the Elzevirs ceased to be
+publishers.  The fragment is valuable: first, because it shows us how
+early the taste for collecting Elzevirs was fully developed, and,
+secondly, because it contains very sound criticism of the mania.
+Already, in the seventeenth century, lovers of the tiny Elzevirian books
+waxed pathetic over dates, already they knew that a ‘Cæsar’ of 1635 was
+the right ‘Cæsar,’ already they were fond of the red-lettered passages,
+as in the first edition of the ‘Virgil’ of 1636.  As early as 1699, too,
+the Parisian critic knew that the editions were not very correct, and
+that the paper, type, ornaments, and _format_ were their main
+attractions.  To these we must now add the rarity of really good
+Elzevirs.
+
+Though Elzevirs have been more fashionable than at present, they are
+still regarded by novelists as the great prize of the book collector.
+You read in novels about “priceless little Elzevirs,” about books “as
+rare as an old Elzevir.”  I have met, in the works of a lady novelist
+(but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir ‘Theocritus.’  The late Mr. Hepworth
+Dixon introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek
+Testament, “worth its weight in gold.”  Casual remarks of this kind
+encourage a popular delusion that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable
+price.  When a man is first smitten with the pleasant fever of
+book-collecting, it is for Elzevirs that he searches.  At first he thinks
+himself in amazing luck.  In Booksellers’ Row and in Castle Street he
+“picks up,” for a shilling or two, Elzevirs, real or supposed.  To the
+beginner, any book with a sphere on the title-page is an Elzevir.  For
+the beginner’s instruction, two copies of spheres are printed here.  The
+second is a sphere, an ill-cut, ill-drawn sphere, which is not Elzevirian
+at all.  The mark was used in the seventeenth century by many other
+booksellers and printers.  The first, on the other hand, is a true
+Elzevirian sphere, from a play of Molière’s, printed in 1675.  Observe
+the comparatively neat drawing of the first sphere, and be not led away
+after spurious imitations.
+
+                        [Picture: Elzevir Spheres]
+
+Beware, too, of the vulgar error of fancying that little duodecimos with
+the mark of the fox and the bee’s nest, and the motto “Quaerendo,” come
+from the press of the Elzevirs.  The mark is that of Abraham Wolfgang,
+which name is not a pseudonym for Elzevir.  There are three sorts of
+Elzevir pseudonyms.  First, they occasionally reprinted the full
+title-page, publisher’s name and all, of the book they pirated.
+Secondly, when they printed books of a “dangerous” sort, Jansenist
+pamphlets and so forth, they used pseudonyms like “Nic. Schouter,” on the
+‘Lettres Provinciales’ of Pascal.  Thirdly, there are real pseudonyms
+employed by the Elzevirs.  John and Daniel, printing at Leyden
+(1652–1655), used the false name “Jean Sambix.”  The Elzevirs of
+Amsterdam often placed the name “Jacques le Jeune” on their title-pages.
+The collector who remembers these things must also see that his purchases
+have the right ornaments at the heads of chapters, the right tail-pieces
+at the ends.  Two of the most frequently recurring ornaments are the
+so-called “Tête de Buffle” and the “Sirène.”  More or less clumsy copies
+of these and the other Elzevirian ornaments are common enough in books of
+the period, even among those printed out of the Low Countries; for
+example, in books published in Paris.
+
+A brief sketch of the history of the Elzevirs may here be useful.  The
+founder of the family, a Flemish bookbinder, Louis, left Louvain and
+settled in Leyden in 1580.  He bought a house opposite the University,
+and opened a book-shop.  Another shop, on college ground, was opened in
+1587.  Louis was a good bookseller, a very ordinary publisher.  It was
+not till shortly before his death, in 1617, that his grandson Isaac
+bought a set of types and other material.  Louis left six sons.  Two of
+these, Matthew and Bonaventure, kept on the business, dating _ex officina
+Elzeviriana_.  In 1625 Bonaventure and Abraham (son of Matthew) became
+partners.  The “good dates” of Elzevirian books begin from 1626.  The two
+Elzevirs chose excellent types, and after nine years’ endeavours turned
+out the beautiful ‘Cæsar’ of 1635.
+
+Their classical series in _petit format_ was opened with ‘Horace’ and
+‘Ovid’ in 1629.  In 1641 they began their elegant piracies of French
+plays and poetry with ‘Le Cid.’  It was worth while being pirated by the
+Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with _fleurons_ and red
+letters, and a pretty frontispiece.  The modern pirate dresses you in
+rags, prints you murderously, and binds you, if he binds you at all, in
+some hideous example of “cloth extra,” all gilt, like archaic
+gingerbread.  Bonaventure and Abraham both died in 1652.  They did not
+depart before publishing (1628), in _grand format_, a desirable work on
+fencing, Thibault’s ‘Académie de l’Espée.’  This Tibbald also killed by
+the book.  John and Daniel Elzevir came next.  They brought out the
+‘Imitation’ (Thomæ a Kempis canonici regularis ord.  S. Augustini De
+Imitatione Christi, libri iv.); I wish by taking thought I could add
+eight millimetres to the stature of my copy.  In 1655 Daniel joined a
+cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and John stayed in Leyden.  John died in
+1661; his widow struggled on, but her son Abraham (1681) let all fall
+into ruins.  Abraham died 1712.  The Elzevirs of Amsterdam lasted till
+1680, when Daniel died, and the business was wound up.  The type, by
+Christopher Van Dyck, was sold in 1681, by Daniel’s widow.  _Sic transit
+gloria_.
+
+   [Picture: Elzevir title-page of the ‘Imitation’ of Thomas à Kempis]
+
+After he has learned all these matters the amateur has still a great deal
+to acquire.  He may now know a real Elzevir from a book which is not an
+Elzevir at all.  But there are enormous differences of value, rarity, and
+excellence among the productions of the Elzevirian press.  The bookstalls
+teem with small, “cropped,” dingy, dirty, battered Elzevirian editions of
+the classics, _not_ “of the good date.”  On these it is not worth while
+to expend a couple of shillings, especially as Elzevirian type is too
+small to be read with comfort by most modern eyes.  No, let the collector
+save his money; avoid littering his shelves with what he will soon find
+to be rubbish, and let him wait the chance of acquiring a really
+beautiful and rare Elzevir.
+
+Meantime, and before we come to describe Elzevirs of the first flight,
+let it be remembered that the “taller” the copy, the less harmed and
+nipped by the binder’s shears, the better.  “Men scarcely know how
+beautiful fire is,” says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly
+know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form.  The
+Elzevirs we have may be “dear,” but they are certainly “dumpy twelves.”
+Their fair proportions have been docked by the binder.  At the Beckford
+sale there was a pearl of a book, a ‘Marot;’ not an Elzevir, indeed, but
+a book published by Wetstein, a follower of the Elzevirs.  This exquisite
+pair of volumes, bound in blue morocco, was absolutely unimpaired, and
+was a sight to bring happy tears into the eyes of the amateur of
+Elzevirs.  There was a gracious _svelte_ elegance about these tomes, an
+appealing and exquisite delicacy of proportion, that linger like sweet
+music in the memory.  I have a copy of the Wetstein ‘Marot’ myself, not a
+bad copy, though murderously bound in that ecclesiastical sort of brown
+calf antique, which goes well with hymn books, and reminds one of cakes
+of chocolate.  But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in height,
+whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the great
+Pixérécourt) was at least 130 millimetres high.  Beside the uncut example
+mine looks like Cinderella’s plain sister beside the beauty of the
+family.
+
+Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall
+Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth
+collecting.  Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was
+taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that
+his altitude filled the minds of all with awe.  Well, the Philistine may
+think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of
+little importance.  When he comes to sell, he will discover the
+difference.  An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good Elzevir may be
+worth fifty or sixty pounds or more; an ordinary copy may bring fewer
+pence.  The binders usually pare down the top and bottom more than the
+sides.  I have a ‘Rabelais’ of the good date, with the red title (1663),
+and some of the pages have never been opened, at the sides.  But the
+height is only some 122 millimetres, a mere dwarf.  Anything over 130
+millimetres is very rare.  Therefore the collector of Elzevirs should
+have one of those useful ivory-handled knives on which the French
+measures are marked, and thus he will at once be able to satisfy himself
+as to the exact height of any example which he encounters.
+
+Let us now assume that the amateur quite understands what a proper
+Elzevir should be: tall, clean, well bound if possible, and of the good
+date.  But we have still to learn what the good dates are, and this is
+matter for the study and practice of a well-spent life.  We may gossip
+about a few of the more famous Elzevirs, those without which no
+collection is complete.  Of all Elzevirs the most famous and the most
+expensive is an old cookery book, “‘Le Pastissier François.’  Wherein is
+taught the way to make all sorts of pastry, useful to all sorts of
+persons.  Also the manner of preparing all manner of eggs, for fast-days,
+and other days, in more than sixty fashions.  Amsterdam, Louys, and
+Daniel Elsevier. 1665.”  The mark is not the old “Sage,” but the
+“Minerva” with her owl.  Now this book has no intrinsic value any more
+than a Tauchnitz reprint of any modern volume on cooking.  The
+‘Pastissier’ is cherished because it is so very rare.  The tract passed
+into the hands of cooks, and the hands of cooks are detrimental to
+literature.  Just as nursery books, fairy tales, and the like are
+destroyed from generation to generation, so it happens with books used in
+the kitchen.  The ‘Pastissier,’ to be sure, has a good frontispiece, a
+scene in a Low Country kitchen, among the dead game and the dainties.
+The buxom cook is making a game pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the
+bird’s head and tail-feathers, is already made. {12}
+
+                        [Picture: Elzevir ‘Sage’]
+
+Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the ‘Pastissier’ coveted.
+In an early edition of the ‘Manuel’ (1821) Brunet says, with a feigned
+brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), “Till now I have disdained to
+admit this book into my work, but I have yielded to the prayers of
+amateurs.  Besides, how could I keep out a volume which was sold for one
+hundred and one francs in 1819?”  One hundred and one francs!  If I could
+only get a ‘Pastissier’ for one hundred and one francs!  But our
+grandfathers lived in the Bookman’s Paradise.  “Il n’est pas jusqu’aux
+Anglais,” adds Brunet—“the very English themselves—have a taste for the
+‘Pastissier.’”  The Duke of Marlborough’s copy was actually sold for £1
+4s.  It would have been money in the ducal pockets of the house of
+Marlborough to have kept this volume till the general sale of all their
+portable property at which our generation is privileged to assist.  No
+wonder the ‘Pastissier’ was thought rare.  Bérard only knew two copies.
+Pietiers, writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five
+‘Pastissiers,’ and in his ‘Annales’ he had found out but five more.
+Willems, on the other hand, enumerates some thirty, not including
+Motteley’s.  Motteley was an uncultivated, untaught enthusiast.  He knew
+no Latin, but he had a _flair_ for uncut Elzevirs.  “Incomptis capillis,”
+he would cry (it was all his lore) as he gloated over his treasures.
+They were all burnt by the Commune in the Louvre Library.
+
+A few examples may be given of the prices brought by ‘Le Pastissier’ in
+later days.  Sensier’s copy was but 128 millimetres in height, and had
+the old ordinary vellum binding,—in fact, it closely resembled a copy
+which Messrs. Ellis and White had for sale in Bond Street in 1883.  The
+English booksellers asked, I think, about 1,500 francs for their copy.
+Sensier’s was sold for 128 francs in April, 1828; for 201 francs in 1837.
+Then the book was gloriously bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, and was sold with
+Potier’s books in 1870, when it fetched 2,910 francs.  At the Benzon sale
+(1875) it fetched 3,255 francs, and, falling dreadfully in price, was
+sold again in 1877 for 2,200 francs.  M. Dutuit, at Rouen, has a taller
+copy, bound by Bauzonnet.  Last time it was sold (1851) it brought 251
+francs.  The Duc de Chartres has now the copy of Pieters, the historian
+of the Elzevirs, valued at 3,000 francs.
+
+About thirty years ago no fewer than three copies were sold at Brighton,
+of all places.  M. Quentin Bauchart had a copy only 127 millimetres in
+height, which he swopped to M. Paillet.  M. Chartener, of Metz, had a
+copy now bound by Bauzonnet which was sold for four francs in 1780.  We
+call this the age of cheap books, but before the Revolution books were
+cheaper.  It is fair to say, however, that this example of the
+‘Pastissier’ was then bound up with another book, Vlacq’s edition of ‘Le
+Cuisinier François,’ and so went cheaper than it would otherwise have
+done.  M. de Fontaine de Resbecq declares that a friend of his bought six
+original pieces of Molière’s bound up with an old French translation of
+Garth’s ‘Dispensary.’  The one faint hope left to the poor book collector
+is that he may find a valuable tract lurking in the leaves of some bound
+collection of trash.  I have an original copy of Molière’s ‘Les Fascheux’
+bound up with a treatise on precious stones, but the bookseller from whom
+I bought it knew it was there!  That made all the difference.
+
+But, to return to our ‘Pastissier,’ here is M. de Fontaine de Resbecq’s
+account of how he wooed and won his own copy of this illustrious Elzevir.
+“I began my walk to-day,” says this haunter of ancient stalls, “by the
+Pont Marie and the Quai de la Grève, the pillars of Hercules of the
+book-hunting world.  After having viewed and reviewed these remote books,
+I was going away, when my attention was caught by a small naked volume,
+without a stitch of binding.  I seized it, and what was my delight when I
+recognised one of the rarest of that famed Elzevir collection whose
+height is measured as minutely as the carats of the diamond.  There was
+no indication of price on the box where this jewel was lying; the book,
+though unbound, was perfectly clean within.  ‘How much?’ said I to the
+bookseller.  ‘You can have it for six sous,’ he answered; ‘is it too
+much?’  ‘No,’ said I, and, trembling a little, I handed him the thirty
+centimes he asked for the ‘Pastissier François.’  You may believe, my
+friend, that after such a piece of luck at the start, one goes home
+fondly embracing the beloved object of one’s search.  That is exactly
+what I did.”
+
+Can this tale be true?  Is such luck given by the jealous fates
+_mortalibus ægris_?  M. de Resbecq’s find was made apparently in 1856,
+when trout were plenty in the streams, and rare books not so very rare.
+To my own knowledge an English collector has bought an original play of
+Molière’s, in the original vellum, for eighteenpence.  But no one has
+such luck any longer.  Not, at least, in London.  A more expensive
+‘Pastissier’ than that which brought six sous was priced in
+Bachelin-Deflorenne’s catalogue at £240.  A curious thing occurred when
+two uncut ‘Pastissiers’ turned up simultaneously in Paris.  One of them
+Morgand and Fatout sold for £400.  Clever people argued that one of the
+twin uncut ‘Pastissiers’ must be an imitation, a facsimile by means of
+photogravure, or some other process.  But it was triumphantly established
+that both were genuine; they had minute points of difference in the
+ornaments.
+
+M. Willems, the learned historian of the Elzevirs, is indignant at the
+successes of a book which, as Brunet declares, is badly printed.  There
+must be at least forty known ‘Pastissiers’ in the world.  Yes; but there
+are at least 4,000 people who would greatly rejoice to possess a
+‘Pastissier,’ and some of these desirous ones are very wealthy.  While
+this state of the market endures, the ‘Pastissier’ will fetch higher
+prices than the other varieties.  Another extremely rare Elzevir is
+‘L’Illustre Théâtre de Mons. Corneille’ (Leyden, 1644).  This contains
+‘Le Cid,’ ‘Les Horaces,’ ‘Le Cinna,’ ‘La Mort de Pompée,’ ‘Le Polyeucte.’
+The name, ‘L’Illustre Théâtre,’ appearing at that date has an interest of
+its own.  In 1643–44, Molière and Madeleine Béjart had just started the
+company which they called ‘L’Illustre Théâtre.’  Only six or seven copies
+of the book are actually known, though three or four are believed to
+exist in England, probably all covered with dust in the library of some
+lord.  “He has a very good library,” I once heard some one say to a noble
+earl, whose own library was famous.  “And what can a fellow do with a
+very good library?” answered the descendant of the Crusaders, who
+probably (being a youth light-hearted and content) was ignorant of his
+own great possessions.  An expensive copy of ‘L’Illustre Théâtre,’ bound
+by Trautz-Bauzonnet, was sold for £300.
+
+Among Elzevirs desirable, yet not hopelessly rare, is the ‘Virgil’ of
+1636.  Heinsius was the editor of this beautiful volume, prettily
+printed, but incorrect.  Probably it is hard to correct with absolute
+accuracy works in the clear but minute type which the Elzevirs affected.
+They have won fame by the elegance of their books, but their intention
+was to sell good books cheap, like Michel Lévy.  The small type was
+required to get plenty of “copy” into little bulk.  Nicholas Heinsius,
+the son of the editor of the ‘Virgil,’ when he came to correct his
+father’s edition, found that it contained so many coquilles, or
+misprints, as to be nearly the most incorrect copy in the world.  Heyne
+says, “Let the ‘Virgil’ be one of the rare Elzevirs, if you please, but
+within it has scarcely a trace of any good quality.”  Yet the first
+edition of this beautiful little book, with its two passages of red
+letters, is so desirable that, till he could possess it, Charles Nodier
+would not profane his shelves by any ‘Virgil’ at all.
+
+Equally fine is the ‘Cæsar’ of 1635, which, with the ‘Virgil’ of 1636 and
+the ‘Imitation’ without date, M. Willems thinks the most successful works
+of the Elzevirs, “one of the most enviable jewels in the casket of the
+bibliophile.”  It may be recognised by the page 238, which is erroneously
+printed 248.  A good average height is from 125 to 128 millimetres.  The
+highest known is 130 millimetres.  This book, like the ‘Imitation,’ has
+one of the pretty and ingenious frontispieces which the Elzevirs prefixed
+to their books.  So farewell, and good speed in your sport, ye hunters of
+Elzevirs, and may you find perhaps the rarest Elzevir of all, ‘L’Aimable
+Mère de Jésus.’
+
+
+
+
+_BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL_.
+(DOUBLE REFRAIN.)
+
+
+   O VISIONS of salmon tremendous,
+   Of trout of unusual weight,
+   Of waters that wander as Ken does,
+   Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+   But the skies that bring never a “spate,”
+   But the flies that catch up in a thorn,
+   But the creel that is barren of freight,
+   Through the portals of horn!
+
+   O dreams of the Fates that attend us
+   With prints in the earliest state,
+   O bargains in books that they send us,
+   Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+   But the tome that has never a mate,
+   But the quarto that’s tattered and torn,
+   And bereft of a title and date,
+   Through the portals of horn!
+
+   O dreams of the tongues that commend us,
+   Of crowns for the laureate pate,
+   Of a public to buy and befriend us,
+   Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+   But the critics that slash us and slate, {19}
+   But the people that hold us in scorn,
+   But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate,
+   Through the portals of horn!
+
+                                  ENVOY.
+
+   Fair dreams of things golden and great,
+   Ye come through the Ivory Gate;
+   But the facts that are bleak and forlorn,
+   Through the portals of horn!
+
+
+
+
+_CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS_.
+
+
+THERE are three classes of persons who are deeply concerned with parish
+registers—namely, villains, antiquaries, and the sedulous readers,
+“parish clerks and others,” of the second or “agony” column of the Times.
+Villains are probably the most numerous of these three classes.  The
+villain of fiction dearly loves a parish register: he cuts out pages,
+inserts others, intercalates remarks in a different coloured ink, and
+generally manipulates the register as a Greek manages his hand at
+_écarté_, or as a Hebrew dealer in Moabite bric-à-brac treats a synagogue
+roll.  We well remember one villain who had locked himself into the
+vestry (he was disguised as an archæologist), and who was enjoying his
+wicked pleasure with the register, when the vestry somehow caught fire,
+the rusty key would not turn in the door, and the villain was roasted
+alive, in spite of the disinterested efforts to save him made by all the
+virtuous characters in the story.  Let the fate of this bold, bad man be
+a warning to wicked earls, baronets, and all others who attempt to
+destroy the record of the marriage of a hero’s parents.  Fate will be too
+strong for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish clerk, or
+carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the vestry and of the
+iron chest in which a register should repose.
+
+There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of villains, if the
+new bill, entitled “The Parish Registers Preservation Act,” ever becomes
+law.  The bill provides that every register earlier than 1837 shall be
+committed to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and removed to the
+Record Office.  Now the common villain of fiction would feel sadly out of
+place in the Register Office, where a more watchful eye than that of a
+comic parish clerk would be kept on his proceedings.  Villains and local
+antiquaries will, therefore, use all their parliamentary influence to
+oppose and delay this bill, which is certainly hard on the parish
+archæologist.  The men who grub in their local registers, and slowly
+compile parish or county history, deserve to be encouraged rather than
+depressed.  Mr. Chester Waters, therefore, has suggested that copies of
+registers should be made, and the comparatively legible copy left in the
+parish, while the crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office in
+London.  Thus the local antiquary would really have his work made more
+easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would quite enjoy that
+condescension), while the villain of romance would be foiled; for it is
+useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie Murray’s proves) to alter the
+register in the keeping of the parish when the original document is safe
+in the Record Office.  But previous examples of enforced transcription
+(as in 1603) do not encourage us to suppose that the copies would be very
+scrupulously made.  Thus, after the Reformation, the prayers for the dead
+in the old registers were omitted by the copyist, who seemed to think (as
+the contractor for “sandwich men” said to the poor fellows who carried
+the letter H), “I don’t want you, and the public don’t want you, and
+you’re no use to nobody.”  Again, when Laurence Fletcher was buried in
+St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1608, the old register described him as “a
+player, the King’s servant.”  But the clerk, keeping a note-book, simply
+called Laurence Fletcher “a man,” and (in 1625) he also styled Mr. John
+Fletcher “a man.”  Now, the old register calls Mr. John Fletcher “a
+poet.”  To copy all the parish registers in England would be a very
+serious task, and would probably be but slovenly performed.  If they were
+reproduced, again, by any process of photography, the old difficult court
+hand would remain as hard as ever.  But this is a minor objection, for
+the local antiquary revels in the old court hand.
+
+From the little volume by Mr. Chester Waters, already referred to
+(‘Parish Registers in England;’ printed for the author by F. J. Roberts,
+Little Britain, E.C.), we proceed to appropriate such matters of
+curiosity as may interest minds neither parochial nor doggedly
+antiquarian.  Parish registers among the civilised peoples of antiquity
+do not greatly concern us.  It seems certain that many Polynesian races
+have managed to record (in verse, or by some rude marks) the genealogies
+of their chiefs through many hundreds of years.  These oral registers are
+accepted as fairly truthful by some students, yet we must remember that
+Pindar supposed himself to possess knowledge of at least twenty-five
+generations before his own time, and that only brought him up to the
+birth of Jason.  Nobody believes in Jason and Medea, and possibly the
+genealogical records of Maoris and Fijians are as little trustworthy as
+those of Pindaric Greece.  However, to consider thus is to consider too
+curiously.  We only know for certain that genealogy very soon becomes
+important, and, therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing
+civilisation.  “After Nehemiah’s return from the captivity in Babylon,
+the priests at Jerusalem whose register was not found were as polluted
+put from the priesthood.”  Rome had her parish registers, which were kept
+in the temple of Saturn.  But modern parish registers were “discovered”
+(like America) in 1497, when Cardinal Ximenes found it desirable to put
+on record the names of the godfathers and godmothers of baptised
+children.  When these relations of “gossip,” or God’s kin (as the word
+literally means), were not certainly known, married persons could easily
+obtain divorces, by pretending previous spiritual relationship.
+
+But it was only during the reign of Mary, (called the Bloody) that this
+rule of registering godfathers and godmothers prevailed in England.
+Henry VIII. introduced the custom of parish registers when in a
+Protestant humour.  By the way, how curiously has Madame de Flamareil (la
+femme de quarante ans, in Charles de Bernard’s novel) anticipated the
+verdict of Mr. Froude on Henry VIII.!  ‘On accuse Henri VIII.,’ dit
+Madame de Flamareil, “moi je le comprends, et je l’absous; c’était un
+cœur généreux, lorsqu’il ne les aimait plus, il les tuait.’”  The public
+of England mistrusted, in the matter of parish registers, the generous
+heart of Henry VIII.  It is the fixed conviction of the public that all
+novelties in administration mean new taxes.  Thus the Croatian peasantry
+were once on the point of revolting because they imagined that they were
+to be taxed in proportion to the length of their moustaches.  The English
+believed, and the insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared,
+that baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a
+“trybette” (tribute) to the king.  But Henry, or rather his minister,
+Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September 29, 1538) issued an
+injunction that a weekly register of weddings, christenings, and burials
+should be kept by the curate of every parish.  The cost of the book
+(twopence in the case of St. Margaret’s, Westminster) was defrayed by the
+parishioners.  The oldest extant register books are those thus acquired
+in 1597 or 1603.  These volumes were of parchment, and entries were
+copied into them out of the old books on paper.  The copyists, as we have
+seen, were indolent, and omitted characteristic points in the more
+ancient records.
+
+In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and when the
+clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their political feelings
+in a mixture of Latin and English.  Latin, by the way, went out as
+Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, in Leicestershire,
+writes, “Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, interruption! persecution!”  At St.
+Bridget’s, in Chester, is the quaint entry, “1643.  Here the register is
+defective till 1653.  The tymes were _such_!”  At Hilton, in Dorset,
+William Snoke, minister, entered his opinion that persons whose baptism
+and marriage were not registered “will be made uncapable of any earthly
+inheritance if they live.  This I note for the satisfaction of any that
+do:” though we may doubt whether these parishioners found the information
+thus conveyed highly satisfactory.
+
+The register of Maid’s Moreton, Bucks, tells how the reading-desk (a
+spread eagle, gilt) was “doomed to perish as an abominable idoll;” and
+how the cross on the steeple nearly (but not quite) knocked out the
+brains of the Puritan who removed it.  The Puritans had their way with
+the registers as well as with the eagle (“the vowl,” as the old country
+people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons as registrars in
+1653.  The books from 1653 to 1660, while this _régime_ lasted, “were
+kept exceptionally well,” new brooms sweeping clean.  The books of the
+period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christian names than we might
+have expected.  We find, “_Repente_ Kytchens,” so styled before the poor
+little thing had anything but original sin to repent of.  “_Faint not_
+Kennard” is also registered, and “_Freegift_ Mabbe.”
+
+A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678.  The law required (for
+purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be buried in
+woollen winding-sheets.  The price of the wool was the obolus paid to the
+Charon of the Revenue.  After March 25, 1667, no person was to be “buried
+in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole only.”
+Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire village lately beheld a
+ghost, “dressed in a long narrow gown of woollen, with bandages round the
+head and chin,” it is clear that the ghost was much more than a hundred
+years old, for the act “had fallen into disuse long before it was
+repealed in 1814.”  But this has little to do with parish registers.  The
+addition made to the duties of the keeper of the register in 1678 was
+this—he had to take and record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to
+the effect that the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric.  The
+upper classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay the fine
+of 5_l_.  When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress, was interred in
+1730, her body was arrayed “in a very fine Brussels lace headdress, a
+holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a
+pair of new kid gloves.”
+
+In 1694 an empty exchequer was replenished by a tax on marriages, births,
+and burials, the very extortion which had been feared by the insurgents
+in the Pilgrimage of Grace.  The tax collectors had access without
+payment of fee to the registers.  The registration of births was
+discontinued when the Taxation Acts expired.  An attempt to introduce the
+registration of births was made in 1753, but unsuccessfully.  The public
+had the old superstitious dread of anything like a census.  Moreover, the
+custom was denounced as “French,” and therefore abominable.  In the same
+way it was thought telling to call the _clôture_ “the French gag” during
+some recent discussions of parliamentary rules.  In 1783 the parish
+register was again made the instrument of taxation, and threepence was
+charged on every entry.  Thus “the clergyman was placed in the invidious
+light of a tax collector, and as the poor were often unable or unwilling
+to pay the tax, the clergy had a direct inducement to retain their
+good-will by keeping the registers defective.”
+
+It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when “bang went
+saxpence” every time a poor man had twins!  Of course the Scotch rose up
+against this unparalleled extortion.  At last, in 1812, “Rose’s Act” was
+passed.  It is styled “an Act for the better regulating and preserving
+registers of births,” but the registration of births is altogether
+omitted from its provisions.  By a stroke of the wildest wit the penalty
+of transportation for fourteen years, for making a false entry, “is to be
+divided equally between the informer and the poor of the parish.”  A more
+casual Act has rarely been drafted.
+
+Without entering into the modern history of parish registers, we may
+borrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found therein, the blunders
+and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and curates, and parish clerks.
+In quite recent times (1832) it was thought worth while to record that
+Charity Morrell at her wedding had signed her name in the register with
+her right foot, and that the ring had been placed on the fourth toe of
+her left foot; for poor Charity was born without arms.  Sometimes the
+time of a birth was recorded with much minuteness, that the astrologers
+might draw a more accurate horoscope.  Unlucky children, with no
+acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety of odd ways.  In Lambeth
+(1685), George Speedwell is put down as “a merry begot;” Anne Twine is
+“_filia uniuscujusque_.”  At Croydon, a certain William is “terraefilius”
+(1582), an autochthonous infant.  Among the queer names of foundlings are
+“Nameless,” “Godsend,” “Subpoena,” and “Moyses and Aaron, two children
+found,” not in the bulrushes, but “in the street.”
+
+The rule was to give the foundling for surname the name of the parish,
+and from the Temple Church came no fewer than one hundred and four
+foundlings named “Temple,” between 1728 and 1755.  These Temples are the
+plebeian _gens_ of the patrician house which claims descent from Godiva.
+The use of surnames as Christian names is later than the Reformation, and
+is the result of a reaction against the exclusive use of saints’ names
+from the calendar.  Another example of the same reaction is the use of
+Old Testament names, and “Ananias and Sapphira were favourite names with
+the Presbyterians.”  It is only fair to add that these names are no
+longer popular with Presbyterians, at any rate in the Kirk of Scotland.
+The old Puritan argument was that you would hardly select the name of too
+notorious a scriptural sinner, “as bearing testimony to the triumph of
+grace over original sin.”  But in America a clergyman has been known to
+decline to christen a child “Pontius Pilate,” and no wonder.
+
+Entries of burials in ancient times often contained some biographical
+information about the deceased.  But nothing could possibly be vaguer
+than this: “1615, February 28, St. Martin’s, Ludgate, was buried an
+anatomy from the College of Physicians.”  Man, woman, or child, sinner or
+saint, we know not, only that “an anatomy” found Christian burial in St.
+Martin’s, Ludgate.  How much more full and characteristic is this, from
+St. Peter’s-in-the-East, Oxford (1568): ‘There was buried Alyce, the wiff
+of a naughty fellow whose name is Matthew Manne.’  There is immortality
+for Matthew Manne, and there is, in short-hand, the tragedy of “Alyce his
+wiff.”  The reader of this record knows more of Matthew than in two
+hundred years any one is likely to know of us who moralise over Matthew!
+At Kyloe, in Northumberland, the intellectual defects of Henry Watson
+have, like the naughtiness of Manne, secured him a measure of fame.
+(1696.)  “Henry was so great a fooll, that he never could put on his own
+close, nor never went a quarter of a mile off the house,” as Voltaire’s
+Memnon resolved never to do, and as Pascal partly recommends.
+
+What had Mary Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the Croydon
+register gives her of “Queen of Hell”? (1788.)  Distinguished people were
+buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which they were
+connected, and each sham burial service was entered in the parish
+registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian.  This curious
+custom is very ancient.  Thus we read in the Odyssey that when Menelaus
+heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he reared for him a cenotaph,
+and piled an empty barrow “that the fame of the dead man might never be
+quenched.”  Probably this old usage gave rise to the claims of several
+Greek cities to possess the tomb of this or that ancient hero.  A heroic
+tomb, as of Cassandra for example, several towns had to show, but which
+was the true grave, which were the cenotaphs?  Queen Elizabeth was buried
+in all the London churches, and poor Cassandra had her barrow in Argos,
+Mycenæ, and Amyclæ.
+
+“A drynkyng for the soul” of the dead, a τάφος or funeral feast, was as
+common in England before the Reformation as in ancient Greece.  James
+Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left six shillings and eightpence to
+pay for this “drynkyng for his soul;” and the funeral feast, which long
+survived in the distribution of wine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures
+as a slight collation of wine and cake in Scotland.  What a funeral could
+be, as late as 1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial
+of Andrew Card, senior bencher of Gray’s Inn.  The deceased was brave in
+a “superfine pinked shroud” (cheap at 1_l_. 5_s_. 6_d_.), and there were
+eight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the daïs, and ninety-six
+buckram escutcheons.  The pall-bearers wore Alamode hatbands covered with
+frizances, and so did the divines who were present at the melancholy but
+gorgeous function.  A hundred men in mourning carried a hundred white wax
+branch lights, and the gloves of the porters in Gray’s Inn were
+ash-coloured with black points.  Yet the wine cost no more than 1_l_.
+19_s_. 6_d_.; a “deal of sack,” by no means “intolerable.”
+
+Leaving the funerals, we find that the parish register sometimes records
+ancient and obsolete modes of death.  Thus, martyrs are scarce now, but
+the register of All Saints’, Derby, 1556, mentions “a poor blinde woman
+called Joan Waste, of this parish, a martyr, burned in Windmill pit.”
+She was condemned by Ralph Baynes, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.  In
+1558, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, we find “Richard Snell, b’rnt, bur. 9
+Sept.”  At Croydon, in 1585, Roger Shepherd probably never expected to be
+eaten by a lioness.  Roger was not, like Wyllyam Barker, “a common
+drunkard and blasphemer,” and we cannot regard the Croydon lioness, like
+the Nemean lion, as a miraculous monster sent against the county of
+Surrey for the sins of the people.  The lioness “was brought into the
+town to be seen of such as would give money to see her.  He” (Roger) “was
+sore wounded in sundry places, and was buried the 26th Aug.”
+
+In 1590, the register of St. Oswald’s, Durham, informs us that “Duke,
+Hyll, Hogge, and Holiday” were hanged and burned for “there horrible
+offences.”  The arm of one of these horrible offenders was preserved at
+St. Omer as the relic of a martyr, “a most precious treasure,” in 1686.
+But no one knew whether the arm belonged originally to Holiday, Hyll,
+Duke, or Hogge.  The coals, when these unfortunate men were burned, cost
+sixpence; the other items in the account of the abominable execution are,
+perhaps, too repulsive to be quoted.
+
+According to some critics of the British government, we do not treat the
+Egyptians well.  But our conduct towards the Fellahs has certainly
+improved since this entry was made in the register of St. Nicholas,
+Durham (1592, August 8th): ‘Simson, Arington, Featherston, Fenwick, and
+Lancaster, _were hanged for being Egyptians_.’  They were, in fact,
+gypsies, or had been consorting with gypsies, and they suffered under 5
+Eliz. c. 20.  In 1783 this statute was abolished, and was even considered
+“a law of excessive severity.”  For even a hundred years ago “the puling
+cant of sickly humanitarianism” was making itself heard to the injury of
+our sturdy old English legislation.  To be killed by a poet is now an
+unusual fate, but the St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions
+how “Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried.”  Gabriel was “slayne” by
+Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton Fields.
+
+The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parish
+registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner.  On August
+21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the imaginary crime
+of witchcraft.  “A grave, for a witch, sixpence,” is an item in the
+municipal accounts.  And the grave was a cheap haven for the poor woman
+who had been committed to the tender mercies of a Scotch witch-trier.
+Cetewayo’s medicine-men, who “smelt out” witches, were only some two
+centuries in the rear of our civilisation.  Three hundred years ago
+Bishop Jewell, preaching before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of
+Cetewayo and Saul, as to the wickedness of suffering a witch to live.  As
+late as 1691, the register of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions
+“William Cleugh, bewitched to death,” and the superstition is almost as
+powerful as ever among the rural people.  Between July 13 and July 24
+(1699) the widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch.  She was
+not drowned, but survived her immersion for only five months.  A singular
+homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689.  “John Arris and Derwick
+Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; one killed the other
+drinking brandy.”  But who slew the slayer?  The register is silent; but
+“often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck of hasty pudding at a time
+caused the death of James Parsons,” at Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743.
+Parsons had resisted the effects of shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding
+till the age of thirty-six.
+
+And so the registers run on.  Sometimes they tell of the death of a
+glutton, sometimes of a _Grace wyfe_ (grosse femme).  Now the bell tolls
+for the decease of a duke, now of a “dog-whipper.”  “Lutenists” and
+“Saltpetremen”—the skeleton of the old German allegory whispers to each
+and twitches him by the sleeve.  “Ellis Thompson, _insipiens_,” leaves
+Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled and scrabbled on the doors, and
+follows “William, foole to my Lady Jerningham,” and “Edward Errington,
+the Towne’s Fooll” (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death.
+Edward Errington died “of the pest,” and another idiot took his place and
+office, for Newcastle had her regular town fools before she acquired her
+singularly advanced modern representatives.  The “aquavity man” dies (in
+Cripplegate), and the “dumb-man who was a fortune-teller” (Stepney,
+1628), and the “King’s Falkner,” and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined the
+professions, not frequently united, of “attorney and husbandman,” in
+Barwell, Leicestershire (1655).  “The lame chimney-sweeper,” and the
+“King of the gypsies,” and Alexander Willis, “qui calographiam docuit,”
+the linguist, and the Tom o’ Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the
+panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death;
+or, if they sought him, the churchyard where they were “hurled into a
+grave” was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight, with
+“frankincense and sweet perfumes, and herbs.”
+
+Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough
+register mentions a fresh way of death, “the swat called New
+Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master.”  Another malady
+was ‘the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne through England.’
+The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth from the Levant, just
+as British commerce still patriotically tries to introduce cholera in
+cargoes of Egyptian rags.  The register of Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24,
+1625), has this strange story of the plague:—
+
+“Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must die at
+yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused his nefew,
+John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not farre from the
+house, and went and lay’d him down in the say’d grave, and caused clothes
+to be lay’d uppon and so dep’ted out of this world; this he did because
+he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nefew and another wench
+were able to bury.”
+
+And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the “wench” already spoken of,
+died, the last of the household.
+
+Old customs survive in the parish registers.  Scolding wives were ducked,
+and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register tells how the sexton’s wife
+“was sett on a new cukking-stoole, and brought to Temes brydge, and there
+had three duckings over head and eres, because she was a common scold and
+fighter.”  The cucking-stool, a very elaborate engine of the law, cost
+1_l_. 3_s_. 4_d_.  Men were ducked for beating their wives, and if that
+custom were revived the profession of cucking-stool maker would become
+busy and lucrative.  Penances of a graver sort are on record in the
+registers.  Margaret Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was ordered to stand
+three market days in the town, and three Sundays in the church, in a
+white sheet.  The sin imputed to her was a dreadful one.  “She stood one
+Saturday, and one Sunday, and died the next.”  Innocent or guilty, this
+world was no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret Sherioux.
+Occasionally the keeper of the register entered any event which seemed
+out of the common.  Thus the register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has
+this contribution to natural history:—
+
+“A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a very greate
+strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen feet, in quantitie and
+dimentions greater than a greate horse, which was taken and killed by
+special policie, in Ethiopia within the Turkas dominions.  But before it
+was killed, it had devoured (as is credibly thought) more than 1,000
+persons, and destroyed a great country.”
+
+This must have been a descendant of the monster that would have eaten
+Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the blameless
+Ethiopians.  Collections of money are recorded occasionally, as in 1680,
+when no less than one pound eight shillings was contributed “for
+redemption of Christians (taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish
+slavery.”  Two hundred years ago the Turk was pretty “unspeakable” still.
+Of all blundering Dogberries, the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish
+register at Melton Mowbray:—
+
+“Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth’s people, which was
+buried, and which was and maried above 10 years old, for because the
+clarke was dead, and therefore they was not set down according as they
+was, but they all set down sure enough one among another here in this
+place.”
+
+“They all set down sure enough,” nor does it matter much now to know whom
+they married, and how long they lived in Melton Mowbray.  The following
+entry sufficed for the great Villiers that expired “in the worst inn’s
+worst room,”—“Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire, 1687.  Georges vilaris Lord
+dooke of Bookingham, bur. 17. April.”
+
+“So much for Buckingham!”
+
+
+
+
+_THE ROWFANT BOOKS_.
+BALLADE EN GUISE DE RONDEAU.
+
+
+   THE Rowfant books, how fair they shew,
+      The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall,
+   Print, autograph, portfolio!
+      Back from the outer air they call,
+   The athletes from the Tennis ball,
+      This Rhymer from his rod and hooks,
+   Would I could sing them one and all,
+            The Rowfant books!
+
+   The Rowfant books!  In sun and snow
+      They’re dear, but most when tempests fall;
+   The folio towers above the row
+      As once, o’er minor prophets,—Saul!
+   What jolly jest books and what small
+      “Dear dumpy Twelves” to fill the nooks.
