diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:18:06 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:18:06 -0700 |
| commit | 076562dbe01ffeb58d92b8cf75771c20cf534f8c (patch) | |
| tree | 377b1ff8437160e5e26c73acaaed38231fcf2240 /1961-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '1961-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/1961-h.htm | 4633 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p100b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 225845 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p100s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 38656 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p108b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 252720 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p108s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40197 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p110b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 231577 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p110s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39182 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p111b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 245652 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p111s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40427 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p113b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 245330 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p113s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39980 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p114b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 221149 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p114s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40305 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p115b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 257451 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p115s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39435 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p116b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 231224 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p116s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 38862 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p119b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 248314 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p119s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 38866 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p12b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 226684 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p12s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40615 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p41b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 228269 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p41s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40868 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p45b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 223491 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p45s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39178 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p51b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 236838 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p51s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40648 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p55b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 230570 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p55s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40105 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p57b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 224240 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p57s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40046 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p5b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 217418 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p5s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40982 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p61b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 224903 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p61s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39516 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p63b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 229279 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p63s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39778 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p8b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 240010 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/p8s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40489 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/tpb.jpg | bin | 0 -> 174175 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1961-h/images/tps.jpg | bin | 0 -> 11569 bytes |
41 files changed, 4633 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/1961-h/1961-h.htm b/1961-h/1961-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7731286 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/1961-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4633 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<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’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’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 /> +’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’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 /> +’Tis true, they are not “rich nor rare;”<br /> +Enough, for me, that they are—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). 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.’</p> +<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ix</span>CONTENTS.</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </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’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> </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 +‘Imitation’ of Thomas à 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 ‘Sage’</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. 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>–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>. “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.”</p> +<p><i>The Parisian</i>. “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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>format</i> were their +main attractions. 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. 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.</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’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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ex officina +Elzeviriana</i>. 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.</p> +<p>Their classical series in <i>petit format</i> 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 +<i>fleurons</i> 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 +<i>grand format</i>, 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. <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 ‘Imitation’ of Thomas +à Kempis" +title= +"Elzevir title-page of the ‘Imitation’ of Thomas +à Kempis" + src="images/p8s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>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, <i>not</i> “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.</p> +<p>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 <i>svelte</i> 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.</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. 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.</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. 