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diff --git a/1961-0.txt b/1961-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5267ed8 --- /dev/null +++ b/1961-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3800 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Books and Bookmen, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Books and Bookmen + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: March 28, 2015 [eBook #1961] +[This file was first posted on March 18, 1999] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN*** + + +Transcribed from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + BOOKS + AND + BOOKMEN + + + BY + ANDREW LANG + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + LONDON + LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. + 1887 + + _All rights reserved_ + + + + +_To_ +_THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY_. + + + MADAME, it is no modish thing, + The bookman’s tribute that I bring; + A talk of antiquaries grey, + Dust unto dust this many a day, + Gossip of texts and bindings old, + Of faded type, and tarnish’d gold! + + _Can ladies care for this to-do_ + _With Payne_, _Derome_, _and Padeloup_? + _Can they resign the rout_, _the ball_, + _For lonely joys of shelf and stall_? + + The critic thus, serenely wise; + But you can read with other eyes, + Whose books and bindings treasured are + ’Midst mingled spoils of peace and war; + Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost, + And trinkets from the Golden Coast, + And many things divinely done + By Chippendale and Sheraton, + And trophies of Egyptian deeds, + And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads, + Pomander boxes, assegais, + And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro’s days. + + In this pell-mell of old and new, + Of war and peace, my essays, too, + For long in serials tempest-tost, + Are landed now, and are not lost: + Nay, on your shelf secure they lie, + As in the amber sleeps the fly. + ’Tis true, they are not “rich nor rare;” + Enough, for me, that they are—there! + + A. L + + + + +PREFACE. + + +THE essays in this volume have, for the most part, already appeared in an +American edition (Combes, New York, 1886). The Essays on ‘Old French +Title-Pages’ and ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ take the place of ‘Book Binding’ and +‘Bookmen at Rome;’ ‘Elzevirs’ and ‘Some Japanese Bogie-Books’ are +reprinted, with permission of Messrs. Cassell, from the Magazine of Art; +‘Curiosities of Parish Registers’ from the Guardian; ‘Literary Forgeries’ +from the Contemporary Review; ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ from the Fortnightly +Review; ‘A Bookman’s Purgatory’ and two of the pieces of verse from +Longman’s Magazine—with the courteous permission of the various editors. +All the chapters have been revised, and I have to thank Mr. H. Tedder for +his kind care in reading the proof sheets, and Mr. Charles Elton, M.P., +for a similar service to the Essay on ‘Parish Registers.’ + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE +ELZEVIRS 3 +BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL 18 +CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS 20 +THE ROWFANT BOOKS 36 +TO F. L. 38 +SOME JAPANESE BOGIE-BOOKS 40 +GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY 66 +LITERARY FORGERIES 69 +BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE 90 +OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES 109 +A BOOKMAN’S PURGATORY 121 +BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE 133 +LADY BOOK-LOVERS 135 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS. + + PAGE +ELZEVIR SPHERES 5 +ELZEVIR TITLE-PAGE OF THE ‘IMITATION’ OF 8 +THOMAS À KEMPIS +ELZEVIR ‘SAGE’ 12 +JAPANESE CHILDREN. DRAWN BY HOKUSAI 41 +A STORM-FIEND 45 +A SNOW-BOGIE 51 +THE SIMULACRUM VULGARE 55 +A WELL AND WATER BOGIE 57 +RAISING THE WIND 61 +A CHINK AND CREVICE BOGIE 63 +FAC-SIMILE OF BINDING FROM THE LIBRARY OF 100 +GROLIER +BINDING WITH THE ARMS OF MADAME DE 108 +POMPADOUR +OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES 110, 111, 113–16, 119 + + + + +ELZEVIRS. + + +_The Countryman_. “You know how much, for some time past, the editions +of the Elzevirs have been in demand. The fancy for them has even +penetrated into the country. I am acquainted with a man there who denies +himself necessaries, for the sake of collecting into a library (where +other books are scarce enough) as many little Elzevirs as he can lay his +hands upon. He is dying of hunger, and his consolation is to be able to +say, ‘I have all the poets whom the Elzevirs printed. I have ten +examples of each of them, all with red letters, and all of the right +date.’ This, no doubt, is a craze, for, good as the books are, if he +kept them to read them, one example of each would be enough.” + +_The Parisian_. “If he had wanted to read them, I would not have advised +him to buy Elzevirs. The editions of minor authors which these +booksellers published, even editions ‘of the right date,’ as you say, are +not too correct. Nothing is good in the books but the type and the +paper. Your friend would have done better to use the editions of +Gryphius or Estienne.” + +This fragment of a literary dialogue I translate from ‘Entretiens sur les +Contes de Fées,’ a book which contains more of old talk about books and +booksellers than about fairies and folk-lore. The ‘Entretiens’ were +published in 1699, about sixteen years after the Elzevirs ceased to be +publishers. The fragment is valuable: first, because it shows us how +early the taste for collecting Elzevirs was fully developed, and, +secondly, because it contains very sound criticism of the mania. +Already, in the seventeenth century, lovers of the tiny Elzevirian books +waxed pathetic over dates, already they knew that a ‘Cæsar’ of 1635 was +the right ‘Cæsar,’ already they were fond of the red-lettered passages, +as in the first edition of the ‘Virgil’ of 1636. As early as 1699, too, +the Parisian critic knew that the editions were not very correct, and +that the paper, type, ornaments, and _format_ were their main +attractions. To these we must now add the rarity of really good +Elzevirs. + +Though Elzevirs have been more fashionable than at present, they are +still regarded by novelists as the great prize of the book collector. +You read in novels about “priceless little Elzevirs,” about books “as +rare as an old Elzevir.” I have met, in the works of a lady novelist +(but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir ‘Theocritus.’ The late Mr. Hepworth +Dixon introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek +Testament, “worth its weight in gold.” Casual remarks of this kind +encourage a popular delusion that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable +price. When a man is first smitten with the pleasant fever of +book-collecting, it is for Elzevirs that he searches. At first he thinks +himself in amazing luck. In Booksellers’ Row and in Castle Street he +“picks up,” for a shilling or two, Elzevirs, real or supposed. To the +beginner, any book with a sphere on the title-page is an Elzevir. For +the beginner’s instruction, two copies of spheres are printed here. The +second is a sphere, an ill-cut, ill-drawn sphere, which is not Elzevirian +at all. The mark was used in the seventeenth century by many other +booksellers and printers. The first, on the other hand, is a true +Elzevirian sphere, from a play of Molière’s, printed in 1675. Observe +the comparatively neat drawing of the first sphere, and be not led away +after spurious imitations. + + [Picture: Elzevir Spheres] + +Beware, too, of the vulgar error of fancying that little duodecimos with +the mark of the fox and the bee’s nest, and the motto “Quaerendo,” come +from the press of the Elzevirs. The mark is that of Abraham Wolfgang, +which name is not a pseudonym for Elzevir. There are three sorts of +Elzevir pseudonyms. First, they occasionally reprinted the full +title-page, publisher’s name and all, of the book they pirated. +Secondly, when they printed books of a “dangerous” sort, Jansenist +pamphlets and so forth, they used pseudonyms like “Nic. Schouter,” on the +‘Lettres Provinciales’ of Pascal. Thirdly, there are real pseudonyms +employed by the Elzevirs. John and Daniel, printing at Leyden +(1652–1655), used the false name “Jean Sambix.” The Elzevirs of +Amsterdam often placed the name “Jacques le Jeune” on their title-pages. +The collector who remembers these things must also see that his purchases +have the right ornaments at the heads of chapters, the right tail-pieces +at the ends. Two of the most frequently recurring ornaments are the +so-called “Tête de Buffle” and the “Sirène.” More or less clumsy copies +of these and the other Elzevirian ornaments are common enough in books of +the period, even among those printed out of the Low Countries; for +example, in books published in Paris. + +A brief sketch of the history of the Elzevirs may here be useful. The +founder of the family, a Flemish bookbinder, Louis, left Louvain and +settled in Leyden in 1580. He bought a house opposite the University, +and opened a book-shop. Another shop, on college ground, was opened in +1587. Louis was a good bookseller, a very ordinary publisher. It was +not till shortly before his death, in 1617, that his grandson Isaac +bought a set of types and other material. Louis left six sons. Two of +these, Matthew and Bonaventure, kept on the business, dating _ex officina +Elzeviriana_. In 1625 Bonaventure and Abraham (son of Matthew) became +partners. The “good dates” of Elzevirian books begin from 1626. The two +Elzevirs chose excellent types, and after nine years’ endeavours turned +out the beautiful ‘Cæsar’ of 1635. + +Their classical series in _petit format_ was opened with ‘Horace’ and +‘Ovid’ in 1629. In 1641 they began their elegant piracies of French +plays and poetry with ‘Le Cid.’ It was worth while being pirated by the +Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with _fleurons_ and red +letters, and a pretty frontispiece. The modern pirate dresses you in +rags, prints you murderously, and binds you, if he binds you at all, in +some hideous example of “cloth extra,” all gilt, like archaic +gingerbread. Bonaventure and Abraham both died in 1652. They did not +depart before publishing (1628), in _grand format_, a desirable work on +fencing, Thibault’s ‘Académie de l’Espée.’ This Tibbald also killed by +the book. John and Daniel Elzevir came next. They brought out the +‘Imitation’ (Thomæ a Kempis canonici regularis ord. S. Augustini De +Imitatione Christi, libri iv.); I wish by taking thought I could add +eight millimetres to the stature of my copy. In 1655 Daniel joined a +cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and John stayed in Leyden. John died in +1661; his widow struggled on, but her son Abraham (1681) let all fall +into ruins. Abraham died 1712. The Elzevirs of Amsterdam lasted till +1680, when Daniel died, and the business was wound up. The type, by +Christopher Van Dyck, was sold in 1681, by Daniel’s widow. _Sic transit +gloria_. + + [Picture: Elzevir title-page of the ‘Imitation’ of Thomas à Kempis] + +After he has learned all these matters the amateur has still a great deal +to acquire. He may now know a real Elzevir from a book which is not an +Elzevir at all. But there are enormous differences of value, rarity, and +excellence among the productions of the Elzevirian press. The bookstalls +teem with small, “cropped,” dingy, dirty, battered Elzevirian editions of +the classics, _not_ “of the good date.” On these it is not worth while +to expend a couple of shillings, especially as Elzevirian type is too +small to be read with comfort by most modern eyes. No, let the collector +save his money; avoid littering his shelves with what he will soon find +to be rubbish, and let him wait the chance of acquiring a really +beautiful and rare Elzevir. + +Meantime, and before we come to describe Elzevirs of the first flight, +let it be remembered that the “taller” the copy, the less harmed and +nipped by the binder’s shears, the better. “Men scarcely know how +beautiful fire is,” says Shelley; and we may say that most men hardly +know how beautiful an Elzevir was in its uncut and original form. The +Elzevirs we have may be “dear,” but they are certainly “dumpy twelves.” +Their fair proportions have been docked by the binder. At the Beckford +sale there was a pearl of a book, a ‘Marot;’ not an Elzevir, indeed, but +a book published by Wetstein, a follower of the Elzevirs. This exquisite +pair of volumes, bound in blue morocco, was absolutely unimpaired, and +was a sight to bring happy tears into the eyes of the amateur of +Elzevirs. There was a gracious _svelte_ elegance about these tomes, an +appealing and exquisite delicacy of proportion, that linger like sweet +music in the memory. I have a copy of the Wetstein ‘Marot’ myself, not a +bad copy, though murderously bound in that ecclesiastical sort of brown +calf antique, which goes well with hymn books, and reminds one of cakes +of chocolate. But my copy is only some 128 millimetres in height, +whereas the uncut Beckford copy (it had belonged to the great +Pixérécourt) was at least 130 millimetres high. Beside the uncut example +mine looks like Cinderella’s plain sister beside the beauty of the +family. + +Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall +Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth +collecting. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was +taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that +his altitude filled the minds of all with awe. Well, the Philistine may +think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of +little importance. When he comes to sell, he will discover the +difference. An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good Elzevir may be +worth fifty or sixty pounds or more; an ordinary copy may bring fewer +pence. The binders usually pare down the top and bottom more than the +sides. I have a ‘Rabelais’ of the good date, with the red title (1663), +and some of the pages have never been opened, at the sides. But the +height is only some 122 millimetres, a mere dwarf. Anything over 130 +millimetres is very rare. Therefore the collector of Elzevirs should +have one of those useful ivory-handled knives on which the French +measures are marked, and thus he will at once be able to satisfy himself +as to the exact height of any example which he encounters. + +Let us now assume that the amateur quite understands what a proper +Elzevir should be: tall, clean, well bound if possible, and of the good +date. But we have still to learn what the good dates are, and this is +matter for the study and practice of a well-spent life. We may gossip +about a few of the more famous Elzevirs, those without which no +collection is complete. Of all Elzevirs the most famous and the most +expensive is an old cookery book, “‘Le Pastissier François.’ Wherein is +taught the way to make all sorts of pastry, useful to all sorts of +persons. Also the manner of preparing all manner of eggs, for fast-days, +and other days, in more than sixty fashions. Amsterdam, Louys, and +Daniel Elsevier. 1665.” The mark is not the old “Sage,” but the +“Minerva” with her owl. Now this book has no intrinsic value any more +than a Tauchnitz reprint of any modern volume on cooking. The +‘Pastissier’ is cherished because it is so very rare. The tract passed +into the hands of cooks, and the hands of cooks are detrimental to +literature. Just as nursery books, fairy tales, and the like are +destroyed from generation to generation, so it happens with books used in +the kitchen. The ‘Pastissier,’ to be sure, has a good frontispiece, a +scene in a Low Country kitchen, among the dead game and the dainties. +The buxom cook is making a game pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the +bird’s head and tail-feathers, is already made. {12} + + [Picture: Elzevir ‘Sage’] + +Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the ‘Pastissier’ coveted. +In an early edition of the ‘Manuel’ (1821) Brunet says, with a feigned +brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), “Till now I have disdained to +admit this book into my work, but I have yielded to the prayers of +amateurs. Besides, how could I keep out a volume which was sold for one +hundred and one francs in 1819?” One hundred and one francs! If I could +only get a ‘Pastissier’ for one hundred and one francs! But our +grandfathers lived in the Bookman’s Paradise. “Il n’est pas jusqu’aux +Anglais,” adds Brunet—“the very English themselves—have a taste for the +‘Pastissier.’” The Duke of Marlborough’s copy was actually sold for £1 +4s. It would have been money in the ducal pockets of the house of +Marlborough to have kept this volume till the general sale of all their +portable property at which our generation is privileged to assist. No +wonder the ‘Pastissier’ was thought rare. Bérard only knew two copies. +Pietiers, writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five +‘Pastissiers,’ and in his ‘Annales’ he had found out but five more. +Willems, on the other hand, enumerates some thirty, not including +Motteley’s. Motteley was an uncultivated, untaught enthusiast. He knew +no Latin, but he had a _flair_ for uncut Elzevirs. “Incomptis capillis,” +he would cry (it was all his lore) as he gloated over his treasures. +They were all burnt by the Commune in the Louvre Library. + +A few examples may be given of the prices brought by ‘Le Pastissier’ in +later days. Sensier’s copy was but 128 millimetres in height, and had +the old ordinary vellum binding,—in fact, it closely resembled a copy +which Messrs. Ellis and White had for sale in Bond Street in 1883. The +English booksellers asked, I think, about 1,500 francs for their copy. +Sensier’s was sold for 128 francs in April, 1828; for 201 francs in 1837. +Then the book was gloriously bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet, and was sold with +Potier’s books in 1870, when it fetched 2,910 francs. At the Benzon sale +(1875) it fetched 3,255 francs, and, falling dreadfully in price, was +sold again in 1877 for 2,200 francs. M. Dutuit, at Rouen, has a taller +copy, bound by Bauzonnet. Last time it was sold (1851) it brought 251 +francs. The Duc de Chartres has now the copy of Pieters, the historian +of the Elzevirs, valued at 3,000 francs. + +About thirty years ago no fewer than three copies were sold at Brighton, +of all places. M. Quentin Bauchart had a copy only 127 millimetres in +height, which he swopped to M. Paillet. M. Chartener, of Metz, had a +copy now bound by Bauzonnet which was sold for four francs in 1780. We +call this the age of cheap books, but before the Revolution books were +cheaper. It is fair to say, however, that this example of the +‘Pastissier’ was then bound up with another book, Vlacq’s edition of ‘Le +Cuisinier François,’ and so went cheaper than it would otherwise have +done. M. de Fontaine de Resbecq declares that a friend of his bought six +original pieces of Molière’s bound up with an old French translation of +Garth’s ‘Dispensary.’ The one faint hope left to the poor book collector +is that he may find a valuable tract lurking in the leaves of some bound +collection of trash. I have an original copy of Molière’s ‘Les Fascheux’ +bound up with a treatise on precious stones, but the bookseller from whom +I bought it knew it was there! That made all the difference. + +But, to return to our ‘Pastissier,’ here is M. de Fontaine de Resbecq’s +account of how he wooed and won his own copy of this illustrious Elzevir. +“I began my walk to-day,” says this haunter of ancient stalls, “by the +Pont Marie and the Quai de la Grève, the pillars of Hercules of the +book-hunting world. After having viewed and reviewed these remote books, +I was going away, when my attention was caught by a small naked volume, +without a stitch of binding. I seized it, and what was my delight when I +recognised one of the rarest of that famed Elzevir collection whose +height is measured as minutely as the carats of the diamond. There was +no indication of price on the box where this jewel was lying; the book, +though unbound, was perfectly clean within. ‘How much?’ said I to the +bookseller. ‘You can have it for six sous,’ he answered; ‘is it too +much?’ ‘No,’ said I, and, trembling a little, I handed him the thirty +centimes he asked for the ‘Pastissier François.’ You may believe, my +friend, that after such a piece of luck at the start, one goes home +fondly embracing the beloved object of one’s search. That is exactly +what I did.” + +Can this tale be true? Is such luck given by the jealous fates +_mortalibus ægris_? M. de Resbecq’s find was made apparently in 1856, +when trout were plenty in the streams, and rare books not so very rare. +To my own knowledge an English collector has bought an original play of +Molière’s, in the original vellum, for eighteenpence. But no one has +such luck any longer. Not, at least, in London. A more expensive +‘Pastissier’ than that which brought six sous was priced in +Bachelin-Deflorenne’s catalogue at £240. A curious thing occurred when +two uncut ‘Pastissiers’ turned up simultaneously in Paris. One of them +Morgand and Fatout sold for £400. Clever people argued that one of the +twin uncut ‘Pastissiers’ must be an imitation, a facsimile by means of +photogravure, or some other process. But it was triumphantly established +that both were genuine; they had minute points of difference in the +ornaments. + +M. Willems, the learned historian of the Elzevirs, is indignant at the +successes of a book which, as Brunet declares, is badly printed. There +must be at least forty known ‘Pastissiers’ in the world. Yes; but there +are at least 4,000 people who would greatly rejoice to possess a +‘Pastissier,’ and some of these desirous ones are very wealthy. While +this state of the market endures, the ‘Pastissier’ will fetch higher +prices than the other varieties. Another extremely rare Elzevir is +‘L’Illustre Théâtre de Mons. Corneille’ (Leyden, 1644). This contains +‘Le Cid,’ ‘Les Horaces,’ ‘Le Cinna,’ ‘La Mort de Pompée,’ ‘Le Polyeucte.’ +The name, ‘L’Illustre Théâtre,’ appearing at that date has an interest of +its own. In 1643–44, Molière and Madeleine Béjart had just started the +company which they called ‘L’Illustre Théâtre.’ Only six or seven copies +of the book are actually known, though three or four are believed to +exist in England, probably all covered with dust in the library of some +lord. “He has a very good library,” I once heard some one say to a noble +earl, whose own library was famous. “And what can a fellow do with a +very good library?” answered the descendant of the Crusaders, who +probably (being a youth light-hearted and content) was ignorant of his +own great possessions. An expensive copy of ‘L’Illustre Théâtre,’ bound +by Trautz-Bauzonnet, was sold for £300. + +Among Elzevirs desirable, yet not hopelessly rare, is the ‘Virgil’ of +1636. Heinsius was the editor of this beautiful volume, prettily +printed, but incorrect. Probably it is hard to correct with absolute +accuracy works in the clear but minute type which the Elzevirs affected. +They have won fame by the elegance of their books, but their intention +was to sell good books cheap, like Michel Lévy. The small type was +required to get plenty of “copy” into little bulk. Nicholas Heinsius, +the son of the editor of the ‘Virgil,’ when he came to correct his +father’s edition, found that it contained so many coquilles, or +misprints, as to be nearly the most incorrect copy in the world. Heyne +says, “Let the ‘Virgil’ be one of the rare Elzevirs, if you please, but +within it has scarcely a trace of any good quality.” Yet the first +edition of this beautiful little book, with its two passages of red +letters, is so desirable that, till he could possess it, Charles Nodier +would not profane his shelves by any ‘Virgil’ at all. + +Equally fine is the ‘Cæsar’ of 1635, which, with the ‘Virgil’ of 1636 and +the ‘Imitation’ without date, M. Willems thinks the most successful works +of the Elzevirs, “one of the most enviable jewels in the casket of the +bibliophile.” It may be recognised by the page 238, which is erroneously +printed 248. A good average height is from 125 to 128 millimetres. The +highest known is 130 millimetres. This book, like the ‘Imitation,’ has +one of the pretty and ingenious frontispieces which the Elzevirs prefixed +to their books. So farewell, and good speed in your sport, ye hunters of +Elzevirs, and may you find perhaps the rarest Elzevir of all, ‘L’Aimable +Mère de Jésus.’ + + + + +_BALLADE OF THE REAL AND IDEAL_. +(DOUBLE REFRAIN.) + + + O VISIONS of salmon tremendous, + Of trout of unusual weight, + Of waters that wander as Ken does, + Ye come through the Ivory Gate! + But the skies that bring never a “spate,” + But the flies that catch up in a thorn, + But the creel that is barren of freight, + Through the portals of horn! + + O dreams of the Fates that attend us + With prints in the earliest state, + O bargains in books that they send us, + Ye come through the Ivory Gate! + But the tome that has never a mate, + But the quarto that’s tattered and torn, + And bereft of a title and date, + Through the portals of horn! + + O dreams of the tongues that commend us, + Of crowns for the laureate pate, + Of a public to buy and befriend us, + Ye come through the Ivory Gate! + But the critics that slash us and slate, {19} + But the people that hold us in scorn, + But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate, + Through the portals of horn! + + ENVOY. + + Fair dreams of things golden and great, + Ye come through the Ivory Gate; + But the facts that are bleak and forlorn, + Through the portals of horn! + + + + +_CURIOSITIES OF PARISH REGISTERS_. + + +THERE are three classes of persons who are deeply concerned with parish +registers—namely, villains, antiquaries, and the sedulous readers, +“parish clerks and others,” of the second or “agony” column of the Times. +Villains are probably the most numerous of these three classes. The +villain of fiction dearly loves a parish register: he cuts out pages, +inserts others, intercalates remarks in a different coloured ink, and +generally manipulates the register as a Greek manages his hand at +_écarté_, or as a Hebrew dealer in Moabite bric-à-brac treats a synagogue +roll. We well remember one villain who had locked himself into the +vestry (he was disguised as an archæologist), and who was enjoying his +wicked pleasure with the register, when the vestry somehow caught fire, +the rusty key would not turn in the door, and the villain was roasted +alive, in spite of the disinterested efforts to save him made by all the +virtuous characters in the story. Let the fate of this bold, bad man be +a warning to wicked earls, baronets, and all others who attempt to +destroy the record of the marriage of a hero’s parents. Fate will be too +strong for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish clerk, or +carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the vestry and of the +iron chest in which a register should repose. + +There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of villains, if the +new bill, entitled “The Parish Registers Preservation Act,” ever becomes +law. The bill provides that every register earlier than 1837 shall be +committed to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and removed to the +Record Office. Now the common villain of fiction would feel sadly out of +place in the Register Office, where a more watchful eye than that of a +comic parish clerk would be kept on his proceedings. Villains and local +antiquaries will, therefore, use all their parliamentary influence to +oppose and delay this bill, which is certainly hard on the parish +archæologist. The men who grub in their local registers, and slowly +compile parish or county history, deserve to be encouraged rather than +depressed. Mr. Chester Waters, therefore, has suggested that copies of +registers should be made, and the comparatively legible copy left in the +parish, while the crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office in +London. Thus the local antiquary would really have his work made more +easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would quite enjoy that +condescension), while the villain of romance would be foiled; for it is +useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie Murray’s proves) to alter the +register in the keeping of the parish when the original document is safe +in the Record Office. But previous examples of enforced transcription +(as in 1603) do not encourage us to suppose that the copies would be very +scrupulously made. Thus, after the Reformation, the prayers for the dead +in the old registers were omitted by the copyist, who seemed to think (as +the contractor for “sandwich men” said to the poor fellows who carried +the letter H), “I don’t want you, and the public don’t want you, and +you’re no use to nobody.” Again, when Laurence Fletcher was buried in +St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1608, the old register described him as “a +player, the King’s servant.” But the clerk, keeping a note-book, simply +called Laurence Fletcher “a man,” and (in 1625) he also styled Mr. John +Fletcher “a man.” Now, the old register calls Mr. John Fletcher “a +poet.” To copy all the parish registers in England would be a very +serious task, and would probably be but slovenly performed. If they were +reproduced, again, by any process of photography, the old difficult court +hand would remain as hard as ever. But this is a minor objection, for +the local antiquary revels in the old court hand. + +From the little volume by Mr. Chester Waters, already referred to +(‘Parish Registers in England;’ printed for the author by F. J. Roberts, +Little Britain, E.C.), we proceed to appropriate such matters of +curiosity as may interest minds neither parochial nor doggedly +antiquarian. Parish registers among the civilised peoples of antiquity +do not greatly concern us. It seems certain that many Polynesian races +have managed to record (in verse, or by some rude marks) the genealogies +of their chiefs through many hundreds of years. These oral registers are +accepted as fairly truthful by some students, yet we must remember that +Pindar supposed himself to possess knowledge of at least twenty-five +generations before his own time, and that only brought him up to the +birth of Jason. Nobody believes in Jason and Medea, and possibly the +genealogical records of Maoris and Fijians are as little trustworthy as +those of Pindaric Greece. However, to consider thus is to consider too +curiously. We only know for certain that genealogy very soon becomes +important, and, therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing +civilisation. “After Nehemiah’s return from the captivity in Babylon, +the priests at Jerusalem whose register was not found were as polluted +put from the priesthood.” Rome had her parish registers, which were kept +in the temple of Saturn. But modern parish registers were “discovered” +(like America) in 1497, when Cardinal Ximenes found it desirable to put +on record the names of the godfathers and godmothers of baptised +children. When these relations of “gossip,” or God’s kin (as the word +literally means), were not certainly known, married persons could easily +obtain divorces, by pretending previous spiritual relationship. + +But it was only during the reign of Mary, (called the Bloody) that this +rule of registering godfathers and godmothers prevailed in England. +Henry VIII. introduced the custom of parish registers when in a +Protestant humour. By the way, how curiously has Madame de Flamareil (la +femme de quarante ans, in Charles de Bernard’s novel) anticipated the +verdict of Mr. Froude on Henry VIII.! ‘On accuse Henri VIII.,’ dit +Madame de Flamareil, “moi je le comprends, et je l’absous; c’était un +cœur généreux, lorsqu’il ne les aimait plus, il les tuait.’” The public +of England mistrusted, in the matter of parish registers, the generous +heart of Henry VIII. It is the fixed conviction of the public that all +novelties in administration mean new taxes. Thus the Croatian peasantry +were once on the point of revolting because they imagined that they were +to be taxed in proportion to the length of their moustaches. The English +believed, and the insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared, +that baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a +“trybette” (tribute) to the king. But Henry, or rather his minister, +Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September 29, 1538) issued an +injunction that a weekly register of weddings, christenings, and burials +should be kept by the curate of every parish. The cost of the book +(twopence in the case of St. Margaret’s, Westminster) was defrayed by the +parishioners. The oldest extant register books are those thus acquired +in 1597 or 1603. These volumes were of parchment, and entries were +copied into them out of the old books on paper. The copyists, as we have +seen, were indolent, and omitted characteristic points in the more +ancient records. + +In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and when the +clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their political feelings +in a mixture of Latin and English. Latin, by the way, went out as +Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, in Leicestershire, +writes, “Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, interruption! persecution!” At St. +Bridget’s, in Chester, is the quaint entry, “1643. Here the register is +defective till 1653. The tymes were _such_!” At Hilton, in Dorset, +William Snoke, minister, entered his opinion that persons whose baptism +and marriage were not registered “will be made uncapable of any earthly +inheritance if they live. This I note for the satisfaction of any that +do:” though we may doubt whether these parishioners found the information +thus conveyed highly satisfactory. + +The register of Maid’s Moreton, Bucks, tells how the reading-desk (a +spread eagle, gilt) was “doomed to perish as an abominable idoll;” and +how the cross on the steeple nearly (but not quite) knocked out the +brains of the Puritan who removed it. The Puritans had their way with +the registers as well as with the eagle (“the vowl,” as the old country +people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons as registrars in +1653. The books from 1653 to 1660, while this _régime_ lasted, “were +kept exceptionally well,” new brooms sweeping clean. The books of the +period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christian names than we might +have expected. We find, “_Repente_ Kytchens,” so styled before the poor +little thing had anything but original sin to repent of. “_Faint not_ +Kennard” is also registered, and “_Freegift_ Mabbe.” + +A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678. The law required (for +purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be buried in +woollen winding-sheets. The price of the wool was the obolus paid to the +Charon of the Revenue. After March 25, 1667, no person was to be “buried +in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole only.” +Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire village lately beheld a +ghost, “dressed in a long narrow gown of woollen, with bandages round the +head and chin,” it is clear that the ghost was much more than a hundred +years old, for the act “had fallen into disuse long before it was +repealed in 1814.” But this has little to do with parish registers. The +addition made to the duties of the keeper of the register in 1678 was +this—he had to take and record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to +the effect that the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric. The +upper classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay the fine +of 5_l_. When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress, was interred in +1730, her body was arrayed “in a very fine Brussels lace headdress, a +holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a +pair of new kid gloves.” + +In 1694 an empty exchequer was replenished by a tax on marriages, births, +and burials, the very extortion which had been feared by the insurgents +in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The tax collectors had access without +payment of fee to the registers. The registration of births was +discontinued when the Taxation Acts expired. An attempt to introduce the +registration of births was made in 1753, but unsuccessfully. The public +had the old superstitious dread of anything like a census. Moreover, the +custom was denounced as “French,” and therefore abominable. In the same +way it was thought telling to call the _clôture_ “the French gag” during +some recent discussions of parliamentary rules. In 1783 the parish +register was again made the instrument of taxation, and threepence was +charged on every entry. Thus “the clergyman was placed in the invidious +light of a tax collector, and as the poor were often unable or unwilling +to pay the tax, the clergy had a direct inducement to retain their +good-will by keeping the registers defective.” + +It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when “bang went +saxpence” every time a poor man had twins! Of course the Scotch rose up +against this unparalleled extortion. At last, in 1812, “Rose’s Act” was +passed. It is styled “an Act for the better regulating and preserving +registers of births,” but the registration of births is altogether +omitted from its provisions. By a stroke of the wildest wit the penalty +of transportation for fourteen years, for making a false entry, “is to be +divided equally between the informer and the poor of the parish.” A more +casual Act has rarely been drafted. + +Without entering into the modern history of parish registers, we may +borrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found therein, the blunders +and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and curates, and parish clerks. +In quite recent times (1832) it was thought worth while to record that +Charity Morrell at her wedding had signed her name in the register with +her right foot, and that the ring had been placed on the fourth toe of +her left foot; for poor Charity was born without arms. Sometimes the +time of a birth was recorded with much minuteness, that the astrologers +might draw a more accurate horoscope. Unlucky children, with no +acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety of odd ways. In Lambeth +(1685), George Speedwell is put down as “a merry begot;” Anne Twine is +“_filia uniuscujusque_.” At Croydon, a certain William is “terraefilius” +(1582), an autochthonous infant. Among the queer names of foundlings are +“Nameless,” “Godsend,” “Subpoena,” and “Moyses and Aaron, two children +found,” not in the bulrushes, but “in the street.” + +The rule was to give the foundling for surname the name of the parish, +and from the Temple Church came no fewer than one hundred and four +foundlings named “Temple,” between 1728 and 1755. These Temples are the +plebeian _gens_ of the patrician house which claims descent from Godiva. +The use of surnames as Christian names is later than the Reformation, and +is the result of a reaction against the exclusive use of saints’ names +from the calendar. Another example of the same reaction is the use of +Old Testament names, and “Ananias and Sapphira were favourite names with +the Presbyterians.” It is only fair to add that these names are no +longer popular with Presbyterians, at any rate in the Kirk of Scotland. +The old Puritan argument was that you would hardly select the name of too +notorious a scriptural sinner, “as bearing testimony to the triumph of +grace over original sin.” But in America a clergyman has been known to +decline to christen a child “Pontius Pilate,” and no wonder. + +Entries of burials in ancient times often contained some biographical +information about the deceased. But nothing could possibly be vaguer +than this: “1615, February 28, St. Martin’s, Ludgate, was buried an +anatomy from the College of Physicians.” Man, woman, or child, sinner or +saint, we know not, only that “an anatomy” found Christian burial in St. +Martin’s, Ludgate. How much more full and characteristic is this, from +St. Peter’s-in-the-East, Oxford (1568): ‘There was buried Alyce, the wiff +of a naughty fellow whose name is Matthew Manne.’ There is immortality +for Matthew Manne, and there is, in short-hand, the tragedy of “Alyce his +wiff.” The reader of this record knows more of Matthew than in two +hundred years any one is likely to know of us who moralise over Matthew! +At Kyloe, in Northumberland, the intellectual defects of Henry Watson +have, like the naughtiness of Manne, secured him a measure of fame. +(1696.) “Henry was so great a fooll, that he never could put on his own +close, nor never went a quarter of a mile off the house,” as Voltaire’s +Memnon resolved never to do, and as Pascal partly recommends. + +What had Mary Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the Croydon +register gives her of “Queen of Hell”? (1788.) Distinguished people were +buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which they were +connected, and each sham burial service was entered in the parish +registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian. This curious +custom is very ancient. Thus we read in the Odyssey that when Menelaus +heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he reared for him a cenotaph, +and piled an empty barrow “that the fame of the dead man might never be +quenched.” Probably this old usage gave rise to the claims of several +Greek cities to possess the tomb of this or that ancient hero. A heroic +tomb, as of Cassandra for example, several towns had to show, but which +was the true grave, which were the cenotaphs? Queen Elizabeth was buried +in all the London churches, and poor Cassandra had her barrow in Argos, +Mycenæ, and Amyclæ. + +“A drynkyng for the soul” of the dead, a τάφος or funeral feast, was as +common in England before the Reformation as in ancient Greece. James +Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left six shillings and eightpence to +pay for this “drynkyng for his soul;” and the funeral feast, which long +survived in the distribution of wine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures +as a slight collation of wine and cake in Scotland. What a funeral could +be, as late as 1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial +of Andrew Card, senior bencher of Gray’s Inn. The deceased was brave in +a “superfine pinked shroud” (cheap at 1_l_. 5_s_. 6_d_.), and there were +eight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the daïs, and ninety-six +buckram escutcheons. The pall-bearers wore Alamode hatbands covered with +frizances, and so did the divines who were present at the melancholy but +gorgeous function. A hundred men in mourning carried a hundred white wax +branch lights, and the gloves of the porters in Gray’s Inn were +ash-coloured with black points. Yet the wine cost no more than 1_l_. +19_s_. 6_d_.; a “deal of sack,” by no means “intolerable.” + +Leaving the funerals, we find that the parish register sometimes records +ancient and obsolete modes of death. Thus, martyrs are scarce now, but +the register of All Saints’, Derby, 1556, mentions “a poor blinde woman +called Joan Waste, of this parish, a martyr, burned in Windmill pit.” +She was condemned by Ralph Baynes, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. In +1558, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, we find “Richard Snell, b’rnt, bur. 9 +Sept.” At Croydon, in 1585, Roger Shepherd probably never expected to be +eaten by a lioness. Roger was not, like Wyllyam Barker, “a common +drunkard and blasphemer,” and we cannot regard the Croydon lioness, like +the Nemean lion, as a miraculous monster sent against the county of +Surrey for the sins of the people. The lioness “was brought into the +town to be seen of such as would give money to see her. He” (Roger) “was +sore wounded in sundry places, and was buried the 26th Aug.” + +In 1590, the register of St. Oswald’s, Durham, informs us that “Duke, +Hyll, Hogge, and Holiday” were hanged and burned for “there horrible +offences.” The arm of one of these horrible offenders was preserved at +St. Omer as the relic of a martyr, “a most precious treasure,” in 1686. +But no one knew whether the arm belonged originally to Holiday, Hyll, +Duke, or Hogge. The coals, when these unfortunate men were burned, cost +sixpence; the other items in the account of the abominable execution are, +perhaps, too repulsive to be quoted. + +According to some critics of the British government, we do not treat the +Egyptians well. But our conduct towards the Fellahs has certainly +improved since this entry was made in the register of St. Nicholas, +Durham (1592, August 8th): ‘Simson, Arington, Featherston, Fenwick, and +Lancaster, _were hanged for being Egyptians_.’ They were, in fact, +gypsies, or had been consorting with gypsies, and they suffered under 5 +Eliz. c. 20. In 1783 this statute was abolished, and was even considered +“a law of excessive severity.” For even a hundred years ago “the puling +cant of sickly humanitarianism” was making itself heard to the injury of +our sturdy old English legislation. To be killed by a poet is now an +unusual fate, but the St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions +how “Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried.” Gabriel was “slayne” by +Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton Fields. + +The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parish +registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner. On August +21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the imaginary crime +of witchcraft. “A grave, for a witch, sixpence,” is an item in the +municipal accounts. And the grave was a cheap haven for the poor woman +who had been committed to the tender mercies of a Scotch witch-trier. +Cetewayo’s medicine-men, who “smelt out” witches, were only some two +centuries in the rear of our civilisation. Three hundred years ago +Bishop Jewell, preaching before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of +Cetewayo and Saul, as to the wickedness of suffering a witch to live. As +late as 1691, the register of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions +“William Cleugh, bewitched to death,” and the superstition is almost as +powerful as ever among the rural people. Between July 13 and July 24 +(1699) the widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch. She was +not drowned, but survived her immersion for only five months. A singular +homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689. “John Arris and Derwick +Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; one killed the other +drinking brandy.” But who slew the slayer? The register is silent; but +“often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck of hasty pudding at a time +caused the death of James Parsons,” at Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743. +Parsons had resisted the effects of shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding +till the age of thirty-six. + +And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the death of a +glutton, sometimes of a _Grace wyfe_ (grosse femme). Now the bell tolls +for the decease of a duke, now of a “dog-whipper.” “Lutenists” and +“Saltpetremen”—the skeleton of the old German allegory whispers to each +and twitches him by the sleeve. “Ellis Thompson, _insipiens_,” leaves +Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled and scrabbled on the doors, and +follows “William, foole to my Lady Jerningham,” and “Edward Errington, +the Towne’s Fooll” (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death. +Edward Errington died “of the pest,” and another idiot took his place and +office, for Newcastle had her regular town fools before she acquired her +singularly advanced modern representatives. The “aquavity man” dies (in +Cripplegate), and the “dumb-man who was a fortune-teller” (Stepney, +1628), and the “King’s Falkner,” and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined the +professions, not frequently united, of “attorney and husbandman,” in +Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). “The lame chimney-sweeper,” and the +“King of the gypsies,” and Alexander Willis, “qui calographiam docuit,” +the linguist, and the Tom o’ Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the +panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death; +or, if they sought him, the churchyard where they were “hurled into a +grave” was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight, with +“frankincense and sweet perfumes, and herbs.” + +Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough +register mentions a fresh way of death, “the swat called New +Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master.” Another malady +was ‘the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne through England.’ +The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth from the Levant, just +as British commerce still patriotically tries to introduce cholera in +cargoes of Egyptian rags. The register of Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, +1625), has this strange story of the plague:— + +“Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must die at +yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused his nefew, +John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not farre from the +house, and went and lay’d him down in the say’d grave, and caused clothes +to be lay’d uppon and so dep’ted out of this world; this he did because +he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nefew and another wench +were able to bury.” + +And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the “wench” already spoken of, +died, the last of the household. + +Old customs survive in the parish registers. Scolding wives were ducked, +and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register tells how the sexton’s wife +“was sett on a new cukking-stoole, and brought to Temes brydge, and there +had three duckings over head and eres, because she was a common scold and +fighter.” The cucking-stool, a very elaborate engine of the law, cost +1_l_. 3_s_. 4_d_. Men were ducked for beating their wives, and if that +custom were revived the profession of cucking-stool maker would become +busy and lucrative. Penances of a graver sort are on record in the +registers. Margaret Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was ordered to stand +three market days in the town, and three Sundays in the church, in a +white sheet. The sin imputed to her was a dreadful one. “She stood one +Saturday, and one Sunday, and died the next.” Innocent or guilty, this +world was no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret Sherioux. +Occasionally the keeper of the register entered any event which seemed +out of the common. Thus the register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has +this contribution to natural history:— + +“A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a very greate +strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen feet, in quantitie and +dimentions greater than a greate horse, which was taken and killed by +special policie, in Ethiopia within the Turkas dominions. But before it +was killed, it had devoured (as is credibly thought) more than 1,000 +persons, and destroyed a great country.” + +This must have been a descendant of the monster that would have eaten +Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the blameless +Ethiopians. Collections of money are recorded occasionally, as in 1680, +when no less than one pound eight shillings was contributed “for +redemption of Christians (taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish +slavery.” Two hundred years ago the Turk was pretty “unspeakable” still. +Of all blundering Dogberries, the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish +register at Melton Mowbray:— + +“Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth’s people, which was +buried, and which was and maried above 10 years old, for because the +clarke was dead, and therefore they was not set down according as they +was, but they all set down sure enough one among another here in this +place.” + +“They all set down sure enough,” nor does it matter much now to know whom +they married, and how long they lived in Melton Mowbray. The following +entry sufficed for the great Villiers that expired “in the worst inn’s +worst room,”—“Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire, 1687. Georges vilaris Lord +dooke of Bookingham, bur. 17. April.” + +“So much for Buckingham!” + + + + +_THE ROWFANT BOOKS_. +BALLADE EN GUISE DE RONDEAU. + + + THE Rowfant books, how fair they shew, + The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall, + Print, autograph, portfolio! + Back from the outer air they call, + The athletes from the Tennis ball, + This Rhymer from his rod and hooks, + Would I could sing them one and all, + The Rowfant books! + + The Rowfant books! In sun and snow + They’re dear, but most when tempests fall; + The folio towers above the row + As once, o’er minor prophets,—Saul! + What jolly jest books and what small + “Dear dumpy Twelves” to fill the nooks. + You do not find on every stall + The Rowfant books! + + The Rowfant books! These long ago + Were chained within some College hall; + These manuscripts retain the glow + Of many a coloured capital + While yet the Satires keep their gall, + While the Pastissier puzzles cooks, + Theirs is a joy that does not pall, + The Rowfant books! + + ENVOI. + + The Rowfant books,—ah magical + As famed Armida’s “golden looks,” + They hold the rhymer for their thrall, + The Rowfant books. + + + + +_TO F. L._ + + + I MIND that Forest Shepherd’s saw, + For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he, + “It’s a’ that’s bricht, and a’ that’s braw, + But Bourhope’s guid eneuch for me!” + + Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills + That guard Saint Mary’s Loch it lies, + The silence of the pasture fills + That shepherd’s homely paradise. + + Enough for him his mountain lake, + His glen the burn went singing through, + And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake, + May well seem good enough for you. + + For all is old, and tried, and dear, + And all is fair, and round about + The brook that murmurs from the mere + Is dimpled with the rising trout. + + But when the skies of shorter days + Are dark and all the ways are mire, + How bright upon your books the blaze + Gleams from the cheerful study fire, + + On quartos where our fathers read, + Enthralled, the book of Shakespeare’s play, + On all that Poe could dream of dread, + And all that Herrick sang of gay! + + Fair first editions, duly prized, + Above them all, methinks, I rate + The tome where Walton’s hand revised + His wonderful receipts for bait! + + Happy, who rich in toys like these + Forgets a weary nation’s ills, + Who from his study window sees + The circle of the Sussex hills! + + + + +_SOME JAPANESE BOGIE-BOOKS_. + + +THERE is or used to be a poem for infant minds of a rather Pharisaical +character, which was popular in the nursery when I was a youngster. It +ran something like this:— + + I thank my stars that I was born + A little British child. + +Perhaps these were not the very words, but that was decidedly the +sentiment. Look at the Japanese infants, from the pencil of the famous +Hokusai. Though they are not British, were there ever two jollier, +happier small creatures? Did Leech, or Mr. Du Maurier, or Andrea della +Robbia ever present a more delightful view of innocent, well-pleased +childhood? Well, these Japanese children, if they are in the least +inclined to be timid or nervous, must have an awful time of it at night +in the dark, and when they make that eerie “northwest passage” bedwards +through the darkling house of which Mr. Stevenson sings the perils and +the emotions. All of us who did not suffer under parents brought up on +the views of Mr. Herbert Spencer have endured, in childhood, a good deal +from ghosts. But it is nothing to what Japanese children bear, for our +ghosts are to the spectres of Japan as moonlight is to sunlight, or as +water unto whisky. Personally I may say that few people have been +plagued by the terror that walketh in darkness more than myself. At the +early age of ten I had the tales of the ingenious Mr. Edgar Poe and of +Charlotte Brontë “put into my hands” by a cousin who had served as a +Bashi Bazouk, and knew not the meaning of fear. But I _did_, and perhaps +even Nelson would have found out “what fear was,” or the boy in the Norse +tale would have “learned to shiver,” if he had been left alone to peruse +‘Jane Eyre,’ and the ‘Black Cat,’ and the ‘Fall of the House of Usher,’ +as I was. Every night I expected to wake up in my coffin, having been +prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by light, +unsteady footsteps on the stairs, and then to see a lady all in a white +shroud stained with blood and clay stagger into my room, the victim of +too rapid interment. As to the notion that my respected kinsman had a +mad wife concealed on the premises, and that a lunatic aunt, black in the +face with suppressed mania, would burst into my chamber, it was +comparatively a harmless fancy, and not particularly disturbing. Between +these and the ‘Yellow Dwarf,’ who (though only the invention of the +Countess D’Aulnoy) might frighten a nervous infant into hysterics, I +personally had as bad a time of it in the night watches as any happy +British child has survived. But