+   You do not find on every stall
+            The Rowfant books!
+
+   The Rowfant books!  These long ago
+      Were chained within some College hall;
+   These manuscripts retain the glow
+      Of many a coloured capital
+   While yet the Satires keep their gall,
+      While the Pastissier puzzles cooks,
+   Theirs is a joy that does not pall,
+            The Rowfant books!
+
+                                  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!
+
+                                  ENVOY.
+
+   Prince, bear a hopeless Bard’s appeal;
+   Reverse the rules of Mine and Thine;
+   Make it legitimate to steal
+   The Books that never can be mine!
+
+
+
+
+_LADY BOOK-LOVERS_.
+
+
+THE biographer of Mrs. Aphra Behn refutes the vulgar error that “a
+Dutchman cannot love.”  Whether or not a lady can love books is a
+question that may not be so readily settled.  Mr. Ernest Quentin Bauchart
+has contributed to the discussion of this problem by publishing a
+bibliography, in two quarto volumes, of books which have been in the
+libraries of famous beauties of old, queens and princesses of France.
+There can be no doubt that these ladies were possessors of exquisite
+printed books and manuscripts wonderfully bound, but it remains uncertain
+whether the owners, as a rule, were bibliophiles; whether their hearts
+were with their treasures.  Incredible as it may seem to us now,
+literature was highly respected in the past, and was even fashionable.
+Poets were in favour at court, and Fashion decided that the great must
+possess books, and not only books, but books produced in the utmost
+perfection of art, and bound with all the skill at the disposal of Clovis
+Eve, and Padeloup, and Duseuil.  Therefore, as Fashion gave her commands,
+we cannot hastily affirm that the ladies who obeyed were really
+book-lovers.  In our more polite age, Fashion has decreed that ladies
+shall smoke, and bet, and romp, but it would be premature to assert that
+all ladies who do their duty in these matters are born romps, or have an
+unaffected liking for cigarettes.  History, however, maintains that many
+of the renowned dames whose books are now the most treasured of literary
+relics were actually inclined to study as well as to pleasure, like
+Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de Verrue, and even Madame de
+Pompadour.  Probably books and arts were more to this lady’s liking than
+the diversions by which she beguiled the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a
+time she would rather have been quiet with her plays and novels than
+engaged in conscientiously conducted but distasteful revels.
+
+Like a true Frenchman, M. Bauchart has only written about French lady
+book-lovers, or about women who, like Mary Stuart, were more than half
+French.  Nor would it be easy for an English author to name, outside the
+ranks of crowned heads, like Elizabeth, any Englishwomen of distinction
+who had a passion for the material side of literature, for binding, and
+first editions, and large paper, and engravings in early “states.”  The
+practical sex, when studious, is like the same sex when fond of
+equestrian exercise.  “A lady says, ‘My heyes, he’s an ’orse, and he must
+go,’” according to Leech’s groom.  In the same way, a studious girl or
+matron says, “This is a book,” and reads it, if read she does, without
+caring about the date, or the state, or the publisher’s name, or even
+very often about the author’s.  I remember, before the publication of a
+novel now celebrated, seeing a privately printed vellum-bound copy on
+large paper in the hands of a literary lady.  She was holding it over the
+fire, and had already made the vellum covers curl wide open like the
+shells of an afflicted oyster.
+
+When I asked what the volume was, she explained that “It is a book which
+a poor man has written, and he’s had it printed to see whether some one
+won’t be kind enough to publish it.”  I ventured, perhaps pedantically,
+to point out that the poor man could not be so very poor, or he would not
+have made so costly an experiment on Dutch paper.  But the lady said she
+did not know how that might be, and she went on toasting the experiment.
+In all this there is a fine contempt for everything but the spiritual
+aspect of literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and
+display of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of
+men.  Where ladies have caught “the Bibliomania,” I fancy they have taken
+this pretty fever from the other sex.  But it must be owned that the
+books they have possessed, being rarer and more romantic, are even more
+highly prized by amateurs than examples from the libraries of Grolier,
+and Longepierre, and D’Hoym.  M. Bauchart’s book is a complete guide to
+the collector of these expensive relics.  He begins his dream of fair
+women who have owned books with the pearl of the Valois, Marguerite
+d’Angoulême, the sister of Francis I.  The remains of her library are
+chiefly devotional manuscripts.  Indeed, it is to be noted that all these
+ladies, however frivolous, possessed the most devout and pious books, and
+whole collections of prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with
+miniatures.  Marguerite’s library was bound in morocco, stamped with a
+crowned M in _interlacs_ sown with daisies, or, at least, with
+conventional flowers which may have been meant for daisies.  If one could
+choose, perhaps the most desirable of the specimens extant is ‘Le Premier
+Livre du Prince des Poètes, Homère,’ in Salel’s translation.  For this
+translation Ronsard writes a prologue, addressed to the _manes_ of Salel,
+in which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry.  He draws a
+characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium, among the learned
+lovers:
+
+             qui parmi les fleurs devisent
+    Au giron de leur dame.
+
+Marguerite’s manuscript copy of the First Book of the Iliad is a small
+quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and the crowned M.  It is in
+the Duc d’Aumale’s collection at Chantilly.  The books of Diane de
+Poitiers are more numerous and more famous.  When first a widow she
+stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb, and the motto,
+“Sola vivit in illo.”  But when she consoled herself with Henri II. she
+suppressed the tomb, and made the motto meaningless.  Her crescent shone
+not only on her books, but on the palace walls of France, in the Louvre,
+Fontainebleau, and Anet, and her initial D. is inextricably interlaced
+with the H. of her royal lover.  Indeed, Henri added the D to his own
+cypher, and this must have been so embarrassing for his wife Catherine,
+that people have good-naturedly tried to read the curves of the D’s as
+C’s.  The D’s, and the crescents, and the bows of his Diana are impressed
+even on the covers of Henri’s Book of Hours.  Catherine’s own cypher is a
+double C enlaced with an H, or double K’s (Katherine) combined in the
+same manner.  These, unlike the D.H., are surmounted with a crown—the one
+advantage which the wife possessed over the favourite.  Among Diane’s
+books are various treatises on medicines and on surgery, and plenty of
+poetry and Italian novels.  Among the books exhibited at the British
+Museum in glass cases is Diane’s copy of Bembo’s ‘History of Venice.’  An
+American collector, Mr. Barlow, of New York, is happy enough to possess
+her ‘Singularitez de la France Antarctique’ (Antwerp, 1558).
+
+Catherine de Medicis got splendid books on the same terms as foreign
+pirates procure English novels—she stole them.  The Marshal Strozzi,
+dying in the French service, left a noble collection, on which Catherine
+laid her hands.  Brantôme says that Strozzi’s son often expressed to him
+a candid opinion about this transaction.  What with her own collection
+and what with the Marshal’s, Catherine possessed about four thousand
+volumes.  On her death they were in peril of being seized by her
+creditors, but her almoner carried them to his own house, and De Thou had
+them placed in the royal library.  Unluckily it was thought wiser to
+strip the books of the coats with Catherine’s compromising device, lest
+her creditors should single them out, and take them away in their
+pockets.  Hence, books with her arms and cypher are exceedingly rare.  At
+the sale of the collections of the Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of
+Catherine’s was sold for £2,400.
+
+Mary Stuart of Scotland was one of the lady book-lovers whose taste was
+more than a mere following of the fashion.  Some of her books, like one
+of Marie Antoinette’s, were the companions of her captivity, and still
+bear the sad complaints which she entrusted to these last friends of
+fallen royalty.  Her note-book, in which she wrote her Latin prose
+exercises when a girl, still survives, bound in red morocco, with the
+arms of France.  In a Book of Hours, now the property of the Czar, may be
+partly deciphered the quatrains which she composed in her sorrowful
+years, but many of them are mutilated by the binder’s shears.  The Queen
+used the volume as a kind of album: it contains the signatures of the
+“Countess of Schrewsbury” (as M. Bauchart has it), of Walsingham, of the
+Earl of Sussex, and of Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham.  There is also
+the signature, “Your most infortunat, ARBELLA SEYMOUR;” and “Fr. Bacon.”
+
+This remarkable manuscript was purchased in Paris, during the Revolution,
+by Peter Dubrowsky, who carried it to Russia.  Another Book of Hours of
+the Queen’s bears this inscription, in a sixteenth-century hand: “Ce sont
+les Heures de Marie Setuart Renne.  Marguerite de Blacuod de Rosay.”  In
+De Blacuod it is not very easy to recognise “Blackwood.”  Marguerite was
+probably the daughter of Adam Blackwood, who wrote a volume on Mary
+Stuart’s sufferings (Edinburgh, 1587).
+
+The famous Marguerite de Valois, the wife of Henri IV., had certainly a
+noble library, and many beautifully bound books stamped with daisies are
+attributed to her collections.  They bear the motto, “Expectata non
+eludet,” which appears to refer, first to the daisy (“Margarita”), which
+is punctual in the spring, or rather is “the constellated flower that
+never sets,” and next, to the lady, who will “keep tryst.”  But is the
+lady Marguerite de Valois?  Though the books have been sold at very high
+prices as relics of the leman of La Mole, it seems impossible to
+demonstrate that they were ever on her shelves, that they were bound by
+Clovis Eve from her own design. “No mention is made of them in any
+contemporary document, and the judicious are reduced to conjectures.”
+Yet they form a most important collection, systematically bound, science
+and philosophy in citron morocco, the poets in green, and history and
+theology in red.  In any case it is absurd to explain “Expectata non
+eludet” as a reference to the lily of the royal arms, which appears on
+the centre of the daisy-pied volumes.  The motto, in that case, would
+run, “Expectata (lilia) non eludent.”  As it stands, the feminine
+adjective, “expectata,” in the singular, must apply either to the lady
+who owned the volumes, or to the “Margarita,” her emblem, or to both.
+Yet the ungrammatical rendering is that which M. Bauchart suggests.  Many
+of the books, Marguerite’s or not, were sold at prices over £100 in
+London, in 1884 and 1883.  The Macrobius, and Theocritus, and Homer are
+in the Cracherode collection at the British Museum.  The daisy crowned
+Ronsard went for £430 at the Beckford sale.  These prices will probably
+never be reached again.
+
+If Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile, she may
+be suspected of acting on the motive, “Love me, love my books.”  About
+her affection for Cardinal Mazarin there seems to be no doubt: the
+Cardinal had a famous library, and his royal friend probably imitated his
+tastes.  In her time, and on her volumes, the originality and taste of
+the skilled binder, Le Gascon, begin to declare themselves.  The
+fashionable passion for lace, to which La Fontaine made such sacrifices,
+affected the art of book decorations, and Le Gascon’s beautiful patterns
+of gold points and dots are copies of the productions of Venice.  The
+Queen-Mother’s books include many devotional treatises, for, whatever
+other fashions might come and go, piety was always constant before the
+Revolution.  Anne of Austria seems to have been particularly fond of the
+lives and works of Saint Theresa, and Saint François de Sales, and John
+of the Cross.  But she was not unread in the old French poets, such as
+Coquillart; she condescended to Ariosto; she had that dubious character,
+Théophile de Viaud, beautifully bound; she owned the Rabelais of 1553;
+and, what is particularly interesting, M. de Lignerolles possesses her
+copy of ‘L’Eschole des Femmes, Comédie par J. B. P. Molière.  Paris:
+Guillaume de Luynes, 1663.’  In 12°, red morocco, gilt edges, and the
+Queen’s arms on the covers.  This relic is especially valuable when we
+remember that ‘L’Ecole des Femmes’ and Arnolphe’s sermon to Agnès, and
+his comic threats of future punishment first made envy take the form of
+religious persecution.  The devout Queen-Mother was often appealed to by
+the enemies of Molière, yet Anne of Austria had not only seen his comedy,
+but possessed this beautiful example of the first edition.  M. Paul
+Lacroix supposes that this copy was offered to the Queen-Mother by
+Molière himself.  The frontispiece (Arnolphe preaching to Agnès) is
+thought to be a portrait of Molière, but in the reproduction in M. Louis
+Lacour’s edition it is not easy to see any resemblance.  Apparently Anne
+did not share the views, even in her later years, of the converted Prince
+de Conty, for several comedies and novels remain stamped with her arms
+and device.
+
+The learned Marquise de Rambouillet, the parent of all the ‘Précieuses,’
+must have owned a good library, but nothing is chronicled save her
+celebrated book of prayers and meditations, written out and decorated by
+Jarry.  It is bound in red morocco, _doublé_ with green, and covered with
+V’s in gold.  The Marquise composed the prayers for her own use, and
+Jarry was so much struck with their beauty that he asked leave to
+introduce them into the Book of Hours which he had to copy, “for the
+prayers are often so silly,” said he, “that I am ashamed to write them
+out.”
+
+Here is an example of the devotions which Jarry admired, a prayer to
+Saint Louis.  It was published in ‘Miscellanies Bibliographiques’ by M.
+Prosper Blanchemain.
+
+                            PRIÈRE À SAINT-LOUIS,
+                                ROY DE FRANCE.
+
+    Grand Roy, bien que votre couronne ayt esté des plus esclatantes de
+    la Terre, celle que vous portez dans le ciel est incomparablement
+    plus précieuse.  L’une estoit perissable l’autre est immortelle et
+    ces lys dont la blancheur se pouvoit ternir, sont maintenant
+    incorruptibles.  Vostre obeissance envers vostre mère; vostre justice
+    envers vos sujets; et vos guerres contre les infideles, vous ont
+    acquis la veneration de tous les peuples; et la France doit à vos
+    travaux et à vostre piété l’inestimable tresor de la sanglante et
+    glorieuse couronne du Sauveur du monde.  Priez-le incomparable Saint
+    qu’il donne une paix perpetuëlle au Royaume dont vous avez porté le
+    sceptre; qu’il le préserve d’hérésie; qu’il y face toûjours regner
+    saintement vostre illustre Sang; et que tous ceux qui ont l’honneur
+    d’en descendre soient pour jamais fidèles à son Eglise.
+
+The daughter of the Marquise, the fair Julie, heroine of that “long
+courting” by M. de Montausier, survives in those records as the possessor
+of ‘La Guirlande de Julie,’ the manuscript book of poems by eminent
+hands.  But this manuscript seems to have been all the library of Julie;
+therein she could constantly read of her own perfections.  To be sure she
+had also ‘L’Histoire de Gustave Adolphe,’ a hero for whom, like Major
+Dugald Dalgetty, she cherished a supreme devotion.  In the ‘Guirlande’
+Chapelain’s verses turn on the pleasing fancy that the Protestant Lion of
+the North, changed into a flower (like Paul Limayrac in M. Banville’s
+ode), requests Julie to take pity on his altered estate:
+
+    Sois pitoyable à ma langueur;
+    Et si je n’ay place en ton cœur
+    Que je l’aye au moins sur ta teste.
+
+These verses were reckoned consummate.
+
+The ‘Guirlande’ is still, with happier fate than attends most books, in
+the hands of the successors of the Duc and Duchesse de Montausier.
+
+Like Julie, Madame de Maintenon was a _précieuse_, but she never had time
+to form a regular library.  Her books, however, were bound by Duseuil, a
+binder immortal in the verse of Pope; or it might be more correct to say
+that Madame de Maintenon’s own books are seldom distinguishable from
+those of her favourite foundation, St. Cyr.  The most interesting is a
+copy of the first edition of ‘Esther,’ in quarto (1689), bound in red
+morocco, and bearing, in Racine’s hand, “_A Madame la Marquise de
+Maintenon_, _offert avec respect_,—_RACINE_.”
+
+Doubtless Racine had the book bound before he presented it.  “People are
+discontented,” writes his son Louis, “if you offer them a book in a
+simple marbled paper cover.”  I could wish that this worthy custom were
+restored, for the sake of the art of binding, and also because amateur
+poets would be more chary of their presentation copies.  It is, no doubt,
+wise to turn these gifts with their sides against the inner walls of
+bookcases, to be bulwarks against the damp, but the trouble of
+acknowledging worthless presents from strangers is considerable. {145}
+
+Another interesting example of Madame de Maintenon’s collections is
+Dacier’s ‘Remarques Critiques sur les Œuvres d’Horace,’ bearing the arms
+of Louis XIV., but with his wife’s signature on the fly-leaf (1681).
+
+Of Madame de Montespan, ousted from the royal favour by Madame de
+Maintenon, who “married into the family where she had been governess,”
+there survives one bookish relic of interest.  This is ‘Œuvres Diverses
+par un auteur de sept ans,’ in quarto, red morocco, printed on vellum,
+and with the arms of the mother of the little Duc du Maine (1678).  When
+Madame de Maintenon was still playing mother to the children of the king
+and of Madame de Montespan, she printed those “works” of her eldest
+pupil.
+
+These ladies were only bibliophiles by accident, and were devoted, in the
+first place, to pleasure, piety, or ambition.  With the Comtesse de
+Verrue, whose epitaph will be found on an earlier page, we come to a
+genuine and even fanatical collector.  Madame de Verrue (1670–1736) got
+every kind of diversion out of life, and when she ceased to be young and
+fair, she turned to the joys of “shopping.”  In early years, “pleine de
+cœur, elle le donna sans comptes.”  In later life, she purchased, or
+obtained on credit, everything that caught her fancy, also _sans
+comptes_.  “My aunt,” says the Duc de Luynes, “was always buying, and
+never baulked her fancy.”  Pictures, books, coins, jewels, engravings,
+gems (over 8,000), tapestries, and furniture were all alike precious to
+Madame de Verrue.  Her snuff-boxes defied computation; she had them in
+gold, in tortoise-shell, in porcelain, in lacquer, and in jasper, and she
+enjoyed the delicate fragrance of sixty different sorts of snuff.
+Without applauding the smoking of cigarettes in drawing-rooms, we may
+admit that it is less repulsive than steady applications to tobacco in
+Madame de Verrue’s favourite manner.
+
+The Countess had a noble library, for old tastes survived in her
+commodious heart, and new tastes she anticipated.  She possessed ‘The
+Romance of the Rose,’ and ‘Villon,’ in editions of Galliot du Pré
+(1529–1533) undeterred by the satire of Boileau.  She had examples of the
+‘Pleïade,’ though they were not again admired in France till 1830.  She
+was also in the most modern fashion of to-day, for she had the beautiful
+quarto of La Fontaine’s ‘Contes,’ and Bouchier’s illustrated Molière
+(large paper).  And, what I envy her more, she had Perrault’s ‘Fairy
+Tales,’ in blue morocco—the blue rose of the folklorist who is also a
+book-hunter.  It must also be confessed that Madame de Verrue had a large
+number of books such as are usually kept under lock and key, books which
+her heirs did not care to expose at the sale of her library.  Once I
+myself (_moi chétif_) owned a novel in blue morocco, which had been in
+the collection of Madame de Verrue.  In her old age this exemplary woman
+invented a peculiarly comfortable arm-chair, which, like her novels, was
+covered with citron and violet morocco; the nails were of silver.  If
+Madame de Verrue has met the Baroness Bernstein, their conversation in
+the Elysian Fields must be of the most gallant and interesting
+description.
+
+Another literary lady of pleasure, Madame de Pompadour, can only be
+spoken of with modified approval.  Her great fault was that she did not
+check the decadence of taste and sense in the art of bookbinding.  In her
+time came in the habit of binding books (if binding it can be called)
+with flat backs, without the nerves and sinews that are of the very
+essence of book-covers.  Without these no binding can be permanent, none
+can secure the lasting existence of a volume.  It is very deeply to be
+deplored that by far the most accomplished living English artist in
+bookbinding has reverted to this old and most dangerous heresy.  The most
+original and graceful tooling is of much less real value than permanence,
+and a book bound with a flat back, without _nerfs_, might practically as
+well not be bound at all.  The practice was the herald of the French and
+may open the way for the English Revolution.  Of what avail were the
+ingenious mosaics of Derome to stem the tide of change, when the books
+whose sides they adorned were not really _bound_ at all?  Madame de
+Pompadour’s books were of all sorts, from the inevitable works of
+devotions to devotions of another sort, and the ‘Hours’ of Erycina
+Ridens.  One of her treasures had singular fortunes, a copy of ‘Daphnis
+and Chloe,’ with the Regent’s illustrations, and those of Cochin and
+Eisen (Paris, quarto, 1757, red morocco).  The covers are adorned with
+billing and cooing doves, with the arrows of Eros, with burning hearts,
+and sheep and shepherds.  Eighteen years ago this volume was bought for
+10 francs in a village in Hungary.  A bookseller gave £8 for it in Paris.
+M. Bauchart paid for it £150; and as it has left his shelves, probably he
+too made no bad bargain.  Madame de Pompadour’s ‘Apology for Herodotus’
+(La Haye, 1735) has also its legend.  It belonged to M. Paillet, who
+coveted a glorified copy of the ‘Pastissier François,’ in M. Bauchart’s
+collection.  M Paillet swopped it, with a number of others, for the
+‘Pastissier:’
+
+             J’avais ‘L’Apologie
+    Pour Hérodote,’ en reliûre ancienne, amour
+    De livre provenant de chez la Pompadour
+    Il me le soutira! {148}
+
+Of Marie Antoinette, with whom our lady book-lovers of the old _régime_
+must close, there survive many books.  She had a library in the
+Tuileries, as well as at le petit Trianon.  Of all her great and varied
+collections, none is now so valued as her little book of prayers, which
+was her consolation in the worst of all her evil days, in the Temple and
+the Conciergerie.  The book is ‘Office de la Divine Providence’ (Paris,
+1757, green morocco).  On the fly-leaf the Queen wrote, some hours before
+her death, these touching lines: “Ce 16 Octobre, à 4 h. ½ du matin.  Mon
+Dieu! ayez pitié de moi!  Mes yeux n’ont plus de larmes pour prier pour
+vous, mes pauvres enfants.  Adieu, adieu!—MARIE ANTOINETTE.”
+
+There can be no sadder relic of a greater sorrow, and the last
+consolation of the Queen did not escape the French popular genius for
+cruelty and insult.  The arms on the covers of the prayer-book have been
+cut out by some fanatic of Equality and Fraternity.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{12}  See illustrations, pp. 114, 115.
+
+{19}  “Slate” is a professional term for a severe criticism.  Clearly the
+word is originally “slat,” a narrow board of wood, with which a person
+might be beaten.
+
+{66}  _Histoire des Intrigues Amoureuses de Molière_, _et de celles de sa
+femme_.  (_A la Sphère_.)  A Francfort, chez Frédéric Arnaud, MDCXCVII.
+This anonymous tract has actually been attributed to Racine.  The copy
+referred to is marked with a large N in red, with an eagle’s head.
+
+{67a}  _The Lady of the Lake_, 1810.
+
+                    _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 1806.
+
+              “To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw, Peel.  From the Author.”
+
+{67b}  _Dictys Cretensis_.  Apud Lambertum Roulland.  Lut.  Paris., 1680.
+In red morocco, with the arms of Colbert.
+
+{67c}  _L. Annæi Senecæ Opera Omnia_.  Lug. Bat., apud Elzevirios.  1649.
+With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex.
+
+{67d}  _Stratonis Epigrammata_.  Altenburgi, 1764.  Straton bound up in
+one volume with Epictetus!  From the Beckford library.
+
+{67e}  _Opera Helii Eobani Hessi_.  Yellow morocco, with the first arms
+of De Thou.  Includes a poem addressed “LANGE, _decus meum_.”  Quantity
+of penultimate “Eobanus” taken for granted, _metri gratiâ_.
+
+{68a}  _La Journée du Chrétien_.  Coutances, 1831.  With inscription,
+“Léon Gambetta.  Rue St. Honoré.  Janvier 1, 1848.”
+
+{68b}  _Villoison’s Homer_.  Venice, 1788.  With Tessier’s ticket and
+Schlegel’s book-plate.
+
+{68c}  _Les Essais de Michel_, _Seigneur de Montaigne_.  “Pour François
+le Febvre de Lyon, 1695.”  With autograph of Gul. Drummond, and cipresso
+e palma.
+
+{68d}  “The little old foxed Molière,” once the property of William Pott,
+unknown to fame.
+
+{73}  That there ever were such editors is much disputed.  The story may
+be a fiction of the age of the Ptolemies.
+
+{74}  Or, more easily, in Maury’s _Religions de la Grèce_.
+
+{94}  See Essay on ‘Lady Book-Lovers.’
+
+{102}  See Essay on ‘Lady Book-Lovers.’
+
+{107}  For a specimen of Madame Pompadour’s binding see overleaf.  She
+had another Rabelais in calf, lately to be seen in a shop in Pall Mall.
+
+{119a}  Mr. Payne does not give the date of the edition from which he
+copies the cut.  Apparently it is of the fifteenth century.
+
+{119b}  Reproduced in _The Library_, p. 94.
+
+{145}  Country papers, please copy.  Poets at a distance will kindly
+accept this intimation.
+
+{148}  Bibliothèque d’un Bibliophile.  Lille, 1885.
+
+
+
+
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+<title>Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Books and Bookmen
+
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2015  [eBook #1961]
+[This file was first posted on March 18, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by
+David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>BOOKS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AND</span><br />
+BOOKMEN</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+ANDREW LANG</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic"
+ src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br />
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.<br />
+1887</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+v</span><i>To</i><br />
+<i>THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY</i>.</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Madame</span>, it is no
+modish thing,<br />
+The bookman&rsquo;s tribute that I bring;<br />
+A talk of antiquaries grey,<br />
+Dust unto dust this many a day,<br />
+Gossip of texts and bindings old,<br />
+Of faded type, and tarnish&rsquo;d gold!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Can ladies care for this to-do</i><br />
+<i>With Payne</i>, <i>Derome</i>, <i>and Padeloup</i>?<br />
+<i>Can they resign the rout</i>, <i>the ball</i>,<br />
+<i>For lonely joys of shelf and stall</i>?</p>
+<p class="poetry">The critic thus, serenely wise;<br />
+But you can read with other eyes,<br />
+Whose books and bindings treasured are<br />
+&rsquo;Midst mingled spoils of peace and war;<br />
+Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost,<br />
+And trinkets from the Golden Coast,<br />
+And many things divinely done<br />
+By Chippendale and Sheraton,<br />
+<a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>And
+trophies of Egyptian deeds,<br />
+And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads,<br />
+Pomander boxes, assegais,<br />
+And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro&rsquo;s days.</p>
+<p class="poetry">In this pell-mell of old and new,<br />
+Of war and peace, my essays, too,<br />
+For long in serials tempest-tost,<br />
+Are landed now, and are not lost:<br />
+Nay, on your shelf secure they lie,<br />
+As in the amber sleeps the fly.<br />
+&rsquo;Tis true, they are not &ldquo;rich nor rare;&rdquo;<br />
+Enough, for me, that they are&mdash;there!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. L</p>
+<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+vii</span>PREFACE.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> essays in this volume have, for
+the most part, already appeared in an American edition (Combes,
+New York, 1886).&nbsp; The Essays on &lsquo;Old French
+Title-Pages&rsquo; and &lsquo;Lady Book-Lovers&rsquo; take the
+place of &lsquo;Book Binding&rsquo; and &lsquo;Bookmen at
+Rome;&rsquo; &lsquo;Elzevirs&rsquo; and &lsquo;Some Japanese
+Bogie-Books&rsquo; are reprinted, with permission of Messrs.
+Cassell, from the Magazine of Art; &lsquo;Curiosities of Parish
+Registers&rsquo; from the Guardian; &lsquo;Literary
+Forgeries&rsquo; from the Contemporary Review; &lsquo;Lady
+Book-Lovers&rsquo; from the Fortnightly Review; &lsquo;A
+Bookman&rsquo;s Purgatory&rsquo; and two of the pieces of verse
+from Longman&rsquo;s Magazine&mdash;with the courteous permission
+of the various editors.&nbsp; All the chapters have been revised,
+and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for his kind care in reading
+the proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P., for a similar
+service to the Essay on &lsquo;Parish Registers.&rsquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+ix</span>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Elzevirs</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page3">3</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Ballade of the Real and
+Ideal</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page18">18</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Curiosities of Parish
+Registers</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page20">20</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Rowfant Books</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page36">36</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">To F. L.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page38">38</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Some Japanese Bogie-books</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page40">40</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Ghosts in the Library</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Literary Forgeries</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Bibliomania in France</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page90">90</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Old French Title-pages</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page109">109</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Bookman&rsquo;s Purgatory</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page121">121</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Ballade of the Unattainable</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page133">133</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Lady Book-lovers</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page135">135</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="pagexi"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xi</span>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Elzevir Spheres</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image5">5</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Elzevir title-page of the
+&lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; of Thomas &agrave; Kempis</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image8">8</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Elzevir &lsquo;Sage&rsquo;</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image12">12</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Japanese Children.&nbsp; Drawn by
+Hokusai</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image41">41</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Storm-fiend</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image45">45</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Snow-bogie</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image51">51</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Simulacrum Vulgare</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image55">55</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Well and Water bogie</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image57">57</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Raising the Wind</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image61">61</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Chink and Crevice Bogie</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image63">63</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Fac-simile of binding from the Library
+of Grolier</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image100">100</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Binding with the arms of Madame de
+Pompadour</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image108">108</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Old French title-pages</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image110">110</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image111">111</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image113">113</a></span>&ndash;16, <span
+class="imageref"><a href="#image119">119</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+3</span>ELZEVIRS.</h2>
+<p><i>The Countryman</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;You know how much, for
+some time past, the editions of the Elzevirs have been in
+demand.&nbsp; The fancy for them has even penetrated into the
+country.&nbsp; I am acquainted with a man there who denies
+himself necessaries, for the sake of collecting into a library
+(where other books are scarce enough) as many little Elzevirs as
+he can lay his hands upon.&nbsp; He is dying of hunger, and his
+consolation is to be able to say, &lsquo;I have all the poets
+whom the Elzevirs printed.&nbsp; I have ten examples of each of
+them, all with red letters, and all of the right
+date.&rsquo;&nbsp; This, no doubt, is a craze, for, good as the
+books are, if he kept them to read them, one example of each
+would be enough.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>The Parisian</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;If he had wanted to read
+them, I would not have advised him to buy Elzevirs.&nbsp; The
+editions of minor authors which these booksellers published, even
+editions &lsquo;of the right date,&rsquo; as you say, are not too
+correct.&nbsp; Nothing is good in the books but the type and the
+paper.&nbsp; Your friend would have done better to use the
+editions of Gryphius or Estienne.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This fragment of a literary dialogue I translate from
+&lsquo;Entretiens sur les Contes de F&eacute;es,&rsquo; a book
+which contains more of old talk about books and booksellers than
+about fairies and folk-lore.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Entretiens&rsquo;
+were published in 1699, about sixteen years after the Elzevirs
+ceased to be publishers.&nbsp; The fragment is valuable: first,
+because it shows us how early the taste for collecting Elzevirs
+was fully developed, and, secondly, because it contains very
+sound criticism of the mania.&nbsp; Already, in the seventeenth
+century, lovers of the tiny Elzevirian books waxed pathetic over
+dates, already they knew that a &lsquo;C&aelig;sar&rsquo; of 1635
+was the right &lsquo;C&aelig;sar,&rsquo; already they were fond
+of the red-lettered passages, as in the first edition of the
+&lsquo;Virgil&rsquo; of 1636.&nbsp; As early as 1699, too, the
+Parisian critic knew that the editions were not very correct, and
+that the paper, type, ornaments, and <i>format</i> were their
+main attractions.&nbsp; To these we must now add the rarity of
+really good Elzevirs.</p>
+<p>Though Elzevirs have been more fashionable than at present,
+they are still regarded by novelists as the great prize of the
+book collector.&nbsp; You read in novels about &ldquo;priceless
+little Elzevirs,&rdquo; about books &ldquo;as rare as an old
+Elzevir.&rdquo;&nbsp; I have met, in the works of a lady novelist
+(but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir
+&lsquo;Theocritus.&rsquo;&nbsp; The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon
+introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek
+Testament, &ldquo;worth its weight in gold.&rdquo;&nbsp; Casual
+remarks of this kind encourage a popular delusion that all
+Elzevirs are pearls of considerable price.&nbsp; When a man is
+first smitten with the pleasant fever of book-collecting, it is
+for Elzevirs that he searches.&nbsp; At first he thinks himself
+in amazing luck.&nbsp; In Booksellers&rsquo; Row and in Castle
+Street he &ldquo;picks up,&rdquo; for a shilling or two,
+Elzevirs, real or supposed.&nbsp; To the beginner, any book with
+a sphere on the title-page is an Elzevir.&nbsp; For the
+beginner&rsquo;s instruction, two copies of spheres are printed
+here.&nbsp; The second is a sphere, an ill-cut, ill-drawn sphere,
+which is not Elzevirian at all.&nbsp; The mark was used in the
+seventeenth century by many other booksellers and printers.&nbsp;
+The first, on the other hand, is a true Elzevirian sphere, from a
+play of Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s, printed in 1675.&nbsp; Observe
+the comparatively neat drawing of the first sphere, and be not
+led away after spurious imitations.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image5" href="images/p5b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Elzevir Spheres"
+title=
+"Elzevir Spheres"
+ src="images/p5s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Beware, too, of the vulgar error of fancying that little
+duodecimos with the mark of the fox and the bee&rsquo;s nest, and
+the motto &ldquo;Quaerendo,&rdquo; come from the press of the
+Elzevirs.&nbsp; The mark is that of Abraham Wolfgang, which name
+is not a pseudonym for Elzevir.&nbsp; There are three sorts of
+Elzevir pseudonyms.&nbsp; First, they occasionally reprinted the
+full title-page, publisher&rsquo;s name and all, of the book they
+pirated.&nbsp; Secondly, when they printed books of a
+&ldquo;dangerous&rdquo; sort, Jansenist pamphlets and so forth,
+they used pseudonyms like &ldquo;Nic. Schouter,&rdquo; on the
+&lsquo;Lettres Provinciales&rsquo; of Pascal.&nbsp; Thirdly,
+there are real pseudonyms employed by the Elzevirs.&nbsp; John
+and Daniel, printing at Leyden (1652&ndash;1655), used the false
+name &ldquo;Jean Sambix.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Elzevirs of Amsterdam
+often placed the name &ldquo;Jacques le Jeune&rdquo; on their
+title-pages.&nbsp; The collector who remembers these things must
+also see that his purchases have the right ornaments at the heads
+of chapters, the right tail-pieces at the ends.&nbsp; Two of the
+most frequently recurring ornaments are the so-called
+&ldquo;T&ecirc;te de Buffle&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;Sir&egrave;ne.&rdquo;&nbsp; More or less clumsy copies of
+these and the other Elzevirian ornaments are common enough in
+books of the period, even among those printed out of the Low
+Countries; for example, in books published in Paris.</p>
+<p>A brief sketch of the history of the Elzevirs may here be
+useful.&nbsp; The founder of the family, a Flemish bookbinder,
+Louis, left Louvain and settled in Leyden in 1580.&nbsp; He
+bought a house opposite the University, and opened a
+book-shop.&nbsp; Another shop, on college ground, was opened in
+1587.&nbsp; Louis was a good bookseller, a very ordinary
+publisher.&nbsp; It was not till shortly before his death, in
+1617, that his grandson Isaac bought a set of types and other
+material.&nbsp; Louis left six sons.&nbsp; Two of these, Matthew
+and Bonaventure, kept on the business, dating <i>ex officina
+Elzeviriana</i>.&nbsp; In 1625 Bonaventure and Abraham (son of
+Matthew) became partners.&nbsp; The &ldquo;good dates&rdquo; of
+Elzevirian books begin from 1626.&nbsp; The two Elzevirs chose
+excellent types, and after nine years&rsquo; endeavours turned
+out the beautiful &lsquo;C&aelig;sar&rsquo; of 1635.</p>
+<p>Their classical series in <i>petit format</i> was opened with
+&lsquo;Horace&rsquo; and &lsquo;Ovid&rsquo; in 1629.&nbsp; In
+1641 they began their elegant piracies of French plays and poetry
+with &lsquo;Le Cid.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was worth while being pirated
+by the Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with
+<i>fleurons</i> and red letters, and a pretty frontispiece.&nbsp;
+The modern pirate dresses you in rags, prints you murderously,
+and binds you, if he binds you at all, in some hideous example of
+&ldquo;cloth extra,&rdquo; all gilt, like archaic
+gingerbread.&nbsp; Bonaventure and Abraham both died in
+1652.&nbsp; They did not depart before publishing (1628), in
+<i>grand format</i>, a desirable work on fencing,
+Thibault&rsquo;s &lsquo;Acad&eacute;mie de
+l&rsquo;Esp&eacute;e.&rsquo;&nbsp; This Tibbald also killed by
+the book.&nbsp; John and Daniel Elzevir came next.&nbsp; They
+brought out the &lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; (Thom&aelig; a Kempis
+canonici regularis ord.&nbsp; S. Augustini De Imitatione Christi,
+libri iv.); I wish by taking thought I could add eight
+millimetres to the stature of my copy.&nbsp; In 1655 Daniel
+joined a cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and John stayed in
+Leyden.&nbsp; John died in 1661; his widow struggled on, but her
+son Abraham (1681) let all fall into ruins.&nbsp; Abraham died
+1712.&nbsp; The Elzevirs of Amsterdam lasted till 1680, when
+Daniel died, and the business was wound up.&nbsp; The type, by
+Christopher Van Dyck, was sold in 1681, by Daniel&rsquo;s
+widow.&nbsp; <i>Sic transit gloria</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image8" href="images/p8b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Elzevir title-page of the &lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; of Thomas
+&agrave; Kempis"
+title=
+"Elzevir title-page of the &lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; of Thomas
+&agrave; Kempis"
+ src="images/p8s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>After he has learned all these matters the amateur has still a
+great deal to acquire.&nbsp; He may now know a real Elzevir from
+a book which is not an Elzevir at all.&nbsp; But there are
+enormous differences of value, rarity, and excellence among the
+productions of the Elzevirian press.&nbsp; The bookstalls teem
+with small, &ldquo;cropped,&rdquo; dingy, dirty, battered
+Elzevirian editions of the classics, <i>not</i> &ldquo;of the
+good date.&rdquo;&nbsp; On these it is not worth while to expend
+a couple of shillings, especially as Elzevirian type is too small
+to be read with comfort by most modern eyes.&nbsp; No, let the
+collector save his money; avoid littering his shelves with what
+he will soon find to be rubbish, and let him wait the chance of
+acquiring a really beautiful and rare Elzevir.</p>
+<p>Meantime, and before we come to describe Elzevirs of the first
+flight, let it be remembered that the &ldquo;taller&rdquo; the
+copy, the less harmed and nipped by the binder&rsquo;s shears,
+the better.&nbsp; &ldquo;Men scarcely know how beautiful fire
+is,&rdquo; says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly know
+how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original
+form.&nbsp; The Elzevirs we have may be &ldquo;dear,&rdquo; but
+they are certainly &ldquo;dumpy twelves.&rdquo;&nbsp; Their fair
+proportions have been docked by the binder.&nbsp; At the Beckford
+sale there was a pearl of a book, a &lsquo;Marot;&rsquo; not an
+Elzevir, indeed, but a book published by Wetstein, a follower of
+the Elzevirs.&nbsp; This exquisite pair of volumes, bound in blue
+morocco, was absolutely unimpaired, and was a sight to bring
+happy tears into the eyes of the amateur of Elzevirs.&nbsp; There
+was a gracious <i>svelte</i> elegance about these tomes, an
+appealing and exquisite delicacy of proportion, that linger like
+sweet music in the memory.&nbsp; I have a copy of the Wetstein
+&lsquo;Marot&rsquo; myself, not a bad copy, though murderously
+bound in that ecclesiastical sort of brown calf antique, which
+goes well with hymn books, and reminds one of cakes of
+chocolate.&nbsp; But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in
+height, whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the
+great Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court) was at least 130 millimetres
+high.&nbsp; Beside the uncut example mine looks like
+Cinderella&rsquo;s plain sister beside the beauty of the
+family.</p>
+<p>Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only
+tall Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall
+Elzevirs are worth collecting.&nbsp; Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks
+that the King of Lilliput was taller than any of his court by
+almost the breadth of a nail, and that his altitude filled the
+minds of all with awe.&nbsp; Well, the Philistine may think a few
+millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of
+little importance.&nbsp; When he comes to sell, he will discover
+the difference.&nbsp; An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good
+Elzevir may be worth fifty or sixty pounds or more; an ordinary
+copy may bring fewer pence.&nbsp; The binders usually pare down
+the top and bottom more than the sides.&nbsp; I have a
+&lsquo;Rabelais&rsquo; of the good date, with the red title
+(1663), and some of the pages have never been opened, at the
+sides.&nbsp; But the height is only some 122 millimetres, a mere
+dwarf.&nbsp; Anything over 130 millimetres is very rare.&nbsp;
+Therefore the collector of Elzevirs should have one of those
+useful ivory-handled knives on which the French measures are
+marked, and thus he will at once be able to satisfy himself as to
+the exact height of any example which he encounters.</p>
+<p>Let us now assume that the amateur quite understands what a
+proper Elzevir should be: tall, clean, well bound if possible,
+and of the good date.&nbsp; But we have still to learn what the
+good dates are, and this is matter for the study and practice of
+a well-spent life.&nbsp; We may gossip about a few of the more
+famous Elzevirs, those without which no collection is
+complete.&nbsp; Of all Elzevirs the most famous and the most
+expensive is an old cookery book, &ldquo;&lsquo;Le Pastissier
+Fran&ccedil;ois.&rsquo;&nbsp; Wherein is taught the way to make
+all sorts of pastry, useful to all sorts of persons.&nbsp; Also
+the manner of preparing all manner of eggs, for fast-days, and
+other days, in more than sixty fashions.&nbsp; Amsterdam, Louys,
+and Daniel Elsevier. 1665.&rdquo;&nbsp; The mark is not the old
+&ldquo;Sage,&rdquo; but the &ldquo;Minerva&rdquo; with her
+owl.&nbsp; Now this book has no intrinsic value any more than a
+Tauchnitz reprint of any modern volume on cooking.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; is cherished because it is so very
+rare.&nbsp; The tract passed into the hands of cooks, and the
+hands of cooks are detrimental to literature.&nbsp; Just as
+nursery books, fairy tales, and the like are destroyed from
+generation to generation, so it happens with books used in the
+kitchen.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Pastissier,&rsquo; to be sure, has a
+good frontispiece, a scene in a Low Country kitchen, among the
+dead game and the dainties.&nbsp; The buxom cook is making a game
+pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the bird&rsquo;s head and
+tail-feathers, is already made. <a name="citation12"></a><a
+href="#footnote12" class="citation">[12]</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image12" href="images/p12b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Elzevir &lsquo;Sage&rsquo;"
+title=
+"Elzevir &lsquo;Sage&rsquo;"
+ src="images/p12s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the
+&lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; coveted.&nbsp; In an early edition of
+the &lsquo;Manuel&rsquo; (1821) Brunet says, with a feigned
+brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), &ldquo;Till now I
+have disdained to admit this book into my work, but I have
+yielded to the prayers of amateurs.&nbsp; Besides, how could I
+keep out a volume which was sold for one hundred and one francs
+in 1819?&rdquo;&nbsp; One hundred and one francs!&nbsp; If I
+could only get a &lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; for one hundred and one
+francs!&nbsp; But our grandfathers lived in the Bookman&rsquo;s
+Paradise.&nbsp; &ldquo;Il n&rsquo;est pas jusqu&rsquo;aux
+Anglais,&rdquo; adds Brunet&mdash;&ldquo;the very English
+themselves&mdash;have a taste for the
+&lsquo;Pastissier.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; The Duke of
+Marlborough&rsquo;s copy was actually sold for &pound;1 4s.&nbsp;
+It would have been money in the ducal pockets of the house of
+Marlborough to have kept this volume till the general sale of all
+their portable property at which our generation is privileged to
+assist.&nbsp; No wonder the &lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; was thought
+rare.&nbsp; B&eacute;rard only knew two copies.&nbsp; Pietiers,
+writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five
+&lsquo;Pastissiers,&rsquo; and in his &lsquo;Annales&rsquo; he
+had found out but five more.&nbsp; Willems, on the other hand,
+enumerates some thirty, not including Motteley&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Motteley was an uncultivated, untaught enthusiast.&nbsp; He knew
+no Latin, but he had a <i>flair</i> for uncut Elzevirs.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Incomptis capillis,&rdquo; he would cry (it was all his
+lore) as he gloated over his treasures.&nbsp; They were all burnt
+by the Commune in the Louvre Library.</p>
+<p>A few examples may be given of the prices brought by &lsquo;Le
+Pastissier&rsquo; in later days.&nbsp; Sensier&rsquo;s copy was
+but 128 millimetres in height, and had the old ordinary vellum
+binding,&mdash;in fact, it closely resembled a copy which Messrs.