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. <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 ‘Sage’" +title= +"Elzevir ‘Sage’" + src="images/p12s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>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 <i>flair</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>Can this tale be true? Is such luck given by the jealous +fates <i>mortalibus ægris</i>? 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.’</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 “spate,”<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’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—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 +<i>écarté</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. +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 <i>such</i>!” 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>régime</i> 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, “<i>Repente</i> +Kytchens,” so styled before the poor little thing had +anything but original sin to repent of. “<i>Faint +not</i> Kennard” is also registered, and +“<i>Freegift</i> Mabbe.”</p> +<p>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<i>l</i>. 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.”</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. 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 <i>clôture</i> “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.”</p> +<p>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.</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. 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 +“<i>filia uniuscujusque</i>.” 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.”</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 “Temple,” between 1728 and +1755. These Temples are the plebeian <i>gens</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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<i>l</i>. +5<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.), 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<i>l</i>. +19<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.; a “deal of sack,” by no means +“intolerable.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, +<i>were hanged for being Egyptians</i>.’ 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the +death of a glutton, sometimes of a <i>Grace wyfe</i> (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, <i>insipiens</i>,” 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.”</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the “wench” +already spoken of, died, the last of the household.</p> +<p>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<i>l</i>. 3<i>s</i>. 4<i>d</i>. 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:—</p> +<p>“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.”</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. 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:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“So much for Buckingham!”</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 /> + The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall,<br /> +Print, autograph, portfolio!<br /> + Back from the outer air they call,<br /> +The athletes from the Tennis ball,<br /> + This Rhymer from his rod and hooks,<br /> +Would I could sing them one and all,<br /> + The Rowfant +books!</p> +<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books! In sun and snow<br /> + They’re dear, but most when tempests fall;<br +/> +The folio towers above the row<br /> + As once, o’er minor prophets,—Saul!<br +/> +What jolly jest books and what small<br /> + “Dear dumpy Twelves” to fill the +nooks.<br /> +You do not find on every stall<br /> + The Rowfant +books!</p> +<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books! These long ago<br /> + Were chained within some College hall;<br /> +These manuscripts retain the glow<br /> + Of many a coloured capital<br /> +While yet the Satires keep their gall,<br /> + While the Pastissier puzzles cooks,<br /> +Theirs is a joy that does not pall,<br /> + The Rowfant +books!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">ENVOI.</p> +<p class="poetry">The Rowfant books,—ah magical<br /> + As famed Armida’s “golden +looks,”<br /> +They hold the rhymer for their thrall,<br /> + 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’s saw,<br /> + For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he,<br /> +“It’s a’ that’s bricht, and a’ +that’s braw,<br /> + But Bourhope’s guid eneuch for me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills<br /> + That guard Saint Mary’s Loch it lies,<br /> +The silence of the pasture fills<br /> + That shepherd’s homely paradise.</p> +<p class="poetry">Enough for him his mountain lake,<br /> + His glen the burn went singing through,<br /> +And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,<br /> + May well seem good enough for you.</p> +<p class="poetry">For all is old, and tried, and dear,<br /> + And all is fair, and round about<br /> +The brook that murmurs from the mere<br /> + Is dimpled with the rising trout.</p> +<p class="poetry">But when the skies of shorter days<br /> + Are dark and all the ways are mire,<br /> +How bright upon your books the blaze<br /> + Gleams from the cheerful study fire,</p> +<p class="poetry">On quartos where our fathers read,<br /> + Enthralled, the book of Shakespeare’s play,<br +/> +On all that Poe could dream of dread,<br /> + And all that Herrick sang of gay!</p> +<p class="poetry">Fair first editions, duly prized,<br /> + Above them all, methinks, I rate<br /> +The tome where Walton’s hand revised<br /> + His wonderful receipts for bait!</p> +<p class="poetry">Happy, who rich in toys like these<br /> + Forgets a weary nation’s ills,<br /> +Who from his study window sees<br /> + 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. It ran something +like this:—</p> +<p class="poetry">I thank my stars that I was born<br /> + A little British child.</p> +<p>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 <i>did</i>, 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.</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. 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 <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 ‘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.</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. 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 +<i>not</i> 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.</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, +“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 <i>that</i>. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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. <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), “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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>The first to attract our attention represents, as I +understand, the common ghost, or <i>simulacrum vulgare</i> 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.</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. 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 <i>instantiæ contradictoriæ</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>. +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.</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. +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. Please +remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the +<i>simulacrum</i>. 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.</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, “la lavandière +de la nuit,” who washes dead men’s linen in the +moonlit pools and rivers. 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. 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.