our ogres are nothing to the bogies +which make not only night but day terrible to the studious infants of +Japan and China. + + [Picture: Japanese Children. Drawn by Hokusai] + +Chinese ghosts are probably much the same as Japanese ghosts. The +Japanese have borrowed most things, including apparitions and awesome +sprites and grisly fiends, from the Chinese, and then have improved on +the original model. Now we have a very full, complete, and +horror-striking account of Chinese _harnts_ (as the country people in +Tennessee call them) from Mr. Herbert Giles, who has translated scores of +Chinese ghost stories in his ‘Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio’ (De la +Rue, 1880). Mr. Giles’s volumes prove that China is the place for +Messrs. Gurney and Myers, the secretaries of the Psychical Society. + +Ghosts do not live a hole-and-corner life in China, but boldly come out +and take their part in the pleasures and business of life. It has always +been a question with me whether ghosts, in a haunted house, appear when +there is no audience. What does the spectre in the tapestried chamber do +when the house is _not_ full, and no guest is put in the room to bury +strangers in, the haunted room? Does the ghost sulk and complain that +there is “no house,” and refuse to rehearse his little performance, in a +conscientious and disinterestedly artistic spirit, when deprived of the +artist’s true pleasure, the awakening of sympathetic emotion in the mind +of the spectator? We give too little thought and sympathy to ghosts, who +in our old castles and country houses often find no one to appear to from +year’s end to year’s-end. Only now and then is a guest placed in the +“haunted room.” Then I like to fancy the glee of the lady in green or +the radiant boy, or the headless man, or the old gentleman in +snuff-coloured clothes, as he, or she, recognises the presence of a +spectator, and prepares to give his or her best effects in the familiar +style. + +Now in China and Japan certainly a ghost does not wait till people enter +the haunted room: a ghost, like a person of fashion, “goes everywhere.” +Moreover, he has this artistic excellence, that very often you don’t know +him from an embodied person. He counterfeits mortality so cleverly that +he (the ghost) has been known to personate a candidate for honours, and +pass an examination for him. A pleasing example of this kind, +illustrating the limitations of ghosts, is told in Mr. Giles’s book. A +gentleman of Huai Shang named Chou-t‘ien-i had arrived at the age of +fifty, but his family consisted of but one son, a fine boy, “strangely +averse from study,” as if there were anything strange in _that_. One day +the son disappeared mysteriously, as people do from West Ham. In a year +he came back, said he had been detained in a Taoist monastery, and, to +all men’s amazement, took to his books. Next year he obtained is B.A. +degree, a First Class. All the neighbourhood was overjoyed, for Huai +Shang was like Pembroke College (Oxford), where, according to the poet, +“First Class men are few and far between.” It was who should have the +honour of giving his daughter as bride to this intellectual marvel. A +very nice girl was selected, but most unexpectedly the B.A. would not +marry. This nearly broke his father’s heart. The old gentleman knew, +according to Chinese belief, that if he had no grandchild there would be +no one in the next generation to feed his own ghost and pay it all the +little needful attentions. “Picture then the father naming and insisting +on the day;” till K‘o-ch‘ang, B.A., got up and ran away. His mother +tried to detain him, when his clothes “came off in her hand,” and the +bachelor vanished! Next day appeared the real flesh and blood son, who +had been kidnapped and enslaved. The genuine K‘o-ch‘ang was overjoyed to +hear of his approaching nuptials. The rites were duly celebrated, and in +less than a year the old gentleman welcomed his much-longed-for grand +child. But, oddly enough, K‘o-ch‘ang, though very jolly and universally +beloved, was as stupid as ever, and read nothing but the sporting +intelligence in the newspapers. It was now universally admitted that the +learned K‘o-ch‘ang had been an impostor, a clever ghost. It follows that +ghosts can take a very good degree; but ladies need not be afraid of +marrying ghosts, owing to the inveterate shyness of these learned +spectres. + + [Picture: A Storm-fiend] + +The Chinese ghost is by no means always a malevolent person, as, indeed, +has already been made clear from the affecting narrative of the ghost who +passed an examination. Even the spectre which answers in China to the +statue in ‘Don Juan,’ the statue which accepts invitations to dinner, is +anything but a malevolent guest. So much may be gathered from the story +of Chu and Lu. Chu was an undergraduate of great courage and bodily +vigour, but dull of wit. He was a married man, and his children (as in +the old Oxford legend) often rushed into their mother’s presence, +shouting, “Mamma! mammal papa’s been plucked again!” Once it chanced +that Chu was at a wine party, and the negus (a favourite beverage of the +Celestials) had done its work. His young friends betted Chu a +bird’s-nest dinner that he would not go to the nearest temple, enter the +room devoted to coloured sculptures representing the torments of +Purgatory, and carry off the image of the Chinese judge of the dead, +their Osiris or Rhadamanthus. Off went old Chu, and soon returned with +the august effigy (which wore “a green face, a red beard, and a hideous +expression”) in his arms. The other men were frightened, and begged Chu +to restore his worship to his place on the infernal bench. Before +carrying back the worthy magistrate, Chu poured a libation on the ground +and said, “Whenever your excellency feels so disposed, I shall be glad to +take a cup of wine with you in a friendly way.” That very night, as Chu +was taking a stirrup cup before going to bed, the ghost of the awful +judge came to the door and entered. Chu promptly put the kettle on, +mixed the negus, and made a night of it with the festive fiend. Their +friendship was never interrupted from that moment. The judge even gave +Chu a new heart (literally) whereby he was enabled to pass examinations; +for the heart, in China, is the seat of all the intellectual faculties. +For Mrs. Chu, a plain woman with a fine figure, the ghost provided a new +head, of a handsome girl recently slain by a robber. Even after Chu’s +death the genial spectre did not neglect him, but obtained for him an +appointment as registrar in the next world, with a certain rank attached. + +The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of bureaucracy, +patent places, jobs, mandarins’ buttons and tails, and, in short, the +heaven of officialism. All civilised readers are acquainted with Mr. +Stockton’s humorous story of ‘The Transferred Ghost.’ In Mr. Stockton’s +view a man does not always get his own ghostship; there is a vigorous +competition among spirits for good ghostships, and a great deal of +intrigue and party feeling. It may be long before a disembodied spectre +gets any ghostship at all, and then, if he has little influence, he may +be glad to take a chance of haunting the Board of Trade, or the Post +Office, instead of “walking” in the Foreign Office. One spirit may win a +post as White Lady in the imperial palace, while another is put off with +a position in an old college library, or perhaps has to follow the +fortunes of some seedy “medium” through boarding-houses and third-rate +hotels. Now this is precisely the Chinese view of the fates and fortunes +of ghosts. _Quisque suos patimur manes_. + +In China, to be brief, and to quote a ghost (who ought to know what he +was speaking about), “supernaturals are to be found everywhere.” This is +the fact that makes life so puzzling and terrible to a child of a +believing and trustful character. These Oriental bogies do not appear in +the dark alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross-roads, or in +gloomy woods. They are everywhere: every man has his own ghost, every +place has its peculiar haunting fiend, every natural phenomenon has its +informing spirit; every quality, as hunger, greed, envy, malice, has an +embodied visible shape prowling about seeking what it may devour. Where +our science, for example, sees (or rather smells) sewer gas, the Japanese +behold a slimy, meagre, insatiate wraith, crawling to devour the lives of +men. Where we see a storm of snow, their livelier fancy beholds a comic +snow-ghost, a queer, grinning old man under a vast umbrella. + + [Picture: A Snow-bogie] + +The illustrations in this paper are only a few specimens chosen out of +many volumes of Japanese bogies. We have not ventured to copy the very +most awful spectres, nor dared to be as horrid as we can. These native +drawings, too, are generally coloured regardless of expense, and the +colouring is often horribly lurid and satisfactory. This embellishment, +fortunately perhaps, we cannot reproduce. Meanwhile, if any child looks +into this essay, let him (or her) not be alarmed by the pictures he +beholds. Japanese ghosts do not live in this country; there are none of +them even at the Japanese Legation. Just as bears, lions, and +rattlesnakes are not to be seriously dreaded in our woods and commons, so +the Japanese ghost cannot breathe (any more than a slave can) in the air +of England or America. We do not yet even keep any ghostly zoological +garden in which the bogies of Japanese, Australians, Red Indians, and +other distant peoples may be accommodated. Such an establishment is +perhaps to be desired in the interests of psychical research, but that +form of research has not yet been endowed by a cultivated and progressive +government. + +The first to attract our attention represents, as I understand, the +common ghost, or _simulacrum vulgare_ of psychical science. To this +complexion must we all come, according to the best Japanese opinion. +Each of us contains within him “somewhat of a shadowy being,” like the +spectre described by Dr. Johnson: something like the Egyptian “Ka,” for +which the curious may consult the works of Miss Amelia B. Edwards and +other learned Orientalists. The most recent French student of these +matters, the author of ‘L’Homme Posthume,’ is of opinion that we do not +all possess this double, with its power of surviving our bodily death. +He thinks, too, that our ghost, when it does survive, has but rarely the +energy and enterprise to make itself visible to or audible by +“shadow-casting men.” In some extreme cases the ghost (according to our +French authority, that of a disciple of M. Comte) feeds fearsomely on the +bodies of the living. In no event does he believe that a ghost lasts +much longer than a hundred years. After that it mizzles into spectre, +and is resolved into its elements, whatever they may be. + +A somewhat similar and (to my own mind) probably sound theory of ghosts +prevails among savage tribes, and among such peoples as the ancient +Greeks, the modern Hindoos, and other ancestor worshippers. When +feeding, as they all do, or used to do, the ghosts of the ancestral dead, +they gave special attention to the claims of the dead of the last three +generations, leaving ghosts older than the century to look after their +own supplies of meat and drink. The negligence testifies to a notion +that very old ghosts are of little account, for good or evil. On the +other hand, as regards the longevity of spectres, we must not shut our +eyes to the example of the bogie in ancient armour which appears in +Glamis Castle, or to the Jesuit of Queen Elizabeth’s date that haunts the +library (and a very nice place to haunt: I ask no better, as a ghost in +the Pavilion at Lord’s might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman. +With these _instantiæ contradictoriæ_, as Bacon calls them, present to +our minds, we must not (in the present condition of psychical research) +dogmatise too hastily about the span of life allotted to the _simulacrum +vulgare_. Very probably his chances of a prolonged existence are in +inverse ratio to the square of the distance of time which severs him from +our modern days. No one has ever even pretended to see the ghost of an +ancient Roman buried in these islands, still less of a Pict or Scot, or a +Palæolithic man, welcome as such an apparition would be to many of us. +Thus the evidence does certainly look as if there were a kind of statute +of limitations among ghosts, which, from many points of view, is not an +arrangement at which we should repine. + + [Picture: The Simulacrum Vulgare] + +The Japanese artist expresses his own sense of the casual and fluctuating +nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if the model +had given the artist the horrors. This _simulacrum_ rises out of the +earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into shape above the spade +with which all that is corporeal of its late owner has been interred. +Please remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the _simulacrum_. +We must remember that the ghost or “Ka” is not the “soul,” which has +other destinies in the future world, good or evil, but is only a shadowy +resemblance, condemned, as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in the tomb +and hover near it. The Chinese and Japanese have their own definite +theory of the next world, and we must by no means confuse the eternal +fortunes of the permanent, conscious, and responsible self, already +inhabiting other worlds than ours, with the eccentric vagaries of the +semi-material tomb-haunting larva, which so often develops a noisy and +bear-fighting disposition quite unlike the character of its proprietor in +life. + + [Picture: A Well and Water bogie] + +The next bogie, so limp and washed-out as he seems, with his white, +drooping, dripping arms and hands, reminds us of that horrid French +species of apparition, “la lavandière de la nuit,” who washes dead men’s +linen in the moonlit pools and rivers. Whether this _simulacrum_ be +meant for the spirit of the well (for everything has its spirit in +Japan), or whether it be the ghost of some mortal drowned in the well, I +cannot say with absolute certainty; but the opinion of the learned tends +to the former conclusion. Naturally a Japanese child, when sent in the +dusk to draw water, will do so with fear and trembling, for this limp, +floppy apparition might scare the boldest. Another bogie, a terrible +creation of fancy, I take to be a vampire, about which the curious can +read in Dom Calmet, who will tell them how whole villages in Hungary have +been depopulated by vampires; or he may study in Fauriel’s ‘Chansons de +la Grèce Moderne’ the vampires of modern Hellas. + +Another plan, and perhaps even more satisfactory to a timid or +superstitious mind, is to read in a lonely house at midnight a story +named ‘Carmilla,’ printed in Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘In a Glass Darkly.’ +That work will give you the peculiar sentiment of vampirism, will produce +a gelid perspiration, and reduce the patient to a condition in which he +will be afraid to look round the room. If, while in this mood, some one +tells him Mr. Augustus Hare’s story of Crooglin Grange, his education in +the practice and theory of vampires will be complete, and he will be a +very proper and well-qualified inmate of Earlswood Asylum. The most +awful Japanese vampire, caught red-handed in the act, a hideous, bestial +incarnation of ghoulishness, we have carefully refrained from +reproducing. + + [Picture: Raising the wind] + +Scarcely more agreeable is the bogie, or witch, blowing from her mouth a +malevolent exhalation, an embodiment of malignant and maleficent sorcery. +The vapour which flies and curls from the mouth constitutes “a sending,” +in the technical language of Icelandic wizards, and is capable (in +Iceland, at all events) of assuming the form of some detestable +supernatural animal, to destroy the life of a hated rival. In the case +of our last example it is very hard indeed to make head or tail of the +spectre represented. Chinks and crannies are his domain; through these +he drops upon you. He is a merry but not an attractive or genial ghost. +Where there are such “visions about” it may be admitted that children, +apt to believe in all such fancies, have a youth of variegated and +intense misery, recurring with special vigour at bed-time. But we look +again at our first picture, and hope and trust that Japanese boys and +girls are as happy as these jolly little creatures appear. + + [Picture: A Chink and Crevice Bogie] + + + + +_GHOSTS IN THE LIBRARY_. + + + SUPPOSE, when now the house is dumb, + When lights are out, and ashes fall— + Suppose their ancient owners come + To claim our spoils of shop and stall, + Ah me! within the narrow hall + How strange a mob would meet and go, + What famous folk would haunt them all, + Octavo, quarto, folio! + + The great Napoleon lays his hand + Upon this eagle-headed N, + That marks for his a pamphlet banned + By all but scandal-loving men,— + A libel from some nameless den + Of Frankfort,—_Arnaud à la Sphère_, + Wherein one spilt, with venal pen, + Lies o’er the loves of Molière. {66} + + Another shade—he does not see + “Boney,” the foeman of his race— + The great Sir Walter, this is he + With that grave homely Border face. + He claims his poem of the chase + That rang Benvoirlich’s valley through; + And _this_, that doth the lineage trace + And fortunes of the bold Buccleuch; {67a} + + For these were his, and these he gave + To one who dwelt beside the Peel, + That murmurs with its tiny wave + To join the Tweed at Ashestiel. + Now thick as motes the shadows wheel, + And find their own, and claim a share + Of books wherein Ribou did deal, + Or Roulland sold to wise Colbert. {67b} + + What famous folk of old are here! + A royal duke comes down to us, + And greatly wants his Elzevir, + His Pagan tutor, Lucius. {67c} + And Beckford claims an amorous + Old heathen in morocco blue; {67d} + And who demands Eobanus + But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou! {67e} + + They come, the wise, the great, the true, + They jostle on the narrow stair, + The frolic Countess de Verrue, + Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre, + The new and elder dead are there— + The lords of speech, and song, and pen, + Gambetta, {68a} Schlegel {68b} and the rare + Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. {68c} + + Ah, and with those, a hundred more, + Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot: + Brave “Smiths” and “Thompsons” by the score, + Scrawled upon many a shabby “lot.” + This playbook was the joy of Pott {68d}— + Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves. + Our names, like his, remembered not, + Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves! + + At least in pleasant company + We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit; + A man may turn a page, and sigh, + Seeing one’s name, to think of it. + Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit, + May ope our book, and muse awhile, + And fall into a dreaming fit, + As now we dream, and wake, and smile! + + + + +_LITERARY FORGERIES_. + + +IN the whole amusing history of impostures, there is no more diverting +chapter than that which deals with literary frauds. None contains a more +grotesque revelation of the smallness and the complexity of human nature, +and none—not even the records of the Tichborne trial, nor of general +elections—displays more pleasantly the depths of mortal credulity. The +literary forger is usually a clever man, and it is necessary for him to +be at least on a level with the literary knowledge and critical science +of his time. But how low that level commonly appears to be! Think of +the success of Ireland, a boy of eighteen; think of Chatterton; think of +Surtees of Mainsforth, who took in the great Sir Walter himself, the +father of all them that are skilled in ballad lore. How simple were the +artifices of these ingenious impostors, their resources how scanty; how +hand-to-mouth and improvised was their whole procedure! Times have +altered a little. Jo Smith’s revelation and famed ‘Golden Bible’ only +carried captive the polygamous _populus qui vult decipi_, reasoners a +little lower than even the believers in Anglo-Israel. The Moabite +Ireland, who once gave Mr. Shapira the famous MS. of Deuteronomy, but did +not delude M. Clermont-Ganneau, was doubtless a smart man; he was, +however, a little too indolent, a little too easily satisfied. He might +have procured better and less recognisable materials than his old +“synagogue rolls;” in short, he took rather too little trouble, and came +to the wrong market. A literary forgery ought first, perhaps, to appeal +to the credulous, and only slowly should it come, with the prestige of +having already won many believers, before the learned world. The +inscriber of the Phoenician inscriptions in Brazil (of all places) was a +clever man. His account of the voyage of Hiram to South America probably +gained some credence in Brazil, while in England it only carried captive +Mr. Day, author of ‘The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel.’ But the +Brazilians, from lack of energy, have dropped the subject, and the +Phoenician inscriptions of Brazil are less successful, after all, than +the Moabite stone, about which one begins to entertain disagreeable +doubts. + +The motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed; but they may, +perhaps, be analysed roughly into piety, greed, “push,” and love of fun. +Many literary forgeries have been pious frauds, perpetrated in the +interests of a church, a priesthood, or a dogma. Then we have frauds of +greed, as if, for example, a forger should offer his wares for a million +of money to the British Museum; or when he tries to palm off his +Samaritan Gospel on the “Bad Samaritan” of the Bodleian. Next we come to +playful frauds, or frauds in their origin playful, like (perhaps) the +Shakespearian forgeries of Ireland, the _supercheries_ of Prosper +Mérimée, the sham antique ballads (very spirited poems in their way) of +Surtees, and many other examples. Occasionally it has happened that +forgeries, begun for the mere sake of exerting the imitative faculty, and +of raising a laugh against the learned, have been persevered with in +earnest. The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable, +though it is difficult to forgive the young archæologist who took in his +own father with false Greek inscriptions. But this story may be a mere +fable amongst archæologists, who are constantly accusing each other of +all manner of crimes. Then there are forgeries by “pushing” men, who +hope to get a reading for poems which, if put forth as new, would be +neglected. There remain forgeries of which the motives are so complex as +to remain for ever obscure. We may generally ascribe them to love of +notoriety in the forger; such notoriety as Macpherson won by his dubious +pinchbeck Ossian. More difficult still to understand are the forgeries +which real scholars have committed or connived at for the purpose of +supporting some opinion which they held with earnestness. There is a +vein of madness and self-deceit in the character of the man who +half-persuades himself that his own false facts are true. The Payne +Collier case is thus one of the most difficult in the world to explain, +for it is equally hard to suppose that Mr. Payne Collier was taken in by +the notes on the folio he gave the world, and to hold that he was himself +guilty of forgery to support his own opinions. + +The further we go back in the history of literary forgeries, the more (as +is natural) do we find them to be of a pious or priestly character. When +the clergy alone can write, only the clergy can forge. In such ages +people are interested chiefly in prophecies and warnings, or, if they are +careful about literature, it is only when literature contains some kind +of title-deeds. Thus Solon is said to have forged a line in the Homeric +catalogue of the ships for the purpose of proving that Salamis belonged +to Athens. But the great antique forger, the “Ionian father of the +rest,” is, doubtless, Onomacritus. There exists, to be sure, an Egyptian +inscription professing to be of the fourth, but probably of the +twenty-sixth, dynasty. The Germans hold the latter view; the French, +from patriotic motives, maintain the opposite opinion. But this forgery +is scarcely “literary.” + +I never can think of Onomacritus without a certain respect: he began the +forging business so very early, and was (apart from this failing) such an +imposing and magnificently respectable character. The scene of the error +and the detection of Onomacritus presents itself always to me in a kind +of pictorial vision. It is night, the clear, windless night of Athens; +not of the Athens whose ruins remain, but of the ancient city that sank +in ashes during the invasion of Xerxes. The time is the time of +Pisistratus the successful tyrant; the scene is the ancient temple, the +stately house of Athenê, the fane where the sacred serpent was fed on +cakes, and the primeval olive-tree grew beside the well of Posidon. The +darkness of the temple’s inmost shrine is lit by the ray of one earthen +lamp. You dimly discern the majestic form of a venerable man stooping +above a coffer of cedar and ivory, carved with the exploits of the +goddess, and with _boustrophedon_ inscriptions. In his hair this archaic +Athenian wears the badge of the golden grasshopper. He is Onomacritus, +the famous poet, and the trusted guardian of the ancient oracles of +Musaeus and Bacis. + +What is he doing? Why, he takes from the fragrant cedar coffer certain +thin stained sheets of lead, whereon are scratched the words of doom, the +prophecies of the Greek Thomas the Rhymer. From his bosom he draws +another thin sheet of lead, also stained and corroded. On this he +scratches, in imitation of the old “Cadmeian letters,” a prophecy that +“the Isles near Lemnos shall disappear under the sea.” So busy is he in +this task, that he does not hear the rustle of a chiton behind, and +suddenly a man’s hand is on his shoulder! Onomacritus turns in horror. +Has the goddess punished him for tampering with the oracles? No; it is +Lasus, the son of Hermiones, a rival poet, who has caught the keeper of +the oracles in the very act of a pious forgery. (Herodotus, vii. 6.) + +Pisistratus expelled the learned Onomacritus from Athens, but his conduct +proved, in the long run, highly profitable to the reputations of Musaeus +and Bacis. Whenever one of their oracles was not fulfilled, people said, +“Oh, _that_ is merely one of the interpolations of Onomacritus!” and the +matter was passed over. This Onomacritus is said to have been among the +original editors of Homer under Pisistratus. {73} He lived long, never +repented, and, many years later, deceived Xerxes into attempting his +disastrous expedition. This he did by “keeping back the oracles +unfavourable to the barbarians,” and putting forward any that seemed +favourable. The children of Pisistratus believed in him as spiritualists +go on giving credit to exposed and exploded “mediums.” + +Having once practised deceit, it is to be feared that Onomacritus +acquired a liking for the art of literary forgery, which, as will be seen +in the case of Ireland, grows on a man like dram-drinking. Onomacritus +is generally charged with the authorship of the poems which the ancients +usually attributed to Orpheus, the companion of Jason. Perhaps the most +interesting of the poems of Orpheus to us would have been his ‘Inferno,’ +or, Κατάβασις ὲς ᾄδου, in which the poet gave his own account of his +descent to Hades in search of Eurydice. But only a dubious reference to +one adventure in the journey is quoted by Plutarch. Whatever the exact +truth about the Orphic poems may be (the reader may pursue the hard and +fruitless quest in Lobeck’s ‘Aglaophamus’ {74}), it seems certain that +the period between Pisistratus and Pericles, like the Alexandrian time, +was a great age for literary forgeries. But of all these frauds the +greatest (according to the most “advanced” theory on the subject) is the +“Forgery of the Iliad and Odyssey!” The opinions of the scholars who +hold that the Iliad and Odyssey, which we know and which Plato knew, are +not the epics known to Herodotus, but later compositions, are not very +clear nor consistent. But it seems to be vaguely held that about the +time of Pericles there arose a kind of Greek Macpherson. This ingenious +impostor worked on old epic materials, but added many new ideas of his +own about the gods, converting the Iliad (the poem which we now possess) +into a kind of mocking romance, a Greek Don Quixote. He also forged a +number of pseudo-archaic words, tenses, and expressions, and added the +numerous references to iron, a metal practically unknown, it is asserted, +to Greece before the sixth century. If we are to believe, with Professor +Paley, that the chief incidents of the Iliad and Odyssey were unknown to +Sophocles, Æschylus, and the contemporary vase painters, we must also +suppose that the Greek Macpherson invented most of the situations in the +Odyssey and Iliad. According to this theory the ‘cooker’ of the extant +epics was far the greatest and most successful of all literary impostors, +for he deceived the whole world, from Plato downwards, till he was +exposed by Mr. Paley. There are times when one is inclined to believe +that Plato must have been the forger himself, as Bacon (according to the +other hypothesis) was the author of Shakespeare’s plays. Thus “Plato the +wise, and large-browed Verulam,” would be “the first of those who” forge! +Next to this prodigious imposture, no doubt, the false ‘Letters of +Phalaris’ are the most important of classical forgeries. And these +illustrate, like most literary forgeries, the extreme worthlessness of +literary taste as a criterion of the authenticity of writings. For what +man ever was more a man of taste than Sir William Temple, “the most +accomplished writer of the age,” whom Mr. Boyle never thought of without +calling to mind those happy lines of Lucretius,— + + Quem tu, dea, tempore in omni + Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus. + +Well, the ornate and excellent Temple held that “the Epistles of Phalaris +have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any +others he had ever seen, either ancient or modern.” So much for what +Bentley calls Temple’s “Nicety of Tast.” The greatest of English +scholars readily proved that Phalaris used (in the spirit of prophecy) an +idiom which did not exist to write about matters in his time not +invented, but “many centuries younger than he.” So let the Nicety of +Temple’s Tast and its absolute failure be a warning to us when we read +(if read we must) German critics who deny Homer’s claim to this or that +passage, and Plato’s right to half his accepted dialogues, on grounds of +literary taste. And farewell, as Herodotus would have said, to the +Letters of Phalaris, of Socrates, of Plato; to the Lives of Pythagoras +and of Homer, and to all the other uncounted literary forgeries of the +classical world, from the Sibylline prophecies to the battle of the frogs +and mice. + +Early Christian frauds were, naturally, pious. We have the apocryphal +Gospels, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which were not +exposed till Erasmus’s time. Perhaps the most important of pious +forgeries (if forgery be exactly the right word in this case) was that of +‘The False Decretals.’ “Of a sudden,” says Milman, speaking of the +pontificate of Nicholas I. (_ob._ 867 A.D.), “Of a sudden was +promulgated, unannounced, without preparation, not absolutely +unquestioned, but apparently over-awing at once all doubt, a new Code, +which to the former authentic documents added fifty-nine letters and +decrees of the twenty oldest Popes from Clement to Melchiades, and the +donation of Constantine, and in the third part, among the decrees of the +Popes and of the Councils from Sylvester to Gregory II., thirty-nine +false decrees, and the acts of several unauthentic Councils.” “The whole +is composed,” Milman adds, “with an air of profound piety and reverence.” +The False Decretals naturally assert the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. +“They are full and minute on Church Property” (they were sure to be +that); in fact, they remind one of another forgery, pious and Aryan, ‘The +Institutes of Vishnu.’ “Let him not levy any tax upon Brahmans,” says +the Brahman forger of the Institutes, which “came from the mouths of +Vishnu,” as he sat “clad in a yellow robe, imperturbable, decorated with +all kinds of gems, while Lakshmi was stroking his feet with her soft +palms.” The Institutes took excellent care of Brahmans and cows, as the +Decretals did of the Pope and the clergy, and the earliest Popes had +about as much hand in the Decretals as Vishnu had in his Institutes. +Hommenay, in ‘Pantagruel,’ did well to have the praise of the Decretals +sung by _filles belles_, _blondelettes_, _doulcettes_, _et de bonne +grace_. And then Hommenay drank to the Decretals and their very good +health. “O dives Décretales, tant par vous est le vin bon bon trouvé”—“O +divine Decretals, how good you make good wine taste!” “The miracle would +be greater,” said Pantagruel, “if they made bad wine taste good.” The +most that can now be done by the devout for the Decretals is “to palliate +the guilt of their forger,” whose name, like that of the Greek +Macpherson, is unknown. + +If the early Christian centuries, and the Middle Ages, were chiefly +occupied with pious frauds, with forgeries of gospels, epistles, and +Decretals, the impostors of the Renaissance were busy, as an Oxford +scholar said, when he heard of a new MS. of the Greek Testament, “with +something really important,” that is with classical imitations. After +the Turks took Constantinople, when the learned Greeks were scattered all +over Southern Europe, when many genuine classical manuscripts were +recovered by the zeal of scholars, when the plays of Menander were seen +once, and then lost for ever, it was natural that literary forgery should +thrive. As yet scholars were eager rather than critical; they were +collecting and unearthing, rather than minutely examining the remains of +classic literature. They had found so much, and every year were finding +so much more, that no discovery seemed impossible. The lost books of +Livy and Cicero, the songs of Sappho, the perished plays of Sophocles and +Æschylus might any day be brought to light. This was the very moment for +the literary forger; but it is improbable that any forgery of the period +has escaped detection. Three or four years ago some one published a book +to show that the ‘Annals of Tacitus’ were written by Poggio Bracciolini. +This paradox gained no more converts than the bolder hypothesis of +Hardouin. The theory of Hardouin was all that the ancient classics were +productions of a learned company which worked, in the thirteenth century, +under Severus Archontius. Hardouin made some exceptions to his sweeping +general theory. Cicero’s writings were genuine, he admitted, so were +Pliny’s, of Virgil the Georgics; the satires and epistles of Horace; +Herodotus, and Homer. All the rest of the classics were a magnificent +forgery of the illiterate thirteenth century, which had scarce any Greek, +and whose Latin, abundant in quantity, in quality left much to be +desired. + +Among literary forgers, or passers of false literary coin, at the time of +the Renaissance, Annius is the most notorious. Annius (his real +vernacular name was Nanni) was born at Viterbo, in 1432. He became a +Dominican, and (after publishing his forged classics) rose to the +position of Maître du Palais to the Pope, Alexander Borgia. With Cæsar +Borgia it is said that Annius was never on good terms. He persisted in +preaching “the sacred truth” to his highness and this (according to the +detractors of Annius) was the only use he made of the sacred truth. +There is a legend that Cæsar Borgia poisoned the preacher (1502), but +people usually brought that charge against Cæsar when any one in any way +connected with him happened to die. Annius wrote on the History and +Empire of the Turks, who took Constantinople in his time; but he is +better remembered by his ‘Antiquitatum Variarum Volumina XVII. cum +comment. Fr. Jo. Annii.’ These fragments of antiquity included, among +many other desirable things, the historical writings of Fabius Pictor, +the predecessor of Livy. One is surprised that Annius, when he had his +hand in, did not publish choice extracts from the ‘Libri Lintei,’ the +ancient Roman annals, written on linen and preserved in the temple of +Juno Moneta. Among the other discoveries of Annius were treatises by +Berosus, Manetho, Cato, and poems by Archilochus. Opinion has been +divided as to whether Annius was wholly a knave, or whether he was +himself imposed upon. Or, again, whether he had some genuine fragments, +and eked them out with his own inventions. It is observed that he did +not dovetail the really genuine relics of Berosus and Manetho into the +works attributed to them. This may be explained as the result of +ignorance or of cunning; there can be no certain inference. “Even the +Dominicans,” as Bayle says, admit that Annius’s discoveries are false, +though they excuse them by averring that the pious man was the dupe of +others. But a learned Lutheran has been found to defend the +‘Antiquitates’ of the Dominican. + +It is amusing to remember that the great and erudite Rabelais was taken +in by some pseudo-classical fragments. The joker of jokes was hoaxed. +He published, says Mr. Besant, “a couple of Latin forgeries, which he +proudly called ‘Ex reliquiis venerandæ antiquitatis,’ consisting of a +pretended will and a contract.” The name of the book is ‘Ex reliquiis +venerandæ antiquitatis. Lucii Cuspidii Testamentum. Item contractus +venditionis antiquis Romanorum temporibus initus. _Lugduni apud +Gryphium_ (1532).’ Pomponius Lætus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently +authors of the hoax. + +Socrates said that he “would never lift up his hand against his father +Parmenides.” The fathers of the Church have not been so respectfully +treated by literary forgers during the Renaissance. The ‘Flowers of +Theology’ of St. Bernard, which were to be a primrose path _ad gaudia +Paradisi_ (Strasburg, 1478), were really, it seems, the production of +Jean de Garlande. Athanasius, his ‘Eleven Books concerning the Trinity,’ +are attributed to Vigilius, a colonial Bishop in Northern Africa. Among +false classics were two comic Latin fragments with which Muretus beguiled +Scaliger. Meursius has suffered, posthumously, from the attribution to +him of a very disreputable volume indeed. In 1583, a book on +‘Consolations,’ by Cicero, was published at Venice, containing the +reflections with which Cicero consoled himself for the death of Tullia. +It might as well have been attributed to Mrs. Blimber, and described as +replete with the thoughts by which that lady supported herself under the +affliction of never having seen Cicero or his Tusculan villa. The real +author was Charles Sigonius, of Modena. Sigonius actually did discover +some Ciceronian fragments, and, if he was not the builder, at least he +was the restorer of Tully’s lofty theme. In 1693, François Nodot, +conceiving the world had not already enough of Petronius Arbiter, +published an edition, in which he added to the works of that lax though +accomplished author. Nodot’s story was that he had found a whole MS. of +Petronius at Belgrade, and he published it with a translation of his own +Latin into French. Still dissatisfied with the existing supply of +Petronius’ humour was Marchena, a writer of Spanish books, who printed at +Bâle a translation and edition of a new fragment. This fragment was very +cleverly inserted in a presumed _lacuna_. In spite of the ironical style +of the preface many scholars were taken in by this fragment, and their +credulity led Marchena to find a new morsel (of Catullus this time) at +Herculaneum. Eichstadt, a Jena professor, gravely announced that the +same fragment existed in a MS. in the university library, and, under +pretence of giving various readings, corrected Marchena’s faults in +prosody. Another sham Catullus, by Corradino, a Venetian, was published +in 1738. + +The most famous forgeries of the eighteenth century were those of +Macpherson, Chatterton, and Ireland. Space (fortunately) does not permit +a discussion of the Ossianic question. That fragments of Ossianic legend +(if not of Ossianic poetry) survive in oral Gaelic traditions, seems +certain. How much Macpherson knew of these, and how little he used them +in the bombastic prose which Napoleon loved (and spelled “Ocean”), it is +next to impossible to discover. The case of Chatterton is too well known +to need much more than mention. The most extraordinary poet for his +years who ever lived began with the forgery of a sham feudal pedigree for +Mr. Bergum, a pewterer. Ireland started on his career in much the same +way, unless Ireland’s ‘Confessions’ be themselves a fraud, based on what +he knew about Chatterton. Once launched in his career, Chatterton drew +endless stores of poetry from “Rowley’s MS.” and the muniment chest in +St. Mary Redcliffe’s. Jacob Bryant believed in them and wrote an +‘Apology’ for the credulous. Bryant, who believed in his own system of +mythology, might have believed in anything. When Chatterton sent his +“discoveries” to Walpole (himself somewhat of a mediæval imitator), Gray +and Mason detected the imposture, and Walpole, his feelings as an +antiquary injured took no more notice of the boy. Chatterton’s death was +due to his precocity. Had his genius come to him later, it would have +found him wiser, and better able to command the fatal demon of intellect, +for which he had to find work, like Michael Scott in the legend. + +The end of the eighteenth century, which had been puzzled or diverted by +the Chatterton and Macpherson frauds, witnessed also the great and famous +Shakespearian forgeries. We shall never know the exact truth about the +fabrication of the Shakespearian documents, and ‘Vortigern’ and the other +plays. We have, indeed, the confession of the culprit: _habemus +confitentem reum_, but Mr. W. H. Ireland was a liar and a solicitor’s +clerk, so versatile and accomplished that we cannot always trust him, +even when he is narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary +but wide and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the +disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning are (or a hundred +years ago were) worth very little as literary touchstones. A polished +and learned society, a society devoted to Shakespeare and to the stage, +was taken in by a boy of eighteen. Young Ireland not only palmed off his +sham prose documents, most makeshift imitations of the antique, but even +his ridiculous verses on the experts. James Boswell went down on his +knees and thanked Heaven for the sight of them, and, feeling thirsty +after these devotions, drank hot brandy and water. Dr. Parr was not less +readily gulled, and probably the experts, like Malone, who held aloof, +were as much influenced by jealousy as by science. The whole story of +young Ireland’s forgeries is not only too long to be told here, but forms +the topic of a novel (‘The Talk of the Town’) by Mr. James Payn. The +frauds in his hands lose neither their humour nor their complicated +interest of plot. To be brief, then, Mr. Samuel Ireland was a gentleman +extremely fond of old literature and old books. If we may trust the +‘Confessions’ (1805) of his candid son, Mr. W. H. Ireland, a more +harmless and confiding old person than Samuel never collected early +English tracts. Living in his learned society, his son, Mr. W. H. +Ireland, acquired not only a passion for black letters, but a desire to +emulate Chatterton. His first step in guilt was the forgery of an +autograph on an old pamphlet, with which he gratified Samuel Ireland. He +also wrote a sham inscription on a modern bust of Cromwell, which he +represented as an authentic antique. Finding that the critics were taken +in, and attributed this new bust to the old sculptor Simeon, Ireland +conceived a very low and not unjustifiable opinion of critical tact. +Critics would find merit in anything which seemed old enough. Ireland’s +next achievement was the forgery of some legal documents concerning +Shakespeare. Just as the bad man who deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira +forged his ‘Deuteronomy’ on the blank spaces of old synagogue rolls, so +young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent rolls. He next bought up +quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on this ancient paper he +indicted a sham confession of faith, which he attributed to Shakespeare. +Being a strong “evangelical,” young Mr. Ireland gave a very Protestant +complexion to this edifying document. And still the critics gaped and +wondered and believed. + +Ireland’s method was to write in an ink made by blending various liquids +used in the marbling of paper for bookbinding. This stuff was supplied +to him by a bookbinder’s apprentice. When people asked questions as to +whence all the new Shakespeare manuscripts came, he said they were +presented to him by a gentleman who wished to remain anonymous. Finally, +the impossibility of producing this gentleman was one of the causes of +the detection of the fraud. According to himself, Ireland performed +prodigies of acuteness. Once he had forged, at random, the name of a +contemporary of Shakespeare. He was confronted with a genuine signature, +which, of course, was quite different. He obtained leave to consult his +“anonymous gentleman,” rushed home, forged the name again on the model of +what had been shown to him, and returned with this signature as a new +gift from his benefactor. That nameless friend had informed him (he +swore) that there were two persons of the same name, and that both +signatures were genuine. Ireland’s impudence went the length of +introducing an ancestor of his own, with the same name as himself, among +the companions of Shakespeare. If ‘Vortigern’ had succeeded (and it was +actually put on the stage with all possible pomp), Ireland meant to have +produced a series of pseudo-Shakespearian plays from William the +Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth. When busy with ‘Vortigern,’ he was +detected by a friend of his own age, who pounced on him while he was at +work, as Lasus pounced on Onomacritus. The discoverer, however, +consented to “stand in” with Ireland, and did not divulge his secret. At +last, after the fiasco of ‘Vortigern,’ suspicion waxed so strong, and +disagreeable inquiries for the anonymous benefactor were so numerous, +that Ireland fled from his father’s house. He confessed all, and, +according to his own account, fell under the undying wrath of Samuel +Ireland. Any reader of Ireland’s confessions will be likely to +sympathise with old Samuel as the dupe of his son. The whole story is +told with a curious mixture of impudence and humour, and with great +plausibility. Young Ireland admits that his “desire for laughter” was +almost irresistible, when people—learned, pompous, sagacious +people—listened attentively to the papers. One feels half inclined to +forgive the rogue for the sake of his youth, his cleverness, his humour. +But the ‘Confessions’ are, not improbably, almost as apocryphal as the +original documents. They were written for the sake of money, and it is +impossible to say how far the same mercenary motive actuated Ireland in +his forgeries. Dr. Ingleby, in his ‘Shakespeare Fabrications,’ takes a +very rigid view of the conduct, not only of William, but of old Samuel +Ireland. Sam, according to Dr. Ingleby, was a partner in the whole +imposture, and the confession was only one element in the scheme of +fraud. Old Samuel was the Fagin of a band of young literary Dodgers. He +“positively trained his whole family to trade in forgery,” and as for Mr. +W. H. Ireland, he was “the most accomplished liar that ever lived,” which +is certainly a distinction in its way. The point of the joke is that, +after the whole conspiracy exploded, people were anxious to buy examples +of the forgeries. Mr. W. H. Ireland was equal to the occasion. He +actually forged his own, or (according to Dr. Ingleby) his father’s +forgeries, and, by thus increasing the supply, he deluged the market with +sham shams, with imitations of imitations. If this accusation be +correct, it is impossible not to admire the colossal impudence of Mr. W. +H. Ireland. Dr. Ingleby, in the ardour of his honest indignation, +pursues William into his private life, which, it appears, was far from +exemplary. But literary criticism should be content with a man’s works; +his domestic life is matter, as Aristotle often says, “for a separate +kind of investigation.” Old Ritson used to say that “every literary +impostor deserved hanging as much as a common thief.” W. H. Ireland’s +merits were never recognised by the law. + +How old Ritson would have punished “the old corrector,” it is “better +only guessing,” as the wicked say, according to Clough, in regard to +their own possible chastisement. The difficulty is to ascertain who the +apocryphal old corrector really was. The story of his misdeeds was +recently brought back to mind by the death, at an advanced age, of the +learned Shakespearian, Mr. J. Payne Collier. Mr. Collier was, to put it +mildly, the Shapira of the old corrector. He brought that artist’s works +before the public; but _why_? how deceived, or how influenced, it is once +more “better only guessing.” Mr. Collier first introduced to the public +notice his singular copy of a folio Shakespeare (second edition), loaded +with ancient manuscript emendations, in 1849. His account of this book +was simple and plausible. He chanced, one day, to be in the shop of Mr. +Rudd, the bookseller, in Great Newport Street, when a parcel of +second-hand volumes arrived from the country. When the parcel was +opened, the heart of the Bibliophile began to sing, for the packet +contained two old folios, one of them an old folio Shakespeare of the +second edition (1632). The volume (mark this) was “much cropped,” +greasy, and imperfect. Now the student of Mr. Hamilton’s ‘Inquiry’ into +the whole affair is already puzzled. In later days, Mr. Collier said +that his folio had previously been in the possession of a Mr. Parry. On +the other hand, Mr. Parry (then a very aged man) failed to recognise his +folio in Mr. Collier’s, for _his_ copy was “cropped,” whereas the leaves +of Mr. Collier’s example were _not_ mutilated. Here, then (‘Inquiry,’ +pp. 12, 61), we have two descriptions of the outward aspect of Mr. +Collier’s dubious treasure. In one account it is “much cropped” by the +book-binder’s cruel shears; in the other, its unmutilated condition is +contrasted with that of a copy which has been “cropped.” In any case, +Mr. Collier hoped, he says, to complete an imperfect folio he possessed, +with leaves taken from the folio newly acquired for thirty shillings. +But the volumes happened to have the same defects, and the healing +process was impossible. Mr. Collier chanced to be going into the +country, when in packing the folio he had bought of Rudd he saw it was +covered with manuscript corrections in an old hand. These he was +inclined to attribute to one Thomas Perkins, whose name was written on +the fly-leaf, and who might have been a connection of Richard Perkins, +the actor (_flor._ 1633) The notes contained many various readings, and +very numerous changes in punctuation. Some of these Mr. Collier +published in his ‘Notes and Emendations’ (1852), and in an edition of the +‘Plays.’ There was much discussion, much doubt, and the folio of the old +corrector (who was presumed to have marked the book in the theatre during +early performances) was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries. Then +Mr. Collier presented the treasure to the Duke of Devonshire, who again +lent it for examination to the British Museum. Mr. Hamilton published in +the _Times_ (July, 1859) the results of his examination of the old +corrector. It turned out that the old corrector was a modern myth. He +had first made his corrections in pencil and in a modern hand, and then +he had copied them over in ink, and in a forged ancient hand. The same +word sometimes recurred in both handwritings. The ink, which looked old, +was really no English ink at all, not even Ireland’s mixture. It seemed +to be sepia, sometimes mixed with a little Indian ink. Mr. Hamilton made +many other sad discoveries. He pointed out that Mr. Collier had +published, from a Dulwich MS., a letter of Mrs. Alleyne’s (the actor’s +wife), referring to Shakespeare as “Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe.” Now +the Dulwich MS. was mutilated and blank in the very place where this +interesting reference should have occurred. Such is a skeleton history +of the old corrector, his works and ways. It is probable that—thanks to +his assiduities—new Shakespearian documents will in future be received +with extreme scepticism; and this is all the fruit, except acres of +newspaper correspondence, which the world has derived from Mr. Collier’s +greasy and imperfect but unique “corrected folio.” + +The recency and (to a Shakespearian critic) the importance of these +forgeries obscures the humble merit of Surtees, with his ballads of the +‘Slaying of Antony Featherstonhaugh,’ and of ‘Bartram’s Dirge.’ Surtees +left clever _lacunæ_ in these songs, ‘collected from oral tradition,’ and +furnished notes so learned that they took in Sir Walter Scott. There are +moments when I half suspect “the Shirra himsel” (who blamelessly forged +so many extracts from ‘Old Plays’) of having composed ‘Kinmont Willie.’ +To compare old Scott of Satchell’s account of Kinmont Willie with the +ballad is to feel uncomfortable doubts. But this is a rank impiety. The +last ballad forgery of much note was the set of sham Macedonian epics and +popular songs (all about Alexander the Great, and other heroes) which a +schoolmaster in the Rhodope imposed on M. Verkovitch. The trick was not +badly done, and the imitation of “ballad slang” was excellent. The ‘Oera +Linda’ book, too, was successful enough to be translated into English. +With this latest effort of the tenth muse, the crafty muse of Literary +Forgery, we may leave a topic which could not be exhausted in a ponderous +volume. We have not room even for the forged letters of Shelley, to +which Mr. Browning, being taken in thereby, wrote a preface, nor for the +forged letters of Mr. Ruskin, which occasionally hoax all the newspapers. + + + + +_BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE_. + + +THE love of books for their own sake, for their paper, print, binding, +and for their associations, as distinct from the love of literature, is a +stronger and more universal passion in France than elsewhere in Europe. +In England publishers are men of business; in France they aspire to be +artists. In England people borrow what they read from the libraries, and +take what gaudy cloth-binding chance chooses to send them. In France +people buy books, and bind them to their heart’s desire with quaint and +dainty devices on the morocco covers. Books are lifelong friends in that +country; in England they are the guests of a week or of a fortnight. The +greatest French writers have been collectors of curious editions; they +have devoted whole treatises to the love of books. The literature and +history of France are full of anecdotes of the good and bad fortunes of +bibliophiles, of their bargains, discoveries, disappointments. There +lies before us at this moment a small library of books about books,—the +‘Bibliophile Français,’ in seven large volumes, ‘Les Sonnets d’un +Bibliophile,’ ‘La Bibliomanie en 1878,’ ‘La Bibliothèque d’un +Bibliophile’ (1885) and a dozen other works of Janin, Nodier, Beraldi, +Pieters, Didot, great collectors who have written for the instruction of +beginners and the pleasure of every one who takes delight in printed +paper. + +The passion for books, like other forms of desire, has its changes of +fashion. It is not always easy to justify the caprices of taste. The +presence or absence of half an inch of paper in the “uncut” margin of a +book makes a difference of value that ranges from five shillings to a +hundred pounds. Some books are run after because they are beautifully +bound; some are competed for with equal eagerness because they never have +been bound at all. The uninitiated often make absurd mistakes about +these distinctions. Some time ago the _Daily Telegraph_ reproached a +collector because his books were “uncut,” whence, argued the journalist, +it was clear that he had never read them. “Uncut,” of course, only means +that the margins have not been curtailed by the binders’ plough. It is a +point of sentiment to like books just as they left the hands of the old +printers,—of Estienne, Aldus, or Louis Elzevir. + +It is because the passion for books is a sentimental passion that people +who have not felt it always fail to understand it. Sentiment is not an +easy thing to explain. Englishmen especially find it impossible to +understand tastes and emotions that are not their own,—the wrongs of +Ireland, (till quite recently) the aspirations of Eastern Roumelia, the +demands of Greece. If we are to understand the book-hunter, we must +never forget that to him books are, in the first place, _relics_. He +likes to think that the great writers whom he admires handled just such +pages and saw such an arrangement of type as he now beholds. Molière, +for