+Ellis and White had for sale in Bond Street in 1883.&nbsp; The
+English booksellers asked, I think, about 1,500 francs for their
+copy.&nbsp; Sensier&rsquo;s was sold for 128 francs in April,
+1828; for 201 francs in 1837.&nbsp; Then the book was gloriously
+bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, and was sold with Potier&rsquo;s books
+in 1870, when it fetched 2,910 francs.&nbsp; At the Benzon sale
+(1875) it fetched 3,255 francs, and, falling dreadfully in price,
+was sold again in 1877 for 2,200 francs.&nbsp; M. Dutuit, at
+Rouen, has a taller copy, bound by Bauzonnet.&nbsp; Last time it
+was sold (1851) it brought 251 francs.&nbsp; The Duc de Chartres
+has now the copy of Pieters, the historian of the Elzevirs,
+valued at 3,000 francs.</p>
+<p>About thirty years ago no fewer than three copies were sold at
+Brighton, of all places.&nbsp; M. Quentin Bauchart had a copy
+only 127 millimetres in height, which he swopped to M.
+Paillet.&nbsp; M. Chartener, of Metz, had a copy now bound by
+Bauzonnet which was sold for four francs in 1780.&nbsp; We call
+this the age of cheap books, but before the Revolution books were
+cheaper.&nbsp; It is fair to say, however, that this example of
+the &lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; was then bound up with another book,
+Vlacq&rsquo;s edition of &lsquo;Le Cuisinier
+Fran&ccedil;ois,&rsquo; and so went cheaper than it would
+otherwise have done.&nbsp; M. de Fontaine de Resbecq declares
+that a friend of his bought six original pieces of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s bound up with an old French translation of
+Garth&rsquo;s &lsquo;Dispensary.&rsquo;&nbsp; The one faint hope
+left to the poor book collector is that he may find a valuable
+tract lurking in the leaves of some bound collection of
+trash.&nbsp; I have an original copy of Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Les Fascheux&rsquo; bound up with a treatise on precious
+stones, but the bookseller from whom I bought it knew it was
+there!&nbsp; That made all the difference.</p>
+<p>But, to return to our &lsquo;Pastissier,&rsquo; here is M. de
+Fontaine de Resbecq&rsquo;s account of how he wooed and won his
+own copy of this illustrious Elzevir.&nbsp; &ldquo;I began my
+walk to-day,&rdquo; says this haunter of ancient stalls,
+&ldquo;by the Pont Marie and the Quai de la Gr&egrave;ve, the
+pillars of Hercules of the book-hunting world.&nbsp; After having
+viewed and reviewed these remote books, I was going away, when my
+attention was caught by a small naked volume, without a stitch of
+binding.&nbsp; I seized it, and what was my delight when I
+recognised one of the rarest of that famed Elzevir collection
+whose height is measured as minutely as the carats of the
+diamond.&nbsp; There was no indication of price on the box where
+this jewel was lying; the book, though unbound, was perfectly
+clean within.&nbsp; &lsquo;How much?&rsquo; said I to the
+bookseller.&nbsp; &lsquo;You can have it for six sous,&rsquo; he
+answered; &lsquo;is it too much?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;No,&rsquo;
+said I, and, trembling a little, I handed him the thirty centimes
+he asked for the &lsquo;Pastissier Fran&ccedil;ois.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+You may believe, my friend, that after such a piece of luck at
+the start, one goes home fondly embracing the beloved object of
+one&rsquo;s search.&nbsp; That is exactly what I did.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Can this tale be true?&nbsp; Is such luck given by the jealous
+fates <i>mortalibus &aelig;gris</i>?&nbsp; M. de Resbecq&rsquo;s
+find was made apparently in 1856, when trout were plenty in the
+streams, and rare books not so very rare.&nbsp; To my own
+knowledge an English collector has bought an original play of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s, in the original vellum, for
+eighteenpence.&nbsp; But no one has such luck any longer.&nbsp;
+Not, at least, in London.&nbsp; A more expensive
+&lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; than that which brought six sous was
+priced in Bachelin-Deflorenne&rsquo;s catalogue at
+&pound;240.&nbsp; A curious thing occurred when two uncut
+&lsquo;Pastissiers&rsquo; turned up simultaneously in
+Paris.&nbsp; One of them Morgand and Fatout sold for
+&pound;400.&nbsp; Clever people argued that one of the twin uncut
+&lsquo;Pastissiers&rsquo; must be an imitation, a facsimile by
+means of photogravure, or some other process.&nbsp; But it was
+triumphantly established that both were genuine; they had minute
+points of difference in the ornaments.</p>
+<p>M. Willems, the learned historian of the Elzevirs, is
+indignant at the successes of a book which, as Brunet declares,
+is badly printed.&nbsp; There must be at least forty known
+&lsquo;Pastissiers&rsquo; in the world.&nbsp; Yes; but there are
+at least 4,000 people who would greatly rejoice to possess a
+&lsquo;Pastissier,&rsquo; and some of these desirous ones are
+very wealthy.&nbsp; While this state of the market endures, the
+&lsquo;Pastissier&rsquo; will fetch higher prices than the other
+varieties.&nbsp; Another extremely rare Elzevir is
+&lsquo;L&rsquo;Illustre Th&eacute;&acirc;tre de Mons.
+Corneille&rsquo; (Leyden, 1644).&nbsp; This contains &lsquo;Le
+Cid,&rsquo; &lsquo;Les Horaces,&rsquo; &lsquo;Le Cinna,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;La Mort de Pomp&eacute;e,&rsquo; &lsquo;Le
+Polyeucte.&rsquo;&nbsp; The name, &lsquo;L&rsquo;Illustre
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tre,&rsquo; appearing at that date has an
+interest of its own.&nbsp; In 1643&ndash;44, Moli&egrave;re and
+Madeleine B&eacute;jart had just started the company which they
+called &lsquo;L&rsquo;Illustre Th&eacute;&acirc;tre.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Only six or seven copies of the book are actually known, though
+three or four are believed to exist in England, probably all
+covered with dust in the library of some lord.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+has a very good library,&rdquo; I once heard some one say to a
+noble earl, whose own library was famous.&nbsp; &ldquo;And what
+can a fellow do with a very good library?&rdquo; answered the
+descendant of the Crusaders, who probably (being a youth
+light-hearted and content) was ignorant of his own great
+possessions.&nbsp; An expensive copy of &lsquo;L&rsquo;Illustre
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tre,&rsquo; bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, was sold
+for &pound;300.</p>
+<p>Among Elzevirs desirable, yet not hopelessly rare, is the
+&lsquo;Virgil&rsquo; of 1636.&nbsp; Heinsius was the editor of
+this beautiful volume, prettily printed, but incorrect.&nbsp;
+Probably it is hard to correct with absolute accuracy works in
+the clear but minute type which the Elzevirs affected.&nbsp; They
+have won fame by the elegance of their books, but their intention
+was to sell good books cheap, like Michel L&eacute;vy.&nbsp; The
+small type was required to get plenty of &ldquo;copy&rdquo; into
+little bulk.&nbsp; Nicholas Heinsius, the son of the editor of
+the &lsquo;Virgil,&rsquo; when he came to correct his
+father&rsquo;s edition, found that it contained so many
+coquilles, or misprints, as to be nearly the most incorrect copy
+in the world.&nbsp; Heyne says, &ldquo;Let the
+&lsquo;Virgil&rsquo; be one of the rare Elzevirs, if you please,
+but within it has scarcely a trace of any good
+quality.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yet the first edition of this beautiful
+little book, with its two passages of red letters, is so
+desirable that, till he could possess it, Charles Nodier would
+not profane his shelves by any &lsquo;Virgil&rsquo; at all.</p>
+<p>Equally fine is the &lsquo;C&aelig;sar&rsquo; of 1635, which,
+with the &lsquo;Virgil&rsquo; of 1636 and the
+&lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; without date, M. Willems thinks the most
+successful works of the Elzevirs, &ldquo;one of the most enviable
+jewels in the casket of the bibliophile.&rdquo;&nbsp; It may be
+recognised by the page 238, which is erroneously printed
+248.&nbsp; A good average height is from 125 to 128
+millimetres.&nbsp; The highest known is 130 millimetres.&nbsp;
+This book, like the &lsquo;Imitation,&rsquo; has one of the
+pretty and ingenious frontispieces which the Elzevirs prefixed to
+their books.&nbsp; So farewell, and good speed in your sport, ye
+hunters of Elzevirs, and may you find perhaps the rarest Elzevir
+of all, &lsquo;L&rsquo;Aimable M&egrave;re de
+J&eacute;sus.&rsquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+18</span><i>BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL</i>.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(DOUBLE REFRAIN.)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry">O <span class="smcap">visions</span> of salmon
+tremendous,<br />
+Of trout of unusual weight,<br />
+Of waters that wander as Ken does,<br />
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!<br />
+But the skies that bring never a &ldquo;spate,&rdquo;<br />
+But the flies that catch up in a thorn,<br />
+But the creel that is barren of freight,<br />
+Through the portals of horn!</p>
+<p class="poetry">O dreams of the Fates that attend us<br />
+With prints in the earliest state,<br />
+O bargains in books that they send us,<br />
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!<br />
+But the tome that has never a mate,<br />
+But the quarto that&rsquo;s tattered and torn,<br />
+And bereft of a title and date,<br />
+Through the portals of horn!</p>
+<p class="poetry">O dreams of the tongues that commend us,<br />
+Of crowns for the laureate pate,<br />
+Of a public to buy and befriend us,<br />
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!<br />
+But the critics that slash us and slate, <a
+name="citation19"></a><a href="#footnote19"
+class="citation">[19]</a><br />
+But the people that hold us in scorn,<br />
+But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate,<br />
+Through the portals of horn!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">ENVOY.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Fair dreams of things golden and great,<br />
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate;<br />
+But the facts that are bleak and forlorn,<br />
+Through the portals of horn!</p>
+<h2><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+20</span><i>CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> are three classes of persons
+who are deeply concerned with parish registers&mdash;namely,
+villains, antiquaries, and the sedulous readers, &ldquo;parish
+clerks and others,&rdquo; of the second or &ldquo;agony&rdquo;
+column of the Times.&nbsp; Villains are probably the most
+numerous of these three classes.&nbsp; The villain of fiction
+dearly loves a parish register: he cuts out pages, inserts
+others, intercalates remarks in a different coloured ink, and
+generally manipulates the register as a Greek manages his hand at
+<i>&eacute;cart&eacute;</i>, or as a Hebrew dealer in Moabite
+bric-&agrave;-brac treats a synagogue roll.&nbsp; We well
+remember one villain who had locked himself into the vestry (he
+was disguised as an arch&aelig;ologist), and who was enjoying his
+wicked pleasure with the register, when the vestry somehow caught
+fire, the rusty key would not turn in the door, and the villain
+was roasted alive, in spite of the disinterested efforts to save
+him made by all the virtuous characters in the story.&nbsp; Let
+the fate of this bold, bad man be a warning to wicked earls,
+baronets, and all others who attempt to destroy the record of the
+marriage of a hero&rsquo;s parents.&nbsp; Fate will be too strong
+for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish clerk, or
+carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the vestry
+and of the iron chest in which a register should repose.</p>
+<p>There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of
+villains, if the new bill, entitled &ldquo;The Parish Registers
+Preservation Act,&rdquo; ever becomes law.&nbsp; The bill
+provides that every register earlier than 1837 shall be committed
+to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and removed to the Record
+Office.&nbsp; Now the common villain of fiction would feel sadly
+out of place in the Register Office, where a more watchful eye
+than that of a comic parish clerk would be kept on his
+proceedings.&nbsp; Villains and local antiquaries will,
+therefore, use all their parliamentary influence to oppose and
+delay this bill, which is certainly hard on the parish
+arch&aelig;ologist.&nbsp; The men who grub in their local
+registers, and slowly compile parish or county history, deserve
+to be encouraged rather than depressed.&nbsp; Mr. Chester Waters,
+therefore, has suggested that copies of registers should be made,
+and the comparatively legible copy left in the parish, while the
+crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office in
+London.&nbsp; Thus the local antiquary would really have his work
+made more easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would
+quite enjoy that condescension), while the villain of romance
+would be foiled; for it is useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie
+Murray&rsquo;s proves) to alter the register in the keeping of
+the parish when the original document is safe in the Record
+Office.&nbsp; But previous examples of enforced transcription (as
+in 1603) do not encourage us to suppose that the copies would be
+very scrupulously made.&nbsp; Thus, after the Reformation, the
+prayers for the dead in the old registers were omitted by the
+copyist, who seemed to think (as the contractor for
+&ldquo;sandwich men&rdquo; said to the poor fellows who carried
+the letter H), &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want you, and the public
+don&rsquo;t want you, and you&rsquo;re no use to
+nobody.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again, when Laurence Fletcher was buried in
+St. Saviour&rsquo;s, Southwark, in 1608, the old register
+described him as &ldquo;a player, the King&rsquo;s
+servant.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the clerk, keeping a note-book, simply
+called Laurence Fletcher &ldquo;a man,&rdquo; and (in 1625) he
+also styled Mr. John Fletcher &ldquo;a man.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now, the
+old register calls Mr. John Fletcher &ldquo;a poet.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To copy all the parish registers in England would be a very
+serious task, and would probably be but slovenly performed.&nbsp;
+If they were reproduced, again, by any process of photography,
+the old difficult court hand would remain as hard as ever.&nbsp;
+But this is a minor objection, for the local antiquary revels in
+the old court hand.</p>
+<p>From the little volume by Mr. Chester Waters, already referred
+to (&lsquo;Parish Registers in England;&rsquo; printed for the
+author by F. J. Roberts, Little Britain, E.C.), we proceed to
+appropriate such matters of curiosity as may interest minds
+neither parochial nor doggedly antiquarian.&nbsp; Parish
+registers among the civilised peoples of antiquity do not greatly
+concern us.&nbsp; It seems certain that many Polynesian races
+have managed to record (in verse, or by some rude marks) the
+genealogies of their chiefs through many hundreds of years.&nbsp;
+These oral registers are accepted as fairly truthful by some
+students, yet we must remember that Pindar supposed himself to
+possess knowledge of at least twenty-five generations before his
+own time, and that only brought him up to the birth of
+Jason.&nbsp; Nobody believes in Jason and Medea, and possibly the
+genealogical records of Maoris and Fijians are as little
+trustworthy as those of Pindaric Greece.&nbsp; However, to
+consider thus is to consider too curiously.&nbsp; We only know
+for certain that genealogy very soon becomes important, and,
+therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing
+civilisation.&nbsp; &ldquo;After Nehemiah&rsquo;s return from the
+captivity in Babylon, the priests at Jerusalem whose register was
+not found were as polluted put from the priesthood.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Rome had her parish registers, which were kept in the temple of
+Saturn.&nbsp; But modern parish registers were
+&ldquo;discovered&rdquo; (like America) in 1497, when Cardinal
+Ximenes found it desirable to put on record the names of the
+godfathers and godmothers of baptised children.&nbsp; When these
+relations of &ldquo;gossip,&rdquo; or God&rsquo;s kin (as the
+word literally means), were not certainly known, married persons
+could easily obtain divorces, by pretending previous spiritual
+relationship.</p>
+<p>But it was only during the reign of Mary, (called the Bloody)
+that this rule of registering godfathers and godmothers prevailed
+in England.&nbsp; Henry VIII. introduced the custom of parish
+registers when in a Protestant humour.&nbsp; By the way, how
+curiously has Madame de Flamareil (la femme de quarante ans, in
+Charles de Bernard&rsquo;s novel) anticipated the verdict of Mr.
+Froude on Henry VIII.!&nbsp; &lsquo;On accuse Henri VIII.,&rsquo;
+dit Madame de Flamareil, &ldquo;moi je le comprends, et je
+l&rsquo;absous; c&rsquo;&eacute;tait un c&oelig;ur
+g&eacute;n&eacute;reux, lorsqu&rsquo;il ne les aimait plus, il
+les tuait.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; The public of England mistrusted,
+in the matter of parish registers, the generous heart of Henry
+VIII.&nbsp; It is the fixed conviction of the public that all
+novelties in administration mean new taxes.&nbsp; Thus the
+Croatian peasantry were once on the point of revolting because
+they imagined that they were to be taxed in proportion to the
+length of their moustaches.&nbsp; The English believed, and the
+insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared, that
+baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a
+&ldquo;trybette&rdquo; (tribute) to the king.&nbsp; But Henry, or
+rather his minister, Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September
+29, 1538) issued an injunction that a weekly register of
+weddings, christenings, and burials should be kept by the curate
+of every parish.&nbsp; The cost of the book (twopence in the case
+of St. Margaret&rsquo;s, Westminster) was defrayed by the
+parishioners.&nbsp; The oldest extant register books are those
+thus acquired in 1597 or 1603.&nbsp; These volumes were of
+parchment, and entries were copied into them out of the old books
+on paper.&nbsp; The copyists, as we have seen, were indolent, and
+omitted characteristic points in the more ancient records.</p>
+<p>In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion,
+and when the clergy did make entries they commonly expressed
+their political feelings in a mixture of Latin and English.&nbsp;
+Latin, by the way, went out as Protestantism came in, but the
+curate of Rotherby, in Leicestershire, writes, &ldquo;Bellum,
+Bellum, Bellum, interruption! persecution!&rdquo;&nbsp; At St.
+Bridget&rsquo;s, in Chester, is the quaint entry,
+&ldquo;1643.&nbsp; Here the register is defective till
+1653.&nbsp; The tymes were <i>such</i>!&rdquo;&nbsp; At Hilton,
+in Dorset, William Snoke, minister, entered his opinion that
+persons whose baptism and marriage were not registered
+&ldquo;will be made uncapable of any earthly inheritance if they
+live.&nbsp; This I note for the satisfaction of any that
+do:&rdquo; though we may doubt whether these parishioners found
+the information thus conveyed highly satisfactory.</p>
+<p>The register of Maid&rsquo;s Moreton, Bucks, tells how the
+reading-desk (a spread eagle, gilt) was &ldquo;doomed to perish
+as an abominable idoll;&rdquo; and how the cross on the steeple
+nearly (but not quite) knocked out the brains of the Puritan who
+removed it.&nbsp; The Puritans had their way with the registers
+as well as with the eagle (&ldquo;the vowl,&rdquo; as the old
+country people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons as
+registrars in 1653.&nbsp; The books from 1653 to 1660, while this
+<i>r&eacute;gime</i> lasted, &ldquo;were kept exceptionally
+well,&rdquo; new brooms sweeping clean.&nbsp; The books of the
+period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christian names than we
+might have expected.&nbsp; We find, &ldquo;<i>Repente</i>
+Kytchens,&rdquo; so styled before the poor little thing had
+anything but original sin to repent of.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>Faint
+not</i> Kennard&rdquo; is also registered, and
+&ldquo;<i>Freegift</i> Mabbe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678.&nbsp; The law
+required (for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead
+should be buried in woollen winding-sheets.&nbsp; The price of
+the wool was the obolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue.&nbsp;
+After March 25, 1667, no person was to be &ldquo;buried in any
+shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole
+only.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire
+village lately beheld a ghost, &ldquo;dressed in a long narrow
+gown of woollen, with bandages round the head and chin,&rdquo; it
+is clear that the ghost was much more than a hundred years old,
+for the act &ldquo;had fallen into disuse long before it was
+repealed in 1814.&rdquo;&nbsp; But this has little to do with
+parish registers.&nbsp; The addition made to the duties of the
+keeper of the register in 1678 was this&mdash;he had to take and
+record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to the effect that
+the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric.&nbsp; The upper
+classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay the fine
+of 5<i>l</i>.&nbsp; When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress,
+was interred in 1730, her body was arrayed &ldquo;in a very fine
+Brussels lace headdress, a holland shift with a tucker and double
+ruffles of the same lace, and a pair of new kid
+gloves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1694 an empty exchequer was replenished by a tax on
+marriages, births, and burials, the very extortion which had been
+feared by the insurgents in the Pilgrimage of Grace.&nbsp; The
+tax collectors had access without payment of fee to the
+registers.&nbsp; The registration of births was discontinued when
+the Taxation Acts expired.&nbsp; An attempt to introduce the
+registration of births was made in 1753, but
+unsuccessfully.&nbsp; The public had the old superstitious dread
+of anything like a census.&nbsp; Moreover, the custom was
+denounced as &ldquo;French,&rdquo; and therefore
+abominable.&nbsp; In the same way it was thought telling to call
+the <i>cl&ocirc;ture</i> &ldquo;the French gag&rdquo; during some
+recent discussions of parliamentary rules.&nbsp; In 1783 the
+parish register was again made the instrument of taxation, and
+threepence was charged on every entry.&nbsp; Thus &ldquo;the
+clergyman was placed in the invidious light of a tax collector,
+and as the poor were often unable or unwilling to pay the tax,
+the clergy had a direct inducement to retain their good-will by
+keeping the registers defective.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when
+&ldquo;bang went saxpence&rdquo; every time a poor man had
+twins!&nbsp; Of course the Scotch rose up against this
+unparalleled extortion.&nbsp; At last, in 1812,
+&ldquo;Rose&rsquo;s Act&rdquo; was passed.&nbsp; It is styled
+&ldquo;an Act for the better regulating and preserving registers
+of births,&rdquo; but the registration of births is altogether
+omitted from its provisions.&nbsp; By a stroke of the wildest wit
+the penalty of transportation for fourteen years, for making a
+false entry, &ldquo;is to be divided equally between the informer
+and the poor of the parish.&rdquo;&nbsp; A more casual Act has
+rarely been drafted.</p>
+<p>Without entering into the modern history of parish registers,
+we may borrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found
+therein, the blunders and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and
+curates, and parish clerks.&nbsp; In quite recent times (1832) it
+was thought worth while to record that Charity Morrell at her
+wedding had signed her name in the register with her right foot,
+and that the ring had been placed on the fourth toe of her left
+foot; for poor Charity was born without arms.&nbsp; Sometimes the
+time of a birth was recorded with much minuteness, that the
+astrologers might draw a more accurate horoscope.&nbsp; Unlucky
+children, with no acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety
+of odd ways.&nbsp; In Lambeth (1685), George Speedwell is put
+down as &ldquo;a merry begot;&rdquo; Anne Twine is
+&ldquo;<i>filia uniuscujusque</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; At Croydon, a
+certain William is &ldquo;terraefilius&rdquo; (1582), an
+autochthonous infant.&nbsp; Among the queer names of foundlings
+are &ldquo;Nameless,&rdquo; &ldquo;Godsend,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Subpoena,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Moyses and Aaron, two children
+found,&rdquo; not in the bulrushes, but &ldquo;in the
+street.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rule was to give the foundling for surname the name of the
+parish, and from the Temple Church came no fewer than one hundred
+and four foundlings named &ldquo;Temple,&rdquo; between 1728 and
+1755.&nbsp; These Temples are the plebeian <i>gens</i> of the
+patrician house which claims descent from Godiva.&nbsp; The use
+of surnames as Christian names is later than the Reformation, and
+is the result of a reaction against the exclusive use of
+saints&rsquo; names from the calendar.&nbsp; Another example of
+the same reaction is the use of Old Testament names, and
+&ldquo;Ananias and Sapphira were favourite names with the
+Presbyterians.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is only fair to add that these
+names are no longer popular with Presbyterians, at any rate in
+the Kirk of Scotland.&nbsp; The old Puritan argument was that you
+would hardly select the name of too notorious a scriptural
+sinner, &ldquo;as bearing testimony to the triumph of grace over
+original sin.&rdquo;&nbsp; But in America a clergyman has been
+known to decline to christen a child &ldquo;Pontius
+Pilate,&rdquo; and no wonder.</p>
+<p>Entries of burials in ancient times often contained some
+biographical information about the deceased.&nbsp; But nothing
+could possibly be vaguer than this: &ldquo;1615, February 28, St.
+Martin&rsquo;s, Ludgate, was buried an anatomy from the College
+of Physicians.&rdquo;&nbsp; Man, woman, or child, sinner or
+saint, we know not, only that &ldquo;an anatomy&rdquo; found
+Christian burial in St. Martin&rsquo;s, Ludgate.&nbsp; How much
+more full and characteristic is this, from St.
+Peter&rsquo;s-in-the-East, Oxford (1568): &lsquo;There was buried
+Alyce, the wiff of a naughty fellow whose name is Matthew
+Manne.&rsquo;&nbsp; There is immortality for Matthew Manne, and
+there is, in short-hand, the tragedy of &ldquo;Alyce his
+wiff.&rdquo;&nbsp; The reader of this record knows more of
+Matthew than in two hundred years any one is likely to know of us
+who moralise over Matthew!&nbsp; At Kyloe, in Northumberland, the
+intellectual defects of Henry Watson have, like the naughtiness
+of Manne, secured him a measure of fame. (1696.)&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Henry was so great a fooll, that he never could put on his
+own close, nor never went a quarter of a mile off the
+house,&rdquo; as Voltaire&rsquo;s Memnon resolved never to do,
+and as Pascal partly recommends.</p>
+<p>What had Mary Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the
+Croydon register gives her of &ldquo;Queen of Hell&rdquo;?
+(1788.)&nbsp; Distinguished people were buried in effigy, in all
+the different churches with which they were connected, and each
+sham burial service was entered in the parish registers, a snare
+and stumbling-block to the historian.&nbsp; This curious custom
+is very ancient.&nbsp; Thus we read in the Odyssey that when
+Menelaus heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he reared for
+him a cenotaph, and piled an empty barrow &ldquo;that the fame of
+the dead man might never be quenched.&rdquo;&nbsp; Probably this
+old usage gave rise to the claims of several Greek cities to
+possess the tomb of this or that ancient hero.&nbsp; A heroic
+tomb, as of Cassandra for example, several towns had to show, but
+which was the true grave, which were the cenotaphs?&nbsp; Queen
+Elizabeth was buried in all the London churches, and poor
+Cassandra had her barrow in Argos, Mycen&aelig;, and
+Amycl&aelig;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A drynkyng for the soul&rdquo; of the dead, a
+&tau;&#8049;&phi;&omicron;&sigmaf; or funeral feast, was as
+common in England before the Reformation as in ancient
+Greece.&nbsp; James Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left six
+shillings and eightpence to pay for this &ldquo;drynkyng for his
+soul;&rdquo; and the funeral feast, which long survived in the
+distribution of wine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures as a
+slight collation of wine and cake in Scotland.&nbsp; What a
+funeral could be, as late as 1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by
+the bill for the burial of Andrew Card, senior bencher of
+Gray&rsquo;s Inn.&nbsp; The deceased was brave in a
+&ldquo;superfine pinked shroud&rdquo; (cheap at 1<i>l</i>.
+5<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.), and there were eight large plate
+candle-sticks on stands round the da&iuml;s, and ninety-six
+buckram escutcheons.&nbsp; The pall-bearers wore Alamode hatbands
+covered with frizances, and so did the divines who were present
+at the melancholy but gorgeous function.&nbsp; A hundred men in
+mourning carried a hundred white wax branch lights, and the
+gloves of the porters in Gray&rsquo;s Inn were ash-coloured with
+black points.&nbsp; Yet the wine cost no more than 1<i>l</i>.
+19<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.; a &ldquo;deal of sack,&rdquo; by no means
+&ldquo;intolerable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Leaving the funerals, we find that the parish register
+sometimes records ancient and obsolete modes of death.&nbsp;
+Thus, martyrs are scarce now, but the register of All
+Saints&rsquo;, Derby, 1556, mentions &ldquo;a poor blinde woman
+called Joan Waste, of this parish, a martyr, burned in Windmill
+pit.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was condemned by Ralph Baynes, Bishop of
+Coventry and Lichfield.&nbsp; In 1558, at Richmond, in Yorkshire,
+we find &ldquo;Richard Snell, b&rsquo;rnt, bur. 9
+Sept.&rdquo;&nbsp; At Croydon, in 1585, Roger Shepherd probably
+never expected to be eaten by a lioness.&nbsp; Roger was not,
+like Wyllyam Barker, &ldquo;a common drunkard and
+blasphemer,&rdquo; and we cannot regard the Croydon lioness, like
+the Nemean lion, as a miraculous monster sent against the county
+of Surrey for the sins of the people.&nbsp; The lioness
+&ldquo;was brought into the town to be seen of such as would give
+money to see her.&nbsp; He&rdquo; (Roger) &ldquo;was sore wounded
+in sundry places, and was buried the 26th Aug.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1590, the register of St. Oswald&rsquo;s, Durham, informs
+us that &ldquo;Duke, Hyll, Hogge, and Holiday&rdquo; were hanged
+and burned for &ldquo;there horrible offences.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+arm of one of these horrible offenders was preserved at St. Omer
+as the relic of a martyr, &ldquo;a most precious treasure,&rdquo;
+in 1686.&nbsp; But no one knew whether the arm belonged
+originally to Holiday, Hyll, Duke, or Hogge.&nbsp; The coals,
+when these unfortunate men were burned, cost sixpence; the other
+items in the account of the abominable execution are, perhaps,
+too repulsive to be quoted.</p>
+<p>According to some critics of the British government, we do not
+treat the Egyptians well.&nbsp; But our conduct towards the
+Fellahs has certainly improved since this entry was made in the
+register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1592, August 8th):
+&lsquo;Simson, Arington, Featherston, Fenwick, and Lancaster,
+<i>were hanged for being Egyptians</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; They were,
+in fact, gypsies, or had been consorting with gypsies, and they
+suffered under 5 Eliz. c. 20.&nbsp; In 1783 this statute was
+abolished, and was even considered &ldquo;a law of excessive
+severity.&rdquo;&nbsp; For even a hundred years ago &ldquo;the
+puling cant of sickly humanitarianism&rdquo; was making itself
+heard to the injury of our sturdy old English legislation.&nbsp;
+To be killed by a poet is now an unusual fate, but the St.
+Leonard&rsquo;s, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions how
+&ldquo;Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Gabriel was &ldquo;slayne&rdquo; by Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton
+Fields.</p>
+<p>The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in
+parish registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like
+manner.&nbsp; On August 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were
+executed for the imaginary crime of witchcraft.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+grave, for a witch, sixpence,&rdquo; is an item in the municipal
+accounts.&nbsp; And the grave was a cheap haven for the poor
+woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of a Scotch
+witch-trier.&nbsp; Cetewayo&rsquo;s medicine-men, who
+&ldquo;smelt out&rdquo; witches, were only some two centuries in
+the rear of our civilisation.&nbsp; Three hundred years ago
+Bishop Jewell, preaching before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind
+of Cetewayo and Saul, as to the wickedness of suffering a witch
+to live.&nbsp; As late as 1691, the register of Holy Island,
+Northumberland, mentions &ldquo;William Cleugh, bewitched to
+death,&rdquo; and the superstition is almost as powerful as ever
+among the rural people.&nbsp; Between July 13 and July 24 (1699)
+the widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch.&nbsp; She
+was not drowned, but survived her immersion for only five
+months.&nbsp; A singular homicide is recorded at Newington Butts,
+1689.&nbsp; &ldquo;John Arris and Derwick Farlin in one grave,
+being both Dutch soldiers; one killed the other drinking
+brandy.&rdquo;&nbsp; But who slew the slayer?&nbsp; The register
+is silent; but &ldquo;often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck
+of hasty pudding at a time caused the death of James
+Parsons,&rdquo; at Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743.&nbsp; Parsons
+had resisted the effects of shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding
+till the age of thirty-six.</p>
+<p>And so the registers run on.&nbsp; Sometimes they tell of the
+death of a glutton, sometimes of a <i>Grace wyfe</i> (grosse
+femme).&nbsp; Now the bell tolls for the decease of a duke, now
+of a &ldquo;dog-whipper.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Lutenists&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Saltpetremen&rdquo;&mdash;the skeleton of the old German
+allegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ellis Thompson, <i>insipiens</i>,&rdquo; leaves
+Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled and scrabbled on the
+doors, and follows &ldquo;William, foole to my Lady
+Jerningham,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Edward Errington, the Towne&rsquo;s
+Fooll&rdquo; (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty
+death.&nbsp; Edward Errington died &ldquo;of the pest,&rdquo; and
+another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastle had her
+regular town fools before she acquired her singularly advanced
+modern representatives.&nbsp; The &ldquo;aquavity man&rdquo; dies
+(in Cripplegate), and the &ldquo;dumb-man who was a
+fortune-teller&rdquo; (Stepney, 1628), and the
+&ldquo;King&rsquo;s Falkner,&rdquo; and Mr. Gregory Isham, who
+combined the professions, not frequently united, of
+&ldquo;attorney and husbandman,&rdquo; in Barwell, Leicestershire
+(1655).&nbsp; &ldquo;The lame chimney-sweeper,&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;King of the gypsies,&rdquo; and Alexander Willis,
+&ldquo;qui calographiam docuit,&rdquo; the linguist, and the Tom
+o&rsquo; Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the
+tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death; or, if they
+sought him, the churchyard where they were &ldquo;hurled into a
+grave&rdquo; was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight,
+with &ldquo;frankincense and sweet perfumes, and
+herbs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the
+Longborough register mentions a fresh way of death, &ldquo;the
+swat called New Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy
+master.&rdquo;&nbsp; Another malady was &lsquo;the posting swet,
+that posted from towne to towne through England.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth from the Levant,
+just as British commerce still patriotically tries to introduce
+cholera in cargoes of Egyptian rags.&nbsp; The register of
+Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, 1625), has this strange story of
+the plague:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and
+perceiving he must die at yt time, arose out of his bed, and made
+his grave, and caused his nefew, John Dawson, to cast strawe into
+the grave which was not farre from the house, and went and
+lay&rsquo;d him down in the say&rsquo;d grave, and caused clothes
+to be lay&rsquo;d uppon and so dep&rsquo;ted out of this world;
+this he did because he was a strong man, and heavier than his
+said nefew and another wench were able to bury.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the &ldquo;wench&rdquo;
+already spoken of, died, the last of the household.</p>
+<p>Old customs survive in the parish registers.&nbsp; Scolding
+wives were ducked, and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register
+tells how the sexton&rsquo;s wife &ldquo;was sett on a new
+cukking-stoole, and brought to Temes brydge, and there had three
+duckings over head and eres, because she was a common scold and
+fighter.&rdquo;&nbsp; The cucking-stool, a very elaborate engine
+of the law, cost 1<i>l</i>. 3<i>s</i>. 4<i>d</i>.&nbsp; Men were
+ducked for beating their wives, and if that custom were revived
+the profession of cucking-stool maker would become busy and
+lucrative.&nbsp; Penances of a graver sort are on record in the
+registers.&nbsp; Margaret Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was
+ordered to stand three market days in the town, and three Sundays
+in the church, in a white sheet.&nbsp; The sin imputed to her was
+a dreadful one.&nbsp; &ldquo;She stood one Saturday, and one
+Sunday, and died the next.&rdquo;&nbsp; Innocent or guilty, this
+world was no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret
+Sherioux.&nbsp; Occasionally the keeper of the register entered
+any event which seemed out of the common.&nbsp; Thus the register
+of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has this contribution to natural
+history:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a
+very greate strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen
+feet, in quantitie and dimentions greater than a greate horse,
+which was taken and killed by special policie, in Ethiopia within
+the Turkas dominions.&nbsp; But before it was killed, it had
+devoured (as is credibly thought) more than 1,000 persons, and
+destroyed a great country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This must have been a descendant of the monster that would
+have eaten Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of
+the blameless Ethiopians.&nbsp; Collections of money are recorded
+occasionally, as in 1680, when no less than one pound eight
+shillings was contributed &ldquo;for redemption of Christians
+(taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish
+slavery.&rdquo;&nbsp; Two hundred years ago the Turk was pretty
+&ldquo;unspeakable&rdquo; still.&nbsp; Of all blundering
+Dogberries, the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish register
+at Melton Mowbray:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth&rsquo;s
+people, which was buried, and which was and maried above 10 years
+old, for because the clarke was dead, and therefore they was not
+set down according as they was, but they all set down sure enough
+one among another here in this place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They all set down sure enough,&rdquo; nor does it
+matter much now to know whom they married, and how long they
+lived in Melton Mowbray.&nbsp; The following entry sufficed for
+the great Villiers that expired &ldquo;in the worst inn&rsquo;s
+worst room,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire,
+1687.&nbsp; Georges vilaris Lord dooke of Bookingham, bur. 17.