</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 ‘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.</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. 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.</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 /> + When lights are out, and ashes fall—<br /> +Suppose their ancient owners come<br /> + To claim our spoils of shop and stall,<br /> + Ah me! within the narrow hall<br /> +How strange a mob would meet and go,<br /> + What famous folk would haunt them all,<br /> + Octavo, quarto, +folio!</p> +<p class="poetry">The great Napoleon lays his hand<br /> + Upon this eagle-headed N,<br /> +That marks for his a pamphlet banned<br /> + By all but scandal-loving men,—<br /> +A libel from some nameless den<br /> + Of Frankfort,—<i>Arnaud à la +Sphère</i>,<br /> +Wherein one spilt, with venal pen,<br /> + Lies o’er the loves of Molière. <a +name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66" +class="citation">[66]</a></p> +<p class="poetry">Another shade—he does not see<br /> +“Boney,” the foeman of his race—<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’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—<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 “Smiths” and “Thompsons” by the +score,<br /> +Scrawled upon many a shabby “lot.”<br /> +This playbook was the joy of Pott <a name="citation68d"></a><a +href="#footnote68d" class="citation">[68d]</a>—<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’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. 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 <i>populus qui +vult decipi</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>supercheries</i> 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.</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. 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.”</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. 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 <i>boustrophedon</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.)</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. Whenever one of their +oracles was not fulfilled, people said, “Oh, <i>that</i> 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. <a +name="citation73"></a><a href="#footnote73" +class="citation">[73]</a> 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.”</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. 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’ <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. 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,—</p> + +<blockquote><p> Quem +tu, dea, tempore in omni<br /> +Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. (<i>ob.</i> 867 <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span>), +“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 <i>filles belles</i>, <i>blondelettes</i>, +<i>doulcettes</i>, <i>et de bonne grace</i>. 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.</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, “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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Lugduni apud Gryphium</i> (1532).’ +Pomponius Lætus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently +authors of the hoax.</p> +<p>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 +<i>ad gaudia Paradisi</i> (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 <i>lacuna</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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: <i>habemus confitentem reum</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>why</i>? 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 +<i>his</i> copy was “cropped,” whereas the leaves of +Mr. Collier’s example were <i>not</i> 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 +(<i>flor.</i> 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 <i>Times</i> (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.”</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 ‘Slaying of Antony Featherstonhaugh,’ +and of ‘Bartram’s Dirge.’ Surtees left +clever <i>lacunæ</i> 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Daily Telegraph</i> 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.</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. 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, +<i>relics</i>. 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 +<i>green</i> (<i>neuf</i>) 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 <i>ballade</i>, 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 <i>Don Juan</i>. 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 <i>readings</i> they care for,—the +author’s first fancies, and those more hurried expressions +which he afterwards corrected. 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. They are +the copies which belonged to illustrious people,—to the +famous collectors who make a kind of <i>catena</i> (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 +<i>fleurs de lys</i> 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 +<i>Trissotin</i> 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 <i>coquettes</i>, pedants, +poets, and <i>précieuses</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. 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. <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. 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 +<i>Memento Mori</i>, or <i>Spes mea Deus</i>. 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 <i>petits +fers</i> 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 <i>Mort m’est vie</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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 <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. 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Le dos humide, je l’éponge;<br /> +Où manque un coin, vite une allonge,<br /> +Pour tous j’ai maison de santé.</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. 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, <i>Quos +voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique</i>,—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 <i>Libraires fripiers</i>, <i>et les vieux fonds et +magasins</i>. Here he truly observes that you may find rare +books, <i>brochés</i>,—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.</p> +<p>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,—<i>ut non hominis unius sedulitas</i>, <i>sed +calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum tabernas pervasisse +videatur</i>!” 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 +<i>Bibliothèque 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. The enemies and rivals of +Molière—De Visé, De Villiers, and the +rest—are always reproaching him—with his love of +<i>bouquins</i>. 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. The +<i>bouquin</i> 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 <i>contemplateur</i> 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,—<i>un ravissant petit Elzevir</i>, ‘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 +<i>bouquins</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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 ‘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, <a name="citation102"></a><a href="#footnote102" +class="citation">[102]</a> 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 <i>fleur de quinze ans</i>, as +Ronsard says, at the court of Victor Amadeus of Savoy. It +is thought that the countess was less cruel than the <i>fleur +Angevine</i> 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 <i>jusqu’au délire</i>, 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Here lies, in sleep secure,<br /> + A dame inclined to mirth,<br /> +Who, by way of making sure,<br /> + 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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>jettatura</i>,—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.