example, corrected the proofs for this edition of the ‘Précieuses +Ridicules,’ when he first discovered “what a labour it is to publish a +book, and how _green_ (_neuf_) an author is the first time they print +him.” Or it may be that Campanella turned over, with hands unstrung, and +still broken by the torture, these leaves that contain his passionate +sonnets. Here again is the copy of Theocritus from which some pretty +page may have read aloud to charm the pagan and pontifical leisure of Leo +X. This Gargantua is the counterpart of that which the martyred Dolet +printed for (or pirated from, alas!) Maître François Rabelais. This +woeful _ballade_, with the woodcut of three thieves hanging from one +gallows, came near being the “Last Dying Speech and Confession of +François Villon.” This shabby copy of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ is +precisely like that which Shelley doubled up and thrust into his pocket +when the prow of the piratical felucca crashed into the timbers of the +_Don Juan_. Some rare books have these associations, and they bring you +nearer to the authors than do the modern reprints. Bibliophiles will +tell you that it is the early _readings_ they care for,—the author’s +first fancies, and those more hurried expressions which he afterwards +corrected. These _readings_ have their literary value, especially in the +masterpieces of the great; but the sentiment after all is the main thing. + +Other books come to be relics in another way. They are the copies which +belonged to illustrious people,—to the famous collectors who make a kind +of _catena_ (a golden chain of bibliophiles) through the centuries since +printing was invented. There are Grolier (1479–1565),—not a bookbinder, +as an English newspaper supposed (probably when Mr. Sala was on his +travels),—De Thou (1553–1617), the great Colbert, the Duc de la Vallière +(1708–1780), Charles Nodier, a man of yesterday, M. Didot, and the rest, +too numerous to name. Again, there are the books of kings, like Francis +I., Henri III., and Louis XIV. These princes had their favourite +devices. Nicolas Eve, Padeloup, Derome, and other artists arrayed their +books in morocco,—tooled with skulls, cross-bones, and crucifixions for +the voluptuous pietist Henri III., with the salamander for Francis I., +and powdered with _fleurs de lys_ for the monarch who “was the State.” +There are relics also of noble beauties. The volumes of Marguerite +d’Angoulême are covered with golden daisies. The cipher of Marie +Antoinette adorns too many books that Madame du Barry might have welcomed +to her hastily improvised library. The three daughters of Louis XV. had +their favourite colours of morocco, citron, red, and olive, and their +books are valued as much as if they bore the bees of De Thou, or the +intertwined C’s of the illustrious and ridiculous Abbé Cotin, the +_Trissotin_ of the comedy. Surely in all these things there is a human +interest, and our fingers are faintly thrilled, as we touch these books, +with the far-off contact of the hands of kings and cardinals, scholars +and _coquettes_, pedants, poets, and _précieuses_, the people who are +unforgotten in the mob that inhabited dead centuries. + +So universal and ardent has the love of magnificent books been in France, +that it would be possible to write a kind of bibliomaniac history of that +country. All her rulers, kings, cardinals, and ladies have had time to +spare for collecting. Without going too far back, to the time when +Bertha span and Charlemagne was an amateur, we may give a few specimens +of an anecdotical history of French bibliolatry, beginning, as is +courteous, with a lady. “Can a woman be a bibliophile?” is a question +which was once discussed at the weekly breakfast party of Guilbert de +Pixérécourt, the famous book-lover and playwright, the “Corneille of the +Boulevards.” The controversy glided into a discussion as to “how many +books a man can love at a time;” but historical examples prove that +French women (and Italian, witness the Princess d’Este) may be +bibliophiles of the true strain. Diane de Poictiers was their +illustrious patroness. The mistress of Henri II. possessed, in the +Château d’Anet, a library of the first triumphs of typography. Her taste +was wide in range, including songs, plays, romances, divinity; her copies +of the Fathers were bound in citron morocco, stamped with her arms and +devices, and closed with clasps of silver. In the love of books, as in +everything else, Diane and Henri II. were inseparable. The interlaced H +and D are scattered over the covers of their volumes; the lily of France +is twined round the crescents of Diane, or round the quiver, the arrows, +and the bow which she adopted as her cognisance, in honour of the maiden +goddess. The books of Henri and of Diane remained in the Château d’Anet +till the death of the Princesse de Condé in 1723, when they were +dispersed. The son of the famous Madame de Guyon bought the greater part +of the library, which has since been scattered again and again. M. +Léopold Double, a well-known bibliophile, possessed several examples. +{94} + +Henry III. scarcely deserves, perhaps, the name of a book-lover, for he +probably never read the works which were bound for him in the most +elaborate way. But that great historian, Alexandre Dumas, takes a far +more friendly view of the king’s studies, and, in ‘La Dame de Monsoreau,’ +introduces us to a learned monarch. Whether he cared for the contents of +his books or not, his books are among the most singular relics of a +character which excites even morbid curiosity. No more debauched and +worthless wretch ever filled a throne; but, like the bad man in +Aristotle, Henri III. was “full of repentance.” When he was not dancing +in an unseemly revel, he was on his knees in his chapel. The board of +one of his books, of which an engraving lies before me, bears his cipher +and crown in the corners; but the centre is occupied in front with a +picture of the Annunciation, while on the back is the crucifixion and the +breeding heart through which the swords have pierced. His favourite +device was the death’s-head, with the motto _Memento Mori_, or _Spes mea +Deus_. While he was still only Duc d’Anjou, Henri loved Marie de Clèves, +Princesse de Condé. On her sudden death he expressed his grief, as he +had done his piety, by aid of the _petits fers_ of the bookbinder. +Marie’s initials were stamped on his book-covers in a chaplet of laurels. +In one corner a skull and cross-bones were figured; in the other the +motto _Mort m’est vie_; while two curly objects, which did duty for +tears, filled up the lower corners. The books of Henri III., even when +they are absolutely worthless as literature, sell for high prices; and an +inane treatise on theology, decorated with his sacred emblems, lately +brought about £120 in a London sale. + +Francis I., as a patron of all the arts, was naturally an amateur of +bindings. The fates of books were curiously illustrated by the story of +the copy of Homer, on large paper, which Aldus, the great Venetian +printer, presented to Francis I. After the death of the late Marquis of +Hastings, better known as an owner of horses than of books, his +possessions were brought to the hammer. With the instinct, the _flair_, +as the French say, of the bibliophile, M. Ambroise Firmin Didot, the +biographer of Aldus, guessed that the marquis might have owned something +in his line. He sent his agent over to England, to the country town +where the sale was to be held. M. Didot had his reward. Among the books +which were dragged out of some mouldy store-room was the very Aldine +Homer of Francis I., with part of the original binding still clinging to +the leaves. M. Didot purchased the precious relic, and sent it to what +M. Fertiault (who has written a century of sonnets on bibliomania) calls +the hospital for books. + + Le dos humide, je l’éponge; + Où manque un coin, vite une allonge, + Pour tous j’ai maison de santé. + +M. Didot, of course, did not practise this amateur surgery himself, but +had the arms and devices of Francis I. restored by one of those famous +binders who only work for dukes, millionnaires, and Rothschilds. + +During the religious wars and the troubles of the Fronde, it is probable +that few people gave much time to the collection of books. The +illustrious exceptions are Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin, who possessed +a “snuffy Davy” of his own, an indefatigable prowler among book-stalls +and dingy purlieus, in Gabriel Naudé. In 1664, Naudé, who was a learned +and ingenious writer, the apologist for “great men suspected of magic,” +published the second edition of his ‘Avis pour dresser une Bibliothèque,’ +and proved himself to be a true lover of the chase, a mighty hunter (of +books) before the Lord. Naudé’s advice to the collector is rather +amusing. He pretends not to care much for bindings, and quotes Seneca’s +rebuke of the Roman bibliomaniacs, _Quos voluminum suorum frontes maxime +placent titulique_,—who chiefly care for the backs and lettering of their +volumes. The fact is that Naudé had the wealth of Mazarin at his back, +and we know very well, from the remains of the Cardinal’s library which +exist, that he liked as well as any man to see his cardinal’s hat +glittering on red or olive morocco in the midst of the beautiful tooling +of the early seventeenth century. When once he got a book, he would not +spare to give it a worthy jacket. Naudé’s ideas about buying were +peculiar. Perhaps he sailed rather nearer the wind than even Monkbarns +would have cared to do. His favourite plan was to buy up whole libraries +in the gross, “speculative lots” as the dealers call them. In the second +place, he advised the book-lover to haunt the retreats of _Libraires +fripiers_, _et les vieux fonds et magasins_. Here he truly observes that +you may find rare books, _brochés_,—that is, unbound and uncut,—just as +Mr. Symonds bought two uncut copies of ‘Laon and Cythna’ in a Bristol +stall for a crown. “You may get things for four or five crowns that +would cost you forty or fifty elsewhere,” says Naudé. Thus a few years +ago M. Paul Lacroix bought for two francs, in a Paris shop, the very copy +of ‘Tartuffe’ which had belonged to Louis XIV. The example may now be +worth perhaps £200. But we are digressing into the pleasures of the +modern sportsman. + +It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naudé hunted, but among the +dealers in waste paper. “Thus did Poggio find Quintilian on the counter +of a wood-merchant, and Masson picked up ‘Agobardus’ at the shop of a +binder, who was going to use the MS. to patch his books withal.” Rossi, +who may have seen Naudé at work, tells us how he would enter a shop with +a yard-measure in his hand, buying books, we are sorry to say, by the +ell. “The stalls where he had passed were like the towns through which +Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their train,—_ut non +hominis unius sedulitas_, _sed calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum +tabernas pervasisse videatur_!” Naudé had sorrows of his own. In 1652 +the Parliament decreed the confiscation of the splendid library of +Mazarin, which was perhaps the first free library in Europe,—the first +that was open to all who were worthy of right of entrance. There is a +painful description of the sale, from which the book-lover will avert his +eyes. On Mazarin’s return to power he managed to collect again and +enrich his stores, which form the germ of the existing _Bibliothèque +Mazarine_. + +Among princes and popes it is pleasant to meet one man of letters, and he +the greatest of the great age, who was a bibliophile. The enemies and +rivals of Molière—De Visé, De Villiers, and the rest—are always +reproaching him—with his love of _bouquins_. There is some difference of +opinion among philologists about the derivation of _bouquin_, but all +book-hunters know the meaning of the word. The _bouquin_ is the “small, +rare volume, black with tarnished gold,” which lies among the wares of +the stall-keeper, patient in rain and dust, till the hunter comes who can +appreciate the quarry. We like to think of Molière lounging through the +narrow streets in the evening, returning, perhaps, from some noble house +where he has been reading the proscribed ‘Tartuffe,’ or giving an +imitation of the rival actors at the Hôtel Bourgogne. Absent as the +_contemplateur_ is, a dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His +lace ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient +volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library that +is known to exist,—_un ravissant petit Elzevir_, ‘De Imperio Magni +Mogolis’ (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny volume, one +of the minute series of ‘Republics’ which the Elzevirs published, the +poet has written his rare signature, “J. B. P. Molière,” with the price +the book cost him, “1 livre, 10 sols.” “Il n’est pas de bouquin qui +s’échappe de ses mains,” says the author of ‘La Guerre Comique,’ the last +of the pamphlets which flew about during the great literary quarrel about +“L’École des Femmes.” Thanks to M. Soulié the catalogue of Molière’s +library has been found, though the books themselves have passed out of +view. There are about three hundred and fifty volumes in the inventory, +but Molière’s widow may have omitted as valueless (it is the foible of +her sex) many rusty _bouquins_, now worth far more than their weight in +gold. Molière owned no fewer than two hundred and forty volumes of +French and Italian comedies. From these he took what suited him wherever +he found it. He had plenty of classics, histories, philosophic +treatises, the essays of Montaigne, a Plutarch, and a Bible. + +We know nothing, to the regret of bibliophiles, of Molière’s taste in +bindings. Did he have a comic mask stamped on the leather (that device +was chased on his plate), or did he display his cognizance and arms, the +two apes that support a shield charged with three mirrors of Truth? It +is certain—La Bruyère tells us as much—that the sillier sort of +book-lover in the seventeenth century was much the same sort of person as +his successor in our own time. “A man tells me he has a library,” says +La Bruyère (De la Mode); “I ask permission to see it. I go to visit my +friend, and he receives me in a house where, even on the stairs, the +smell of the black morocco with which his books are covered is so strong +that I nearly faint. He does his best to revive me; shouts in my ear +that the volumes ‘have gilt edges,’ that they are ‘elegantly tooled,’ +that they are ‘of the good edition,’ . . . and informs me that ‘he never +reads,’ that ‘he never sets foot in this part of his house,’ that he +‘will come to oblige me!’ I thank him for all his kindness, and have no +more desire than himself to see the tanner’s shop that he calls his +library.” + +Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile at whom +perhaps La Bruyère would have sneered. He was a collector who did not +read, but who amassed beautiful books, and looked forward, as business +men do, to the day when he would have time to study them. After Grolier, +De Thou, and Mazarin, Colbert possessed probably the richest private +library in Europe. The ambassadors of France were charged to procure him +rare books and manuscripts, and it is said that in a commercial treaty +with the Porte he inserted a clause demanding a certain quantity of +Levant morocco for the use of the royal bookbinders. England, in those +days, had no literature with which France deigned to be acquainted. Even +into England, however, valuable books had been imported; and we find +Colbert pressing the French ambassador at St. James’s to bid for him at a +certain sale of rare heretical writings. People who wanted to gain his +favour approached him with presents of books, and the city of Metz gave +him two real curiosities—the famous “Metz Bible” and the Missal of +Charles the Bald. The Elzevirs sent him their best examples, and though +Colbert probably saw more of the gilt covers of his books than of their +contents, at least he preserved and handed down many valuable works. As +much may be said for the reprobate Cardinal Dubois, who, with all his +faults, was a collector. Bossuet, on the other hand, left little or +nothing of interest except a copy of the 1682 edition of Molière, whom he +detested and condemned to “the punishment of those who laugh.” Even this +book, which has a curious interest, has slipped out of sight, and may +have ceased to exist. + + [Picture: Fac-simile of binding from the Library of Grolier] + +If Colbert and Dubois preserved books from destruction, there are +collectors enough who have been rescued from oblivion by books. The +diplomacy of D’Hoym is forgotten; the plays of Longepierre, and his +quarrels with J. B. Rousseau, are known only to the literary historian. +These great amateurs have secured an eternity of gilt edges, an +immortality of morocco. Absurd prices are given for any trash that +belonged to them, and the writer of this notice has bought for four +shillings an Elzevir classic, which when it bears the golden fleece of +Longepierre is worth about £100. Longepierre, D’Hoym, McCarthy, and the +Duc de la Vallière, with all their treasures, are less interesting to us +than Graille, Coche and Loque, the neglected daughters of Louis XV. They +found some pale consolation in their little cabinets of books, in their +various liveries of olive, citron, and red morocco. + +A lady amateur of high (book-collecting) reputation, the Comtesse de +Verrue, was represented in the Beckford sale by one of three copies of +‘L’Histoire de Mélusine,’ of Melusine, the twy-formed fairy, and +ancestress of the house of Lusignan. The Comtesse de Verrue, one of the +few women who have really understood book-collecting, {102} was born +January 18, 1670, and died November 18, 1736. She was the daughter of +Charles de Luynes and of his second wife, Anne de Rohan. When only +thirteen she married the Comte de Verrue, who somewhat injudiciously +presented her, a _fleur de quinze ans_, as Ronsard says, at the court of +Victor Amadeus of Savoy. It is thought that the countess was less cruel +than the _fleur Angevine_ of Ronsard. For some reason the young matron +fled from the court of Turin and returned to Paris, where she built a +magnificent hotel, and received the most distinguished company. +According to her biographer, the countess loved science and art _jusqu’au +délire_, and she collected the furniture of the period, without +neglecting the blue china of the glowing Orient. In ebony bookcases she +possessed about eighteen thousand volumes, bound by the greatest artists +of the day. “Without care for the present, without fear of the future, +doing good, pursuing the beautiful, protecting the arts, with a tender +heart and open hand, the countess passed through life, calm, happy, +beloved, and admired.” She left an epitaph on herself, thus rudely +translated:— + + Here lies, in sleep secure, + A dame inclined to mirth, + Who, by way of making sure, + Chose her Paradise on earth. + +During the Revolution, to like well-bound books was as much as to +proclaim one an aristocrat. Condorcet might have escaped the scaffold if +he had only thrown away the neat little