+April.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So much for Buckingham!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span><i>THE
+ROWFANT BOOKS</i>.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BALLADE EN GUISE DE RONDEAU.</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> Rowfant books,
+how fair they shew,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall,<br />
+Print, autograph, portfolio!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Back from the outer air they call,<br />
+The athletes from the Tennis ball,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This Rhymer from his rod and hooks,<br />
+Would I could sing them one and all,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Rowfant
+books!</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books!&nbsp; In sun and snow<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; They&rsquo;re dear, but most when tempests fall;<br
+/>
+The folio towers above the row<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As once, o&rsquo;er minor prophets,&mdash;Saul!<br
+/>
+What jolly jest books and what small<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Dear dumpy Twelves&rdquo; to fill the
+nooks.<br />
+You do not find on every stall<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Rowfant
+books!</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books!&nbsp; These long ago<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were chained within some College hall;<br />
+These manuscripts retain the glow<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of many a coloured capital<br />
+While yet the Satires keep their gall,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While the Pastissier puzzles cooks,<br />
+Theirs is a joy that does not pall,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Rowfant
+books!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">ENVOI.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books,&mdash;ah magical<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As famed Armida&rsquo;s &ldquo;golden
+looks,&rdquo;<br />
+They hold the rhymer for their thrall,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Rowfant
+books.</p>
+<h2><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span><i>TO
+F. L.</i></h2>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">mind</span> that Forest
+Shepherd&rsquo;s saw,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he,<br />
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a&rsquo; that&rsquo;s bricht, and a&rsquo;
+that&rsquo;s braw,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But Bourhope&rsquo;s guid eneuch for me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That guard Saint Mary&rsquo;s Loch it lies,<br />
+The silence of the pasture fills<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That shepherd&rsquo;s homely paradise.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Enough for him his mountain lake,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His glen the burn went singing through,<br />
+And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; May well seem good enough for you.</p>
+<p class="poetry">For all is old, and tried, and dear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And all is fair, and round about<br />
+The brook that murmurs from the mere<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is dimpled with the rising trout.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But when the skies of shorter days<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Are dark and all the ways are mire,<br />
+How bright upon your books the blaze<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Gleams from the cheerful study fire,</p>
+<p class="poetry">On quartos where our fathers read,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Enthralled, the book of Shakespeare&rsquo;s play,<br
+/>
+On all that Poe could dream of dread,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And all that Herrick sang of gay!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Fair first editions, duly prized,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Above them all, methinks, I rate<br />
+The tome where Walton&rsquo;s hand revised<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His wonderful receipts for bait!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Happy, who rich in toys like these<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Forgets a weary nation&rsquo;s ills,<br />
+Who from his study window sees<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The circle of the Sussex hills!</p>
+<h2><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+40</span><i>SOME JAPANESE BOGIE-BOOKS</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> 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.&nbsp; It ran something
+like this:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I thank my stars that I was born<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A little British child.</p>
+<p>Perhaps these were not the very words, but that was decidedly
+the sentiment.&nbsp; Look at the Japanese infants, from the
+pencil of the famous Hokusai.&nbsp; Though they are not British,
+were there ever two jollier, happier small creatures?&nbsp; Did
+Leech, or Mr. Du Maurier, or Andrea della Robbia ever present a
+more delightful view of innocent, well-pleased childhood?&nbsp;
+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 &ldquo;northwest
+passage&rdquo; bedwards through the darkling house of which Mr.
+Stevenson sings the perils and the emotions.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Personally I may say
+that few people have been plagued by the terror that walketh in
+darkness more than myself.&nbsp; At the early age of ten I had
+the tales of the ingenious Mr. Edgar Poe and of Charlotte
+Bront&euml; &ldquo;put into my hands&rdquo; by a cousin who had
+served as a Bashi Bazouk, and knew not the meaning of fear.&nbsp;
+But I <i>did</i>, and perhaps even Nelson would have found out
+&ldquo;what fear was,&rdquo; or the boy in the Norse tale would
+have &ldquo;learned to shiver,&rdquo; if he had been left alone
+to peruse &lsquo;Jane Eyre,&rsquo; and the &lsquo;Black
+Cat,&rsquo; and the &lsquo;Fall of the House of Usher,&rsquo; as
+I was.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Between these and the &lsquo;Yellow
+Dwarf,&rsquo; who (though only the invention of the Countess
+D&rsquo;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.&nbsp; But our ogres are nothing
+to the bogies which make not only night but day terrible to the
+studious infants of Japan and China.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image41" href="images/p41b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Japanese Children.  Drawn by Hokusai"
+title=
+"Japanese Children.  Drawn by Hokusai"
+ src="images/p41s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Chinese ghosts are probably much the same as Japanese
+ghosts.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Now
+we have a very full, complete, and horror-striking account of
+Chinese <i>harnts</i> (as the country people in Tennessee call
+them) from Mr. Herbert Giles, who has translated scores of
+Chinese ghost stories in his &lsquo;Strange Tales from a Chinese
+Studio&rsquo; (De la Rue, 1880).&nbsp; Mr. Giles&rsquo;s volumes
+prove that China is the place for Messrs. Gurney and Myers, the
+secretaries of the Psychical Society.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; It has always been a question with me whether ghosts,
+in a haunted house, appear when there is no audience.&nbsp; What
+does the spectre in the tapestried chamber do when the house is
+<i>not</i> full, and no guest is put in the room to bury
+strangers in, the haunted room?&nbsp; Does the ghost sulk and
+complain that there is &ldquo;no house,&rdquo; and refuse to
+rehearse his little performance, in a conscientious and
+disinterestedly artistic spirit, when deprived of the
+artist&rsquo;s true pleasure, the awakening of sympathetic
+emotion in the mind of the spectator?&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+end to year&rsquo;s-end.&nbsp; Only now and then is a guest
+placed in the &ldquo;haunted room.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Now in China and Japan certainly a ghost does not wait till
+people enter the haunted room: a ghost, like a person of fashion,
+&ldquo;goes everywhere.&rdquo;&nbsp; Moreover, he has this
+artistic excellence, that very often you don&rsquo;t know him
+from an embodied person.&nbsp; He counterfeits mortality so
+cleverly that he (the ghost) has been known to personate a
+candidate for honours, and pass an examination for him.&nbsp; A
+pleasing example of this kind, illustrating the limitations of
+ghosts, is told in Mr. Giles&rsquo;s book.&nbsp; A gentleman of
+Huai Shang named Chou-t&lsquo;ien-i had arrived at the age of
+fifty, but his family consisted of but one son, a fine boy,
+&ldquo;strangely averse from study,&rdquo; as if there were
+anything strange in <i>that</i>.&nbsp; One day the son
+disappeared mysteriously, as people do from West Ham.&nbsp; In a
+year he came back, said he had been detained in a Taoist
+monastery, and, to all men&rsquo;s amazement, took to his
+books.&nbsp; Next year he obtained is B.A. degree, a First
+Class.&nbsp; All the neighbourhood was overjoyed, for Huai Shang
+was like Pembroke College (Oxford), where, according to the poet,
+&ldquo;First Class men are few and far between.&rdquo;&nbsp; It
+was who should have the honour of giving his daughter as bride to
+this intellectual marvel.&nbsp; A very nice girl was selected,
+but most unexpectedly the B.A. would not marry.&nbsp; This nearly
+broke his father&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;Picture
+then the father naming and insisting on the day;&rdquo; till
+K&lsquo;o-ch&lsquo;ang, B.A., got up and ran away.&nbsp; His
+mother tried to detain him, when his clothes &ldquo;came off in
+her hand,&rdquo; and the bachelor vanished!&nbsp; Next day
+appeared the real flesh and blood son, who had been kidnapped and
+enslaved.&nbsp; The genuine K&lsquo;o-ch&lsquo;ang was overjoyed
+to hear of his approaching nuptials.&nbsp; The rites were duly
+celebrated, and in less than a year the old gentleman welcomed
+his much-longed-for grand child.&nbsp; But, oddly enough,
+K&lsquo;o-ch&lsquo;ang, though very jolly and universally
+beloved, was as stupid as ever, and read nothing but the sporting
+intelligence in the newspapers.&nbsp; It was now universally
+admitted that the learned K&lsquo;o-ch&lsquo;ang had been an
+impostor, a clever ghost.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image45" href="images/p45b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Storm-fiend"
+title=
+"A Storm-fiend"
+ src="images/p45s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Even the
+spectre which answers in China to the statue in &lsquo;Don
+Juan,&rsquo; the statue which accepts invitations to dinner, is
+anything but a malevolent guest.&nbsp; So much may be gathered
+from the story of Chu and Lu.&nbsp; Chu was an undergraduate of
+great courage and bodily vigour, but dull of wit.&nbsp; He was a
+married man, and his children (as in the old Oxford legend) often
+rushed into their mother&rsquo;s presence, shouting,
+&ldquo;Mamma! mammal papa&rsquo;s been plucked
+again!&rdquo;&nbsp; Once it chanced that Chu was at a wine party,
+and the negus (a favourite beverage of the Celestials) had done
+its work.&nbsp; His young friends betted Chu a bird&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Off went old Chu, and
+soon returned with the august effigy (which wore &ldquo;a green
+face, a red beard, and a hideous expression&rdquo;) in his
+arms.&nbsp; The other men were frightened, and begged Chu to
+restore his worship to his place on the infernal bench.&nbsp;
+Before carrying back the worthy magistrate, Chu poured a libation
+on the ground and said, &ldquo;Whenever your excellency feels so
+disposed, I shall be glad to take a cup of wine with you in a
+friendly way.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Chu promptly put the kettle
+on, mixed the negus, and made a night of it with the festive
+fiend.&nbsp; Their friendship was never interrupted from that
+moment.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Even after Chu&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of
+bureaucracy, patent places, jobs, mandarins&rsquo; buttons and
+tails, and, in short, the heaven of officialism.&nbsp; All
+civilised readers are acquainted with Mr. Stockton&rsquo;s
+humorous story of &lsquo;The Transferred Ghost.&rsquo;&nbsp; In
+Mr. Stockton&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+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 &ldquo;walking&rdquo; in the Foreign Office.&nbsp; 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
+&ldquo;medium&rdquo; through boarding-houses and third-rate
+hotels.&nbsp; Now this is precisely the Chinese view of the fates
+and fortunes of ghosts.&nbsp; <i>Quisque suos patimur
+manes</i>.</p>
+<p>In China, to be brief, and to quote a ghost (who ought to know
+what he was speaking about), &ldquo;supernaturals are to be found
+everywhere.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is the fact that makes life so
+puzzling and terrible to a child of a believing and trustful
+character.&nbsp; These Oriental bogies do not appear in the dark
+alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross-roads, or in gloomy
+woods.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Where we see a storm of snow, their livelier fancy
+beholds a comic snow-ghost, a queer, grinning old man under a
+vast umbrella.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image51" href="images/p51b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Snow-bogie"
+title=
+"A Snow-bogie"
+ src="images/p51s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The illustrations in this paper are only a few specimens
+chosen out of many volumes of Japanese bogies.&nbsp; We have not
+ventured to copy the very most awful spectres, nor dared to be as
+horrid as we can.&nbsp; These native drawings, too, are generally
+coloured regardless of expense, and the colouring is often
+horribly lurid and satisfactory.&nbsp; This embellishment,
+fortunately perhaps, we cannot reproduce.&nbsp; Meanwhile, if any
+child looks into this essay, let him (or her) not be alarmed by
+the pictures he beholds.&nbsp; Japanese ghosts do not live in
+this country; there are none of them even at the Japanese
+Legation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>The first to attract our attention represents, as I
+understand, the common ghost, or <i>simulacrum vulgare</i> of
+psychical science.&nbsp; To this complexion must we all come,
+according to the best Japanese opinion.&nbsp; Each of us contains
+within him &ldquo;somewhat of a shadowy being,&rdquo; like the
+spectre described by Dr. Johnson: something like the Egyptian
+&ldquo;Ka,&rdquo; for which the curious may consult the works of
+Miss Amelia B. Edwards and other learned Orientalists.&nbsp; The
+most recent French student of these matters, the author of
+&lsquo;L&rsquo;Homme Posthume,&rsquo; is of opinion that we do
+not all possess this double, with its power of surviving our
+bodily death.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;shadow-casting men.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; In no event does he believe that
+a ghost lasts much longer than a hundred years.&nbsp; After that
+it mizzles into spectre, and is resolved into its elements,
+whatever they may be.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The negligence testifies to a notion that
+very old ghosts are of little account, for good or evil.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman.&nbsp;
+With these <i>instanti&aelig; contradictori&aelig;</i>, 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 <i>simulacrum vulgare</i>.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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 Pal&aelig;olithic man, welcome as such an
+apparition would be to many of us.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image55" href="images/p55b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The Simulacrum Vulgare"
+title=
+"The Simulacrum Vulgare"
+ src="images/p55s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+This <i>simulacrum</i> 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.&nbsp; Please
+remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the
+<i>simulacrum</i>.&nbsp; We must remember that the ghost or
+&ldquo;Ka&rdquo; is not the &ldquo;soul,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image57" href="images/p57b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Well and Water bogie"
+title=
+"A Well and Water bogie"
+ src="images/p57s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>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, &ldquo;la lavandi&egrave;re
+de la nuit,&rdquo; who washes dead men&rsquo;s linen in the
+moonlit pools and rivers.&nbsp; Whether this <i>simulacrum</i> 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s &lsquo;Chansons de la Gr&egrave;ce Moderne&rsquo;
+the vampires of modern Hellas.</p>
+<p>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 &lsquo;Carmilla,&rsquo; printed in Mr. Sheridan Le
+Fanu&rsquo;s &lsquo;In a Glass Darkly.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; If, while
+in this mood, some one tells him Mr. Augustus Hare&rsquo;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.&nbsp; The most awful
+Japanese vampire, caught red-handed in the act, a hideous,
+bestial incarnation of ghoulishness, we have carefully refrained
+from reproducing.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image61" href="images/p61b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Raising the wind"
+title=
+"Raising the wind"
+ src="images/p61s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Scarcely more agreeable is the bogie, or witch, blowing from
+her mouth a malevolent exhalation, an embodiment of malignant and
+maleficent sorcery.&nbsp; The vapour which flies and curls from
+the mouth constitutes &ldquo;a sending,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; In the case
+of our last example it is very hard indeed to make head or tail
+of the spectre represented.&nbsp; Chinks and crannies are his
+domain; through these he drops upon you.&nbsp; He is a merry but
+not an attractive or genial ghost.&nbsp; Where there are such
+&ldquo;visions about&rdquo; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image63" href="images/p63b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Chink and Crevice Bogie"
+title=
+"A Chink and Crevice Bogie"
+ src="images/p63s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+66</span><i>GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY</i>.</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Suppose</span>, when now
+the house is dumb,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When lights are out, and ashes fall&mdash;<br />
+Suppose their ancient owners come<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To claim our spoils of shop and stall,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ah me! within the narrow hall<br />
+How strange a mob would meet and go,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What famous folk would haunt them all,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Octavo, quarto,
+folio!</p>
+<p class="poetry">The great Napoleon lays his hand<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon this eagle-headed N,<br />
+That marks for his a pamphlet banned<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By all but scandal-loving men,&mdash;<br />
+A libel from some nameless den<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of Frankfort,&mdash;<i>Arnaud &agrave; la
+Sph&egrave;re</i>,<br />
+Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lies o&rsquo;er the loves of Moli&egrave;re. <a
+name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66"
+class="citation">[66]</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">Another shade&mdash;he does not see<br />
+&ldquo;Boney,&rdquo; the foeman of his race&mdash;<br />
+The great Sir Walter, this is he<br />
+With that grave homely Border face.<br />
+He claims his poem of the chase<br />
+That rang Benvoirlich&rsquo;s valley through;<br />
+And <i>this</i>, that doth the lineage trace<br />
+And fortunes of the bold Buccleuch; <a name="citation67a"></a><a
+href="#footnote67a" class="citation">[67a]</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">For these were his, and these he gave<br />
+To one who dwelt beside the Peel,<br />
+That murmurs with its tiny wave<br />
+To join the Tweed at Ashestiel.<br />
+Now thick as motes the shadows wheel,<br />
+And find their own, and claim a share<br />
+Of books wherein Ribou did deal,<br />
+Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert. <a name="citation67b"></a><a
+href="#footnote67b" class="citation">[67b]</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">What famous folk of old are here!<br />
+A royal duke comes down to us,<br />
+And greatly wants his Elzevir,<br />
+His Pagan tutor, Lucius. <a name="citation67c"></a><a
+href="#footnote67c" class="citation">[67c]</a><br />
+And Beckford claims an amorous<br />
+Old heathen in morocco blue; <a name="citation67d"></a><a
+href="#footnote67d" class="citation">[67d]</a><br />
+And who demands Eobanus<br />
+But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou! <a name="citation67e"></a><a
+href="#footnote67e" class="citation">[67e]</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">They come, the wise, the great, the true,<br />
+They jostle on the narrow stair,<br />
+The frolic Countess de Verrue,<br />
+Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre,<br />
+The new and elder dead are there&mdash;<br />
+The lords of speech, and song, and pen,<br />
+Gambetta, <a name="citation68a"></a><a href="#footnote68a"
+class="citation">[68a]</a> Schlegel <a name="citation68b"></a><a
+href="#footnote68b" class="citation">[68b]</a> and the rare<br />
+Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. <a name="citation68c"></a><a
+href="#footnote68c" class="citation">[68c]</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">Ah, and with those, a hundred more,<br />
+Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:<br />
+Brave &ldquo;Smiths&rdquo; and &ldquo;Thompsons&rdquo; by the
+score,<br />
+Scrawled upon many a shabby &ldquo;lot.&rdquo;<br />
+This playbook was the joy of Pott <a name="citation68d"></a><a
+href="#footnote68d" class="citation">[68d]</a>&mdash;<br />
+Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves.<br />
+Our names, like his, remembered not,<br />
+Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!</p>
+<p class="poetry">At least in pleasant company<br />
+We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;<br />
+A man may turn a page, and sigh,<br />
+Seeing one&rsquo;s name, to think of it.<br />
+Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit,<br />
+May ope our book, and muse awhile,<br />
+And fall into a dreaming fit,<br />
+As now we dream, and wake, and smile!</p>
+<h2><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+69</span><i>LITERARY FORGERIES</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the whole amusing history of
+impostures, there is no more diverting chapter than that which
+deals with literary frauds.&nbsp; None contains a more grotesque
+revelation of the smallness and the complexity of human nature,
+and none&mdash;not even the records of the Tichborne trial, nor
+of general elections&mdash;displays more pleasantly the depths of
+mortal credulity.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+But how low that level commonly appears to be!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; How simple were the artifices of these ingenious
+impostors, their resources how scanty; how hand-to-mouth and
+improvised was their whole procedure!&nbsp; Times have altered a
+little.&nbsp; Jo Smith&rsquo;s revelation and famed &lsquo;Golden
+Bible&rsquo; only carried captive the polygamous <i>populus qui
+vult decipi</i>, reasoners a little lower than even the believers
+in Anglo-Israel.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He
+might have procured better and less recognisable materials than
+his old &ldquo;synagogue rolls;&rdquo; in short, he took rather
+too little trouble, and came to the wrong market.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The inscriber of the Phoenician inscriptions in
+Brazil (of all places) was a clever man.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed; but
+they may, perhaps, be analysed roughly into piety, greed,
+&ldquo;push,&rdquo; and love of fun.&nbsp; Many literary
+forgeries have been pious frauds, perpetrated in the interests of
+a church, a priesthood, or a dogma.&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;Bad Samaritan&rdquo; of
+the Bodleian.&nbsp; Next we come to playful frauds, or frauds in
+their origin playful, like (perhaps) the Shakespearian forgeries
+of Ireland, the <i>supercheries</i> of Prosper
+M&eacute;rim&eacute;e, the sham antique ballads (very spirited
+poems in their way) of Surtees, and many other examples.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable, though
+it is difficult to forgive the young arch&aelig;ologist who took
+in his own father with false Greek inscriptions.&nbsp; But this
+story may be a mere fable amongst arch&aelig;ologists, who are
+constantly accusing each other of all manner of crimes.&nbsp;
+Then there are forgeries by &ldquo;pushing&rdquo; men, who hope
+to get a reading for poems which, if put forth as new, would be
+neglected.&nbsp; There remain forgeries of which the motives are
+so complex as to remain for ever obscure.&nbsp; We may generally
+ascribe them to love of notoriety in the forger; such notoriety
+as Macpherson won by his dubious pinchbeck Ossian.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; When the clergy alone can write, only
+the clergy can forge.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But the great antique
+forger, the &ldquo;Ionian father of the rest,&rdquo; is,
+doubtless, Onomacritus.&nbsp; There exists, to be sure, an
+Egyptian inscription professing to be of the fourth, but probably
+of the twenty-sixth, dynasty.&nbsp; The Germans hold the latter
+view; the French, from patriotic motives, maintain the opposite
+opinion.&nbsp; But this forgery is scarcely
+&ldquo;literary.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The scene of the error and the detection of
+Onomacritus presents itself always to me in a kind of pictorial
+vision.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The time
+is the time of Pisistratus the successful tyrant; the scene is
+the ancient temple, the stately house of Athen&ecirc;, the fane
+where the sacred serpent was fed on cakes, and the primeval
+olive-tree grew beside the well of Posidon.&nbsp; The darkness of
+the temple&rsquo;s inmost shrine is lit by the ray of one earthen
+lamp.&nbsp; 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 <i>boustrophedon</i>
+inscriptions.&nbsp; In his hair this archaic Athenian wears the
+badge of the golden grasshopper.&nbsp; He is Onomacritus, the
+famous poet, and the trusted guardian of the ancient oracles of
+Musaeus and Bacis.</p>
+<p>What is he doing?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; From his bosom he draws another thin sheet of lead,
+also stained and corroded.&nbsp; On this he scratches, in
+imitation of the old &ldquo;Cadmeian letters,&rdquo; a prophecy
+that &ldquo;the Isles near Lemnos shall disappear under the
+sea.&rdquo;&nbsp; So busy is he in this task, that he does not
+hear the rustle of a chiton behind, and suddenly a man&rsquo;s
+hand is on his shoulder!&nbsp; Onomacritus turns in horror.&nbsp;
+Has the goddess punished him for tampering with the
+oracles?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; (Herodotus, vii. 6.)</p>
+<p>Pisistratus expelled the learned Onomacritus from Athens, but
+his conduct proved, in the long run, highly profitable to the
+reputations of Musaeus and Bacis.&nbsp; Whenever one of their
+oracles was not fulfilled, people said, &ldquo;Oh, <i>that</i> is
+merely one of the interpolations of Onomacritus!&rdquo; and the
+matter was passed over.&nbsp; This Onomacritus is said to have
+been among the original editors of Homer under Pisistratus. <a
+name="citation73"></a><a href="#footnote73"
+class="citation">[73]</a>&nbsp; He lived long, never repented,
+and, many years later, deceived Xerxes into attempting his
+disastrous expedition.&nbsp; This he did by &ldquo;keeping back
+the oracles unfavourable to the barbarians,&rdquo; and putting
+forward any that seemed favourable.&nbsp; The children of
+Pisistratus believed in him as spiritualists go on giving credit
+to exposed and exploded &ldquo;mediums.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Onomacritus is generally charged with
+the authorship of the poems which the ancients usually attributed
+to Orpheus, the companion of Jason.&nbsp; Perhaps the most
+interesting of the poems of Orpheus to us would have been his
+&lsquo;Inferno,&rsquo; or,
+&Kappa;&alpha;&tau;&#8049;&beta;&alpha;&sigma;&iota;&sigmaf;
+&#8050;&sigmaf; &#8068;&delta;&omicron;&upsilon;, in which the
+poet gave his own account of his descent to Hades in search of
+Eurydice.&nbsp; But only a dubious reference to one adventure in
+the journey is quoted by Plutarch.&nbsp; Whatever the exact truth
+about the Orphic poems may be (the reader may pursue the hard and
+fruitless quest in Lobeck&rsquo;s &lsquo;Aglaophamus&rsquo; <a
+name="citation74"></a><a href="#footnote74"
+class="citation">[74]</a>), it seems certain that the period
+between Pisistratus and Pericles, like the Alexandrian time, was
+a great age for literary forgeries.&nbsp; But of all these frauds
+the greatest (according to the most &ldquo;advanced&rdquo; theory
+on the subject) is the &ldquo;Forgery of the Iliad and
+Odyssey!&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But it seems to be vaguely held
+that about the time of Pericles there arose a kind of Greek
+Macpherson.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; If we are to believe, with Professor Paley, that
+the chief incidents of the Iliad and Odyssey were unknown to
+Sophocles, &AElig;schylus, and the contemporary vase painters, we
+must also suppose that the Greek Macpherson invented most of the
+situations in the Odyssey and Iliad.&nbsp; According to this
+theory the &lsquo;cooker&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s plays.&nbsp; Thus &ldquo;Plato the wise, and
+large-browed Verulam,&rdquo; would be &ldquo;the first of those
+who&rdquo; forge!&nbsp; Next to this prodigious imposture, no
+doubt, the false &lsquo;Letters of Phalaris&rsquo; are the most
+important of classical forgeries.&nbsp; And these illustrate,
+like most literary forgeries, the extreme worthlessness of
+literary taste as a criterion of the authenticity of
+writings.&nbsp; For what man ever was more a man of taste than
+Sir William Temple, &ldquo;the most accomplished writer of the
+age,&rdquo; whom Mr. Boyle never thought of without calling to
+mind those happy lines of Lucretius,&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quem
+tu, dea, tempore in omni<br />
+Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Well, the ornate and excellent Temple held that &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; So much for what Bentley calls
+Temple&rsquo;s &ldquo;Nicety of Tast.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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 &ldquo;many centuries
+younger than he.&rdquo;&nbsp; So let the Nicety of Temple&rsquo;s
+Tast and its absolute failure be a warning to us when we read (if
+read we must) German critics who deny Homer&rsquo;s claim to this
+or that passage, and Plato&rsquo;s right to half his accepted
+dialogues, on grounds of literary taste.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Early Christian frauds were, naturally, pious.&nbsp; We have
+the apocryphal Gospels, and the works of Dionysius the
+Areopagite, which were not exposed till Erasmus&rsquo;s
+time.&nbsp; Perhaps the most important of pious forgeries (if
+forgery be exactly the right word in this case) was that of
+&lsquo;The False Decretals.&rsquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Of a
+sudden,&rdquo; says Milman, speaking of the pontificate of
+Nicholas I. (<i>ob.</i> 867 <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span>),
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The whole is composed,&rdquo;
+Milman adds, &ldquo;with an air of profound piety and
+reverence.&rdquo;&nbsp; The False Decretals naturally assert the
+supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.&nbsp; &ldquo;They are full and
+minute on Church Property&rdquo; (they were sure to be that); in
+fact, they remind one of another forgery, pious and Aryan,
+&lsquo;The Institutes of Vishnu.&rsquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Let him not
+levy any tax upon Brahmans,&rdquo; says the Brahman forger of the
+Institutes, which &ldquo;came from the mouths of Vishnu,&rdquo;
+as he sat &ldquo;clad in a yellow robe, imperturbable, decorated
+with all kinds of gems, while Lakshmi was stroking his feet with
+her soft palms.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Hommenay, in
+&lsquo;Pantagruel,&rsquo; did well to have the praise of the
+Decretals sung by <i>filles belles</i>, <i>blondelettes</i>,
+<i>doulcettes</i>, <i>et de bonne grace</i>.&nbsp; And then
+Hommenay drank to the Decretals and their very good health.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;O dives D&eacute;cretales, tant par vous est le vin bon
+bon trouv&eacute;&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;O divine Decretals, how
+good you make good wine taste!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The miracle
+would be greater,&rdquo; said Pantagruel, &ldquo;if they made bad
+wine taste good.&rdquo;&nbsp; The most that can now be done by
+the devout for the Decretals is &ldquo;to palliate the guilt of
+their forger,&rdquo; whose name, like that of the Greek
+Macpherson, is unknown.</p>
+<p>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, &ldquo;with something really
+important,&rdquo; that is with classical imitations.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; As yet
+scholars were eager rather than critical; they were collecting
+and unearthing, rather than minutely examining the remains of
+classic literature.&nbsp; They had found so much, and every year
+were finding so much more, that no discovery seemed
+impossible.&nbsp; The lost books of Livy and Cicero, the songs of
+Sappho, the perished plays of Sophocles and &AElig;schylus might
+any day be brought to light.&nbsp; This was the very moment for
+the literary forger; but it is improbable that any forgery of the
+period has escaped detection.&nbsp; Three or four years ago some
+one published a book to show that the &lsquo;Annals of
+Tacitus&rsquo; were written by Poggio Bracciolini.&nbsp; This
+paradox gained no more converts than the bolder hypothesis of
+Hardouin.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Hardouin
+made some exceptions to his sweeping general theory.&nbsp;
+Cicero&rsquo;s writings were genuine, he admitted, so were
+Pliny&rsquo;s, of Virgil the Georgics; the satires and epistles
+of Horace; Herodotus, and Homer.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Among literary forgers, or passers of false literary coin, at
+the time of the Renaissance, Annius is the most notorious.&nbsp;
+Annius (his real vernacular name was Nanni) was born at Viterbo,
+in 1432.&nbsp; He became a Dominican, and (after publishing his
+forged classics) rose to the position of Ma&icirc;tre du Palais
+to the Pope, Alexander Borgia.&nbsp; With C&aelig;sar Borgia it
+is said that Annius was never on good terms.&nbsp; He persisted
+in preaching &ldquo;the sacred truth&rdquo; to his highness and
+this (according to the detractors of Annius) was the only use he
+made of the sacred truth.&nbsp; There is a legend that
+C&aelig;sar Borgia poisoned the preacher (1502), but people
+usually brought that charge against C&aelig;sar when any one in
+any way connected with him happened to die.&nbsp; Annius wrote on
+the History and Empire of the Turks, who took Constantinople in
+his time; but he is better remembered by his &lsquo;Antiquitatum
+Variarum Volumina XVII. cum comment.&nbsp; Fr. Jo.
+Annii.&rsquo;&nbsp; These fragments of antiquity included, among
+many other desirable things, the historical writings of Fabius
+Pictor, the predecessor of Livy.&nbsp; One is surprised that
+Annius, when he had his hand in, did not publish choice extracts
+from the &lsquo;Libri Lintei,&rsquo; the ancient Roman annals,
+written on linen and preserved in the temple of Juno
+Moneta.&nbsp; Among the other discoveries of Annius were
+treatises by Berosus, Manetho, Cato, and poems by
+Archilochus.&nbsp; Opinion has been divided as to whether Annius
+was wholly a knave, or whether he was himself imposed upon.&nbsp;
+Or, again, whether he had some genuine fragments, and eked them
+out with his own inventions.&nbsp; It is observed that he did not
+dovetail the really genuine relics of Berosus and Manetho into
+the works attributed to them.&nbsp; This may be explained as the
+result of ignorance or of cunning; there can be no certain
+inference.&nbsp; &ldquo;Even the Dominicans,&rdquo; as Bayle
+says, admit that Annius&rsquo;s discoveries are false, though
+they excuse them by averring that the pious man was the dupe of
+others.&nbsp; But a learned Lutheran has been found to defend the
+&lsquo;Antiquitates&rsquo; of the Dominican.</p>
+<p>It is amusing to remember that the great and erudite Rabelais
+was taken in by some pseudo-classical fragments.&nbsp; The joker
+of jokes was hoaxed.&nbsp; He published, says Mr. Besant,
+&ldquo;a couple of Latin forgeries, which he proudly called
+&lsquo;Ex reliquiis venerand&aelig; antiquitatis,&rsquo;
+consisting of a pretended will and a contract.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+name of the book is &lsquo;Ex reliquiis venerand&aelig;
+antiquitatis.&nbsp; Lucii Cuspidii Testamentum.&nbsp; Item
+contractus venditionis antiquis Romanorum temporibus
+initus.&nbsp; <i>Lugduni apud Gryphium</i> (1532).&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Pomponius L&aelig;tus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently
+authors of the hoax.</p>
+<p>Socrates said that he &ldquo;would never lift up his hand
+against his father Parmenides.&rdquo;&nbsp; The fathers of the
+Church have not been so respectfully treated by literary forgers
+during the Renaissance.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Flowers of
+Theology&rsquo; of St. Bernard, which were to be a primrose path
+<i>ad gaudia Paradisi</i> (Strasburg, 1478), were really, it
+seems, the production of Jean de Garlande.&nbsp; Athanasius, his
+&lsquo;Eleven Books concerning the Trinity,&rsquo; are attributed
+to Vigilius, a colonial Bishop in Northern Africa.&nbsp; Among
+false classics were two comic Latin fragments with which Muretus
+beguiled Scaliger.&nbsp; Meursius has suffered, posthumously,
+from the attribution to him of a very disreputable volume
+indeed.&nbsp; In 1583, a book on &lsquo;Consolations,&rsquo; by
+Cicero, was published at Venice, containing the reflections with
+which Cicero consoled himself for the death of Tullia.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The real author was Charles Sigonius, of
+Modena.&nbsp; Sigonius actually did discover some Ciceronian
+fragments, and, if he was not the builder, at least he was the
+restorer of Tully&rsquo;s lofty theme.&nbsp; In 1693,
+Fran&ccedil;ois 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.&nbsp;
+Nodot&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Still dissatisfied with the
+existing supply of Petronius&rsquo; humour was Marchena, a writer
+of Spanish books, who printed at B&acirc;le a translation and
+edition of a new fragment.&nbsp; This fragment was very cleverly
+inserted in a presumed <i>lacuna</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s faults in
+prosody.&nbsp; Another sham Catullus, by Corradino, a Venetian,
+was published in 1738.</p>
+<p>The most famous forgeries of the eighteenth century were those
+of Macpherson, Chatterton, and Ireland.&nbsp; Space (fortunately)
+does not permit a discussion of the Ossianic question.&nbsp; That
+fragments of Ossianic legend (if not of Ossianic poetry) survive
+in oral Gaelic traditions, seems certain.&nbsp; How much
+Macpherson knew of these, and how little he used them in the
+bombastic prose which Napoleon loved (and spelled
+&ldquo;Ocean&rdquo;), it is next to impossible to discover.&nbsp;
+The case of Chatterton is too well known to need much more than
+mention.&nbsp; The most extraordinary poet for his years who ever
+lived began with the forgery of a sham feudal pedigree for Mr.
+Bergum, a pewterer.&nbsp; Ireland started on his career in much
+the same way, unless Ireland&rsquo;s &lsquo;Confessions&rsquo; be
+themselves a fraud, based on what he knew about Chatterton.&nbsp;
+Once launched in his career, Chatterton drew endless stores of
+poetry from &ldquo;Rowley&rsquo;s MS.&rdquo; and the muniment
+chest in St. Mary Redcliffe&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Jacob Bryant believed
+in them and wrote an &lsquo;Apology&rsquo; for the
+credulous.&nbsp; Bryant, who believed in his own system of
+mythology, might have believed in anything.&nbsp; When Chatterton
+sent his &ldquo;discoveries&rdquo; to Walpole (himself somewhat
+of a medi&aelig;val imitator), Gray and Mason detected the
+imposture, and Walpole, his feelings as an antiquary injured took
+no more notice of the boy.&nbsp; Chatterton&rsquo;s death was due
+to his precocity.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; We shall
+never know the exact truth about the fabrication of the
+Shakespearian documents, and &lsquo;Vortigern&rsquo; and the
+other plays.&nbsp; We have, indeed, the confession of the
+culprit: <i>habemus confitentem reum</i>, but Mr. W. H. Ireland
+was a liar and a solicitor&rsquo;s clerk, so versatile and
+accomplished that we cannot always trust him, even when he is
+narrating the tale of his own iniquities.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; A polished and learned society, a society
+devoted to Shakespeare and to the stage, was taken in by a boy of
+eighteen.&nbsp; Young Ireland not only palmed off his sham prose
+documents, most makeshift imitations of the antique, but even his
+ridiculous verses on the experts.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The whole story of young
+Ireland&rsquo;s forgeries is not only too long to be told here,
+but forms the topic of a novel (&lsquo;The Talk of the
+Town&rsquo;) by Mr. James Payn.&nbsp; The frauds in his hands
+lose neither their humour nor their complicated interest of
+plot.&nbsp; To be brief, then, Mr. Samuel Ireland was a gentleman
+extremely fond of old literature and old books.&nbsp; If we may
+trust the &lsquo;Confessions&rsquo; (1805) of his candid son, Mr.
+W. H. Ireland, a more harmless and confiding old person than
+Samuel never collected early English tracts.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His first step in guilt was the forgery of an
+autograph on an old pamphlet, with which he gratified Samuel
+Ireland.&nbsp; He also wrote a sham inscription on a modern bust
+of Cromwell, which he represented as an authentic antique.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Critics would
+find merit in anything which seemed old enough.&nbsp;
+Ireland&rsquo;s next achievement was the forgery of some legal
+documents concerning Shakespeare.&nbsp; Just as the bad man who
+deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira forged his
+&lsquo;Deuteronomy&rsquo; on the blank spaces of old synagogue
+rolls, so young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent
+rolls.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Being a strong
+&ldquo;evangelical,&rdquo; young Mr. Ireland gave a very
+Protestant complexion to this edifying document.&nbsp; And still
+the critics gaped and wondered and believed.</p>
+<p>Ireland&rsquo;s method was to write in an ink made by blending
+various liquids used in the marbling of paper for
+bookbinding.&nbsp; This stuff was supplied to him by a
+bookbinder&rsquo;s apprentice.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Finally, the impossibility of producing this
+gentleman was one of the causes of the detection of the
+fraud.&nbsp; According to himself, Ireland performed prodigies of
+acuteness.&nbsp; Once he had forged, at random, the name of a
+contemporary of Shakespeare.&nbsp; He was confronted with a
+genuine signature, which, of course, was quite different.&nbsp;
+He obtained leave to consult his &ldquo;anonymous
+gentleman,&rdquo; 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.&nbsp; That nameless friend had
+informed him (he swore) that there were two persons of the same
+name, and that both signatures were genuine.&nbsp;
+Ireland&rsquo;s impudence went the length of introducing an
+ancestor of his own, with the same name as himself, among the
+companions of Shakespeare.&nbsp; If &lsquo;Vortigern&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; When busy with &lsquo;Vortigern,&rsquo; he was
+detected by a friend of his own age, who pounced on him while he
+was at work, as Lasus pounced on Onomacritus.&nbsp; The
+discoverer, however, consented to &ldquo;stand in&rdquo; with
+Ireland, and did not divulge his secret.&nbsp; At last, after the
+fiasco of &lsquo;Vortigern,&rsquo; suspicion waxed so strong, and
+disagreeable inquiries for the anonymous benefactor were so
+numerous, that Ireland fled from his father&rsquo;s house.&nbsp;
+He confessed all, and, according to his own account, fell under
+the undying wrath of Samuel Ireland.&nbsp; Any reader of
+Ireland&rsquo;s confessions will be likely to sympathise with old
+Samuel as the dupe of his son.&nbsp; The whole story is told with
+a curious mixture of impudence and humour, and with great
+plausibility.&nbsp; Young Ireland admits that his &ldquo;desire
+for laughter&rdquo; was almost irresistible, when
+people&mdash;learned, pompous, sagacious people&mdash;listened
+attentively to the papers.&nbsp; One feels half inclined to
+forgive the rogue for the sake of his youth, his cleverness, his
+humour.&nbsp; But the &lsquo;Confessions&rsquo; are, not
+improbably, almost as apocryphal as the original documents.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Dr. Ingleby, in his &lsquo;Shakespeare
+Fabrications,&rsquo; takes a very rigid view of the conduct, not
+only of William, but of old Samuel Ireland.&nbsp; Sam, according
+to Dr. Ingleby, was a partner in the whole imposture, and the
+confession was only one element in the scheme of fraud.&nbsp; Old
+Samuel was the Fagin of a band of young literary Dodgers.&nbsp;
+He &ldquo;positively trained his whole family to trade in
+forgery,&rdquo; and as for Mr. W. H. Ireland, he was &ldquo;the
+most accomplished liar that ever lived,&rdquo; which is certainly
+a distinction in its way.&nbsp; The point of the joke is that,
+after the whole conspiracy exploded, people were anxious to buy
+examples of the forgeries.&nbsp; Mr. W. H. Ireland was equal to
+the occasion.&nbsp; He actually forged his own, or (according to
+Dr. Ingleby) his father&rsquo;s forgeries, and, by thus
+increasing the supply, he deluged the market with sham shams,
+with imitations of imitations.&nbsp; If this accusation be
+correct, it is impossible not to admire the colossal impudence of
+Mr. W. H. Ireland.&nbsp; Dr. Ingleby, in the ardour of his honest
+indignation, pursues William into his private life, which, it
+appears, was far from exemplary.&nbsp; But literary criticism
+should be content with a man&rsquo;s works; his domestic life is
+matter, as Aristotle often says, &ldquo;for a separate kind of
+investigation.&rdquo;&nbsp; Old Ritson used to say that
+&ldquo;every literary impostor deserved hanging as much as a
+common thief.&rdquo;&nbsp; W. H. Ireland&rsquo;s merits were
+never recognised by the law.</p>
+<p>How old Ritson would have punished &ldquo;the old
+corrector,&rdquo; it is &ldquo;better only guessing,&rdquo; as
+the wicked say, according to Clough, in regard to their own
+possible chastisement.&nbsp; The difficulty is to ascertain who
+the apocryphal old corrector really was.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Mr. Collier was, to put it mildly, the Shapira of
+the old corrector.&nbsp; He brought that artist&rsquo;s works
+before the public; but <i>why</i>? how deceived, or how
+influenced, it is once more &ldquo;better only
+guessing.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Collier first introduced to the public
+notice his singular copy of a folio Shakespeare (second edition),
+loaded with ancient manuscript emendations, in 1849.&nbsp; His
+account of this book was simple and plausible.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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).&nbsp; The volume (mark this) was &ldquo;much
+cropped,&rdquo; greasy, and imperfect.&nbsp; Now the student of
+Mr. Hamilton&rsquo;s &lsquo;Inquiry&rsquo; into the whole affair
+is already puzzled.&nbsp; In later days, Mr. Collier said that
+his folio had previously been in the possession of a Mr.