</p> +<p>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 <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 école</i> +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 <i>ballades and huitains</i> of +the scamp François Villon (1533). ‘The History +of the Holy Grail’ (<i>L’Hystoire du Sainct +Gréaal</i>: 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 <i>grand monarque</i>, 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. <a name="citation107"></a><a +href="#footnote107" class="citation">[107]</a></p> +<p>The natural sympathy of collectors “to middle fortune +born” is not with the rich men whose sport in book-hunting +resembles the <i>battue</i>. 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. 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 <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. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>garde +champêtre</i>; 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 (<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. 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,</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><b>Hystoria Troiana +Guidonis</b>,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image110" href="images/p110b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Les demandes tamours auec les refpôfesioyeufes. +Demáde refponfe" +title= +"Les demandes tamours auec les refpôfesioyeufes. +Demáde 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, +‘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.</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 ‘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). <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. 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). <a name="citation119b"></a><a href="#footnote119b" +class="citation">[119b]</a> 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.</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 mediæval +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. 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 +<i>marguerites</i> of Marguerite, with mottoes like the <i>Le +Banny de liesse</i>, <i>Le traverseur des voies +périlleuses</i>, <i>Tout par Soulas</i>, 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 <i>La Mort n’y Mord</i>. 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 +<i>L’Adolescence Clémentine</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image114" href="images/p114b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Le Pastissier François, MDCLV, title page" +title= +"Le Pastissier François, 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. 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 <i>Nul ne +s’y frotte</i>, 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p116b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Gargantva" +title= +"Gargantva" + src="images/p116s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In 1532–35 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, <i>devant nostre Dame de Confort</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In the same <i>genre</i> 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 <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. These are two notable +aspects of the genius of the great comedian. The apes below +are the supporters of his scutcheon.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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 +‘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 <i>armes +parlantes</i>, 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.</p> +<h2><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span><i>A +BOOKMAN’S PURGATORY</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Blinton</span> 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 “<i>too</i> frequently.” +“Although I am not disposed to admit,” Dibdin goes +on, “the <i>whole</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>point +d’Alençon</i> 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.”</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, +Glatigny’s ‘Jour de l’An d’un +Vagabond’ was exposed.</p> +<p>“Look,” said Blinton, “there is a book I +have wanted some time. Glatignys are getting rather scarce, +and it is an amusing trifle.”</p> +<p>“Nay, buy <i>that</i>,” said the implacable +Stranger, pointing with a hooked forefinger at Alison’s +‘History of Europe’ in an indefinite number of +volumes. Blinton shuddered.</p> +<p>“What, buy <i>that</i>, and why? In heaven’s +name, what could I do with it?”</p> +<p>“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, “and +<i>that</i>” (indicating the ‘Ilios’ of Dr. +Schliemann, a bulky work), “and <i>these</i>” +(pointing to all Mr. Theodore Alois Buckley’s translations +of the Classics), “and <i>these</i>” (glancing at the +collected writings of the late Mr. Hain Friswell, and at a +‘Life,’ in more than one volume, of Mr. +Gladstone).</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and +tried to enter into conversation with his tormentor.</p> +<p>“He <i>does</i> know about books,” thought +Blinton, “and he must have a weak spot +somewhere.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Buy those!” he hissed through his teeth.</p> +<p>“Those” 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 +‘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.</p> +<p>“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized +whole boxes and piled them on Blinton’s head.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“You are tired?” asked the tormentor. +“Never mind, these books will soon be off your +hands.”</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’s +famous and very expensive binder.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p>“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, <i>doublé</i>, every book of them, +<i>petits fers</i>, 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.</p> +<p>Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary +questions, Blinton’s tormentor had hurried that amateur out +of the room.</p> +<p>“Come on to the sale,” he cried.</p> +<p>“What sale?” said Blinton.</p> +<p>“Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a +lucky day.”</p> +<p>“But I have forgotten my catalogue.”</p> +<p>“Where is it?”</p> +<p>“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side +of the ebony book-case at home.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Six hundred,” cried Blinton.</p> +<p>“Guineas,” said the great Mr. —.</p> +<p>“Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton.</p> +<p>“Guineas,” replied the other.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“Then your books must be sold,” cried the +Stranger, and, leaping on a chair, he addressed the +audience:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp +shook his shoulder,—</p> +<p>“Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying!”</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. Beside him lay ‘L’Enfer du +Bibliophile, vu et décrit par Charles +Asselineau.’ (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX.)</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>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. <i>Moi qui parle</i>, 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 <i>Tanquam Ventus</i>, and +<i>quisque suos patimur Manes</i>. 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.</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,—<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,—<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’s nursery,<br /> +For you I’d go without a meal!