+Parry.&nbsp; On the other hand, Mr. Parry (then a very aged man)
+failed to recognise his folio in Mr. Collier&rsquo;s, for
+<i>his</i> copy was &ldquo;cropped,&rdquo; whereas the leaves of
+Mr. Collier&rsquo;s example were <i>not</i> mutilated.&nbsp;
+Here, then (&lsquo;Inquiry,&rsquo; pp. 12, 61), we have two
+descriptions of the outward aspect of Mr. Collier&rsquo;s dubious
+treasure.&nbsp; In one account it is &ldquo;much cropped&rdquo;
+by the book-binder&rsquo;s cruel shears; in the other, its
+unmutilated condition is contrasted with that of a copy which has
+been &ldquo;cropped.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+But the volumes happened to have the same defects, and the
+healing process was impossible.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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
+(<i>flor.</i> 1633)&nbsp; The notes contained many various
+readings, and very numerous changes in punctuation.&nbsp; Some of
+these Mr. Collier published in his &lsquo;Notes and
+Emendations&rsquo; (1852), and in an edition of the
+&lsquo;Plays.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Then Mr. Collier
+presented the treasure to the Duke of Devonshire, who again lent
+it for examination to the British Museum.&nbsp; Mr. Hamilton
+published in the <i>Times</i> (July, 1859) the results of his
+examination of the old corrector.&nbsp; It turned out that the
+old corrector was a modern myth.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The
+same word sometimes recurred in both handwritings.&nbsp; The ink,
+which looked old, was really no English ink at all, not even
+Ireland&rsquo;s mixture.&nbsp; It seemed to be sepia, sometimes
+mixed with a little Indian ink.&nbsp; Mr. Hamilton made many
+other sad discoveries.&nbsp; He pointed out that Mr. Collier had
+published, from a Dulwich MS., a letter of Mrs. Alleyne&rsquo;s
+(the actor&rsquo;s wife), referring to Shakespeare as &ldquo;Mr.
+Shakespeare of the Globe.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now the Dulwich MS. was
+mutilated and blank in the very place where this interesting
+reference should have occurred.&nbsp; Such is a skeleton history
+of the old corrector, his works and ways.&nbsp; It is probable
+that&mdash;thanks to his assiduities&mdash;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&rsquo;s greasy and
+imperfect but unique &ldquo;corrected folio.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The recency and (to a Shakespearian critic) the importance of
+these forgeries obscures the humble merit of Surtees, with his
+ballads of the &lsquo;Slaying of Antony Featherstonhaugh,&rsquo;
+and of &lsquo;Bartram&rsquo;s Dirge.&rsquo;&nbsp; Surtees left
+clever <i>lacun&aelig;</i> in these songs, &lsquo;collected from
+oral tradition,&rsquo; and furnished notes so learned that they
+took in Sir Walter Scott.&nbsp; There are moments when I half
+suspect &ldquo;the Shirra himsel&rdquo; (who blamelessly forged
+so many extracts from &lsquo;Old Plays&rsquo;) of having composed
+&lsquo;Kinmont Willie.&rsquo;&nbsp; To compare old Scott of
+Satchell&rsquo;s account of Kinmont Willie with the ballad is to
+feel uncomfortable doubts.&nbsp; But this is a rank
+impiety.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The trick was not badly done, and
+the imitation of &ldquo;ballad slang&rdquo; was excellent.&nbsp;
+The &lsquo;Oera Linda&rsquo; book, too, was successful enough to
+be translated into English.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+90</span><i>BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.&nbsp; In England publishers are men of business; in
+France they aspire to be artists.&nbsp; In England people borrow
+what they read from the libraries, and take what gaudy
+cloth-binding chance chooses to send them.&nbsp; In France people
+buy books, and bind them to their heart&rsquo;s desire with
+quaint and dainty devices on the morocco covers.&nbsp; Books are
+lifelong friends in that country; in England they are the guests
+of a week or of a fortnight.&nbsp; The greatest French writers
+have been collectors of curious editions; they have devoted whole
+treatises to the love of books.&nbsp; The literature and history
+of France are full of anecdotes of the good and bad fortunes of
+bibliophiles, of their bargains, discoveries,
+disappointments.&nbsp; There lies before us at this moment a
+small library of books about books,&mdash;the &lsquo;Bibliophile
+Fran&ccedil;ais,&rsquo; in seven large volumes, &lsquo;Les
+Sonnets d&rsquo;un Bibliophile,&rsquo; &lsquo;La Bibliomanie en
+1878,&rsquo; &lsquo;La Biblioth&egrave;que d&rsquo;un
+Bibliophile&rsquo; (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.</p>
+<p>The passion for books, like other forms of desire, has its
+changes of fashion.&nbsp; It is not always easy to justify the
+caprices of taste.&nbsp; The presence or absence of half an inch
+of paper in the &ldquo;uncut&rdquo; margin of a book makes a
+difference of value that ranges from five shillings to a hundred
+pounds.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The uninitiated
+often make absurd mistakes about these distinctions.&nbsp; Some
+time ago the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> reproached a collector
+because his books were &ldquo;uncut,&rdquo; whence, argued the
+journalist, it was clear that he had never read them.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Uncut,&rdquo; of course, only means that the margins have
+not been curtailed by the binders&rsquo; plough.&nbsp; It is a
+point of sentiment to like books just as they left the hands of
+the old printers,&mdash;of Estienne, Aldus, or Louis Elzevir.</p>
+<p>It is because the passion for books is a sentimental passion
+that people who have not felt it always fail to understand
+it.&nbsp; Sentiment is not an easy thing to explain.&nbsp;
+Englishmen especially find it impossible to understand tastes and
+emotions that are not their own,&mdash;the wrongs of Ireland,
+(till quite recently) the aspirations of Eastern Roumelia, the
+demands of Greece.&nbsp; If we are to understand the book-hunter,
+we must never forget that to him books are, in the first place,
+<i>relics</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Moli&egrave;re, for
+example, corrected the proofs for this edition of the
+&lsquo;Pr&eacute;cieuses Ridicules,&rsquo; when he first
+discovered &ldquo;what a labour it is to publish a book, and how
+<i>green</i> (<i>neuf</i>) an author is the first time they print
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Or it may be that Campanella turned over, with
+hands unstrung, and still broken by the torture, these leaves
+that contain his passionate sonnets.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This
+Gargantua is the counterpart of that which the martyred Dolet
+printed for (or pirated from, alas!) Ma&icirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ois
+Rabelais.&nbsp; This woeful <i>ballade</i>, with the woodcut of
+three thieves hanging from one gallows, came near being the
+&ldquo;Last Dying Speech and Confession of Fran&ccedil;ois
+Villon.&rdquo;&nbsp; This shabby copy of &lsquo;The Eve of St.
+Agnes&rsquo; 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 <i>Don Juan</i>.&nbsp; Some rare
+books have these associations, and they bring you nearer to the
+authors than do the modern reprints.&nbsp; Bibliophiles will tell
+you that it is the early <i>readings</i> they care for,&mdash;the
+author&rsquo;s first fancies, and those more hurried expressions
+which he afterwards corrected.&nbsp; These <i>readings</i> have
+their literary value, especially in the masterpieces of the
+great; but the sentiment after all is the main thing.</p>
+<p>Other books come to be relics in another way.&nbsp; They are
+the copies which belonged to illustrious people,&mdash;to the
+famous collectors who make a kind of <i>catena</i> (a golden
+chain of bibliophiles) through the centuries since printing was
+invented.&nbsp; There are Grolier (1479&ndash;1565),&mdash;not a
+bookbinder, as an English newspaper supposed (probably when Mr.
+Sala was on his travels),&mdash;De Thou (1553&ndash;1617), the
+great Colbert, the Duc de la Valli&egrave;re (1708&ndash;1780),
+Charles Nodier, a man of yesterday, M. Didot, and the rest, too
+numerous to name.&nbsp; Again, there are the books of kings, like
+Francis I., Henri III., and Louis XIV.&nbsp; These princes had
+their favourite devices.&nbsp; Nicolas Eve, Padeloup, Derome, and
+other artists arrayed their books in morocco,&mdash;tooled with
+skulls, cross-bones, and crucifixions for the voluptuous pietist
+Henri III., with the salamander for Francis I., and powdered with
+<i>fleurs de lys</i> for the monarch who &ldquo;was the
+State.&rdquo;&nbsp; There are relics also of noble
+beauties.&nbsp; The volumes of Marguerite d&rsquo;Angoul&ecirc;me
+are covered with golden daisies.&nbsp; The cipher of Marie
+Antoinette adorns too many books that Madame du Barry might have
+welcomed to her hastily improvised library.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s of
+the illustrious and ridiculous Abb&eacute; Cotin, the
+<i>Trissotin</i> of the comedy.&nbsp; 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 <i>coquettes</i>, pedants,
+poets, and <i>pr&eacute;cieuses</i>, the people who are
+unforgotten in the mob that inhabited dead centuries.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; All her rulers,
+kings, cardinals, and ladies have had time to spare for
+collecting.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;Can a woman
+be a bibliophile?&rdquo; is a question which was once discussed
+at the weekly breakfast party of Guilbert de
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court, the famous book-lover and playwright,
+the &ldquo;Corneille of the Boulevards.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+controversy glided into a discussion as to &ldquo;how many books
+a man can love at a time;&rdquo; but historical examples prove
+that French women (and Italian, witness the Princess
+d&rsquo;Este) may be bibliophiles of the true strain.&nbsp; Diane
+de Poictiers was their illustrious patroness.&nbsp; The mistress
+of Henri II. possessed, in the Ch&acirc;teau d&rsquo;Anet, a
+library of the first triumphs of typography.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In
+the love of books, as in everything else, Diane and Henri II.
+were inseparable.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The books of Henri and of Diane remained in the
+Ch&acirc;teau d&rsquo;Anet till the death of the Princesse de
+Cond&eacute; in 1723, when they were dispersed.&nbsp; The son of
+the famous Madame de Guyon bought the greater part of the
+library, which has since been scattered again and again.&nbsp; M.
+L&eacute;opold Double, a well-known bibliophile, possessed
+several examples. <a name="citation94"></a><a href="#footnote94"
+class="citation">[94]</a></p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; But that great
+historian, Alexandre Dumas, takes a far more friendly view of the
+king&rsquo;s studies, and, in &lsquo;La Dame de Monsoreau,&rsquo;
+introduces us to a learned monarch.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; No more debauched and worthless wretch ever
+filled a throne; but, like the bad man in Aristotle, Henri III.
+was &ldquo;full of repentance.&rdquo;&nbsp; When he was not
+dancing in an unseemly revel, he was on his knees in his
+chapel.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His
+favourite device was the death&rsquo;s-head, with the motto
+<i>Memento Mori</i>, or <i>Spes mea Deus</i>.&nbsp; While he was
+still only Duc d&rsquo;Anjou, Henri loved Marie de Cl&egrave;ves,
+Princesse de Cond&eacute;.&nbsp; On her sudden death he expressed
+his grief, as he had done his piety, by aid of the <i>petits
+fers</i> of the bookbinder.&nbsp; Marie&rsquo;s initials were
+stamped on his book-covers in a chaplet of laurels.&nbsp; In one
+corner a skull and cross-bones were figured; in the other the
+motto <i>Mort m&rsquo;est vie</i>; while two curly objects, which
+did duty for tears, filled up the lower corners.&nbsp; 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
+&pound;120 in a London sale.</p>
+<p>Francis I., as a patron of all the arts, was naturally an
+amateur of bindings.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; With the instinct, the <i>flair</i>,
+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.&nbsp; He sent his agent over to
+England, to the country town where the sale was to be held.&nbsp;
+M. Didot had his reward.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<blockquote><p>Le dos humide, je l&rsquo;&eacute;ponge;<br />
+O&ugrave; manque un coin, vite une allonge,<br />
+Pour tous j&rsquo;ai maison de sant&eacute;.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>During the religious wars and the troubles of the Fronde, it
+is probable that few people gave much time to the collection of
+books.&nbsp; The illustrious exceptions are Richelieu and
+Cardinal Mazarin, who possessed a &ldquo;snuffy Davy&rdquo; of
+his own, an indefatigable prowler among book-stalls and dingy
+purlieus, in Gabriel Naud&eacute;.&nbsp; In 1664, Naud&eacute;,
+who was a learned and ingenious writer, the apologist for
+&ldquo;great men suspected of magic,&rdquo; published the second
+edition of his &lsquo;Avis pour dresser une
+Biblioth&egrave;que,&rsquo; and proved himself to be a true lover
+of the chase, a mighty hunter (of books) before the Lord.&nbsp;
+Naud&eacute;&rsquo;s advice to the collector is rather
+amusing.&nbsp; He pretends not to care much for bindings, and
+quotes Seneca&rsquo;s rebuke of the Roman bibliomaniacs, <i>Quos
+voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique</i>,&mdash;who
+chiefly care for the backs and lettering of their volumes.&nbsp;
+The fact is that Naud&eacute; had the wealth of Mazarin at his
+back, and we know very well, from the remains of the
+Cardinal&rsquo;s library which exist, that he liked as well as
+any man to see his cardinal&rsquo;s hat glittering on red or
+olive morocco in the midst of the beautiful tooling of the early
+seventeenth century.&nbsp; When once he got a book, he would not
+spare to give it a worthy jacket.&nbsp; Naud&eacute;&rsquo;s
+ideas about buying were peculiar.&nbsp; Perhaps he sailed rather
+nearer the wind than even Monkbarns would have cared to do.&nbsp;
+His favourite plan was to buy up whole libraries in the gross,
+&ldquo;speculative lots&rdquo; as the dealers call them.&nbsp; In
+the second place, he advised the book-lover to haunt the retreats
+of <i>Libraires fripiers</i>, <i>et les vieux fonds et
+magasins</i>.&nbsp; Here he truly observes that you may find rare
+books, <i>broch&eacute;s</i>,&mdash;that is, unbound and
+uncut,&mdash;just as Mr. Symonds bought two uncut copies of
+&lsquo;Laon and Cythna&rsquo; in a Bristol stall for a
+crown.&nbsp; &ldquo;You may get things for four or five crowns
+that would cost you forty or fifty elsewhere,&rdquo; says
+Naud&eacute;.&nbsp; Thus a few years ago M. Paul Lacroix bought
+for two francs, in a Paris shop, the very copy of
+&lsquo;Tartuffe&rsquo; which had belonged to Louis XIV.&nbsp; The
+example may now be worth perhaps &pound;200.&nbsp; But we are
+digressing into the pleasures of the modern sportsman.</p>
+<p>It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naud&eacute;
+hunted, but among the dealers in waste paper.&nbsp; &ldquo;Thus
+did Poggio find Quintilian on the counter of a wood-merchant, and
+Masson picked up &lsquo;Agobardus&rsquo; at the shop of a binder,
+who was going to use the MS. to patch his books
+withal.&rdquo;&nbsp; Rossi, who may have seen Naud&eacute; 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.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The stalls where he had passed were like the towns through
+which Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their
+train,&mdash;<i>ut non hominis unius sedulitas</i>, <i>sed
+calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum tabernas pervasisse
+videatur</i>!&rdquo;&nbsp; Naud&eacute; had sorrows of his
+own.&nbsp; In 1652 the Parliament decreed the confiscation of the
+splendid library of Mazarin, which was perhaps the first free
+library in Europe,&mdash;the first that was open to all who were
+worthy of right of entrance.&nbsp; There is a painful description
+of the sale, from which the book-lover will avert his eyes.&nbsp;
+On Mazarin&rsquo;s return to power he managed to collect again
+and enrich his stores, which form the germ of the existing
+<i>Biblioth&egrave;que Mazarine</i>.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The enemies and rivals of
+Moli&egrave;re&mdash;De Vis&eacute;, De Villiers, and the
+rest&mdash;are always reproaching him&mdash;with his love of
+<i>bouquins</i>.&nbsp; There is some difference of opinion among
+philologists about the derivation of <i>bouquin</i>, but all
+book-hunters know the meaning of the word.&nbsp; The
+<i>bouquin</i> is the &ldquo;small, rare volume, black with
+tarnished gold,&rdquo; which lies among the wares of the
+stall-keeper, patient in rain and dust, till the hunter comes who
+can appreciate the quarry.&nbsp; We like to think of
+Moli&egrave;re lounging through the narrow streets in the
+evening, returning, perhaps, from some noble house where he has
+been reading the proscribed &lsquo;Tartuffe,&rsquo; or giving an
+imitation of the rival actors at the H&ocirc;tel Bourgogne.&nbsp;
+Absent as the <i>contemplateur</i> is, a dingy book-stall wakens
+him from his reverie.&nbsp; His lace ruffles are soiled in a
+moment with the learned dust of ancient volumes.&nbsp; Perhaps he
+picks up the only work out of all his library that is known to
+exist,&mdash;<i>un ravissant petit Elzevir</i>, &lsquo;De Imperio
+Magni Mogolis&rsquo; (Lugd.&nbsp; Bat. 1651).&nbsp; On the
+title-page of this tiny volume, one of the minute series of
+&lsquo;Republics&rsquo; which the Elzevirs published, the poet
+has written his rare signature, &ldquo;J. B. P.
+Moli&egrave;re,&rdquo; with the price the book cost him, &ldquo;1
+livre, 10 sols.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Il n&rsquo;est pas de bouquin
+qui s&rsquo;&eacute;chappe de ses mains,&rdquo; says the author
+of &lsquo;La Guerre Comique,&rsquo; the last of the pamphlets
+which flew about during the great literary quarrel about
+&ldquo;L&rsquo;&Eacute;cole des Femmes.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thanks to M.
+Souli&eacute; the catalogue of Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s library has
+been found, though the books themselves have passed out of
+view.&nbsp; There are about three hundred and fifty volumes in
+the inventory, but Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s widow may have omitted
+as valueless (it is the foible of her sex) many rusty
+<i>bouquins</i>, now worth far more than their weight in
+gold.&nbsp; Moli&egrave;re owned no fewer than two hundred and
+forty volumes of French and Italian comedies.&nbsp; From these he
+took what suited him wherever he found it.&nbsp; He had plenty of
+classics, histories, philosophic treatises, the essays of
+Montaigne, a Plutarch, and a Bible.</p>
+<p>We know nothing, to the regret of bibliophiles, of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s taste in bindings.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp;
+It is certain&mdash;La Bruy&egrave;re tells us as much&mdash;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.&nbsp; &ldquo;A man tells me he has a library,&rdquo; says
+La Bruy&egrave;re (De la Mode); &ldquo;I ask permission to see
+it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He does his best to revive me; shouts in my ear that
+the volumes &lsquo;have gilt edges,&rsquo; that they are
+&lsquo;elegantly tooled,&rsquo; that they are &lsquo;of the good
+edition,&rsquo; . . . and informs me that &lsquo;he never
+reads,&rsquo; that &lsquo;he never sets foot in this part of his
+house,&rsquo; that he &lsquo;will come to oblige me!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I thank him for all his kindness, and have no more desire than
+himself to see the tanner&rsquo;s shop that he calls his
+library.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile
+at whom perhaps La Bruy&egrave;re would have sneered.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; After Grolier, De Thou, and
+Mazarin, Colbert possessed probably the richest private library
+in Europe.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; England, in those days, had no literature with
+which France deigned to be acquainted.&nbsp; Even into England,
+however, valuable books had been imported; and we find Colbert
+pressing the French ambassador at St. James&rsquo;s to bid for
+him at a certain sale of rare heretical writings.&nbsp; People
+who wanted to gain his favour approached him with presents of
+books, and the city of Metz gave him two real
+curiosities&mdash;the famous &ldquo;Metz Bible&rdquo; and the
+Missal of Charles the Bald.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; As much may be said
+for the reprobate Cardinal Dubois, who, with all his faults, was
+a collector.&nbsp; Bossuet, on the other hand, left little or
+nothing of interest except a copy of the 1682 edition of
+Moli&egrave;re, whom he detested and condemned to &ldquo;the
+punishment of those who laugh.&rdquo;&nbsp; Even this book, which
+has a curious interest, has slipped out of sight, and may have
+ceased to exist.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image100" href="images/p100b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Fac-simile of binding from the Library of Grolier"
+title=
+"Fac-simile of binding from the Library of Grolier"
+ src="images/p100s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>If Colbert and Dubois preserved books from destruction, there
+are collectors enough who have been rescued from oblivion by
+books.&nbsp; The diplomacy of D&rsquo;Hoym is forgotten; the
+plays of Longepierre, and his quarrels with J. B. Rousseau, are
+known only to the literary historian.&nbsp; These great amateurs
+have secured an eternity of gilt edges, an immortality of
+morocco.&nbsp; 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 &pound;100.&nbsp;
+Longepierre, D&rsquo;Hoym, McCarthy, and the Duc de la
+Valli&egrave;re, with all their treasures, are less interesting
+to us than Graille, Coche and Loque, the neglected daughters of
+Louis XV.&nbsp; They found some pale consolation in their little
+cabinets of books, in their various liveries of olive, citron,
+and red morocco.</p>
+<p>A lady amateur of high (book-collecting) reputation, the
+Comtesse de Verrue, was represented in the Beckford sale by one
+of three copies of &lsquo;L&rsquo;Histoire de
+M&eacute;lusine,&rsquo; of Melusine, the twy-formed fairy, and
+ancestress of the house of Lusignan.&nbsp; The Comtesse de
+Verrue, one of the few women who have really understood
+book-collecting, <a name="citation102"></a><a href="#footnote102"
+class="citation">[102]</a> was born January 18, 1670, and died
+November 18, 1736.&nbsp; She was the daughter of Charles de
+Luynes and of his second wife, Anne de Rohan.&nbsp; When only
+thirteen she married the Comte de Verrue, who somewhat
+injudiciously presented her, a <i>fleur de quinze ans</i>, as
+Ronsard says, at the court of Victor Amadeus of Savoy.&nbsp; It
+is thought that the countess was less cruel than the <i>fleur
+Angevine</i> of Ronsard.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; According to her biographer, the countess loved
+science and art <i>jusqu&rsquo;au d&eacute;lire</i>, and she
+collected the furniture of the period, without neglecting the
+blue china of the glowing Orient.&nbsp; In ebony bookcases she
+possessed about eighteen thousand volumes, bound by the greatest
+artists of the day.&nbsp; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp; She left an epitaph on herself, thus rudely
+translated:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Here lies, in sleep secure,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A dame inclined to mirth,<br />
+Who, by way of making sure,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Chose her Paradise on earth.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>During the Revolution, to like well-bound books was as much as
+to proclaim one an aristocrat.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The great libraries from the
+ch&acirc;teaux of the nobles were scattered among all the
+book-stalls.&nbsp; True sons of freedom tore off the bindings,
+with their gilded crests and scutcheons.&nbsp; One revolutionary
+writer declared, and perhaps he was not far wrong, that the art
+of binding was the worst enemy of reading.&nbsp; He always began
+his studies by breaking the backs of the volumes he was about to
+attack.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s collection.</p>
+<p>When Napoleon became Emperor, he strove in vain to make the
+troubled and feverish years of his power produce a
+literature.&nbsp; He himself was one of the most voracious
+readers of novels that ever lived.&nbsp; He was always asking for
+the newest of the new, and unfortunately even the new romances of
+his period were hopelessly bad.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The conqueror
+was very hard to please.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He might
+have been tracked by his trail of romances, as was
+Hop-o&rsquo;-my-Thumb, in the fairy tale, by the white stones he
+dropped behind him.&nbsp; Poor Barbier, who ministered to a
+passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, was at his
+wit&rsquo;s end.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The
+expense, if only fifty copies of each example had been printed,
+would have amounted to more than six million francs.&nbsp; A
+Roman emperor would not have allowed these considerations to
+stand in his way; but Napoleon, after all, was a modern.&nbsp; He
+contented himself with a selection of books conveniently small in
+shape, and packed in sumptuous cases.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Long before they could have reached Moscow, Napoleon
+was flying homeward before Kotousoff and Benningsen.</p>
+<p>Napoleon was the last of the book-lovers who governed
+France.&nbsp; The Duc d&rsquo;Aumale, a famous bibliophile, has
+never &ldquo;come to his own,&rdquo; and of M. Gambetta it is
+only known that his devotional library, at least, has found its
+way into the market.&nbsp; We have reached the era of private
+book-fanciers: of Nodier, who had three libraries in his time,
+but never a Virgil; and of Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court, the
+dramatist, who founded the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des Bibliophiles
+Fran&ccedil;ais.&nbsp; The Romantic movement in French literature
+brought in some new fashions in book-hunting.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court was a believer in the works of the
+Elzevirs.&nbsp; On one occasion, when he was outbid by a friend
+at an auction, he cried passionately, &ldquo;I shall have that
+book at your sale!&rdquo; and, the other poor bibliophile soon
+falling into a decline and dying, Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court got
+the volume which he so much desired.&nbsp; The superstitious
+might have been excused for crediting him with the gift of
+<i>jettatura</i>,&mdash;of the evil eye.&nbsp; On
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court himself the evil eye fell at last; his
+theatre, the Gaiet&eacute;, was burned down in 1835, and his
+creditors intended to impound his beloved books.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There they languished in exile till the affairs of
+the manager were settled.</p>
+<p>Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court and Nodier, the most reckless of
+men, were the leaders of the older school of bibliomaniacs.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; He
+would literally ruin himself in the accumulation of a library,
+and then would recover his fortunes by selling his books.&nbsp;
+Nodier passed through life without a Virgil, because he never
+succeeded in finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams,&mdash;a
+clean, uncut copy of the right Elzevir edition, with the
+misprint, and the two passages in red letters.&nbsp; Perhaps this
+failure was a judgment on him for the trick by which he beguiled
+a certain collector of Bibles.&nbsp; He <i>invented</i> an
+edition, and put the collector on the scent, which he followed
+vainly, till he died of the sickness of hope deferred.</p>
+<p>One has more sympathy with the eccentricities of Nodier than
+with the mere extravagance of the new <i>haute &eacute;cole</i>
+of bibliomaniacs, the school of millionnaires, royal dukes, and
+Rothschilds.&nbsp; These amateurs are reckless of prices, and by
+their competition have made it almost impossible for a poor man
+to buy a precious book.&nbsp; The dukes, the Americans, the
+public libraries, snap them all up in the auctions.&nbsp; A
+glance at M. Gustave Brunet&rsquo;s little volume, &lsquo;La
+Bibliomanie en 1878,&rsquo; will prove the excesses which these
+people commit.&nbsp; 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
+&pound;200.&nbsp; It is true that this copy had possibly belonged
+to Bossuet himself, and certainly to his nephew.&nbsp; There is
+an example, as we have seen, of the 1682 edition of
+Moli&egrave;re,&mdash;of Moli&egrave;re whom Bossuet
+detested,&mdash;which also belonged to the eagle of Meaux.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; While
+pamphlets of Bossuet are sold so dear, the first edition of
+Homer&mdash;the beautiful edition of 1488, which the three young
+Florentine gentlemen published&mdash;may be had for
+&pound;100.&nbsp; Yet even that seems expensive, when we remember
+that the copy in the library of George III. cost only seven
+shillings.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Yet this Homer is less valued than the
+tiny octavo which contains the <i>ballades and huitains</i> of
+the scamp Fran&ccedil;ois Villon (1533).&nbsp; &lsquo;The History
+of the Holy Grail&rsquo; (<i>L&rsquo;Hystoire du Sainct
+Gr&eacute;aal</i>: Paris, 1523), in a binding stamped with the
+four crowns of Louis XIV., is valued at about &pound;500.&nbsp; A
+chivalric romance of the old days, which was treasured even in
+the time of the <i>grand monarque</i>, when old French literature
+was so much despised, is certainly a curiosity.&nbsp; The
+Rabelais of Madame de Pompadour (in morocco) seems comparatively
+cheap at &pound;60.&nbsp; There is something piquant in the idea
+of inheriting from that famous beauty the work of the colossal
+genius of Rabelais. <a name="citation107"></a><a
+href="#footnote107" class="citation">[107]</a></p>
+<p>The natural sympathy of collectors &ldquo;to middle fortune
+born&rdquo; is not with the rich men whose sport in book-hunting
+resembles the <i>battue</i>.&nbsp; We side with the poor hunters
+of the wild game, who hang over the fourpenny stalls on the
+<i>quais</i>, and dive into the dusty boxes after literary
+pearls.&nbsp; These devoted men rise betimes, and hurry to the
+stalls before the common tide of passengers goes by.&nbsp; Early
+morning is the best moment in this, as in other sports.&nbsp; At
+half past seven, in summer, the <i>bouquiniste</i>, 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It is reckoned
+that an energetic, business-like old bookseller will turn over
+150,000 volumes in a year.&nbsp; In this vast number there must
+be pickings for the humble collector who cannot afford to
+encounter the children of Israel at Sotheby&rsquo;s or at the
+H&ocirc;tel Drouot.</p>
+<p>Let the enthusiast, in conclusion, throw a handful of lilies
+on the grave of the martyr of the love of books,&mdash;the poet
+Albert Glatigny.&nbsp; Poor Glatigny was the son of a <i>garde
+champ&ecirc;tre</i>; his education was accidental, and his poetic
+taste and skill extraordinarily fine and delicate.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He lived to read and to dream, and if he bought
+books he had not the wherewithal to live.&nbsp; Still, he bought
+them,&mdash;and he died!&nbsp; His own poems were beautifully
+printed by Lemerre, and it may be a joy to him (<i>si mentem
+mortalia tangunt</i>) that they are now so highly valued that the
+price of a copy would have kept the author alive and happy for a
+month.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image108" href="images/p108b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Binding with the arms of Madame de Pompadour"
+title=
+"Binding with the arms of Madame de Pompadour"
+ src="images/p108s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+109</span><i>OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> can be plainer, as a rule,
+than a modern English title-page.&nbsp; Its only beauty (if
+beauty it possesses) consists in the arrangement and
+&lsquo;massing&rsquo; of lines of type in various sizes.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s mark, or date, or place.&nbsp; These were
+reserved for the colophon, if it was thought desirable to mention
+them at all.&nbsp; Thus, in the black-letter example of Guido de
+Columna&rsquo;s &lsquo;History of Troy,&rsquo; written about
+1283, and printed at Strasburg in 1489, the title-page is blank,
+except for the words,</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><b>Hystoria Troiana
+Guidonis</b>,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>standing alone at the top of the leaf.&nbsp; The colophon
+contains all the rest of the information, &lsquo;happily
+completed in the City of Strasburg, in the year of Grace
+Mcccclxxxix, about the Feast of St. Urban.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+printer and publisher give no name at all.</p>
+<p>This early simplicity is succeeded, in French books, from,
+say, 1510, and afterwards, by the insertion either of the
+printer&rsquo;s trademark, or, in black-letter books, of a rough
+woodcut, illustrative of the nature of the volume.&nbsp; The
+woodcuts have occasionally a rude kind of grace, with a touch of
+the classical taste of the early Renaissance surviving in extreme
+decay.</p>
+<p>An excellent example is the title-page of &lsquo;Les Demandes
+d&rsquo;amours, avec les responses joyeuses,&rsquo; published by
+Jacques Moderne, at Lyon, 1540.&nbsp; There is a certain Pagan
+breadth and joyousness in the figure of Amor, and the man in the
+hood resembles traditional portraits of Dante.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image110" href="images/p110b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Les demandes tamours auec les refp&ocirc;fesioyeufes.
+Dem&aacute;de refponfe"
+title=
+"Les demandes tamours auec les refp&ocirc;fesioyeufes.
+Dem&aacute;de refponfe"
+ src="images/p110s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>There is more humour, and a good deal of skill, in the
+title-page of a book on late marriages and their discomforts,
+&lsquo;Les dictz et complainctes de trop Tard mari&eacute;&rsquo;
+(Jacques Moderne, Lyon, 1540), where we see the elderly and
+comfortable couple sitting gravely under their own fig-tree.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image111" href="images/p111b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Les dictz et complainctes"
+title=
+"Les dictz et complainctes"
+ src="images/p111s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Jacques Moderne was a printer curious in these quaint devices,
+and used them in most of his books: for example, in &lsquo;How
+Satan and the God Bacchus accuse the Publicans that spoil the
+wine,&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The work is
+styled &lsquo;Livret nouveau auquel sont contenuz xxv receptes de
+prendre poissons et oiseaulx avec les mains.&rsquo;&nbsp; A
+countryman clad in a goat&rsquo;s skin with the head and horns
+drawn over his head as a hood, is dragging ashore a net full of
+fishes.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Ballade des Pendus,&rsquo; and is reproduced in Mr. John
+Payne&rsquo;s &lsquo;Poems of Master Francis Villon of
+Paris&rsquo; (London, 1878). <a name="citation119a"></a><a
+href="#footnote119a" class="citation">[119a]</a></p>
+<p>Earlier in date than these vignettes of Jacques Moderne, but
+much more artistic and refined in design, are some frontispieces
+of small octavos printed <i>en lettres rondes</i>, about
+1530.&nbsp; In these rubricated letters are used with brilliant
+effect.&nbsp; One of the best is the title-page of Galliot du
+Pr&eacute;&rsquo;s edition of &lsquo;Le Rommant de la Rose&rsquo;
+(Paris, 1529). <a name="citation119b"></a><a href="#footnote119b"
+class="citation">[119b]</a>&nbsp; Galliot du Pr&eacute;&rsquo;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&rsquo;s poems, which we
+reproduce here.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image113" href="images/p113b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Les Oevvres feu maiftre Alain chartier en fon viuant Secretaire
+du feu roy Charles les feptiefme du non..."
+title=
+"Les Oevvres feu maiftre Alain chartier en fon viuant Secretaire
+du feu roy Charles les feptiefme du non..."
+ src="images/p113s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The arrangement of letters, and the use of red, make a
+charming frame, as it were, to the drawing of the medi&aelig;val
+ship, with the Motto VOGUE LA GALEE.</p>
+<p>Title-pages like these, with designs appropriate to the
+character of the text, were superseded presently by the fashion
+of badges, devices, and mottoes.&nbsp; As courtiers and ladies
+had their private badges, not hereditary, like crests, but
+personal&mdash;the crescent of Diane, the salamander of Francis
+I., the skulls and cross-bones of Henri III., the
+<i>marguerites</i> of Marguerite, with mottoes like the <i>Le
+Banny de liesse</i>, <i>Le traverseur des voies
+p&eacute;rilleuses</i>, <i>Tout par Soulas</i>, and the like, so
+printers and authors had their emblems, and their private
+literary slogans.&nbsp; These they changed, accordinging to
+fancy, or the vicissitudes of their lives.&nbsp; Cl&eacute;ment
+Marot&rsquo;s motto was <i>La Mort n&rsquo;y Mord</i>.&nbsp; It
+is indicated by the letters L. M. N. M. in the curious title of
+an edition of Marot&rsquo;s works published at Lyons by Jean de
+Tournes in 1579.&nbsp; The portrait represents the poet when the
+tide of years had borne him far from his youth, far from
+<i>L&rsquo;Adolescence Cl&eacute;mentine</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image114" href="images/p114b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Le Pastissier Fran&ccedil;ois, MDCLV, title page"
+title=
+"Le Pastissier Fran&ccedil;ois, MDCLV, title page"
+ src="images/p114s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image115" href="images/p115b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Le Pastissier Francois, 1655, showing a kitchen scene"
+title=
+"Le Pastissier Francois, 1655, showing a kitchen scene"
+ src="images/p115s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; In publishing &lsquo;Les
+Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, tr&egrave;s illustre
+Royne de Navarre,&rsquo; Jean de Tournes employed a pretty
+allegorical device.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Groueleau, of Paris, had for motto <i>Nul ne
+s&rsquo;y frotte</i>, with the thistle for badge.&nbsp; These are
+beautifully combined in the title-page of his version of
+Apuleius, &lsquo;L&rsquo;Amour de Cupido et de Psyche&rsquo;
+(Paris, 1557).&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s posthumous chapters is printed quite simply.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p116b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Gargantva"
+title=
+"Gargantva"
+ src="images/p116s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>In 1532&ndash;35 there was a more adventurous
+taste&mdash;witness the title of &lsquo;Gargantua.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+This beautiful title decorates the first known edition, with a
+date of the First Book of Rabelais.&nbsp; It was sold, most
+appropriately, <i>devant nostre Dame de Confort</i>.&nbsp; Why
+should so glorious a relic of the Master have been carried out of
+England, at the Sunderland sale?&nbsp; All the early titles of
+Fran&ccedil;ois Juste&rsquo;s Lyons editions of Rabelais are on
+this model.&nbsp; By 1542 he dropped the framework of
+architectural design.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The taste for vignettes, engraved on copper, not on wood, was
+revived under the Elzevirs.&nbsp; Their pretty little title-pages
+are not so well known but that we offer examples.&nbsp; In the
+essay on the Elzevirs in this volume will be found a copy of the
+vignette of the &lsquo;Imitatio Christi,&rsquo; and of &lsquo;Le
+Pastissier Fran&ccedil;ois&rsquo; a reproduction is given here
+(pp. 114, 115).&nbsp; The artists they employed had plenty of
+fancy, not backed by very profound skill in design.</p>
+<p>In the same <i>genre</i> as the big-wigged classicism of the
+Elzevir vignettes, in an age when Louis XIV. and Moli&egrave;re
+(in tragedy) wore laurel wreaths over vast perruques, are the
+early frontispieces of Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s own collected
+works.&nbsp; Probably the most interesting of all French
+title-pages are those drawn by Chauveau for the two volumes
+&lsquo;Les Oeuvres de M. de Moli&egrave;re,&rsquo; published in
+1666 by Guillaume de Luynes.&nbsp; The first shows Moli&egrave;re
+in two characters, as Mascarille, and as Sganarelle, in &lsquo;Le
+Cocu Imaginaire.&rsquo;&nbsp; Contrast the full-blown jollity of
+the <i>fourbum imperator</i>, in his hat, and feather, and wig,
+and vast <i>canons</i>, and tremendous shoe-tie, with the lean
+melancholy of jealous Sganarelle.&nbsp; These are two notable
+aspects of the genius of the great comedian.&nbsp; The apes below
+are the supporters of his scutcheon.</p>
+<p>The second volume shows the Muse of Comedy crowning Mlle. de
+Moli&egrave;re (Armande B&eacute;jart) in the dress of
+Agn&egrave;s, while her husband is in the costume, apparently, of
+Tartuffe, or of Sganarelle in &lsquo;L&rsquo;Ecole des
+Femmes.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Tartuffe&rsquo; had not yet been
+licensed for a public stage.&nbsp; The interest of the portraits
+and costumes makes these title-pages precious, they are
+historical documents rather than mere curiosities.</p>
+<p>These title-pages of Moli&egrave;re are the highwater mark of
+French taste in this branch of decoration.&nbsp; In the old
+quarto first editions of Corneille&rsquo;s early plays, such as
+&lsquo;Le Cid&rsquo; (Paris 1637), the printers used lax and
+sprawling combinations of flowers and fruit.&nbsp; 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 Moli&egrave;re as publishers.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image119" href="images/p119b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Les Oeuvres de Mr Moliere"
+title=
+"Les Oeuvres de Mr Moliere"
+ src="images/p119s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The basket of fruits on the title-page of
+&lsquo;Iphig&eacute;nie,&rsquo; par M. Racine (Barbin, Paris,
+1675), is almost, but not quite, identical with the similar
+ornament of De Vis&eacute;&rsquo;s &lsquo;La Cocue
+Imaginaire&rsquo; (Ribou, Paris 1662).&nbsp; Many of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s plays appearing first, separately, in
+small octavo, were adorned with frontispieces, illustrative of
+some scene in the comedy.&nbsp; Thus, in the
+&lsquo;Misanthrope&rsquo; (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&rsquo;s face looks rather
+as if he were being baited with a sonnet.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In recent years the employment of
+publishers&rsquo; devices has been less unusual and more
+agreeable.&nbsp; Thus Poulet Malassis had his <i>armes
+parlantes</i>, a chicken very uncomfortably perched on a
+rail.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s early place of business, and doubtless other
+symbols, all capable of being quaintly treated in a
+title-page.</p>
+<h2><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span><i>A
+BOOKMAN&rsquo;S PURGATORY</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Blinton</span> was a
+book-hunter.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He constantly declined to believe that the devil
+came for that renowned amateur of black letter, G.
+Steevens.&nbsp; Dibdin himself, who tells the story (with obvious
+anxiety and alarm), pretends to refuse credit to the ghastly
+narrative.&nbsp; &ldquo;His language,&rdquo; says Dibdin, in his
+account of the book-hunter&rsquo;s end, &ldquo;was, too
+frequently, the language of imprecation.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is
+rather good, as if Dibdin thought a gentleman might swear pretty
+often, but not &ldquo;<i>too</i> frequently.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Although I am not disposed to admit,&rdquo; Dibdin goes
+on, &ldquo;the <i>whole</i> of the testimony of the good woman
+who watched by Steevens&rsquo;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;&rdquo; and so forth.&nbsp; In short,
+Dibdin clearly holds that the windows did shake &ldquo;without a
+blast,&rdquo; like the banners in Branxholme Hall when somebody
+came for the Goblin Page.</p>
+<p>But Thomas Blinton would hear of none of these things.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But the flimsiness of Blinton&rsquo;s theories must
+be apparent to every unbiassed moralist.&nbsp; His
+&ldquo;harmless taste&rdquo; really involved most of the deadly
+sins, or at all events a fair working majority of them.&nbsp; He
+coveted his neighbours&rsquo; books.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He took
+advantage of the ignorance of uneducated persons who kept
+book-stalls.&nbsp; He was envious, and grudged the good fortune
+of others, while he rejoiced in their failures.&nbsp; He turned a
+deaf ear to the appeals of poverty.&nbsp; 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 <i>point
+d&rsquo;Alen&ccedil;on</i> lace.&nbsp; Greedy, proud, envious,
+stingy, extravagant, and sharp in his dealings, Blinton was
+guilty of most of the sins which the Church recognises as
+&ldquo;deadly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+It is true that when he got home and consulted
+&lsquo;Willems,&rsquo; 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
+&ldquo;nuppence&rdquo; to the collector.&nbsp; But the intention
+is the thing, and Blinton&rsquo;s intention was distinctly
+fraudulent.&nbsp; When he discovered his error, then &ldquo;his
+language,&rdquo; as Dibdin says, &ldquo;was that of
+imprecation.&rdquo;&nbsp; Worse (if possible) than this, Blinton
+had gone to a sale, begun to bid for &lsquo;Les Essais de Michel,
+Seigneur de Montaigne&rsquo; (Foppens, MDCLIX.), and, carried
+away by excitement, had &ldquo;plunged&rdquo; to the extent of
+&pound;15, which was precisely the amount of money he owed his
+plumber and gasfitter, a worthy man with a large family.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But Blinton, with fiendish joy,
+pointed out to him that the index was imperfect, and left him
+sorrowing.</p>
+<p>Deeds more foul have yet to be told.&nbsp; Thomas Blinton had
+discovered a new sin, so to speak, in the collecting way.&nbsp;
+Aristophanes says of one of his favourite blackguards, &ldquo;Not
+only is he a villain, but he has invented an original
+villainy.&rdquo;&nbsp; Blinton was like this.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was Blinton&rsquo;s hideous pleasure to
+collect stray copies of these unhappy volumes, these
+&lsquo;P&eacute;ch&eacute;s de Jeunesse,&rsquo; which, always and
+invariably, bear a gushing inscription from the author to a
+friend.&nbsp; He had all Lord John Manners&rsquo;s poems, and
+even Mr. Ruskin&rsquo;s.&nbsp; He had the &lsquo;Ode to
+Despair&rsquo; of Smith (now a comic writer), and the &lsquo;Love
+Lyrics&rsquo; of Brown, who is now a permanent under-secretary,
+than which nothing can be less gay nor more permanent.&nbsp; He
+had the amatory songs which a dignitary of the Church published
+and withdrew from circulation.&nbsp; Blinton was wont to say he
+expected to come across &lsquo;Triolets of a Tribune,&rsquo; by
+Mr. John Bright, and &lsquo;Original Hymns for Infant
+Minds,&rsquo; by Mr. Henry Labouchere, if he only hunted long
+enough.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Ah,
+was this a kind action?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Blinton
+had passed, on the whole, a happy day, notwithstanding the error
+about the Elzevir.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At the very first, in the
+Brompton Road, he saw a man turning over the rubbish in the cheap
+box.&nbsp; Blinton stared at him, fancied he knew him, thought he
+didn&rsquo;t, and then became a prey to the glittering eye of the
+other.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He resembled Mr. Isaacs, Zanoni (in the novel of
+that name), Mendoza (in &lsquo;Codlingsby&rsquo;), the soul-less
+man in &lsquo;A Strange Story,&rsquo; Mr. Home, Mr. Irving
+Bishop, a Buddhist adept in the astral body, and most other
+mysterious characters of history and fiction.&nbsp; Before his
+Awful Will, Blinton&rsquo;s mere modern obstinacy shrank back
+like a child abashed.&nbsp; The Stranger glided to him and
+whispered, &ldquo;Buy these.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;These&rdquo; were a complete set of Auerbach&rsquo;s
+novels, in English, which, I need not say, Blinton would never
+have dreamt of purchasing had he been left to his own
+devices.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Buy these!&rdquo; repeated the Adept, or whatever he
+was, in a cruel whisper.&nbsp; Paying the sum demanded, and
+trailing his vast load of German romance, poor Blinton followed
+the fiend.</p>
+<p>They reached a stall where, amongst much trash,
+Glatigny&rsquo;s &lsquo;Jour de l&rsquo;An d&rsquo;un
+Vagabond&rsquo; was exposed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look,&rdquo; said Blinton, &ldquo;there is a book I
+have wanted some time.&nbsp; Glatignys are getting rather scarce,
+and it is an amusing trifle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, buy <i>that</i>,&rdquo; said the implacable
+Stranger, pointing with a hooked forefinger at Alison&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;History of Europe&rsquo; in an indefinite number of
+volumes.&nbsp; Blinton shuddered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, buy <i>that</i>, and why?&nbsp; In heaven&rsquo;s
+name, what could I do with it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Buy it,&rdquo; repeated the persecutor, &ldquo;and
+<i>that</i>&rdquo; (indicating the &lsquo;Ilios&rsquo; of Dr.
+Schliemann, a bulky work), &ldquo;and <i>these</i>&rdquo;
+(pointing to all Mr. Theodore Alois Buckley&rsquo;s translations
+of the Classics), &ldquo;and <i>these</i>&rdquo; (glancing at the
+collected writings of the late Mr. Hain Friswell, and at a
+&lsquo;Life,&rsquo; in more than one volume, of Mr.
+Gladstone).</p>
+<p>The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along carrying the
+bargains under his arm.&nbsp; Now one book fell out, now another
+dropped by the way.&nbsp; Sometimes a portion of Alison came
+ponderously to earth; sometimes the &lsquo;Gentle Life&rsquo;
+sunk resignedly to the ground.&nbsp; The Adept kept picking them
+up again, and packing them under the arms of the weary
+Blinton.</p>
+<p>The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and
+tried to enter into conversation with his tormentor.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He <i>does</i> know about books,&rdquo; thought
+Blinton, &ldquo;and he must have a weak spot
+somewhere.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational
+style.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He discoursed of first editions, of black
+letter, and even of illustrations and vignettes.&nbsp; He
+approached the topic of Bibles, but here his tyrant, with a
+fierce yet timid glance, interrupted him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Buy those!&rdquo; he hissed through his teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Those&rdquo; were the complete publications of the Folk
+Lore Society.</p>
+<p>Blinton did not care for folk lore (very bad men never do),
+but he had to act as he was told.</p>
+<p>Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire the
+&lsquo;Ethics&rsquo; of Aristotle, in the agreeable versions of
+Williams and Chase.&nbsp; Next he secured
+&lsquo;Strathmore,&rsquo; &lsquo;Chandos,&rsquo; &lsquo;Under Two
+Flags,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Two Little Wooden Shoes,&rsquo; and
+several dozens more of Ouida&rsquo;s novels.&nbsp; The next stall
+was entirely filled with school-books, old geographies, Livys,
+Delectuses, Arnold&rsquo;s &lsquo;Greek Exercises,&rsquo;
+Ollendorffs, and what not.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Buy them all,&rdquo; hissed the fiend.&nbsp; He seized
+whole boxes and piled them on Blinton&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p>He tied up Ouida&rsquo;s novels, in two parcels, with string,
+and fastened each to one of the buttons above the tails of
+Blinton&rsquo;s coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are tired?&rdquo; asked the tormentor.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Never mind, these books will soon be off your
+hands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s
+famous and very expensive binder.</p>
+<p>The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of
+Blinton&rsquo;s treasures.&nbsp; Then the miserable Blinton found
+himself, as it were automatically and without any exercise of his
+will, speaking thus:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here are some things I have picked up,&mdash;extremely
+rare,&mdash;and you will oblige me by binding them in your best
+manner, regardless of expense.&nbsp; Morocco, of course; crushed
+levant morocco, <i>doubl&eacute;</i>, every book of them,
+<i>petits fers</i>, my crest and coat of arms, plenty of
+gilding.&nbsp; Spare no cost.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t keep me waiting,
+as you generally do;&rdquo; for indeed book-binders are the most
+dilatory of the human species.</p>
+<p>Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary
+questions, Blinton&rsquo;s tormentor had hurried that amateur out
+of the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come on to the sale,&rdquo; he cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What sale?&rdquo; said Blinton.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a
+lucky day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I have forgotten my catalogue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side
+of the ebony book-case at home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated
+itself till the hand disappeared from view round the
+corner.&nbsp; In a moment the hand returned with the
+catalogue.&nbsp; The pair sped on to Messrs. Sotheby&rsquo;s
+auction-rooms in Wellington Street.&nbsp; Every one knows the
+appearance of a great book-sale.&nbsp; The long table, surrounded
+by eager bidders, resembles from a little distance a roulette
+table, and communicates the same sort of excitement.&nbsp; The
+amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct himself.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Besides, professionals always dislike amateurs, and,
+in this game, they have a very great advantage.&nbsp; Blinton
+knew all this, and was in the habit of giving his commissions to
+a broker.&nbsp; But now he felt (and very naturally) as if a
+demon had entered into him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Tirante il Bianco
+Valorosissimo Cavaliere&rsquo; was being competed for, an
+excessively rare romance of chivalry, in magnificent red Venetian
+morocco, from Canevari&rsquo;s library.&nbsp; The book is one of
+the rarest of the Venetian Press, and beautifully adorned with
+Canevari&rsquo;s device,&mdash;a simple and elegant affair in
+gold and colours.&nbsp; &ldquo;Apollo is driving his chariot
+across the green waves towards the rock, on which winged Pegasus
+is pawing the ground,&rdquo; though why this action of a horse
+should be called &ldquo;pawing&rdquo; (the animal notoriously not
+possessing paws) it is hard to say.&nbsp; Round this graceful
+design is the inscription &Omicron;&Rho;&Theta;&Omega;&Sigma;
+&Kappa;&Alpha;&Iota; &Mu;&Eta;
+&Alpha;&Omicron;&Xi;&Iota;&Omega;&Sigma; (straight not
+crooked).&nbsp; In his ordinary mood Blinton could only have
+admired &lsquo;Tirante il Bianco&rsquo; from a distance.&nbsp;
+But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into the lists, and
+challenged the great Mr. &mdash;, the Napoleon of
+bookselling.&nbsp; The price had already reached five hundred
+pounds.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Six hundred,&rdquo; cried Blinton.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Guineas,&rdquo; said the great Mr. &mdash;.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seven hundred,&rdquo; screamed Blinton.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Guineas,&rdquo; replied the other.</p>
+<p>This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. &mdash;
+struck his flag, with a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said
+&ldquo;Six thousand.&rdquo;&nbsp; The cheers of the audience
+rewarded the largest bid ever made for any book.&nbsp; As if he
+had not done enough, the Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend
+with Mr. &mdash; for every expensive work that appeared.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; The hammer fell for the last time.&nbsp; Blinton owed
+some fifty thousand pounds, and exclaimed audibly, as the
+influence of the fiend died out, &ldquo;I am a ruined
+man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then your books must be sold,&rdquo; cried the
+Stranger, and, leaping on a chair, he addressed the
+audience:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton&rsquo;s sale,
+which will immediately take place.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room were
+filled with Blinton&rsquo;s books, all tied up in big lots of
+some thirty volumes each.&nbsp; His early Moli&egrave;res were
+fastened to old French dictionaries and school-books.&nbsp; His
+Shakespeare quartos were in the same lot with tattered railway
+novels.&nbsp; His copy (almost unique) of Richard
+Barnfield&rsquo;s much too &lsquo;Affectionate Shepheard&rsquo;
+was coupled with odd volumes of &lsquo;Chips from a German
+Workshop&rsquo; and a cheap, imperfect example of &lsquo;Tom
+Brown&rsquo;s School-Days.&rsquo;&nbsp; Hookes&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Amanda&rsquo; was at the bottom of a lot of American
+devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus
+and the Aldine &lsquo;Hypnerotomachia.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+auctioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the
+whole affair was a &ldquo;knock-out.&rdquo;&nbsp; His most
+treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste
+paper.&nbsp; It is an awful thing to be present at one&rsquo;s
+own sale.&nbsp; No man would bid above a few shillings.&nbsp;
+Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the plunder would
+be shared among the grinning bidders.&nbsp; At last his
+&lsquo;Adonais,&rsquo; uncut, bound by Lortic, went, in company
+with some old &lsquo;Bradshaws,&rsquo; the &lsquo;Court
+Guide&rsquo; of 1881, and an odd volume of the &lsquo;Sunday at
+Home,&rsquo; for sixpence.&nbsp; The Stranger smiled a smile of
+peculiar malignity.&nbsp; Blinton leaped up to protest; the room
+seemed to shake around him, but words would not come to his
+lips.</p>
+<p>Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp
+shook his shoulder,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Beside him lay &lsquo;L&rsquo;Enfer du
+Bibliophile, vu et d&eacute;crit par Charles
+Asselineau.&rsquo;&nbsp; (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX.)</p>
+
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>If this were an ordinary tract, I should have to tell how
+Blinton&rsquo;s eyes were opened, how he gave up book-collecting,
+and took to gardening, or politics, or something of that
+sort.&nbsp; But truth compels me to admit that Blinton&rsquo;s
+repentance had vanished by the end of the week, when he was
+discovered marking M. Claudin&rsquo;s catalogue, surreptitiously,
+before breakfast.&nbsp; Thus, indeed, end all our remorses.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Lancelot falls to his own love again,&rdquo; as in the
+romance.&nbsp; Much, and justly, as theologians decry a death-bed
+repentance, it is, perhaps, the only repentance that we do not
+repent of.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; Once a collector, always a
+collector.&nbsp; <i>Moi qui parle</i>, I have sinned, and
+struggled, and fallen.&nbsp; I have thrown catalogues, unopened,
+into the waste-paper basket.&nbsp; I have withheld my feet from
+the paths that lead to Sotheby&rsquo;s and to
+Puttick&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I have crossed the street to avoid a
+book-stall.&nbsp; In fact, like the prophet Nicholas, &ldquo;I
+have been known to be steady for weeks at a time.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Probably Grolier was thinking of such
+weaknesses when he chose his devices <i>Tanquam Ventus</i>, and
+<i>quisque suos patimur Manes</i>.&nbsp; Like the wind we are
+blown about, and, like the people in the &AElig;neid, we are
+obliged to suffer the consequences of our own extravagance.</p>
+<h2><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+133</span><i>BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE</i>.</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> Books I cannot
+hope to buy,<br />
+Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel,<br />
+They pass before the dreaming eye,<br />
+Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal.<br />
+A kind of literary reel<br />
+They dance; how fair the bindings shine!<br />
+Prose cannot tell them what I feel,&mdash;<br />
+The Books that never can be mine!</p>
+<p class="poetry">There frisk Editions rare and shy,<br />
+Morocco clad from head to heel;<br />
+Shakspearian quartos; Comedy<br />
+As first she flashed from Richard Steele;<br />
+And quaint De Foe on Mrs. Veal;<br />
+And, lord of landing net and line,<br />
+Old Izaak with his fishing creel,&mdash;<br />
+The Books that never can be mine!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Incunables! for you I sigh,<br />
+Black letter, at thy founts I kneel,<br />
+Old tales of Perrault&rsquo;s nursery,<br />
+For you I&rsquo;d go without a meal!<br />
+For Books wherein did Aldus deal<br />
+And rare Galliot du Pr&eacute; I pine.<br />
+The watches of the night reveal<br />
+The Books that never can be mine!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">ENVOY.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Prince, bear a hopeless Bard&rsquo;s appeal;<br
+/>
+Reverse the rules of Mine and Thine;<br />
+Make it legitimate to steal<br />
+The Books that never can be mine!</p>
+<h2><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+135</span><i>LADY BOOK-LOVERS</i>.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> biographer of Mrs. Aphra Behn
+refutes the vulgar error that &ldquo;a Dutchman cannot
+love.&rdquo;&nbsp; Whether or not a lady can love books is a
+question that may not be so readily settled.&nbsp; Mr. Ernest
+Quentin Bauchart has contributed to the discussion of this
+problem by publishing a bibliography, in two quarto volumes, of
+books which have been in the libraries of famous beauties of old,
+queens and princesses of France.&nbsp; There can be no doubt that
+these ladies were possessors of exquisite printed books and
+manuscripts wonderfully bound, but it remains uncertain whether
+the owners, as a rule, were bibliophiles; whether their hearts
+were with their treasures.&nbsp; Incredible as it may seem to us
+now, literature was highly respected in the past, and was even
+fashionable.&nbsp; Poets were in favour at court, and Fashion
+decided that the great must possess books, and not only books,
+but books produced in the utmost perfection of art, and bound
+with all the skill at the disposal of Clovis Eve, and Padeloup,
+and Duseuil.&nbsp; Therefore, as Fashion gave her commands, we
+cannot hastily affirm that the ladies who obeyed were really
+book-lovers.&nbsp; In our more polite age, Fashion has decreed
+that ladies shall smoke, and bet, and romp, but it would be
+premature to assert that all ladies who do their duty in these
+matters are born romps, or have an unaffected liking for
+cigarettes.&nbsp; History, however, maintains that many of the
+renowned dames whose books are now the most treasured of literary
+relics were actually inclined to study as well as to pleasure,
+like Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de Verrue, and even
+Madame de Pompadour.&nbsp; Probably books and arts were more to
+this lady&rsquo;s liking than the diversions by which she
+beguiled the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a time she would
+rather have been quiet with her plays and novels than engaged in
+conscientiously conducted but distasteful revels.</p>
+<p>Like a true Frenchman, M. Bauchart has only written about
+French lady book-lovers, or about women who, like Mary Stuart,
+were more than half French.&nbsp; Nor would it be easy for an
+English author to name, outside the ranks of crowned heads, like
+Elizabeth, any Englishwomen of distinction who had a passion for
+the material side of literature, for binding, and first editions,
+and large paper, and engravings in early
+&ldquo;states.&rdquo;&nbsp; The practical sex, when studious, is
+like the same sex when fond of equestrian exercise.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A lady says, &lsquo;My heyes, he&rsquo;s an &rsquo;orse,
+and he must go,&rsquo;&rdquo; according to Leech&rsquo;s
+groom.&nbsp; In the same way, a studious girl or matron says,
+&ldquo;This is a book,&rdquo; and reads it, if read she does,
+without caring about the date, or the state, or the
+publisher&rsquo;s name, or even very often about the
+author&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I remember, before the publication of a
+novel now celebrated, seeing a privately printed vellum-bound
+copy on large paper in the hands of a literary lady.&nbsp; She
+was holding it over the fire, and had already made the vellum
+covers curl wide open like the shells of an afflicted oyster.</p>
+<p>When I asked what the volume was, she explained that &ldquo;It
+is a book which a poor man has written, and he&rsquo;s had it
+printed to see whether some one won&rsquo;t be kind enough to
+publish it.&rdquo;&nbsp; I ventured, perhaps pedantically, to
+point out that the poor man could not be so very poor, or he
+would not have made so costly an experiment on Dutch paper.&nbsp;
+But the lady said she did not know how that might be, and she
+went on toasting the experiment.&nbsp; In all this there is a
+fine contempt for everything but the spiritual aspect of
+literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and display
+of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of
+men.&nbsp; Where ladies have caught &ldquo;the
+Bibliomania,&rdquo; I fancy they have taken this pretty fever
+from the other sex.&nbsp; But it must be owned that the books
+they have possessed, being rarer and more romantic, are even more
+highly prized by amateurs than examples from the libraries of
+Grolier, and Longepierre, and D&rsquo;Hoym.&nbsp; M.
+Bauchart&rsquo;s book is a complete guide to the collector of
+these expensive relics.&nbsp; He begins his dream of fair women
+who have owned books with the pearl of the Valois, Marguerite
+d&rsquo;Angoul&ecirc;me, the sister of Francis I.&nbsp; The
+remains of her library are chiefly devotional manuscripts.&nbsp;
+Indeed, it is to be noted that all these ladies, however
+frivolous, possessed the most devout and pious books, and whole
+collections of prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with
+miniatures.&nbsp; Marguerite&rsquo;s library was bound in
+morocco, stamped with a crowned M in <i>interlacs</i> sown with
+daisies, or, at least, with conventional flowers which may have
+been meant for daisies.&nbsp; If one could choose, perhaps the
+most desirable of the specimens extant is &lsquo;Le Premier Livre
+du Prince des Po&egrave;tes, Hom&egrave;re,&rsquo; in
+Salel&rsquo;s translation.&nbsp; For this translation Ronsard
+writes a prologue, addressed to the <i>manes</i> of Salel, in
+which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry.&nbsp; He
+draws a characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium,
+among the learned lovers:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;qui
+parmi les fleurs devisent<br />
+Au giron de leur dame.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Marguerite&rsquo;s manuscript copy of the First Book of the
+Iliad is a small quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and
+the crowned M.&nbsp; It is in the Duc d&rsquo;Aumale&rsquo;s
+collection at Chantilly.&nbsp; The books of Diane de Poitiers are
+more numerous and more famous.&nbsp; When first a widow she
+stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb, and the
+motto, &ldquo;Sola vivit in illo.&rdquo;&nbsp; But when she
+consoled herself with Henri II. she suppressed the tomb, and made
+the motto meaningless.&nbsp; Her crescent shone not only on her
+books, but on the palace walls of France, in the Louvre,
+Fontainebleau, and Anet, and her initial D. is inextricably
+interlaced with the H. of her royal lover.&nbsp; Indeed, Henri
+added the D to his own cypher, and this must have been so
+embarrassing for his wife Catherine, that people have
+good-naturedly tried to read the curves of the D&rsquo;s as
+C&rsquo;s.&nbsp; The D&rsquo;s, and the crescents, and the bows
+of his Diana are impressed even on the covers of Henri&rsquo;s
+Book of Hours.&nbsp; Catherine&rsquo;s own cypher is a double C
+enlaced with an H, or double K&rsquo;s (Katherine) combined in
+the same manner.&nbsp; These, unlike the D.H., are surmounted
+with a crown&mdash;the one advantage which the wife possessed
+over the favourite.&nbsp; Among Diane&rsquo;s books are various
+treatises on medicines and on surgery, and plenty of poetry and
+Italian novels.&nbsp; Among the books exhibited at the British
+Museum in glass cases is Diane&rsquo;s copy of Bembo&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;History of Venice.&rsquo;&nbsp; An American collector, Mr.
+Barlow, of New York, is happy enough to possess her
+&lsquo;Singularitez de la France Antarctique&rsquo; (Antwerp,
+1558).</p>
+<p>Catherine de Medicis got splendid books on the same terms as
+foreign pirates procure English novels&mdash;she stole
+them.&nbsp; The Marshal Strozzi, dying in the French service,
+left a noble collection, on which Catherine laid her hands.&nbsp;
+Brant&ocirc;me says that Strozzi&rsquo;s son often expressed to
+him a candid opinion about this transaction.&nbsp; What with her
+own collection and what with the Marshal&rsquo;s, Catherine
+possessed about four thousand volumes.&nbsp; On her death they
+were in peril of being seized by her creditors, but her almoner
+carried them to his own house, and De Thou had them placed in the
+royal library.&nbsp; Unluckily it was thought wiser to strip the
+books of the coats with Catherine&rsquo;s compromising device,
+lest her creditors should single them out, and take them away in
+their pockets.&nbsp; Hence, books with her arms and cypher are
+exceedingly rare.&nbsp; At the sale of the collections of the
+Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of Catherine&rsquo;s was sold
+for &pound;2,400.</p>
+<p>Mary Stuart of Scotland was one of the lady book-lovers whose
+taste was more than a mere following of the fashion.&nbsp; Some
+of her books, like one of Marie Antoinette&rsquo;s, were the
+companions of her captivity, and still bear the sad complaints
+which she entrusted to these last friends of fallen
+royalty.&nbsp; Her note-book, in which she wrote her Latin prose
+exercises when a girl, still survives, bound in red morocco, with
+the arms of France.&nbsp; In a Book of Hours, now the property of
+the Czar, may be partly deciphered the quatrains which she
+composed in her sorrowful years, but many of them are mutilated
+by the binder&rsquo;s shears.&nbsp; The Queen used the volume as
+a kind of album: it contains the signatures of the
+&ldquo;Countess of Schrewsbury&rdquo; (as M. Bauchart has it), of
+Walsingham, of the Earl of Sussex, and of Charles Howard, Earl of
+Nottingham.&nbsp; There is also the signature, &ldquo;Your most
+infortunat, <span class="smcap">Arbella Seymour</span>;&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Fr. Bacon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This remarkable manuscript was purchased in Paris, during the
+Revolution, by Peter Dubrowsky, who carried it to Russia.&nbsp;
+Another Book of Hours of the Queen&rsquo;s bears this
+inscription, in a sixteenth-century hand: &ldquo;Ce sont les
+Heures de Marie Setuart Renne.&nbsp; Marguerite de Blacuod de
+Rosay.&rdquo;&nbsp; In De Blacuod it is not very easy to
+recognise &ldquo;Blackwood.&rdquo;&nbsp; Marguerite was probably
+the daughter of Adam Blackwood, who wrote a volume on Mary
+Stuart&rsquo;s sufferings (Edinburgh, 1587).</p>
+<p>The famous Marguerite de Valois, the wife of Henri IV., had
+certainly a noble library, and many beautifully bound books
+stamped with daisies are attributed to her collections.&nbsp;
+They bear the motto, &ldquo;Expectata non eludet,&rdquo; which
+appears to refer, first to the daisy (&ldquo;Margarita&rdquo;),
+which is punctual in the spring, or rather is &ldquo;the
+constellated flower that never sets,&rdquo; and next, to the
+lady, who will &ldquo;keep tryst.&rdquo;&nbsp; But is the lady
+Marguerite de Valois?&nbsp; Though the books have been sold at
+very high prices as relics of the leman of La Mole, it seems
+impossible to demonstrate that they were ever on her shelves,
+that they were bound by Clovis Eve from her own design. &ldquo;No
+mention is made of them in any contemporary document, and the
+judicious are reduced to conjectures.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yet they form
+a most important collection, systematically bound, science and
+philosophy in citron morocco, the poets in green, and history and
+theology in red.&nbsp; In any case it is absurd to explain
+&ldquo;Expectata non eludet&rdquo; as a reference to the lily of
+the royal arms, which appears on the centre of the daisy-pied
+volumes.&nbsp; The motto, in that case, would run,
+&ldquo;Expectata (lilia) non eludent.&rdquo;&nbsp; As it stands,
+the feminine adjective, &ldquo;expectata,&rdquo; in the singular,
+must apply either to the lady who owned the volumes, or to the
+&ldquo;Margarita,&rdquo; her emblem, or to both.&nbsp; Yet the
+ungrammatical rendering is that which M. Bauchart suggests.&nbsp;
+Many of the books, Marguerite&rsquo;s or not, were sold at prices
+over &pound;100 in London, in 1884 and 1883.&nbsp; The Macrobius,
+and Theocritus, and Homer are in the Cracherode collection at the
+British Museum.&nbsp; The daisy crowned Ronsard went for
+&pound;430 at the Beckford sale.&nbsp; These prices will probably
+never be reached again.</p>
+<p>If Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., was a
+bibliophile, she may be suspected of acting on the motive,
+&ldquo;Love me, love my books.&rdquo;&nbsp; About her affection
+for Cardinal Mazarin there seems to be no doubt: the Cardinal had
+a famous library, and his royal friend probably imitated his
+tastes.&nbsp; In her time, and on her volumes, the originality
+and taste of the skilled binder, Le Gascon, begin to declare
+themselves.&nbsp; The fashionable passion for lace, to which La
+Fontaine made such sacrifices, affected the art of book
+decorations, and Le Gascon&rsquo;s beautiful patterns of gold
+points and dots are copies of the productions of Venice.&nbsp;
+The Queen-Mother&rsquo;s books include many devotional treatises,
+for, whatever other fashions might come and go, piety was always
+constant before the Revolution.&nbsp; Anne of Austria seems to
+have been particularly fond of the lives and works of Saint
+Theresa, and Saint Fran&ccedil;ois de Sales, and John of the
+Cross.&nbsp; But she was not unread in the old French poets, such
+as Coquillart; she condescended to Ariosto; she had that dubious
+character, Th&eacute;ophile de Viaud, beautifully bound; she
+owned the Rabelais of 1553; and, what is particularly
+interesting, M. de Lignerolles possesses her copy of
+&lsquo;L&rsquo;Eschole des Femmes, Com&eacute;die par J. B. P.
+Moli&egrave;re.&nbsp; Paris: Guillaume de Luynes,
+1663.&rsquo;&nbsp; In 12&deg;, red morocco, gilt edges, and the
+Queen&rsquo;s arms on the covers.&nbsp; This relic is especially
+valuable when we remember that &lsquo;L&rsquo;Ecole des
+Femmes&rsquo; and Arnolphe&rsquo;s sermon to Agn&egrave;s, and
+his comic threats of future punishment first made envy take the
+form of religious persecution.&nbsp; The devout Queen-Mother was
+often appealed to by the enemies of Moli&egrave;re, yet Anne of
+Austria had not only seen his comedy, but possessed this
+beautiful example of the first edition.&nbsp; M. Paul Lacroix
+supposes that this copy was offered to the Queen-Mother by
+Moli&egrave;re himself.&nbsp; The frontispiece (Arnolphe
+preaching to Agn&egrave;s) is thought to be a portrait of
+Moli&egrave;re, but in the reproduction in M. Louis
+Lacour&rsquo;s edition it is not easy to see any
+resemblance.&nbsp; Apparently Anne did not share the views, even
+in her later years, of the converted Prince de Conty, for several
+comedies and novels remain stamped with her arms and device.</p>
+<p>The learned Marquise de Rambouillet, the parent of all the
+&lsquo;Pr&eacute;cieuses,&rsquo; must have owned a good library,
+but nothing is chronicled save her celebrated book of prayers and
+meditations, written out and decorated by Jarry.&nbsp; It is
+bound in red morocco, <i>doubl&eacute;</i> with green, and
+covered with V&rsquo;s in gold.&nbsp; The Marquise composed the
+prayers for her own use, and Jarry was so much struck with their
+beauty that he asked leave to introduce them into the Book of
+Hours which he had to copy, &ldquo;for the prayers are often so
+silly,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that I am ashamed to write them
+out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Here is an example of the devotions which Jarry admired, a
+prayer to Saint Louis.&nbsp; It was published in
+&lsquo;Miscellanies Bibliographiques&rsquo; by M. Prosper
+Blanchemain.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">PRI&Egrave;RE &Agrave;
+SAINT-LOUIS,<br />
+<span class="smcap">Roy de France</span>.</p>
+<p>Grand Roy, bien que votre couronne ayt est&eacute; des plus
+esclatantes de la Terre, celle que vous portez dans le ciel est
+incomparablement plus pr&eacute;cieuse.&nbsp; L&rsquo;une estoit
+perissable l&rsquo;autre est immortelle et ces lys dont la
+blancheur se pouvoit ternir, sont maintenant
+incorruptibles.&nbsp; Vostre obeissance envers vostre
+m&egrave;re; vostre justice envers vos sujets; et vos guerres
+contre les infideles, vous ont acquis la veneration de tous les
+peuples; et la France doit &agrave; vos travaux et &agrave;
+vostre pi&eacute;t&eacute; l&rsquo;inestimable tresor de la
+sanglante et glorieuse couronne du Sauveur du monde.&nbsp;
+Priez-le incomparable Saint qu&rsquo;il donne une paix
+perpetu&euml;lle au Royaume dont vous avez port&eacute; le
+sceptre; qu&rsquo;il le pr&eacute;serve
+d&rsquo;h&eacute;r&eacute;sie; qu&rsquo;il y face to&ucirc;jours
+regner saintement vostre illustre Sang; et que tous ceux qui ont
+l&rsquo;honneur d&rsquo;en descendre soient pour jamais
+fid&egrave;les &agrave; son Eglise.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The daughter of the Marquise, the fair Julie, heroine of that
+&ldquo;long courting&rdquo; by M. de Montausier, survives in
+those records as the possessor of &lsquo;La Guirlande de
+Julie,&rsquo; the manuscript book of poems by eminent
+hands.&nbsp; But this manuscript seems to have been all the
+library of Julie; therein she could constantly read of her own
+perfections.&nbsp; To be sure she had also
+&lsquo;L&rsquo;Histoire de Gustave Adolphe,&rsquo; a hero for
+whom, like Major Dugald Dalgetty, she cherished a supreme
+devotion.&nbsp; In the &lsquo;Guirlande&rsquo; Chapelain&rsquo;s
+verses turn on the pleasing fancy that the Protestant Lion of the
+North, changed into a flower (like Paul Limayrac in M.
+Banville&rsquo;s ode), requests Julie to take pity on his altered
+estate:</p>
+<blockquote><p>Sois pitoyable &agrave; ma langueur;<br />
+Et si je n&rsquo;ay place en ton c&oelig;ur<br />
+Que je l&rsquo;aye au moins sur ta teste.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These verses were reckoned consummate.</p>
+<p>The &lsquo;Guirlande&rsquo; is still, with happier fate than
+attends most books, in the hands of the successors of the Duc and
+Duchesse de Montausier.</p>
+<p>Like Julie, Madame de Maintenon was a <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i>,
+but she never had time to form a regular library.&nbsp; Her
+books, however, were bound by Duseuil, a binder immortal in the
+verse of Pope; or it might be more correct to say that Madame de
+Maintenon&rsquo;s own books are seldom distinguishable from those
+of her favourite foundation, St. Cyr.&nbsp; The most interesting
+is a copy of the first edition of &lsquo;Esther,&rsquo; in quarto
+(1689), bound in red morocco, and bearing, in Racine&rsquo;s
+hand, &ldquo;<i>A Madame la Marquise de Maintenon</i>, <i>offert
+avec respect</i>,&mdash;<span
+class="smcap"><i>Racine</i></span>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Doubtless Racine had the book bound before he presented
+it.&nbsp; &ldquo;People are discontented,&rdquo; writes his son
+Louis, &ldquo;if you offer them a book in a simple marbled paper
+cover.&rdquo;&nbsp; I could wish that this worthy custom were
+restored, for the sake of the art of binding, and also because
+amateur poets would be more chary of their presentation
+copies.&nbsp; It is, no doubt, wise to turn these gifts with
+their sides against the inner walls of bookcases, to be bulwarks
+against the damp, but the trouble of acknowledging worthless
+presents from strangers is considerable. <a
+name="citation145"></a><a href="#footnote145"
+class="citation">[145]</a></p>
+<p>Another interesting example of Madame de Maintenon&rsquo;s
+collections is Dacier&rsquo;s &lsquo;Remarques Critiques sur les
+&OElig;uvres d&rsquo;Horace,&rsquo; bearing the arms of Louis
+XIV., but with his wife&rsquo;s signature on the fly-leaf
+(1681).</p>
+<p>Of Madame de Montespan, ousted from the royal favour by Madame
+de Maintenon, who &ldquo;married into the family where she had
+been governess,&rdquo; there survives one bookish relic of
+interest.&nbsp; This is &lsquo;&OElig;uvres Diverses par un
+auteur de sept ans,&rsquo; in quarto, red morocco, printed on
+vellum, and with the arms of the mother of the little Duc du
+Maine (1678).&nbsp; When Madame de Maintenon was still playing
+mother to the children of the king and of Madame de Montespan,
+she printed those &ldquo;works&rdquo; of her eldest pupil.</p>
+<p>These ladies were only bibliophiles by accident, and were
+devoted, in the first place, to pleasure, piety, or
+ambition.&nbsp; With the Comtesse de Verrue, whose epitaph will
+be found on an earlier page, we come to a genuine and even
+fanatical collector.&nbsp; Madame de Verrue (1670&ndash;1736) got
+every kind of diversion out of life, and when she ceased to be
+young and fair, she turned to the joys of
+&ldquo;shopping.&rdquo;&nbsp; In early years, &ldquo;pleine de
+c&oelig;ur, elle le donna sans comptes.&rdquo;&nbsp; In later
+life, she purchased, or obtained on credit, everything that
+caught her fancy, also <i>sans comptes</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;My
+aunt,&rdquo; says the Duc de Luynes, &ldquo;was always buying,
+and never baulked her fancy.&rdquo;&nbsp; Pictures, books, coins,
+jewels, engravings, gems (over 8,000), tapestries, and furniture
+were all alike precious to Madame de Verrue.&nbsp; Her
+snuff-boxes defied computation; she had them in gold, in
+tortoise-shell, in porcelain, in lacquer, and in jasper, and she
+enjoyed the delicate fragrance of sixty different sorts of
+snuff.&nbsp; Without applauding the smoking of cigarettes in
+drawing-rooms, we may admit that it is less repulsive than steady
+applications to tobacco in Madame de Verrue&rsquo;s favourite
+manner.</p>
+<p>The Countess had a noble library, for old tastes survived in
+her commodious heart, and new tastes she anticipated.&nbsp; She
+possessed &lsquo;The Romance of the Rose,&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Villon,&rsquo; in editions of Galliot du Pr&eacute;
+(1529&ndash;1533) undeterred by the satire of Boileau.&nbsp; She
+had examples of the &lsquo;Ple&iuml;ade,&rsquo; though they were
+not again admired in France till 1830.&nbsp; She was also in the
+most modern fashion of to-day, for she had the beautiful quarto
+of La Fontaine&rsquo;s &lsquo;Contes,&rsquo; and Bouchier&rsquo;s
+illustrated Moli&egrave;re (large paper).&nbsp; And, what I envy
+her more, she had Perrault&rsquo;s &lsquo;Fairy Tales,&rsquo; in
+blue morocco&mdash;the blue rose of the folklorist who is also a
+book-hunter.&nbsp; It must also be confessed that Madame de
+Verrue had a large number of books such as are usually kept under
+lock and key, books which her heirs did not care to expose at the
+sale of her library.&nbsp; Once I myself (<i>moi
+ch&eacute;tif</i>) owned a novel in blue morocco, which had been
+in the collection of Madame de Verrue.&nbsp; In her old age this
+exemplary woman invented a peculiarly comfortable arm-chair,
+which, like her novels, was covered with citron and violet
+morocco; the nails were of silver.&nbsp; If Madame de Verrue has
+met the Baroness Bernstein, their conversation in the Elysian
+Fields must be of the most gallant and interesting
+description.</p>
+<p>Another literary lady of pleasure, Madame de Pompadour, can
+only be spoken of with modified approval.&nbsp; Her great fault
+was that she did not check the decadence of taste and sense in
+the art of bookbinding.&nbsp; In her time came in the habit of
+binding books (if binding it can be called) with flat backs,
+without the nerves and sinews that are of the very essence of
+book-covers.&nbsp; Without these no binding can be permanent,
+none can secure the lasting existence of a volume.&nbsp; It is
+very deeply to be deplored that by far the most accomplished
+living English artist in bookbinding has reverted to this old and
+most dangerous heresy.&nbsp; The most original and graceful
+tooling is of much less real value than permanence, and a book
+bound with a flat back, without <i>nerfs</i>, might practically
+as well not be bound at all.&nbsp; The practice was the herald of
+the French and may open the way for the English Revolution.&nbsp;
+Of what avail were the ingenious mosaics of Derome to stem the
+tide of change, when the books whose sides they adorned were not
+really <i>bound</i> at all?&nbsp; Madame de Pompadour&rsquo;s
+books were of all sorts, from the inevitable works of devotions
+to devotions of another sort, and the &lsquo;Hours&rsquo; of
+Erycina Ridens.&nbsp; One of her treasures had singular fortunes,
+a copy of &lsquo;Daphnis and Chloe,&rsquo; with the
+Regent&rsquo;s illustrations, and those of Cochin and Eisen
+(Paris, quarto, 1757, red morocco).&nbsp; The covers are adorned
+with billing and cooing doves, with the arrows of Eros, with
+burning hearts, and sheep and shepherds.&nbsp; Eighteen years ago
+this volume was bought for 10 francs in a village in
+Hungary.&nbsp; A bookseller gave &pound;8 for it in Paris.&nbsp;
+M. Bauchart paid for it &pound;150; and as it has left his
+shelves, probably he too made no bad bargain.&nbsp; Madame de
+Pompadour&rsquo;s &lsquo;Apology for Herodotus&rsquo; (La Haye,
+1735) has also its legend.&nbsp; It belonged to M. Paillet, who
+coveted a glorified copy of the &lsquo;Pastissier
+Fran&ccedil;ois,&rsquo; in M. Bauchart&rsquo;s collection.&nbsp;
+M Paillet swopped it, with a number of others, for the
+&lsquo;Pastissier:&rsquo;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;J&rsquo;avais
+&lsquo;L&rsquo;Apologie<br />
+Pour H&eacute;rodote,&rsquo; en reli&ucirc;re ancienne, amour<br
+/>
+De livre provenant de chez la Pompadour<br />
+Il me le soutira! <a name="citation148"></a><a
+href="#footnote148" class="citation">[148]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of Marie Antoinette, with whom our lady book-lovers of the old
+<i>r&eacute;gime</i> must close, there survive many books.&nbsp;
+She had a library in the Tuileries, as well as at le petit
+Trianon.&nbsp; Of all her great and varied collections, none is
+now so valued as her little book of prayers, which was her
+consolation in the worst of all her evil days, in the Temple and
+the Conciergerie.&nbsp; The book is &lsquo;Office de la Divine
+Providence&rsquo; (Paris, 1757, green morocco).&nbsp; On the
+fly-leaf the Queen wrote, some hours before her death, these
+touching lines: &ldquo;Ce 16 Octobre, &agrave; 4 h. &frac12; du
+matin.&nbsp; Mon Dieu! ayez piti&eacute; de moi!&nbsp; Mes yeux
+n&rsquo;ont plus de larmes pour prier pour vous, mes pauvres
+enfants.&nbsp; Adieu, adieu!&mdash;<span class="smcap">Marie
+Antoinette</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There can be no sadder relic of a greater sorrow, and the last
+consolation of the Queen did not escape the French popular genius
+for cruelty and insult.&nbsp; The arms on the covers of the
+prayer-book have been cut out by some fanatic of Equality and
+Fraternity.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12"
+class="footnote">[12]</a>&nbsp; See illustrations, pp. <span
+class="imageref"><a href="#image114">114</a></span>, <span
+class="imageref"><a href="#image115">115</a></span>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote19"></a><a href="#citation19"
+class="footnote">[19]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Slate&rdquo; is a
+professional term for a severe criticism.&nbsp; Clearly the word
+is originally &ldquo;slat,&rdquo; a narrow board of wood, with
+which a person might be beaten.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66"
+class="footnote">[66]</a>&nbsp; <i>Histoire des Intrigues
+Amoureuses de Moli&egrave;re</i>, <i>et de celles de sa
+femme</i>.&nbsp; (<i>A la Sph&egrave;re</i>.)&nbsp; A Francfort,
+chez Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Arnaud, <span
+class="GutSmall">MDCXCVII</span>.&nbsp; This anonymous tract has
+actually been attributed to Racine.&nbsp; The copy referred to is
+marked with a large N in red, with an eagle&rsquo;s head.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67a"></a><a href="#citation67a"
+class="footnote">[67a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>,
+1810.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>The Lay of the Last
+Minstrel</i>, 1806.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw,
+Peel.&nbsp; From the Author.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote67b"></a><a href="#citation67b"
+class="footnote">[67b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Dictys Cretensis</i>.&nbsp;
+Apud Lambertum Roulland.&nbsp; Lut.&nbsp; Paris., 1680.&nbsp; In
+red morocco, with the arms of Colbert.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67c"></a><a href="#citation67c"
+class="footnote">[67c]</a>&nbsp; <i>L. Ann&aelig;i Senec&aelig;
+Opera Omnia</i>.&nbsp; Lug. Bat., apud Elzevirios.&nbsp;
+1649.&nbsp; With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67d"></a><a href="#citation67d"
+class="footnote">[67d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Stratonis
+Epigrammata</i>.&nbsp; Altenburgi, 1764.&nbsp; Straton bound up
+in one volume with Epictetus!&nbsp; From the Beckford
+library.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67e"></a><a href="#citation67e"
+class="footnote">[67e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Opera Helii Eobani
+Hessi</i>.&nbsp; Yellow morocco, with the first arms of De
+Thou.&nbsp; Includes a poem addressed &ldquo;<span
+class="smcap">Lange</span>, <i>decus meum</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Quantity of penultimate &ldquo;Eobanus&rdquo; taken for granted,
+<i>metri grati&acirc;</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68a"></a><a href="#citation68a"
+class="footnote">[68a]</a>&nbsp; <i>La Journ&eacute;e du
+Chr&eacute;tien</i>.&nbsp; Coutances, 1831.&nbsp; With
+inscription, &ldquo;L&eacute;on Gambetta.&nbsp; Rue St.