<br /> +For Books wherein did Aldus deal<br /> +And rare Galliot du Pré 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’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 “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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>interlacs</i> 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 <i>manes</i> 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:</p> + +<blockquote><p> qui +parmi les fleurs devisent<br /> +Au giron de leur dame.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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).</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <span class="smcap">Arbella Seymour</span>;” +and “Fr. Bacon.”</p> +<p>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).</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>doublé</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">PRIÈRE À +SAINT-LOUIS,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Roy de France</span>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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:</p> +<blockquote><p>Sois pitoyable à ma langueur;<br /> +Et si je n’ay place en ton cœur<br /> +Que je l’aye au moins sur ta teste.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These verses were reckoned consummate.</p> +<p>The ‘Guirlande’ 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>précieuse</i>, +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, “<i>A Madame la Marquise de Maintenon</i>, <i>offert +avec respect</i>,—<span +class="smcap"><i>Racine</i></span>.”</p> +<p>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. <a +name="citation145"></a><a href="#footnote145" +class="citation">[145]</a></p> +<p>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).</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>sans comptes</i>. “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.</p> +<p>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 (<i>moi +chétif</i>) 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>nerfs</i>, 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 <i>bound</i> 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:’</p> + +<blockquote><p> J’avais +‘L’Apologie<br /> +Pour Hérodote,’ en reliûre 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>régime</i> 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!—<span class="smcap">Marie +Antoinette</span>.”</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. 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> 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> “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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66" +class="footnote">[66]</a> <i>Histoire des Intrigues +Amoureuses de Molière</i>, <i>et de celles de sa +femme</i>. (<i>A la Sphère</i>.) A Francfort, +chez Frédéric Arnaud, <span +class="GutSmall">MDCXCVII</span>. 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote67a"></a><a href="#citation67a" +class="footnote">[67a]</a> <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">“To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw, +Peel. From the Author.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="footnote67b"></a><a href="#citation67b" +class="footnote">[67b]</a> <i>Dictys Cretensis</i>. +Apud Lambertum Roulland. Lut. Paris., 1680. In +red morocco, with the arms of Colbert.</p> +<p><a name="footnote67c"></a><a href="#citation67c" +class="footnote">[67c]</a> <i>L. Annæi Senecæ +Opera Omnia</i>. Lug. Bat., apud Elzevirios. +1649. With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex.</p> +<p><a name="footnote67d"></a><a href="#citation67d" +class="footnote">[67d]</a> <i>Stratonis +Epigrammata</i>. Altenburgi, 1764. Straton bound up +in one volume with Epictetus! From the Beckford +library.</p> +<p><a name="footnote67e"></a><a href="#citation67e" +class="footnote">[67e]</a> <i>Opera Helii Eobani +Hessi</i>. Yellow morocco, with the first arms of De +Thou. Includes a poem addressed “<span +class="smcap">Lange</span>, <i>decus meum</i>.” +Quantity of penultimate “Eobanus” taken for granted, +<i>metri gratiâ</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote68a"></a><a href="#citation68a" +class="footnote">[68a]</a> <i>La Journée du +Chrétien</i>. Coutances, 1831. With +inscription, “Léon Gambetta. Rue St. +Honoré. Janvier 1, 1848.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote68b"></a><a href="#citation68b" +class="footnote">[68b]</a> <i>Villoison’s +Homer</i>. Venice, 1788. With Tessier’s ticket +and Schlegel’s book-plate.</p> +<p><a name="footnote68c"></a><a href="#citation68c" +class="footnote">[68c]</a> <i>Les Essais de Michel</i>, +<i>Seigneur de Montaigne</i>. “Pour François +le Febvre de Lyon, 1695.” With autograph of Gul. +Drummond, and cipresso e palma.</p> +<p><a name="footnote68d"></a><a href="#citation68d" +class="footnote">[68d]</a> “The little old foxed +Molière,” once the property of William Pott, unknown +to fame.</p> +<p><a name="footnote73"></a><a href="#citation73" +class="footnote">[73]</a> That there ever were such editors +is much disputed. 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> Or, more easily, in Maury’s +<i>Religions de la Grèce</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote94"></a><a href="#citation94" +class="footnote">[94]</a> See Essay on ‘Lady +Book-Lovers.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote102"></a><a href="#citation102" +class="footnote">[102]</a> See Essay on ‘Lady +Book-Lovers.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote107"></a><a href="#citation107" +class="footnote">[107]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote119a"></a><a href="#citation119a" +class="footnote">[119a]</a> Mr. Payne does not give the +date of the edition from which he copies the cut. +Apparently it is of the fifteenth century.</p> +<p><a name="footnote119b"></a><a href="#citation119b" +class="footnote">[119b]</a> Reproduced in <i>The +Library</i>, p. 94.</p> +<p><a name="footnote145"></a><a href="#citation145" +class="footnote">[145]</a> Country papers, please +copy. Poets at a distance will kindly accept this +intimation.</p> +<p><a name="footnote148"></a><a href="#citation148" +class="footnote">[148]</a> Bibliothèque d’un +Bibliophile. Lille, 1885.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1961-h.htm or 1961-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/6/1961 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + 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. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/1961-h/images/p100b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p100b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..291cb5f --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p100b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p100s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p100s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4eb284 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p100s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p108b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p108b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..56aefca --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p108b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p108s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p108s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..107c381 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p108s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p110b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p110b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..69c4404 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p110b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p110s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p110s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5676f68 