+Honor&eacute;.&nbsp; Janvier 1, 1848.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68b"></a><a href="#citation68b"
+class="footnote">[68b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Villoison&rsquo;s
+Homer</i>.&nbsp; Venice, 1788.&nbsp; With Tessier&rsquo;s ticket
+and Schlegel&rsquo;s book-plate.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68c"></a><a href="#citation68c"
+class="footnote">[68c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Les Essais de Michel</i>,
+<i>Seigneur de Montaigne</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Pour Fran&ccedil;ois
+le Febvre de Lyon, 1695.&rdquo;&nbsp; With autograph of Gul.
+Drummond, and cipresso e palma.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68d"></a><a href="#citation68d"
+class="footnote">[68d]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;The little old foxed
+Moli&egrave;re,&rdquo; once the property of William Pott, unknown
+to fame.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote73"></a><a href="#citation73"
+class="footnote">[73]</a>&nbsp; That there ever were such editors
+is much disputed.&nbsp; The story may be a fiction of the age of
+the Ptolemies.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote74"></a><a href="#citation74"
+class="footnote">[74]</a>&nbsp; Or, more easily, in Maury&rsquo;s
+<i>Religions de la Gr&egrave;ce</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote94"></a><a href="#citation94"
+class="footnote">[94]</a>&nbsp; See Essay on &lsquo;Lady
+Book-Lovers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote102"></a><a href="#citation102"
+class="footnote">[102]</a>&nbsp; See Essay on &lsquo;Lady
+Book-Lovers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote107"></a><a href="#citation107"
+class="footnote">[107]</a>&nbsp; For a specimen of Madame
+Pompadour&rsquo;s binding see overleaf.&nbsp; She had another
+Rabelais in calf, lately to be seen in a shop in Pall Mall.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote119a"></a><a href="#citation119a"
+class="footnote">[119a]</a>&nbsp; Mr. Payne does not give the
+date of the edition from which he copies the cut.&nbsp;
+Apparently it is of the fifteenth century.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote119b"></a><a href="#citation119b"
+class="footnote">[119b]</a>&nbsp; Reproduced in <i>The
+Library</i>, p. 94.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote145"></a><a href="#citation145"
+class="footnote">[145]</a>&nbsp; Country papers, please
+copy.&nbsp; Poets at a distance will kindly accept this
+intimation.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote148"></a><a href="#citation148"
+class="footnote">[148]</a>&nbsp; Biblioth&egrave;que d&rsquo;un
+Bibliophile.&nbsp; Lille, 1885.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS AND BOOKMEN
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+
+To the Viscountess Wolseley
+Preface
+Elzevirs
+Ballade of the Real and Ideal
+Curiosities of Parish Registers
+The Rowfant Books
+To F. L.
+Some Japanese Bogie-books
+Ghosts in the Library
+Literary Forgeries
+Bibliomania in France
+Old French Title-pages
+A Bookman's Purgatory
+Ballade of the Unattainable
+Lady Book-lovers
+
+
+
+
+TO THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY
+
+
+
+Madame, it is no modish thing,
+The bookman's tribute that I bring;
+A talk of antiquaries grey,
+Dust unto dust this many a day,
+Gossip of texts and bindings old,
+Of faded type, and tarnish'd gold!
+
+Can ladies care for this to-do
+With Payne, Derome, and Padeloup?
+Can they resign the rout, the ball,
+For lonely joys of shelf and stall?
+
+The critic thus, serenely wise;
+But you can read with other eyes,
+Whose books and bindings treasured are
+'Midst mingled spoils of peace and war;
+Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost,
+And trinkets from the Golden Coast,
+And many things divinely done
+By Chippendale and Sheraton,
+And trophies of Egyptian deeds,
+And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads,
+Pomander boxes, assegais,
+And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro's days.
+
+In this pell-mell of old and new,
+Of war and peace, my essays, too,
+For long in serials tempest-tost,
+Are landed now, and are not lost:
+Nay, on your shelf secure they lie,
+As in the amber sleeps the fly.
+'Tis true, they are not "rich nor rare;"
+Enough, for me, that they are--there!
+
+A. L
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+The essays in this volume have, for the most part, already appeared
+in an American edition (Combes, New York, 1886).  The Essays on 'Old
+French Title-Pages' and 'Lady Book-Lovers' take the place of 'Book
+Binding' and 'Bookmen at Rome;' 'Elzevirs' and 'Some Japanese Bogie-
+Books' are reprinted, with permission of Messrs. Cassell, from the
+Magazine of Art; 'Curiosities of Parish Registers' from the
+Guardian; 'Literary Forgeries' from the Contemporary Review; 'Lady
+Book-Lovers' from the Fortnightly Review; 'A Bookman's Purgatory'
+and two of the pieces of verse from Longman's Magazine--with the
+courteous permission of the various editors.  All the chapters have
+been revised, and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for his kind care in
+reading the proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P., for a similar
+service to the Essay on 'Parish Registers.'
+
+
+
+ELZEVIRS
+
+
+
+The Countryman.  "You know how much, for some time past, the
+editions of the Elzevirs have been in demand.  The fancy for them
+has even penetrated into the country.  I am acquainted with a man
+there who denies himself necessaries, for the sake of collecting
+into a library (where other books are scarce enough) as many little
+Elzevirs as he can lay his hands upon.  He is dying of hunger, and
+his consolation is to be able to say, 'I have all the poets whom the
+Elzevirs printed.  I have ten examples of each of them, all with red
+letters, and all of the right date.'  This, no doubt, is a craze,
+for, good as the books are, if he kept them to read them, one
+example of each would be enough."
+
+The Parisian.  "If he had wanted to read them, I would not have
+advised him to buy Elzevirs.  The editions of minor authors which
+these booksellers published, even editions 'of the right date,' as
+you say, are not too correct.  Nothing is good in the books but the
+type and the paper.  Your friend would have done better to use the
+editions of Gryphius or Estienne."
+
+This fragment of a literary dialogue I translate from 'Entretiens
+sur les Contes de Fees,' a book which contains more of old talk
+about books and booksellers than about fairies and folk-lore.  The
+'Entretiens' were published in 1699, about sixteen years after the
+Elzevirs ceased to be publishers.  The fragment is valuable:  first,
+because it shows us how early the taste for collecting Elzevirs was
+fully developed, and, secondly, because it contains very sound
+criticism of the mania.  Already, in the seventeenth century, lovers
+of the tiny Elzevirian books waxed pathetic over dates, already they
+knew that a 'Caesar' of 1635 was the right 'Caesar,' already they
+were fond of the red-lettered passages, as in the first edition of
+the 'Virgil' of 1636.  As early as 1699, too, the Parisian critic
+knew that the editions were not very correct, and that the paper,
+type, ornaments, and FORMAT were their main attractions.  To these
+we must now add the rarity of really good Elzevirs.
+
+Though Elzevirs have been more fashionable than at present, they are
+still regarded by novelists as the great prize of the book
+collector.  You read in novels about "priceless little Elzevirs,"
+about books "as rare as an old Elzevir."  I have met, in the works
+of a lady novelist (but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir
+'Theocritus.'  The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon introduced into one of
+his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek Testament, "worth its weight
+in gold."  Casual remarks of this kind encourage a popular delusion
+that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable price.  When a man is
+first smitten with the pleasant fever of book-collecting, it is for
+Elzevirs that he searches.  At first he thinks himself in amazing
+luck.  In Booksellers' Row and in Castle Street he "picks up," for a
+shilling or two, Elzevirs, real or supposed.  To the beginner, any
+book with a sphere on the title-page is an Elzevir.  For the
+beginner's instruction, two copies of spheres are printed here.  The
+second is a sphere, an ill-cut, ill-drawn sphere, which is not
+Elzevirian at all.  The mark was used in the seventeenth century by
+many other booksellers and printers.  The first, on the other hand,
+is a true Elzevirian sphere, from a play of Moliere's, printed in
+1675.  Observe the comparatively neat drawing of the first sphere,
+and be not led away after spurious imitations.
+
+Beware, too, of the vulgar error of fancying that little duodecimos
+with the mark of the fox and the bee's nest, and the motto
+"Quaerendo," come from the press of the Elzevirs.  The mark is that
+of Abraham Wolfgang, which name is not a pseudonym for Elzevir.
+There are three sorts of Elzevir pseudonyms.  First, they
+occasionally reprinted the full title-page, publisher's name and
+all, of the book they pirated.  Secondly, when they printed books of
+a "dangerous" sort, Jansenist pamphlets and so forth, they used
+pseudonyms like "Nic. Schouter," on the 'Lettres Provinciales' of
+Pascal.  Thirdly, there are real pseudonyms employed by the
+Elzevirs.  John and Daniel, printing at Leyden (1652-1655), used the
+false name "Jean Sambix."  The Elzevirs of Amsterdam often placed
+the name "Jacques le Jeune" on their title-pages.  The collector who
+remembers these things must also see that his purchases have the
+right ornaments at the heads of chapters, the right tail-pieces at
+the ends.  Two of the most frequently recurring ornaments are the
+so-called "Tete de Buffle" and the "Sirene."  More or less clumsy
+copies of these and the other Elzevirian ornaments are common enough
+in books of the period, even among those printed out of the Low
+Countries; for example, in books published in Paris.
+
+A brief sketch of the history of the Elzevirs may here be useful.
+The founder of the family, a Flemish bookbinder, Louis, left Louvain
+and settled in Leyden in 1580.  He bought a house opposite the
+University, and opened a book-shop.  Another shop, on college
+ground, was opened in 1587.  Louis was a good bookseller, a very
+ordinary publisher.  It was not till shortly before his death, in
+1617, that his grandson Isaac bought a set of types and other
+material.  Louis left six sons.  Two of these, Matthew and
+Bonaventure, kept on the business, dating ex officina Elzeviriana.
+In 1625 Bonaventure and Abraham (son of Matthew) became partners.
+The "good dates" of Elzevirian books begin from 1626.  The two
+Elzevirs chose excellent types, and after nine years' endeavours
+turned out the beautiful 'Caesar' of 1635.
+
+Their classical series in petit format was opened with 'Horace' and
+'Ovid' in 1629.  In 1641 they began their elegant piracies of French
+plays and poetry with 'Le Cid.'  It was worth while being pirated by
+the Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with fleurons and
+red letters, and a pretty frontispiece.  The modern pirate dresses
+you in rags, prints you murderously, and binds you, if he binds you
+at all, in some hideous example of "cloth extra," all gilt, like
+archaic gingerbread.  Bonaventure and Abraham both died in 1652.
+They did not depart before publishing (1628), in grand format, a
+desirable work on fencing, Thibault's 'Academie de l'Espee.'  This
+Tibbald also killed by the book.  John and Daniel Elzevir came next.
+They brought out the 'Imitation' (Thomae a Kempis canonici regularis
+ord.  S. Augustini De Imitatione Christi, libri iv.); I wish by
+taking thought I could add eight millimetres to the stature of my
+copy.  In 1655 Daniel joined a cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and John
+stayed in Leyden.  John died in 1661; his widow struggled on, but
+her son Abraham (1681) let all fall into ruins.  Abraham died 1712.
+The Elzevirs of Amsterdam lasted till 1680, when Daniel died, and
+the business was wound up.  The type, by Christopher Van Dyck, was
+sold in 1681, by Daniel's widow.  Sic transit gloria.
+
+After he has learned all these matters the amateur has still a great
+deal to acquire.  He may now know a real Elzevir from a book which
+is not an Elzevir at all.  But there are enormous differences of
+value, rarity, and excellence among the productions of the
+Elzevirian press.  The bookstalls teem with small, "cropped," dingy,
+dirty, battered Elzevirian editions of the classics, NOT "of the
+good date."  On these it is not worth while to expend a couple of
+shillings, especially as Elzevirian type is too small to be read
+with comfort by most modern eyes.  No, let the collector save his
+money; avoid littering his shelves with what he will soon find to be
+rubbish, and let him wait the chance of acquiring a really beautiful
+and rare Elzevir.
+
+Meantime, and before we come to describe Elzevirs of the first
+flight, let it be remembered that the "taller" the copy, the less
+harmed and nipped by the binder's shears, the better.  "Men scarcely
+know how beautiful fire is," says Shelley; and we may say that most
+men hardly know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and
+original form.  The Elzevirs we have may be "dear," but they are
+certainly "dumpy twelves."  Their fair proportions have been docked
+by the binder.  At the Beckford sale there was a pearl of a book, a
+'Marot;' not an Elzevir, indeed, but a book published by Wetstein, a
+follower of the Elzevirs.  This exquisite pair of volumes, bound in
+blue morocco, was absolutely unimpaired, and was a sight to bring
+happy tears into the eyes of the amateur of Elzevirs.  There was a
+gracious svelte elegance about these tomes, an appealing and
+exquisite delicacy of proportion, that linger like sweet music in
+the memory.  I have a copy of the Wetstein 'Marot' myself, not a bad
+copy, though murderously bound in that ecclesiastical sort of brown
+calf antique, which goes well with hymn books, and reminds one of
+cakes of chocolate.  But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in
+height, whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the
+great Pixerecourt) was at least 130 millimetres high.  Beside the
+uncut example mine looks like Cinderella's plain sister beside the
+beauty of the family.
+
+Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall
+Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are
+worth collecting.  Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of
+Lilliput was taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a
+nail, and that his altitude filled the minds of all with awe.  Well,
+the Philistine may think a few millimetres, more or less, in the
+height of an Elzevir are of little importance.  When he comes to
+sell, he will discover the difference.  An uncut, or almost uncut,
+copy of a good Elzevir may be worth fifty or sixty pounds or more;
+an ordinary copy may bring fewer pence.  The binders usually pare
+down the top and bottom more than the sides.  I have a 'Rabelais' of
+the good date, with the red title (1663), and some of the pages have
+never been opened, at the sides.  But the height is only some 122
+millimetres, a mere dwarf.  Anything over 130 millimetres is very
+rare.  Therefore the collector of Elzevirs should have one of those
+useful ivory-handled knives on which the French measures are marked,
+and thus he will at once be able to satisfy himself as to the exact
+height of any example which he encounters.
+
+Let us now assume that the amateur quite understands what a proper
+Elzevir should be:  tall, clean, well bound if possible, and of the
+good date.  But we have still to learn what the good dates are, and
+this is matter for the study and practice of a well-spent life.  We
+may gossip about a few of the more famous Elzevirs, those without
+which no collection is complete.  Of all Elzevirs the most famous
+and the most expensive is an old cookery book, "'Le Pastissier
+Francois.'  Wherein is taught the way to make all sorts of pastry,
+useful to all sorts of persons.  Also the manner of preparing all
+manner of eggs, for fast-days, and other days, in more than sixty
+fashions.  Amsterdam, Louys, and Daniel Elsevier. 1665."  The mark
+is not the old "Sage," but the "Minerva" with her owl.  Now this
+book has no intrinsic value any more than a Tauchnitz reprint of any
+modern volume on cooking.  The 'Pastissier' is cherished because it
+is so very rare.  The tract passed into the hands of cooks, and the
+hands of cooks are detrimental to literature.  Just as nursery
+books, fairy tales, and the like are destroyed from generation to
+generation, so it happens with books used in the kitchen.  The
+'Pastissier,' to be sure, has a good frontispiece, a scene in a Low
+Country kitchen, among the dead game and the dainties.  The buxom
+cook is making a game pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the bird's
+head and tail-feathers, is already made. {1}
+
+Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the 'Pastissier'
+coveted.  In an early edition of the 'Manuel' (1821) Brunet says,
+with a feigned brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), "Till now
+I have disdained to admit this book into my work, but I have yielded
+to the prayers of amateurs.  Besides, how could I keep out a volume
+which was sold for one hundred and one francs in 1819?"  One hundred
+and one francs!  If I could only get a 'Pastissier' for one hundred
+and one francs!  But our grandfathers lived in the Bookman's
+Paradise.  "Il n'est pas jusqu'aux Anglais," adds Brunet--"the very
+English themselves--have a taste for the 'Pastissier.'"  The Duke of
+Marlborough's copy was actually sold for 1 pound 4s.  It would have
+been money in the ducal pockets of the house of Marlborough to have
+kept this volume till the general sale of all their portable
+property at which our generation is privileged to assist.  No wonder
+the 'Pastissier' was thought rare.  Berard only knew two copies.
+Pietiers, writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five
+'Pastissiers,' and in his 'Annales' he had found out but five more.
+Willems, on the other hand, enumerates some thirty, not including
+Motteley's.  Motteley was an uncultivated, untaught enthusiast.  He
+knew no Latin, but he had a FLAIR for uncut Elzevirs.  "Incomptis
+capillis," he would cry (it was all his lore) as he gloated over his
+treasures.  They were all burnt by the Commune in the Louvre
+Library.
+
+A few examples may be given of the prices brought by 'Le Pastissier'
+in later days.  Sensier's copy was but 128 millimetres in height,
+and had the old ordinary vellum binding,--in fact, it closely
+resembled a copy which Messrs. Ellis and White had for sale in Bond
+Street in 1883.  The English booksellers asked, I think, about 1,500
+francs for their copy.  Sensier's was sold for 128 francs in April,
+1828; for 201 francs in 1837.  Then the book was gloriously bound by
+Trautz-Bauzonnet, and was sold with Potier's books in 1870, when it
+fetched 2,910 francs.  At the Benzon sale (1875) it fetched 3,255
+francs, and, falling dreadfully in price, was sold again in 1877 for
+2,200 francs.  M. Dutuit, at Rouen, has a taller copy, bound by
+Bauzonnet.  Last time it was sold (1851) it brought 251 francs.  The
+Duc de Chartres has now the copy of Pieters, the historian of the
+Elzevirs, valued at 3,000 francs.
+
+About thirty years ago no fewer than three copies were sold at
+Brighton, of all places.  M. Quentin Bauchart had a copy only 127
+millimetres in height, which he swopped to M. Paillet.  M.
+Chartener, of Metz, had a copy now bound by Bauzonnet which was sold
+for four francs in 1780.  We call this the age of cheap books, but
+before the Revolution books were cheaper.  It is fair to say,
+however, that this example of the 'Pastissier' was then bound up
+with another book, Vlacq's edition of 'Le Cuisinier Francois,' and
+so went cheaper than it would otherwise have done.  M. de Fontaine
+de Resbecq declares that a friend of his bought six original pieces
+of Moliere's bound up with an old French translation of Garth's
+'Dispensary.'  The one faint hope left to the poor book collector is
+that he may find a valuable tract lurking in the leaves of some
+bound collection of trash.  I have an original copy of Moliere's
+'Les Fascheux' bound up with a treatise on precious stones, but the
+bookseller from whom I bought it knew it was there!  That made all
+the difference.
+
+But, to return to our 'Pastissier,' here is M. de Fontaine de
+Resbecq's account of how he wooed and won his own copy of this
+illustrious Elzevir.  "I began my walk to-day," says this haunter of
+ancient stalls, "by the Pont Marie and the Quai de la Greve, the
+pillars of Hercules of the book-hunting world.  After having viewed
+and reviewed these remote books, I was going away, when my attention
+was caught by a small naked volume, without a stitch of binding.  I
+seized it, and what was my delight when I recognised one of the
+rarest of that famed Elzevir collection whose height is measured as
+minutely as the carats of the diamond.  There was no indication of
+price on the box where this jewel was lying; the book, though
+unbound, was perfectly clean within.  'How much?' said I to the
+bookseller.  'You can have it for six sous,' he answered; 'is it too
+much?'  'No,' said I, and, trembling a little, I handed him the
+thirty centimes he asked for the 'Pastissier Francois.'  You may
+believe, my friend, that after such a piece of luck at the start,
+one goes home fondly embracing the beloved object of one's search.
+That is exactly what I did."
+
+Can this tale be true?  Is such luck given by the jealous fates
+mortalibus aegris?  M. de Resbecq's find was made apparently in
+1856, when trout were plenty in the streams, and rare books not so
+very rare.  To my own knowledge an English collector has bought an
+original play of Moliere's, in the original vellum, for
+eighteenpence.  But no one has such luck any longer.  Not, at least,
+in London.  A more expensive 'Pastissier' than that which brought
+six sous was priced in Bachelin-Deflorenne's catalogue at 240
+pounds.  A curious thing occurred when two uncut 'Pastissiers'
+turned up simultaneously in Paris.  One of them Morgand and Fatout
+sold for 400 pounds.  Clever people argued that one of the twin
+uncut 'Pastissiers' must be an imitation, a facsimile by means of
+photogravure, or some other process.  But it was triumphantly
+established that both were genuine; they had minute points of
+difference in the ornaments.
+
+M. Willems, the learned historian of the Elzevirs, is indignant at
+the successes of a book which, as Brunet declares, is badly printed.
+There must be at least forty known 'Pastissiers' in the world.  Yes;
+but there are at least 4,000 people who would greatly rejoice to
+possess a 'Pastissier,' and some of these desirous ones are very
+wealthy.  While this state of the market endures, the 'Pastissier'
+will fetch higher prices than the other varieties.  Another
+extremely rare Elzevir is 'L'Illustre Theatre de Mons. Corneille'
+(Leyden, 1644).  This contains 'Le Cid,' 'Les Horaces,' 'Le Cinna,'
+'La Mort de Pompee,' 'Le Polyeucte.'  The name, 'L'Illustre
+Theatre,' appearing at that date has an interest of its own.  In
+1643-44, Moliere and Madeleine Bejart had just started the company
+which they called 'L'Illustre Theatre.'  Only six or seven copies of
+the book are actually known, though three or four are believed to
+exist in England, probably all covered with dust in the library of
+some lord.  "He has a very good library," I once heard some one say
+to a noble earl, whose own library was famous.  "And what can a
+fellow do with a very good library?" answered the descendant of the
+Crusaders, who probably (being a youth light-hearted and content)
+was ignorant of his own great possessions.  An expensive copy of
+'L'Illustre Theatre,' bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, was sold for 300
+pounds.
+
+Among Elzevirs desirable, yet not hopelessly rare, is the 'Virgil'
+of 1636.  Heinsius was the editor of this beautiful volume, prettily
+printed, but incorrect.  Probably it is hard to correct with
+absolute accuracy works in the clear but minute type which the
+Elzevirs affected.  They have won fame by the elegance of their
+books, but their intention was to sell good books cheap, like Michel
+Levy.  The small type was required to get plenty of "copy" into
+little bulk.  Nicholas Heinsius, the son of the editor of the
+'Virgil,' when he came to correct his father's edition, found that
+it contained so many coquilles, or misprints, as to be nearly the
+most incorrect copy in the world.  Heyne says, "Let the 'Virgil' be
+one of the rare Elzevirs, if you please, but within it has scarcely
+a trace of any good quality."  Yet the first edition of this
+beautiful little book, with its two passages of red letters, is so
+desirable that, till he could possess it, Charles Nodier would not
+profane his shelves by any 'Virgil' at all.
+
+Equally fine is the 'Caesar' of 1635, which, with the 'Virgil' of
+1636 and the 'Imitation' without date, M. Willems thinks the most
+successful works of the Elzevirs, "one of the most enviable jewels
+in the casket of the bibliophile."  It may be recognised by the page
+238, which is erroneously printed 248.  A good average height is
+from 125 to 128 millimetres.  The highest known is 130 millimetres.
+This book, like the 'Imitation,' has one of the pretty and ingenious
+frontispieces which the Elzevirs prefixed to their books.  So
+farewell, and good speed in your sport, ye hunters of Elzevirs, and
+may you find perhaps the rarest Elzevir of all, 'L'Aimable Mere de
+Jesus.'
+
+
+
+BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL (DOUBLE REFRAIN)
+
+
+
+O visions of salmon tremendous,
+Of trout of unusual weight,
+Of waters that wander as Ken does,
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+But the skies that bring never a "spate,"
+But the flies that catch up in a thorn,
+But the creel that is barren of freight,
+Through the portals of horn!
+
+O dreams of the Fates that attend us
+With prints in the earliest state,
+O bargains in books that they send us,
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+But the tome that has never a mate,
+But the quarto that's tattered and torn,
+And bereft of a title and date,
+Through the portals of horn!
+
+O dreams of the tongues that commend us,
+Of crowns for the laureate pate,
+Of a public to buy and befriend us,
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate!
+But the critics that slash us and slate, {2}
+But the people that hold us in scorn,
+But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate,
+Through the portals of horn!
+
+ENVOY.
+
+Fair dreams of things golden and great,
+Ye come through the Ivory Gate;
+But the facts that are bleak and forlorn,
+Through the portals of horn!
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS
+
+
+
+There are three classes of persons who are deeply concerned with
+parish registers--namely, villains, antiquaries, and the sedulous
+readers, "parish clerks and others," of the second or "agony" column
+of the Times.  Villains are probably the most numerous of these
+three classes.  The villain of fiction dearly loves a parish
+register:  he cuts out pages, inserts others, intercalates remarks
+in a different coloured ink, and generally manipulates the register
+as a Greek manages his hand at ecarte, or as a Hebrew dealer in
+Moabite bric-a-brac treats a synagogue roll.  We well remember one
+villain who had locked himself into the vestry (he was disguised as
+an archaeologist), and who was enjoying his wicked pleasure with the
+register, when the vestry somehow caught fire, the rusty key would
+not turn in the door, and the villain was roasted alive, in spite of
+the disinterested efforts to save him made by all the virtuous
+characters in the story.  Let the fate of this bold, bad man be a
+warning to wicked earls, baronets, and all others who attempt to
+destroy the record of the marriage of a hero's parents.  Fate will
+be too strong for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish
+clerk, or carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the
+vestry and of the iron chest in which a register should repose.
+
+There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of villains, if
+the new bill, entitled "The Parish Registers Preservation Act," ever
+becomes law.  The bill provides that every register earlier than
+1837 shall be committed to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and
+removed to the Record Office.  Now the common villain of fiction
+would feel sadly out of place in the Register Office, where a more
+watchful eye than that of a comic parish clerk would be kept on his
+proceedings.  Villains and local antiquaries will, therefore, use
+all their parliamentary influence to oppose and delay this bill,
+which is certainly hard on the parish archaeologist.  The men who
+grub in their local registers, and slowly compile parish or county
+history, deserve to be encouraged rather than depressed.  Mr.
+Chester Waters, therefore, has suggested that copies of registers
+should be made, and the comparatively legible copy left in the
+parish, while the crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office
+in London.  Thus the local antiquary would really have his work made
+more easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would quite
+enjoy that condescension), while the villain of romance would be
+foiled; for it is useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie Murray's
+proves) to alter the register in the keeping of the parish when the
+original document is safe in the Record Office.  But previous
+examples of enforced transcription (as in 1603) do not encourage us
+to suppose that the copies would be very scrupulously made.  Thus,
+after the Reformation, the prayers for the dead in the old registers
+were omitted by the copyist, who seemed to think (as the contractor
+for "sandwich men" said to the poor fellows who carried the letter
+H), "I don't want you, and the public don't want you, and you're no
+use to nobody."  Again, when Laurence Fletcher was buried in St.
+Saviour's, Southwark, in 1608, the old register described him as "a
+player, the King's servant."  But the clerk, keeping a note-book,
+simply called Laurence Fletcher "a man," and (in 1625) he also
+styled Mr. John Fletcher "a man."  Now, the old register calls Mr.
+John Fletcher "a poet."  To copy all the parish registers in England
+would be a very serious task, and would probably be but slovenly
+performed.  If they were reproduced, again, by any process of
+photography, the old difficult court hand would remain as hard as
+ever.  But this is a minor objection, for the local antiquary revels
+in the old court hand.
+
+From the little volume by Mr. Chester Waters, already referred to
+('Parish Registers in England;' printed for the author by F. J.
+Roberts, Little Britain, E.C.), we proceed to appropriate such
+matters of curiosity as may interest minds neither parochial nor
+doggedly antiquarian.  Parish registers among the civilised peoples
+of antiquity do not greatly concern us.  It seems certain that many
+Polynesian races have managed to record (in verse, or by some rude
+marks) the genealogies of their chiefs through many hundreds of
+years.  These oral registers are accepted as fairly truthful by some
+students, yet we must remember that Pindar supposed himself to
+possess knowledge of at least twenty-five generations before his own
+time, and that only brought him up to the birth of Jason.  Nobody
+believes in Jason and Medea, and possibly the genealogical records
+of Maoris and Fijians are as little trustworthy as those of Pindaric
+Greece.  However, to consider thus is to consider too curiously.  We
+only know for certain that genealogy very soon becomes important,
+and, therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing
+civilisation.  "After Nehemiah's return from the captivity in
+Babylon, the priests at Jerusalem whose register was not found were
+as polluted put from the priesthood."  Rome had her parish
+registers, which were kept in the temple of Saturn.  But modern
+parish registers were "discovered" (like America) in 1497, when
+Cardinal Ximenes found it desirable to put on record the names of
+the godfathers and godmothers of baptised children.  When these
+relations of "gossip," or God's kin (as the word literally means),
+were not certainly known, married persons could easily obtain
+divorces, by pretending previous spiritual relationship.
+
+But it was only during the reign of Mary, (called the Bloody) that
+this rule of registering godfathers and godmothers prevailed in
+England.  Henry VIII. introduced the custom of parish registers when
+in a Protestant humour.  By the way, how curiously has Madame de
+Flamareil (la femme de quarante ans, in Charles de Bernard's novel)
+anticipated the verdict of Mr. Froude on Henry VIII.!  'On accuse
+Henri VIII.,' dit Madame de Flamareil, "moi je le comprends, et je
+l'absous; c'etait un coeur genereux, lorsqu'il ne les aimait plus,
+il les tuait.'"  The public of England mistrusted, in the matter of
+parish registers, the generous heart of Henry VIII.  It is the fixed
+conviction of the public that all novelties in administration mean
+new taxes.  Thus the Croatian peasantry were once on the point of
+revolting because they imagined that they were to be taxed in
+proportion to the length of their moustaches.  The English believed,
+and the insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared, that
+baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a
+"trybette" (tribute) to the king.  But Henry, or rather his
+minister, Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September 29, 1538)
+issued an injunction that a weekly register of weddings,
+christenings, and burials should be kept by the curate of every
+parish.  The cost of the book (twopence in the case of St.
+Margaret's, Westminster) was defrayed by the parishioners.  The
+oldest extant register books are those thus acquired in 1597 or
+1603.  These volumes were of parchment, and entries were copied into
+them out of the old books on paper.  The copyists, as we have seen,
+were indolent, and omitted characteristic points in the more ancient
+records.
+
+In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and when
+the clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their political
+feelings in a mixture of Latin and English.  Latin, by the way, went
+out as Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, in
+Leicestershire, writes, "Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, interruption!
+persecution!"  At St. Bridget's, in Chester, is the quaint entry,
+"1643.  Here the register is defective till 1653.  The tymes were
+SUCH!"  At Hilton, in Dorset, William Snoke, minister, entered his
+opinion that persons whose baptism and marriage were not registered
+"will be made uncapable of any earthly inheritance if they live.
+This I note for the satisfaction of any that do:" though we may
+doubt whether these parishioners found the information thus conveyed
+highly satisfactory.
+
+The register of Maid's Moreton, Bucks, tells how the reading-desk (a
+spread eagle, gilt) was "doomed to perish as an abominable idoll;"
+and how the cross on the steeple nearly (but not quite) knocked out
+the brains of the Puritan who removed it.  The Puritans had their
+way with the registers as well as with the eagle ("the vowl," as the
+old country people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons as
+registrars in 1653.  The books from 1653 to 1660, while this regime
+lasted, "were kept exceptionally well," new brooms sweeping clean.
+The books of the period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christian
+names than we might have expected.  We find, "REPENTE Kytchens," so
+styled before the poor little thing had anything but original sin to
+repent of.  "FAINT NOT Kennard" is also registered, and "FREEGIFT
+Mabbe."
+
+A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678.  The law required
+(for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be
+buried in woollen winding-sheets.  The price of the wool was the
+obolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue.  After March 25, 1667, no
+person was to be "buried in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that
+should be made of woole only."  Thus when the children in a little
+Oxfordshire village lately beheld a ghost, "dressed in a long narrow
+gown of woollen, with bandages round the head and chin," it is clear
+that the ghost was much more than a hundred years old, for the act
+"had fallen into disuse long before it was repealed in 1814."  But
+this has little to do with parish registers.  The addition made to
+the duties of the keeper of the register in 1678 was this--he had to
+take and record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to the
+effect that the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric.  The
+upper classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay the
+fine of 5L.  When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress, was
+interred in 1730, her body was arrayed "in a very fine Brussels lace
+headdress, a holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the
+same lace, and a pair of new kid gloves."
+
+In 1694 an empty exchequer was replenished by a tax on marriages,
+births, and burials, the very extortion which had been feared by the
+insurgents in the Pilgrimage of Grace.  The tax collectors had
+access without payment of fee to the registers.  The registration of
+births was discontinued when the Taxation Acts expired.  An attempt
+to introduce the registration of births was made in 1753, but
+unsuccessfully.  The public had the old superstitious dread of
+anything like a census.  Moreover, the custom was denounced as
+"French," and therefore abominable.  In the same way it was thought
+telling to call the cloture "the French gag" during some recent
+discussions of parliamentary rules.  In 1783 the parish register was
+again made the instrument of taxation, and threepence was charged on
+every entry.  Thus "the clergyman was placed in the invidious light
+of a tax collector, and as the poor were often unable or unwilling
+to pay the tax, the clergy had a direct inducement to retain their
+good-will by keeping the registers defective."
+
+It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when "bang went
+saxpence" every time a poor man had twins!  Of course the Scotch
+rose up against this unparalleled extortion.  At last, in 1812,
+"Rose's Act" was passed.  It is styled "an Act for the better
+regulating and preserving registers of births," but the registration
+of births is altogether omitted from its provisions.  By a stroke of
+the wildest wit the penalty of transportation for fourteen years,
+for making a false entry, "is to be divided equally between the
+informer and the poor of the parish."  A more casual Act has rarely
+been drafted.
+
+Without entering into the modern history of parish registers, we may
+borrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found therein, the
+blunders and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and curates, and
+parish clerks.  In quite recent times (1832) it was thought worth
+while to record that Charity Morrell at her wedding had signed her
+name in the register with her right foot, and that the ring had been
+placed on the fourth toe of her left foot; for poor Charity was born
+without arms.  Sometimes the time of a birth was recorded with much
+minuteness, that the astrologers might draw a more accurate
+horoscope.  Unlucky children, with no acknowledged fathers, were
+entered in a variety of odd ways.  In Lambeth (1685), George
+Speedwell is put down as "a merry begot;" Anne Twine is "filia
+uniuscujusque."  At Croydon, a certain William is "terraefilius"
+(1582), an autochthonous infant.  Among the queer names of
+foundlings are "Nameless," "Godsend," "Subpoena," and "Moyses and
+Aaron, two children found," not in the bulrushes, but "in the
+street."
+
+The rule was to give the foundling for surname the name of the
+parish, and from the Temple Church came no fewer than one hundred
+and four foundlings named "Temple," between 1728 and 1755.  These
+Temples are the plebeian gens of the patrician house which claims
+descent from Godiva.  The use of surnames as Christian names is
+later than the Reformation, and is the result of a reaction against
+the exclusive use of saints' names from the calendar.  Another
+example of the same reaction is the use of Old Testament names, and
+"Ananias and Sapphira were favourite names with the Presbyterians."
+It is only fair to add that these names are no longer popular with
+Presbyterians, at any rate in the Kirk of Scotland.  The old Puritan
+argument was that you would hardly select the name of too notorious
+a scriptural sinner, "as bearing testimony to the triumph of grace
+over original sin."  But in America a clergyman has been known to
+decline to christen a child "Pontius Pilate," and no wonder.
+
+Entries of burials in ancient times often contained some
+biographical information about the deceased.  But nothing could
+possibly be vaguer than this:  "1615, February 28, St. Martin's,
+Ludgate, was buried an anatomy from the College of Physicians."
+Man, woman, or child, sinner or saint, we know not, only that "an
+anatomy" found Christian burial in St. Martin's, Ludgate.  How much
+more full and characteristic is this, from St. Peter's-in-the-East,
+Oxford (1568):  'There was buried Alyce, the wiff of a naughty
+fellow whose name is Matthew Manne.'  There is immortality for
+Matthew Manne, and there is, in short-hand, the tragedy of "Alyce
+his wiff."  The reader of this record knows more of Matthew than in
+two hundred years any one is likely to know of us who moralise over
+Matthew!  At Kyloe, in Northumberland, the intellectual defects of
+Henry Watson have, like the naughtiness of Manne, secured him a
+measure of fame. (1696.)  "Henry was so great a fooll, that he never
+could put on his own close, nor never went a quarter of a mile off
+the house," as Voltaire's Memnon resolved never to do, and as Pascal
+partly recommends.
+
+What had Mary Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the Croydon
+register gives her of "Queen of Hell"? (1788.)  Distinguished people
+were buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which they
+were connected, and each sham burial service was entered in the
+parish registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian.
+This curious custom is very ancient.  Thus we read in the Odyssey
+that when Menelaus heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he
+reared for him a cenotaph, and piled an empty barrow "that the fame
+of the dead man might never be quenched."  Probably this old usage
+gave rise to the claims of several Greek cities to possess the tomb
+of this or that ancient hero.  A heroic tomb, as of Cassandra for
+example, several towns had to show, but which was the true grave,
+which were the cenotaphs?  Queen Elizabeth was buried in all the
+London churches, and poor Cassandra had her barrow in Argos,
+Mycenae, and Amyclae.
+
+"A drynkyng for the soul" of the dead, a [Greek text] or funeral
+feast, was as common in England before the Reformation as in ancient
+Greece.  James Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left six
+shillings and eightpence to pay for this "drynkyng for his soul;"
+and the funeral feast, which long survived in the distribution of
+wine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures as a slight collation of
+wine and cake in Scotland.  What a funeral could be, as late as
+1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial of Andrew
+Card, senior bencher of Gray's Inn.  The deceased was brave in a
+"superfine pinked shroud" (cheap at 1L. 5S. 6D.), and there were
+eight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the dais, and
+ninety-six buckram escutcheons.  The pall-bearers wore Alamode
+hatbands covered with frizances, and so did the divines who were
+present at the melancholy but gorgeous function.  A hundred men in
+mourning carried a hundred white wax branch lights, and the gloves
+of the porters in Gray's Inn were ash-coloured with black points.
+Yet the wine cost no more than 1L. 19S. 6D.; a "deal of sack," by no
+means "intolerable."
+
+Leaving the funerals, we find that the parish register sometimes
+records ancient and obsolete modes of death.  Thus, martyrs are
+scarce now, but the register of All Saints', Derby, 1556, mentions
+"a poor blinde woman called Joan Waste, of this parish, a martyr,
+burned in Windmill pit."  She was condemned by Ralph Baynes, Bishop
+of Coventry and Lichfield.  In 1558, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, we
+find "Richard Snell, b'rnt, bur. 9 Sept."  At Croydon, in 1585,
+Roger Shepherd probably never expected to be eaten by a lioness.
+Roger was not, like Wyllyam Barker, "a common drunkard and
+blasphemer," and we cannot regard the Croydon lioness, like the
+Nemean lion, as a miraculous monster sent against the county of
+Surrey for the sins of the people.  The lioness "was brought into
+the town to be seen of such as would give money to see her.  He"
+(Roger) "was sore wounded in sundry places, and was buried the 26th
+Aug."
+
+In 1590, the register of St. Oswald's, Durham, informs us that
+"Duke, Hyll, Hogge, and Holiday" were hanged and burned for "there
+horrible offences."  The arm of one of these horrible offenders was
+preserved at St. Omer as the relic of a martyr, "a most precious
+treasure," in 1686.  But no one knew whether the arm belonged
+originally to Holiday, Hyll, Duke, or Hogge.  The coals, when these
+unfortunate men were burned, cost sixpence; the other items in the
+account of the abominable execution are, perhaps, too repulsive to
+be quoted.
+
+According to some critics of the British government, we do not treat
+the Egyptians well.  But our conduct towards the Fellahs has
+certainly improved since this entry was made in the register of St.
+Nicholas, Durham (1592, August 8th):  'Simson, Arington,
+Featherston, Fenwick, and Lancaster, WERE HANGED FOR BEING
+EGYPTIANS.'  They were, in fact, gypsies, or had been consorting
+with gypsies, and they suffered under 5 Eliz. c. 20.  In 1783 this
+statute was abolished, and was even considered "a law of excessive
+severity."  For even a hundred years ago "the puling cant of sickly
+humanitarianism" was making itself heard to the injury of our sturdy
+old English legislation.  To be killed by a poet is now an unusual
+fate, but the St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions
+how "Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried."  Gabriel was
+"slayne" by Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton Fields.
+
+The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parish
+registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner.  On
+August 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the
+imaginary crime of witchcraft.  "A grave, for a witch, sixpence," is
+an item in the municipal accounts.  And the grave was a cheap haven
+for the poor woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of a
+Scotch witch-trier.  Cetewayo's medicine-men, who "smelt out"
+witches, were only some two centuries in the rear of our
+civilisation.  Three hundred years ago Bishop Jewell, preaching
+before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of Cetewayo and Saul, as to
+the wickedness of suffering a witch to live.  As late as 1691, the
+register of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions "William Cleugh,
+bewitched to death," and the superstition is almost as powerful as
+ever among the rural people.  Between July 13 and July 24 (1699) the
+widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch.  She was not
+drowned, but survived her immersion for only five months.  A
+singular homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689.  "John Arris
+and Derwick Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; one
+killed the other drinking brandy."  But who slew the slayer?  The
+register is silent; but "often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck
+of hasty pudding at a time caused the death of James Parsons," at
+Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743.  Parsons had resisted the effects of
+shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding till the age of thirty-six.
+
+And so the registers run on.  Sometimes they tell of the death of a
+glutton, sometimes of a GRACE WYFE (grosse femme).  Now the bell
+tolls for the decease of a duke, now of a "dog-whipper."
+"Lutenists" and "Saltpetremen"--the skeleton of the old German
+allegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve.  "Ellis
+Thompson, insipiens," leaves Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled
+and scrabbled on the doors, and follows "William, foole to my Lady
+Jerningham," and "Edward Errington, the Towne's Fooll" (Newcastle-
+on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death.  Edward Errington died "of the
+pest," and another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastle
+had her regular town fools before she acquired her singularly
+advanced modern representatives.  The "aquavity man" dies (in
+Cripplegate), and the "dumb-man who was a fortune-teller" (Stepney,
+1628), and the "King's Falkner," and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined
+the professions, not frequently united, of "attorney and
+husbandman," in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655).  "The lame chimney-
+sweeper," and the "King of the gypsies," and Alexander Willis, "qui
+calographiam docuit," the linguist, and the Tom o' Bedlam, the
+comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the
+suicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, the
+churchyard where they were "hurled into a grave" was interdicted,
+and purified, after a fortnight, with "frankincense and sweet
+perfumes, and herbs."
+
+Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough
+register mentions a fresh way of death, "the swat called New
+Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master."  Another
+malady was 'the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne
+through England.'  The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth
+from the Levant, just as British commerce still patriotically tries
+to introduce cholera in cargoes of Egyptian rags.  The register of
+Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, 1625), has this strange story of the
+plague:-
+
+"Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must
+die at yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused
+his nefew, John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not
+farre from the house, and went and lay'd him down in the say'd
+grave, and caused clothes to be lay'd uppon and so dep'ted out of
+this world; this he did because he was a strong man, and heavier
+than his said nefew and another wench were able to bury."
+
+And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the "wench" already spoken of,
+died, the last of the household.
+
+Old customs survive in the parish registers.  Scolding wives were
+ducked, and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register tells how the
+sexton's wife "was sett on a new cukking-stoole, and brought to
+Temes brydge, and there had three duckings over head and eres,
+because she was a common scold and fighter."  The cucking-stool, a
+very elaborate engine of the law, cost 1L. 3S. 4D.  Men were ducked
+for beating their wives, and if that custom were revived the
+profession of cucking-stool maker would become busy and lucrative.
+Penances of a graver sort are on record in the registers.  Margaret
+Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was ordered to stand three market days
+in the town, and three Sundays in the church, in a white sheet.  The
+sin imputed to her was a dreadful one.  "She stood one Saturday, and
+one Sunday, and died the next."  Innocent or guilty, this world was
+no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret Sherioux.  Occasionally
+the keeper of the register entered any event which seemed out of the
+common.  Thus the register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has this
+contribution to natural history:-
+
+"A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a very greate
+strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen feet, in quantitie
+and dimentions greater than a greate horse, which was taken and
+killed by special policie, in Ethiopia within the Turkas dominions.
+But before it was killed, it had devoured (as is credibly thought)
+more than 1,000 persons, and destroyed a great country."
+
+This must have been a descendant of the monster that would have
+eaten Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the
+blameless Ethiopians.  Collections of money are recorded
+occasionally, as in 1680, when no less than one pound eight
+shillings was contributed "for redemption of Christians (taken by ye
+Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish slavery."  Two hundred years ago the
+Turk was pretty "unspeakable" still.  Of all blundering Dogberries,
+the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish register at Melton
+Mowbray:-
+
+"Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth's people, which was
+buried, and which was and maried above 10 years old, for because the
+clarke was dead, and therefore they was not set down according as
+they was, but they all set down sure enough one among another here
+in this place."
+
+"They all set down sure enough," nor does it matter much now to know
+whom they married, and how long they lived in Melton Mowbray.  The
+following entry sufficed for the great Villiers that expired "in the
+worst inn's worst room,"--"Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire, 1687.
+Georges vilaris Lord dooke of Bookingham, bur. 17. April."
+
+"So much for Buckingham!"
+
+
+
+THE ROWFANT BOOKS
+BALLADE EN GUISE DE RONDEAU
+
+
+
+The Rowfant books, how fair they shew,
+The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall,
+Print, autograph, portfolio!
+Back from the outer air they call,
+The athletes from the Tennis ball,
+This Rhymer from his rod and hooks,
+Would I could sing them one and all,
+The Rowfant books!
+
+The Rowfant books!  In sun and snow
+They're dear, but most when tempests fall;
+The folio towers above the row
+As once, o'er minor prophets,--Saul!
+What jolly jest books and what small
+"Dear dumpy Twelves" to fill the nooks.
+You do not find on every stall
+The Rowfant books!
+
+The Rowfant books!  These long ago
+Were chained within some College hall;
+These manuscripts retain the glow
+Of many a coloured capital
+While yet the Satires keep their gall,
+While the Pastissier puzzles cooks,
+Theirs is a joy that does not pall,
+The Rowfant books!
+
+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 Bronte "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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 instantiae contradictoriae, 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 Palaeolithic 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 lavandiere 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 Grece
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 a la Sphere,
+Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,
+Lies o'er the loves of Moliere. {3}
+
+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; {4}
+
+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. {5}
+
+What famous folk of old are here!
+A royal duke comes down to us,
+And greatly wants his Elzevir,
+His Pagan tutor, Lucius. {6}
+And Beckford claims an amorous
+Old heathen in morocco blue; {7}
+And who demands Eobanus
+But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou! {8}
+
+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, {9} Schlegel {10} and the rare
+Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. {11}
+
+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 {12} -
+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 Merimee, 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 archaeologist who took
+in his own father with false Greek inscriptions.  But this story may
+be a mere fable amongst archaeologists, 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 Athene, 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. {13}  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 [Greek text], 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' {14}), 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, AEschylus, 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 Decretales, tant par vous est le vin bon bon trouve"--"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
+AEschylus 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 Maitre du Palais to the Pope, Alexander Borgia.
+With Caesar 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 Caesar Borgia
+poisoned the preacher (1502), but people usually brought that charge
+against Caesar 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 venerandae
+antiquitatis,' consisting of a pretended will and a contract."  The
+name of the book is 'Ex reliquiis venerandae antiquitatis.  Lucii
+Cuspidii Testamentum.  Item contractus venditionis antiquis
+Romanorum temporibus initus.  Lugduni apud Gryphium (1532).'
+Pomponius Laetus 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, Francois 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 Bale 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 mediaeval
+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 lacunae 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 Francais,' in seven
+large volumes, 'Les Sonnets d'un Bibliophile,' 'La Bibliomanie en
+1878,' 'La Bibliotheque 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.  Moliere, for example, corrected the proofs
+for this edition of the 'Precieuses 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!) Maitre Francois Rabelais.  This
+woeful ballade, with the woodcut of three thieves hanging from one
+gallows, came near being the "Last Dying Speech and Confession of
+Francois 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 Valliere (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'Angouleme 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
+Abbe 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
+precieuses, 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 Pixerecourt, 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 Chateau
+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 Chateau d'Anet till the death of the
+Princesse de Conde 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. Leopold Double,
+a well-known bibliophile, possessed several examples. {15}
+
+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 Cleves,
+Princesse de Conde.  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 pounds 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'eponge;
+Ou manque un coin, vite une allonge,
+Pour tous j'ai maison de sante.
+
+
+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 Naude.  In 1664, Naude,
+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 Bibliotheque,' and proved himself to be a true lover of
+the chase, a mighty hunter (of books) before the Lord.  Naude'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 Naude 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.
+Naude'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, broches,--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 Naude.
+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 pounds.  But we are
+digressing into the pleasures of the modern sportsman.
+
+It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naude 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 Naude 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!"  Naude 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
+Bibliotheque 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 Moliere--De Vise, 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 Moliere 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 Hotel 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.
+Moliere," with the price the book cost him, "1 livre, 10 sols."  "Il
+n'est pas de bouquin qui s'echappe 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'Ecole des Femmes."
+Thanks to M. Soulie the catalogue of Moliere'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
+Moliere'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.  Moliere 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 Moliere'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 Bruyere 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 Bruyere (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 Bruyere 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 Moliere, 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.
+
+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 pounds.
+Longepierre, D'Hoym, McCarthy, and the Duc de la Valliere, 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 Melusine,' 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, {16} 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 delire, 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 chateaux 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 Pixerecourt, the dramatist, who
+founded the Societe des Bibliophiles Francais.  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.  Pixerecourt
+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, Pixerecourt 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
+Pixerecourt himself the evil eye fell at last; his theatre, the
+Gaiete, 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.
+
+Pixerecourt 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 ecole 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 pounds.  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 Moliere,--of Moliere 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 pounds.
+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 Francois Villon (1533).  'The History of the
+Holy Grail' (L'Hystoire du Sainct Greaal:  Paris, 1523), in a
+binding stamped with the four crowns of Louis XIV., is valued at
+about 500 pounds.  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 pounds.  There is something piquant in the idea of
+inheriting from that famous beauty the work of the colossal genius
+of Rabelais. {17}
+
+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 Hotel 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 champetre; 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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration with title page:  Les demandes tamours auec les
+refpofesioyeufes.  Demade refponfe.]
+
+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.
+
+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 marie' (Jacques Moderne, Lyon, 1540),
+where we see the elderly and comfortable couple sitting gravely
+under their own fig-tree.
+
+[Illustration of '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). {18}
+
+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 Pre's edition of 'Le Rommant de la Rose'
+(Paris, 1529). {19}  Galliot du Pre'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.
+
+[Illustration of title page]
+
+The arrangement of letters, and the use of red, make a charming
+frame, as it were, to the drawing of the mediaeval 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 perilleuses, Tout par
+Soulas, and the like, so printers and authors had their emblems, and
+their private literary slogans.  These they changed, accordinging
+
+[Another illustration titled:  Le Pastissier Francois, MDCLV, title
+page]
+
+to fancy, or the vicissitudes of their lives.  Clement 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 Clementine.
+
+[Another illustration titled:  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, tres 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.
+
+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 Francois 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 Francois' 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 Moliere (in tragedy) wore
+laurel wreaths over vast perruques, are the early frontispieces of
+Moliere'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 Moliere,' published in 1666 by Guillaume de
+Luynes.  The first shows Moliere 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 Moliere
+(Armande Bejart) in the dress of Agnes, 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 Moliere 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 Moliere as publishers.
+
+The basket of fruits on the title-page of 'Iphigenie,' par M. Racine
+(Barbin, Paris, 1675), is almost, but not quite, identical with the
+similar ornament of De Vise's 'La Cocue Imaginaire' (Ribou, Paris
+1662).  Many of Moliere'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'Alencon 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
+pounds, 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 'Peches 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, double, 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 [Greek
+text] (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 Molieres 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 decrit
+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 AEneid, 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 Pre I pine.
+The watches of the night reveal
+The Books that never can be mine!
+
+ENVOY.
+
+Prince, bear a hopeless Bard's appeal;
+Reverse the rules of Mine and Thine;
+Make it legitimate to steal
+The Books that never can be mine!
+
+
+
+LADY BOOK-LOVERS
+
+
+
+The biographer of Mrs. Aphra Behn refutes the vulgar error that "a
+Dutchman cannot love."  Whether or not a lady can love books is a
+question that may not be so readily settled.  Mr. Ernest Quentin
+Bauchart has contributed to the discussion of this problem by
+publishing a bibliography, in two quarto volumes, of books which
+have been in the libraries of famous beauties of old, queens and
+princesses of France.  There can be no doubt that these ladies were
+possessors of exquisite printed books and manuscripts wonderfully
+bound, but it remains uncertain whether the owners, as a rule, were
+bibliophiles; whether their hearts were with their treasures.
+Incredible as it may seem to us now, literature was highly respected
+in the past, and was even fashionable.  Poets were in favour at
+court, and Fashion decided that the great must possess books, and
+not only books, but books produced in the utmost perfection of art,
+and bound with all the skill at the disposal of Clovis Eve, and
+Padeloup, and Duseuil.  Therefore, as Fashion gave her commands, we
+cannot hastily affirm that the ladies who obeyed were really book-
+lovers.  In our more polite age, Fashion has decreed that ladies
+shall smoke, and bet, and romp, but it would be premature to assert
+that all ladies who do their duty in these matters are born romps,
+or have an unaffected liking for cigarettes.  History, however,
+maintains that many of the renowned dames whose books are now the
+most treasured of literary relics were actually inclined to study as
+well as to pleasure, like Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de
+Verrue, and even Madame de Pompadour.  Probably books and arts were
+more to this lady's liking than the diversions by which she beguiled
+the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a time she would rather have been
+quiet with her plays and novels than engaged in conscientiously
+conducted but distasteful revels.
+
+Like a true Frenchman, M. Bauchart has only written about French
+lady book-lovers, or about women who, like Mary Stuart, were more
+than half French.  Nor would it be easy for an English author to
+name, outside the ranks of crowned heads, like Elizabeth, any
+Englishwomen of distinction who had a passion for the material side
+of literature, for binding, and first editions, and large paper, and
+engravings in early "states."  The practical sex, when studious, is
+like the same sex when fond of equestrian exercise.  "A lady says,
+'My heyes, he's an 'orse, and he must go,'" according to Leech's
+groom.  In the same way, a studious girl or matron says, "This is a
+book," and reads it, if read she does, without caring about the
+date, or the state, or the publisher's name, or even very often
+about the author's.  I remember, before the publication of a novel
+now celebrated, seeing a privately printed vellum-bound copy on
+large paper in the hands of a literary lady.  She was holding it
+over the fire, and had already made the vellum covers curl wide open
+like the shells of an afflicted oyster.
+
+When I asked what the volume was, she explained that "It is a book
+which a poor man has written, and he's had it printed to see whether
+some one won't be kind enough to publish it."  I ventured, perhaps
+pedantically, to point out that the poor man could not be so very
+poor, or he would not have made so costly an experiment on Dutch
+paper.  But the lady said she did not know how that might be, and
+she went on toasting the experiment.  In all this there is a fine
+contempt for everything but the spiritual aspect of literature;
+there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and display of morocco and
+red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of men.  Where
+ladies have caught "the Bibliomania," I fancy they have taken this
+pretty fever from the other sex.  But it must be owned that the
+books they have possessed, being rarer and more romantic, are even
+more highly prized by amateurs than examples from the libraries of
+Grolier, and Longepierre, and D'Hoym.  M. Bauchart's book is a
+complete guide to the collector of these expensive relics.  He
+begins his dream of fair women who have owned books with the pearl
+of the Valois, Marguerite d'Angouleme, the sister of Francis I.  The
+remains of her library are chiefly devotional manuscripts.  Indeed,
+it is to be noted that all these ladies, however frivolous,
+possessed the most devout and pious books, and whole collections of
+prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with miniatures.
+Marguerite's library was bound in morocco, stamped with a crowned M
+in interlacs sown with daisies, or, at least, with conventional
+flowers which may have been meant for daisies.  If one could choose,
+perhaps the most desirable of the specimens extant is 'Le Premier
+Livre du Prince des Poetes, Homere,' in Salel's translation.  For
+this translation Ronsard writes a prologue, addressed to the manes
+of Salel, in which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry.
+He draws a characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium,
+among the learned lovers:
+
+
+qui parmi les fleurs devisent
+Au giron de leur dame.
+
+
+Marguerite's manuscript copy of the First Book of the Iliad is a
+small quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and the crowned
+M.  It is in the Duc d'Aumale's collection at Chantilly.  The books
+of Diane de Poitiers are more numerous and more famous.  When first
+a widow she stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb,
+and the motto, "Sola vivit in illo."  But when she consoled herself
+with Henri II. she suppressed the tomb, and made the motto
+meaningless.  Her crescent shone not only on her books, but on the
+palace walls of France, in the Louvre, Fontainebleau, and Anet, and
+her initial D. is inextricably interlaced with the H. of her royal
+lover.  Indeed, Henri added the D to his own cypher, and this must
+have been so embarrassing for his wife Catherine, that people have
+good-naturedly tried to read the curves of the D's as C's.  The D's,
+and the crescents, and the bows of his Diana are impressed even on
+the covers of Henri's Book of Hours.  Catherine's own cypher is a
+double C enlaced with an H, or double K's (Katherine) combined in
+the same manner.  These, unlike the D.H., are surmounted with a
+crown--the one advantage which the wife possessed over the
+favourite.  Among Diane's books are various treatises on medicines
+and on surgery, and plenty of poetry and Italian novels.  Among the
+books exhibited at the British Museum in glass cases is Diane's copy
+of Bembo's 'History of Venice.'  An American collector, Mr. Barlow,
+of New York, is happy enough to possess her 'Singularitez de la
+France Antarctique' (Antwerp, 1558).
+
+Catherine de Medicis got splendid books on the same terms as foreign
+pirates procure English novels--she stole them.  The Marshal
+Strozzi, dying in the French service, left a noble collection, on
+which Catherine laid her hands.  Brantome says that Strozzi's son
+often expressed to him a candid opinion about this transaction.
+What with her own collection and what with the Marshal's, Catherine
+possessed about four thousand volumes.  On her death they were in
+peril of being seized by her creditors, but her almoner carried them
+to his own house, and De Thou had them placed in the royal library.
+Unluckily it was thought wiser to strip the books of the coats with
+Catherine's compromising device, lest her creditors should single
+them out, and take them away in their pockets.  Hence, books with
+her arms and cypher are exceedingly rare.  At the sale of the
+collections of the Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of Catherine's
+was sold for 2,400 pounds.
+
+Mary Stuart of Scotland was one of the lady book-lovers whose taste
+was more than a mere following of the fashion.  Some of her books,
+like one of Marie Antoinette's, were the companions of her
+captivity, and still bear the sad complaints which she entrusted to
+these last friends of fallen royalty.  Her note-book, in which she
+wrote her Latin prose exercises when a girl, still survives, bound
+in red morocco, with the arms of France.  In a Book of Hours, now
+the property of the Czar, may be partly deciphered the quatrains
+which she composed in her sorrowful years, but many of them are
+mutilated by the binder's shears.  The Queen used the volume as a
+kind of album:  it contains the signatures of the "Countess of
+Schrewsbury" (as M. Bauchart has it), of Walsingham, of the Earl of
+Sussex, and of Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham.  There is also
+the signature, "Your most infortunat, ARBELLA SEYMOUR;" and "Fr.
+Bacon."
+
+This remarkable manuscript was purchased in Paris, during the
+Revolution, by Peter Dubrowsky, who carried it to Russia.  Another
+Book of Hours of the Queen's bears this inscription, in a sixteenth-
+century hand:  "Ce sont les Heures de Marie Setuart Renne.
+Marguerite de Blacuod de Rosay."  In De Blacuod it is not very easy
+to recognise "Blackwood."  Marguerite was probably the daughter of
+Adam Blackwood, who wrote a volume on Mary Stuart's sufferings
+(Edinburgh, 1587).
+
+The famous Marguerite de Valois, the wife of Henri IV., had
+certainly a noble library, and many beautifully bound books stamped
+with daisies are attributed to her collections.  They bear the
+motto, "Expectata non eludet," which appears to refer, first to the
+daisy ("Margarita"), which is punctual in the spring, or rather is
+"the constellated flower that never sets," and next, to the lady,
+who will "keep tryst."  But is the lady Marguerite de Valois?
+Though the books have been sold at very high prices as relics of the
+leman of La Mole, it seems impossible to demonstrate that they were
+ever on her shelves, that they were bound by Clovis Eve from her own
+design. "No mention is made of them in any contemporary document,
+and the judicious are reduced to conjectures."  Yet they form a most
+important collection, systematically bound, science and philosophy
+in citron morocco, the poets in green, and history and theology in
+red.  In any case it is absurd to explain "Expectata non eludet" as
+a reference to the lily of the royal arms, which appears on the
+centre of the daisy-pied volumes.  The motto, in that case, would
+run, "Expectata (lilia) non eludent."  As it stands, the feminine
+adjective, "expectata," in the singular, must apply either to the
+lady who owned the volumes, or to the "Margarita," her emblem, or to
+both.  Yet the ungrammatical rendering is that which M. Bauchart
+suggests.  Many of the books, Marguerite's or not, were sold at
+prices over 100 pounds in London, in 1884 and 1883.  The Macrobius,
+and Theocritus, and Homer are in the Cracherode collection at the
+British Museum.  The daisy crowned Ronsard went for 430 pounds at
+the Beckford sale.  These prices will probably never be reached
+again.
+
+If Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile, she
+may be suspected of acting on the motive, "Love me, love my books."
+About her affection for Cardinal Mazarin there seems to be no doubt:
+the Cardinal had a famous library, and his royal friend probably
+imitated his tastes.  In her time, and on her volumes, the
+originality and taste of the skilled binder, Le Gascon, begin to
+declare themselves.  The fashionable passion for lace, to which La
+Fontaine made such sacrifices, affected the art of book decorations,
+and Le Gascon's beautiful patterns of gold points and dots are
+copies of the productions of Venice.  The Queen-Mother's books
+include many devotional treatises, for, whatever other fashions
+might come and go, piety was always constant before the Revolution.
+Anne of Austria seems to have been particularly fond of the lives
+and works of Saint Theresa, and Saint Francois de Sales, and John of
+the Cross.  But she was not unread in the old French poets, such as
+Coquillart; she condescended to Ariosto; she had that dubious
+character, Theophile de Viaud, beautifully bound; she owned the
+Rabelais of 1553; and, what is particularly interesting, M. de
+Lignerolles possesses her copy of 'L'Eschole des Femmes, Comedie par
+J. B. P. Moliere.  Paris:  Guillaume de Luynes, 1663.'  In 12
+[degree sign], red morocco, gilt edges, and the Queen's arms on the
+covers.  This relic is especially valuable when we remember that
+'L'Ecole des Femmes' and Arnolphe's sermon to Agnes, and his comic
+threats of future punishment first made envy take the form of
+religious persecution.  The devout Queen-Mother was often appealed
+to by the enemies of Moliere, yet Anne of Austria had not only seen
+his comedy, but possessed this beautiful example of the first
+edition.  M. Paul Lacroix supposes that this copy was offered to the
+Queen-Mother by Moliere himself.  The frontispiece (Arnolphe
+preaching to Agnes) is thought to be a portrait of Moliere, but in
+the reproduction in M. Louis Lacour's edition it is not easy to see
+any resemblance.  Apparently Anne did not share the views, even in
+her later years, of the converted Prince de Conty, for several
+comedies and novels remain stamped with her arms and device.
+
+The learned Marquise de Rambouillet, the parent of all the
+'Precieuses,' must have owned a good library, but nothing is
+chronicled save her celebrated book of prayers and meditations,
+written out and decorated by Jarry.  It is bound in red morocco,
+double with green, and covered with V's in gold.  The Marquise
+composed the prayers for her own use, and Jarry was so much struck
+with their beauty that he asked leave to introduce them into the
+Book of Hours which he had to copy, "for the prayers are often so
+silly," said he, "that I am ashamed to write them out."
+
+Here is an example of the devotions which Jarry admired, a prayer to
+Saint Louis.  It was published in 'Miscellanies Bibliographiques' by
+M. Prosper Blanchemain.
+
+
+PRIERE A SAINT-LOUIS,
+ROY DE FRANCE.
+
+Grand Roy, bien que votre couronne ayt este des plus esclatantes de
+la Terre, celle que vous portez dans le ciel est incomparablement
+plus precieuse.  L'une estoit perissable l'autre est immortelle et
+ces lys dont la blancheur se pouvoit ternir, sont maintenant
+incorruptibles.  Vostre obeissance envers vostre mere; vostre
+justice envers vos sujets; et vos guerres contre les infideles, vous
+ont acquis la veneration de tous les peuples; et la France doit a
+vos travaux et a vostre piete l'inestimable tresor de la sanglante
+et glorieuse couronne du Sauveur du monde.  Priez-le incomparable
+Saint qu'il donne une paix perpetuelle au Royaume dont vous avez
+porte le sceptre; qu'il le preserve d'heresie; qu'il y face toujours
+regner saintement vostre illustre Sang; et que tous ceux qui ont
+l'honneur d'en descendre soient pour jamais fideles a son Eglise.
+
+
+The daughter of the Marquise, the fair Julie, heroine of that "long
+courting" by M. de Montausier, survives in those records as the
+possessor of 'La Guirlande de Julie,' the manuscript book of poems
+by eminent hands.  But this manuscript seems to have been all the
+library of Julie; therein she could constantly read of her own
+perfections.  To be sure she had also 'L'Histoire de Gustave
+Adolphe,' a hero for whom, like Major Dugald Dalgetty, she cherished
+a supreme devotion.  In the 'Guirlande' Chapelain's verses turn on
+the pleasing fancy that the Protestant Lion of the North, changed
+into a flower (like Paul Limayrac in M. Banville's ode), requests
+Julie to take pity on his altered estate:
+
+
+Sois pitoyable a ma langueur;
+Et si je n'ay place en ton coeur
+Que je l'aye au moins sur ta teste.
+
+
+These verses were reckoned consummate.
+
+The 'Guirlande' is still, with happier fate than attends most books,
+in the hands of the successors of the Duc and Duchesse de
+Montausier.
+
+Like Julie, Madame de Maintenon was a precieuse, but she never had
+time to form a regular library.  Her books, however, were bound by
+Duseuil, a binder immortal in the verse of Pope; or it might be more
+correct to say that Madame de Maintenon's own books are seldom
+distinguishable from those of her favourite foundation, St. Cyr.
+The most interesting is a copy of the first edition of 'Esther,' in
+quarto (1689), bound in red morocco, and bearing, in Racine's hand,
+'A Madame la Marquise de Maintenon, offert avec respect,--RACINE."
+
+Doubtless Racine had the book bound before he presented it.  "People
+are discontented," writes his son Louis, "if you offer them a book
+in a simple marbled paper cover."  I could wish that this worthy
+custom were restored, for the sake of the art of binding, and also
+because amateur poets would be more chary of their presentation
+copies.  It is, no doubt, wise to turn these gifts with their sides
+against the inner walls of bookcases, to be bulwarks against the
+damp, but the trouble of acknowledging worthless presents from
+strangers is considerable. {20}
+
+Another interesting example of Madame de Maintenon's collections is
+Dacier's 'Remarques Critiques sur les OEuvres d'Horace,' bearing the
+arms of Louis XIV., but with his wife's signature on the fly-leaf
+(1681).
+
+Of Madame de Montespan, ousted from the royal favour by Madame de
+Maintenon, who "married into the family where she had been
+governess," there survives one bookish relic of interest.  This is
+'OEuvres Diverses par un auteur de sept ans,' in quarto, red
+morocco, printed on vellum, and with the arms of the mother of the
+little Duc du Maine (1678).  When Madame de Maintenon was still
+playing mother to the children of the king and of Madame de
+Montespan, she printed those "works" of her eldest pupil.
+
+These ladies were only bibliophiles by accident, and were devoted,
+in the first place, to pleasure, piety, or ambition.  With the
+Comtesse de Verrue, whose epitaph will be found on an earlier page,
+we come to a genuine and even fanatical collector.  Madame de Verrue
+(1670-1736) got every kind of diversion out of life, and when she
+ceased to be young and fair, she turned to the joys of "shopping."
+In early years, "pleine de coeur, elle le donna sans comptes."  In
+later life, she purchased, or obtained on credit, everything that
+caught her fancy, also sans comptes.  "My aunt," says the Duc de
+Luynes, "was always buying, and never baulked her fancy."  Pictures,
+books, coins, jewels, engravings, gems (over 8,000), tapestries, and
+furniture were all alike precious to Madame de Verrue.  Her snuff-
+boxes defied computation; she had them in gold, in tortoise-shell,
+in porcelain, in lacquer, and in jasper, and she enjoyed the
+delicate fragrance of sixty different sorts of snuff.  Without
+applauding the smoking of cigarettes in drawing-rooms, we may admit
+that it is less repulsive than steady applications to tobacco in
+Madame de Verrue's favourite manner.
+
+The Countess had a noble library, for old tastes survived in her
+commodious heart, and new tastes she anticipated.  She possessed
+'The Romance of the Rose,' and 'Villon,' in editions of Galliot du
+Pre (1529-1533) undeterred by the satire of Boileau.  She had
+examples of the 'Pleiade,' though they were not again admired in
+France till 1830.  She was also in the most modern fashion of to-
+day, for she had the beautiful quarto of La Fontaine's 'Contes,' and
+Bouchier's illustrated Moliere (large paper).  And, what I envy her
+more, she had Perrault's 'Fairy Tales,' in blue morocco--the blue
+rose of the folklorist who is also a book-hunter.  It must also be
+confessed that Madame de Verrue had a large number of books such as
+are usually kept under lock and key, books which her heirs did not
+care to expose at the sale of her library.  Once I myself (moi
+chetif) owned a novel in blue morocco, which had been in the
+collection of Madame de Verrue.  In her old age this exemplary woman
+invented a peculiarly comfortable arm-chair, which, like her novels,
+was covered with citron and violet morocco; the nails were of
+silver.  If Madame de Verrue has met the Baroness Bernstein, their
+conversation in the Elysian Fields must be of the most gallant and
+interesting description.
+
+Another literary lady of pleasure, Madame de Pompadour, can only be
+spoken of with modified approval.  Her great fault was that she did
+not check the decadence of taste and sense in the art of
+bookbinding.  In her time came in the habit of binding books (if
+binding it can be called) with flat backs, without the nerves and
+sinews that are of the very essence of book-covers.  Without these
+no binding can be permanent, none can secure the lasting existence
+of a volume.  It is very deeply to be deplored that by far the most
+accomplished living English artist in bookbinding has reverted to
+this old and most dangerous heresy.  The most original and graceful
+tooling is of much less real value than permanence, and a book bound
+with a flat back, without nerfs, might practically as well not be
+bound at all.  The practice was the herald of the French and may
+open the way for the English Revolution.  Of what avail were the
+ingenious mosaics of Derome to stem the tide of change, when the
+books whose sides they adorned were not really BOUND at all?  Madame
+de Pompadour's books were of all sorts, from the inevitable works of
+devotions to devotions of another sort, and the 'Hours' of Erycina
+Ridens.  One of her treasures had singular fortunes, a copy of
+'Daphnis and Chloe,' with the Regent's illustrations, and those of
+Cochin and Eisen (Paris, quarto, 1757, red morocco).  The covers are
+adorned with billing and cooing doves, with the arrows of Eros, with
+burning hearts, and sheep and shepherds.  Eighteen years ago this
+volume was bought for 10 francs in a village in Hungary.  A
+bookseller gave 8 pounds for it in Paris.  M. Bauchart paid for it
+150 pounds; and as it has left his shelves, probably he too made no
+bad bargain.  Madame de Pompadour's 'Apology for Herodotus' (La
+Haye, 1735) has also its legend.  It belonged to M. Paillet, who
+coveted a glorified copy of the 'Pastissier Francois,' in M.
+Bauchart's collection.  M Paillet swopped it, with a number of
+others, for the 'Pastissier:'
+
+
+J'avais 'L'Apologie
+Pour Herodote,' en reliure ancienne, amour
+De livre provenant de chez la Pompadour
+Il me le soutira! {21}
+
+
+Of Marie Antoinette, with whom our lady book-lovers of the old
+regime must close, there survive many books.  She had a library in
+the Tuileries, as well as at le petit Trianon.  Of all her great and
+varied collections, none is now so valued as her little book of
+prayers, which was her consolation in the worst of all her evil
+days, in the Temple and the Conciergerie.  The book is 'Office de la
+Divine Providence' (Paris, 1757, green morocco).  On the fly-leaf
+the Queen wrote, some hours before her death, these touching lines:
+"Ce 16 Octobre, a 4 h. 0.5 du matin.  Mon Dieu! ayez pitie de moi!
+Mes yeux n'ont plus de larmes pour prier pour vous, mes pauvres
+enfants.  Adieu, adieu!--MARIE ANTOINETTE."
+
+There can be no sadder relic of a greater sorrow, and the last
+consolation of the Queen did not escape the French popular genius
+for cruelty and insult.  The arms on the covers of the prayer-book
+have been cut out by some fanatic of Equality and Fraternity.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  See illustrations, pp.  114, 115.--In this Project Gutenberg
+eText none of the illustrations are included.  However, the
+references to them are included.--DP
+
+{2}  "Slate" is a professional term for a severe criticism.  Clearly
+the word is originally "slat," a narrow board of wood, with which a
+person might be beaten.
+
+{3}  Histoire des Intrigues Amoureuses de Moliere, et de celles de
+sa femme.  (A la Sphere.)  A Francfort, chez Frederic Arnaud,
+MDCXCVII.  This anonymous tract has actually been attributed to
+Racine.  The copy referred to is marked with a large N in red, with
+an eagle's head.
+
+{4}  The Lady of the Lake, 1810.
+
+The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1806.
+
+"To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw, Peel.  From the Author."
+
+{5}  Dictys Cretensis.  Apud Lambertum Roulland.  Lut.  Paris.,
+1680.  In red morocco, with the arms of Colbert.
+
+{6}  L. Annaei Senecae Opera Omnia. Lug.  Bat., apud Elzevirios.
+1649.  With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex.
+
+{7}  Stratonis Epigrammata.  Altenburgi, 1764.  Straton bound up in
+one volume with Epictetus!  From the Beckford library.
+
+{8}  Opera Helii Eobani Hessi.  Yellow morocco, with the first arms
+of De Thou.  Includes a poem addressed "LANGE, decus meum."
+Quantity of penultimate "Eobanus" taken for granted, metri gratia.
+
+{9}  La Journee du Chretien.  Coutances, 1831.  With inscription,
+"Leon Gambetta.  Rue St. Honore.  Janvier 1, 1848."
+
+{10}  Villoison's Homer.  Venice, 1788.  With Tessier's ticket and
+Schlegel's book-plate.
+
+{11}  Les Essais de Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne.  "Pour Francois
+le Febvre de Lyon, 1695."  With autograph of Gul. Drummond, and
+cipresso e palma.
+
+{12}  "The little old foxed Moliere," once the property of William
+Pott, unknown to fame.
+
+{13}  That there ever were such editors is much disputed.  The story
+may be a fiction of the age of the Ptolemies.
+
+{14}  Or, more easily, in Maury's Religions de la Grece.
+
+{15}  See Essay on 'Lady Book-Lovers.'
+
+{16}  See Essay on 'Lady Book-Lovers.'
+
+{17}  For a specimen of Madame Pompadour's binding see overleaf.
+She had another Rabelais in calf, lately to be seen in a shop in
+Pall Mall.
+
+{18}  Mr. Payne does not give the date of the edition from which he
+copies the cut.  Apparently it is of the fifteenth century.
+
+{19}  Reproduced in The Library, p. 94.
+
+{20}  Country papers, please copy.  Poets at a distance will kindly
+accept this intimation.
+
+{21}  Bibliotheque d'un Bibliophile.  Lille, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang
+
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