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p110s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p111b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p111b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d0b6ff --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p111b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p111s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p111s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c4ee7e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p111s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p113b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p113b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..23097c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p113b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p113s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p113s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1910f62 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p113s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p114b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p114b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..975fe84 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p114b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p114s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p114s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d601d1c --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p114s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p115b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p115b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f0f0900 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p115b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p115s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p115s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..21e6231 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p115s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p116b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p116b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..20a23cd --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p116b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p116s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p116s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..587bf9d --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p116s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p119b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p119b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc6bc2f --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p119b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p119s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p119s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..34add97 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p119s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p12b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p12b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2450f47 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p12b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p12s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p12s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..12565e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p12s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p41b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p41b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..52d22a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p41b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p41s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p41s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9af55a --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p41s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p45b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p45b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be04f28 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p45b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p45s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p45s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f67e59f --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p45s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p51b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p51b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5199210 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p51b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p51s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p51s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3832a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p51s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p55b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p55b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0825d2a --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p55b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p55s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p55s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a82254 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p55s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p57b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p57b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..04ddced --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p57b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p57s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p57s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ce4a32f --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p57s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p5b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p5b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a6965e --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p5b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p5s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p5s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d6dd649 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p5s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p61b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p61b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f89668 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p61b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p61s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p61s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d6ef8a --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p61s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p63b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p63b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bab7ce --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p63b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p63s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p63s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..58137f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p63s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p8b.jpg b/1961-h/images/p8b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c998361 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p8b.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/p8s.jpg b/1961-h/images/p8s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca2f39f --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/p8s.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/tpb.jpg b/1961-h/images/tpb.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..281fe0d --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/tpb.jpg diff --git a/1961-h/images/tps.jpg b/1961-h/images/tps.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..03ea944 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-h/images/tps.jpg |