Horace from the royal press, +which betrayed him for no true Republican, but an educated man. The +great libraries from the châteaux of the nobles were scattered among all +the book-stalls. True sons of freedom tore off the bindings, with their +gilded crests and scutcheons. One revolutionary writer declared, and +perhaps he was not far wrong, that the art of binding was the worst enemy +of reading. He always began his studies by breaking the backs of the +volumes he was about to attack. The art of bookbinding in these sad +years took flight to England, and was kept alive by artists robust rather +than refined, like Thompson and Roger Payne. These were evil days, when +the binder had to cut the aristocratic coat of arms out of a book cover, +and glue in a gilt cap of liberty, as in a volume in an Oxford amateur’s +collection. + +When Napoleon became Emperor, he strove in vain to make the troubled and +feverish years of his power produce a literature. He himself was one of +the most voracious readers of novels that ever lived. He was always +asking for the newest of the new, and unfortunately even the new romances +of his period were hopelessly bad. Barbier, his librarian, had orders to +send parcels of fresh fiction to his majesty wherever he might happen to +be, and great loads of novels followed Napoleon to Germany, Spain, Italy, +Russia. The conqueror was very hard to please. He read in his +travelling carriage, and after skimming a few pages would throw a volume +that bored him out of the window into the highway. He might have been +tracked by his trail of romances, as was Hop-o’-my-Thumb, in the fairy +tale, by the white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who +ministered to a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, +was at his wit’s end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of +the year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he +refused, with imperial scorn, to look at them again. He ordered a +travelling library of three thousand volumes to be made for him, but it +was proved that the task could not be accomplished in less than six +years. The expense, if only fifty copies of each example had been +printed, would have amounted to more than six million francs. A Roman +emperor would not have allowed these considerations to stand in his way; +but Napoleon, after all, was a modern. He contented himself with a +selection of books conveniently small in shape, and packed in sumptuous +cases. The classical writers of France could never content Napoleon, and +even from Moscow in 1812, he wrote to Barbier clamorous for new books, +and good ones. Long before they could have reached Moscow, Napoleon was +flying homeward before Kotousoff and Benningsen. + +Napoleon was the last of the book-lovers who governed France. The Duc +d’Aumale, a famous bibliophile, has never “come to his own,” and of M. +Gambetta it is only known that his devotional library, at least, has +found its way into the market. We have reached the era of private +book-fanciers: of Nodier, who had three libraries in his time, but never +a Virgil; and of Pixérécourt, the dramatist, who founded the Société des +Bibliophiles Français. The Romantic movement in French literature +brought in some new fashions in book-hunting. The original editions of +Ronsard, Des Portes, Belleau, and Du Bellay became invaluable; while the +writings of Gautier, Petrus Borel, and others excited the passion of +collectors. Pixérécourt was a believer in the works of the Elzevirs. On +one occasion, when he was outbid by a friend at an auction, he cried +passionately, “I shall have that book at your sale!” and, the other poor +bibliophile soon falling into a decline and dying, Pixérécourt got the +volume which he so much desired. The superstitious might have been +excused for crediting him with the gift of _jettatura_,—of the evil eye. +On Pixérécourt himself the evil eye fell at last; his theatre, the +Gaieté, was burned down in 1835, and his creditors intended to impound +his beloved books. The bibliophile hastily packed them in boxes, and +conveyed them in two cabs and under cover of night to the house of M. +Paul Lacroix. There they languished in exile till the affairs of the +manager were settled. + +Pixérécourt and Nodier, the most reckless of men, were the leaders of the +older school of bibliomaniacs. The former was not a rich man; the second +was poor, but he never hesitated in face of a price that he could not +afford. He would literally ruin himself in the accumulation of a +library, and then would recover his fortunes by selling his books. +Nodier passed through life without a Virgil, because he never succeeded +in finding the ideal Virgil of his dreams,—a clean, uncut copy of the +right Elzevir edition, with the misprint, and the two passages in red +letters. Perhaps this failure was a judgment on him for the trick by +which he beguiled a certain collector of Bibles. He _invented_ an +edition, and put the collector on the scent, which he followed vainly, +till he died of the sickness of hope deferred. + +One has more sympathy with the eccentricities of Nodier than with the +mere extravagance of the new _haute école_ of bibliomaniacs, the school +of millionnaires, royal dukes, and Rothschilds. These amateurs are +reckless of prices, and by their competition have made it almost +impossible for a poor man to buy a precious book. The dukes, the +Americans, the public libraries, snap them all up in the auctions. A +glance at M. Gustave Brunet’s little volume, ‘La Bibliomanie en 1878,’ +will prove the excesses which these people commit. The funeral oration +of Bossuet over Henriette Marie of France (1669), and Henriette Anne of +England (1670), quarto, in the original binding, are sold for £200. It +is true that this copy had possibly belonged to Bossuet himself, and +certainly to his nephew. There is an example, as we have seen, of the +1682 edition of Molière,—of Molière whom Bossuet detested,—which also +belonged to the eagle of Meaux. The manuscript notes of the divine on +the work of the poor player must be edifying, and in the interests of +science it is to be hoped that this book may soon come into the market. +While pamphlets of Bossuet are sold so dear, the first edition of +Homer—the beautiful edition of 1488, which the three young Florentine +gentlemen published—may be had for £100. Yet even that seems expensive, +when we remember that the copy in the library of George III. cost only +seven shillings. This exquisite Homer, sacred to the memory of learned +friendships, the chief offering of early printing at the altar of ancient +poetry, is really one of the most interesting books in the world. Yet +this Homer is less valued than the tiny octavo which contains the +_ballades and huitains_ of the scamp François Villon (1533). ‘The +History of the Holy Grail’ (_L’Hystoire du Sainct Gréaal_: Paris, 1523), +in a binding stamped with the four crowns of Louis XIV., is valued at +about £500. A chivalric romance of the old days, which was treasured +even in the time of the _grand monarque_, when old French literature was +so much despised, is certainly a curiosity. The Rabelais of Madame de +Pompadour (in morocco) seems comparatively cheap at £60. There is +something piquant in the idea of inheriting from that famous beauty the +work of the colossal genius of Rabelais. {107} + +The natural sympathy of collectors “to middle fortune born” is not with +the rich men whose sport in book-hunting resembles the _battue_. We side +with the poor hunters of the wild game, who hang over the fourpenny +stalls on the _quais_, and dive into the dusty boxes after literary +pearls. These devoted men rise betimes, and hurry to the stalls before +the common tide of passengers goes by. Early morning is the best moment +in this, as in other sports. At half past seven, in summer, the +_bouquiniste_, the dealer in cheap volumes at second-hand, arrays the +books which he purchased over night, the stray possessions of ruined +families, the outcasts of libraries. The old-fashioned bookseller knew +little of the value of his wares; it was his object to turn a small +certain profit on his expenditure. It is reckoned that an energetic, +business-like old bookseller will turn over 150,000 volumes in a year. +In this vast number there must be pickings for the humble collector who +cannot afford to encounter the children of Israel at Sotheby’s or at the +Hôtel Drouot. + +Let the enthusiast, in conclusion, throw a handful of lilies on the grave +of the martyr of the love of books,—the poet Albert Glatigny. Poor +Glatigny was the son of a _garde champêtre_; his education was +accidental, and his poetic taste and skill extraordinarily fine and +delicate. In his life of starvation (he had often to sleep in omnibuses +and railway stations), he frequently spent the price of a dinner on a new +book. He lived to read and to dream, and if he bought books he had not +the wherewithal to live. Still, he bought them,—and he died! His own +poems were beautifully printed by Lemerre, and it may be a joy to him +(_si mentem mortalia tangunt_) that they are now so highly valued that +the price of a copy would have kept the author alive and happy for a +month. + + [Picture: Binding with the arms of Madame de Pompadour] + + + + +_OLD FRENCH TITLE-PAGES_. + + +NOTHING can be plainer, as a rule, than a modern English title-page. Its +only beauty (if beauty it possesses) consists in the arrangement and +‘massing’ of lines of type in various sizes. We have returned almost to +the primitive simplicity of the oldest printed books, which had no +title-pages, properly speaking, at all, or merely gave, with extreme +brevity, the name of the work, without printer’s mark, or date, or place. +These were reserved for the colophon, if it was thought desirable to +mention them at all. Thus, in the black-letter example of Guido de +Columna’s ‘History of Troy,’ written about 1283, and printed at Strasburg +in 1489, the title-page is blank, except for the words, + + Hystoria Troiana Guidonis, + +standing alone at the top of the leaf. The colophon contains all the +rest of the information, ‘happily completed in the City of Strasburg, in +the year of Grace Mcccclxxxix, about the Feast of St. Urban.’ The +printer and publisher give no name at all. + +This early simplicity is succeeded, in French books, from, say, 1510, and +afterwards, by the insertion either of the printer’s trademark, or, in +black-letter books, of a rough woodcut, illustrative of the nature of the +volume. The woodcuts have occasionally a rude kind of grace, with a +touch of the classical taste of the early Renaissance surviving in +extreme decay. + +An excellent example is the title-page of ‘Les Demandes d’amours, avec +les responses joyeuses,’ published by Jacques Moderne, at Lyon, 1540. +There is a certain Pagan breadth and joyousness in the figure of Amor, +and the man in the hood resembles traditional portraits of Dante. + + [Picture: Les demandes tamours auec les refpôfesioyeufes. Demáde + refponfe] + +There is more humour, and a good deal of skill, in the title-page of a +book on late marriages and their discomforts, ‘Les dictz et complainctes +de trop Tard marié’ (Jacques Moderne, Lyon, 1540), where we see the +elderly and comfortable couple sitting gravely under their own fig-tree. + + [Picture: Les dictz et complainctes] + +Jacques Moderne was a printer curious in these quaint devices, and used +them in most of his books: for example, in ‘How Satan and the God Bacchus +accuse the Publicans that spoil the wine,’ Bacchus and Satan (exactly +like each other, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson will not be surprised to hear) are +encouraging dishonest tavern-keepers to stew in their own juice in a +caldron over a huge fire. From the same popular publisher came a little +tract on various modes of sport, if the name of sport can be applied to +the netting of fish and birds. The work is styled ‘Livret nouveau auquel +sont contenuz xxv receptes de prendre poissons et oiseaulx avec les +mains.’ A countryman clad in a goat’s skin with the head and horns drawn +over his head as a hood, is dragging ashore a net full of fishes. There +is no more characteristic frontispiece of this black-letter sort than the +woodcut representing a gallows with three men hanging on it, which +illustrates Villon’s ‘Ballade des Pendus,’ and is reproduced in Mr. John +Payne’s ‘Poems of Master Francis Villon of Paris’ (London, 1878). {119a} + +Earlier in date than these vignettes of Jacques Moderne, but much more +artistic and refined in design, are some frontispieces of small octavos +printed _en lettres rondes_, about 1530. In these rubricated letters are +used with brilliant effect. One of the best is the title-page of Galliot +du Pré’s edition of ‘Le Rommant de la Rose’ (Paris, 1529). {119b} +Galliot du Pré’s artist, however, surpassed even the charming device of +the Lover plucking the Rose, in his title-page, of the same date, for the +small octavo edition of Alain Chartier’s poems, which we reproduce here. + +[Picture: Les Oevvres feu maiftre Alain chartier en fon viuant Secretaire + du feu roy Charles les feptiefme du non...] + +The arrangement of letters, and the use of red, make a charming frame, as +it were, to the drawing of the mediæval ship, with the Motto VOGUE LA +GALEE. + +Title-pages like these, with designs appropriate to the character of the +text, were superseded presently by the fashion of badges, devices, and +mottoes. As courtiers and ladies had their private badges, not +hereditary, like crests, but personal—the crescent of Diane, the +salamander of Francis I., the skulls and cross-bones of Henri III., the +_marguerites_ of Marguerite, with mottoes like the _Le Banny de liesse_, +_Le traverseur des voies périlleuses_, _Tout par Soulas_, and the like, +so printers and authors had their emblems, and their private literary +slogans. These they changed, accordinging to fancy, or the vicissitudes +of their lives. Clément Marot’s motto was _La Mort n’y Mord_. It is +indicated by the letters L. M. N. M. in the curious title of an edition +of Marot’s works published at Lyons by Jean de Tournes in 1579. The +portrait represents the poet when the tide of years had borne him far +from his youth, far from _L’Adolescence Clémentine_. + + [Picture: Le Pastissier François, MDCLV, title page] + + [Picture: Le Pastissier Francois, 1655, showing a kitchen scene] + +The unfortunate Etienne Dolet, perhaps the only publisher who was ever +burned, used an ominous device, a trunk of a tree, with the axe struck +into it. In publishing ‘Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, +très illustre Royne de Navarre,’ Jean de Tournes employed a pretty +allegorical device. Love, with the bandage thrust back from his eyes, +and with the bow and arrows in his hand, has flown up to the sun, which +he seems to touch; like Prometheus in the myth when he stole the fire, a +shower of flowers and flames falls around him. Groueleau, of Paris, had +for motto _Nul ne s’y frotte_, with the thistle for badge. These are +beautifully combined in the title-page of his version of Apuleius, +‘L’Amour de Cupido et de Psyche’ (Paris, 1557). There is probably no +better date for frontispieces, both for ingenuity of device and for +elegance of arrangement of title, than the years between 1530 and 1560. +By 1562, when the first edition of the famous Fifth Book of Rabelais was +published, the printers appear to have thought devices wasted on popular +books, and the title of the Master’s posthumous chapters is printed quite +simply. + + [Picture: Gargantva] + +In 1532–35 there was a more adventurous taste—witness the title of +‘Gargantua.’ This beautiful title decorates the first known edition, +with a date of the First Book of Rabelais. It was sold, most +appropriately, _devant nostre Dame de Confort_. Why should so glorious a +relic of the Master have been carried out of England, at the Sunderland +sale? All the early titles of François Juste’s Lyons editions of +Rabelais are on this model. By 1542 he dropped the framework of +architectural design. By 1565 Richard Breton, in Paris, was printing +Rabelais with a frontispiece of a classical dame holding a heart to the +sun, a figure which is almost in the taste of Stothard, or Flaxman. + +The taste for vignettes, engraved on copper, not on wood, was revived +under the Elzevirs. Their pretty little title-pages are not so well +known but that we offer examples. In the essay on the Elzevirs in this +volume will be found a copy of the vignette of the ‘Imitatio Christi,’ +and of ‘Le Pastissier François’ a reproduction is given here (pp. 114, +115). The artists they employed had plenty of fancy, not backed by very +profound skill in design. + +In the same _genre_ as the big-wigged classicism of the Elzevir +vignettes, in an age when Louis XIV. and Molière (in tragedy) wore laurel +wreaths over vast perruques, are the early frontispieces of Molière’s own +collected works. Probably the most interesting of all French title-pages +are those drawn by Chauveau for the two volumes ‘Les Oeuvres de M. de +Molière,’ published in 1666 by Guillaume de Luynes. The first shows +Molière in two characters, as Mascarille, and as Sganarelle, in ‘Le Cocu +Imaginaire.’ Contrast the full-blown jollity of the _fourbum imperator_, +in his hat, and feather, and wig, and vast _canons_, and tremendous +shoe-tie, with the lean melancholy of jealous Sganarelle. These are two +notable aspects of the genius of the great comedian. The apes below are +the supporters of his scutcheon. + +The second volume shows the Muse of Comedy crowning Mlle. de Molière +(Armande Béjart) in the dress of Agnès, while her husband is in the +costume, apparently, of Tartuffe, or of Sganarelle in ‘L’Ecole des +Femmes.’ ‘Tartuffe’ had not yet been licensed for a public stage. The +interest of the portraits and costumes makes these title-pages precious, +they are historical documents rather than mere curiosities. + +These title-pages of Molière are the highwater mark of French taste in +this branch of decoration. In the old quarto first editions of +Corneille’s early plays, such as ‘Le Cid’ (Paris 1637), the printers used +lax and sprawling combinations of flowers and fruit. These, a little +better executed, were the staple of Ribou, de Luynes, Quinet, and the +other Parisian booksellers who, one after another, failed to satisfy +Molière as publishers. + + [Picture: Les Oeuvres de Mr Moliere] + +The basket of fruits on the title-page of ‘Iphigénie,’ par M. Racine +(Barbin, Paris, 1675), is almost, but not quite, identical with the +similar ornament of De Visé’s ‘La Cocue Imaginaire’ (Ribou, Paris 1662). +Many of Molière’s plays appearing first, separately, in small octavo, +were adorned with frontispieces, illustrative of some scene in the +comedy. Thus, in the ‘Misanthrope’ (Rihou 1667) we see Alceste, green +ribbons and all, discoursing with Philinte, or perhaps listening to the +famous sonnet of Oronte; it is not easy to be quite certain, but the +expression of Alceste’s face looks rather as if he were being baited with +a sonnet. From the close of the seventeenth century onwards, the taste +for title-pages declined, except when Moreau or Gravelot drew vignettes +on copper, with abundance of cupids and nymphs. These were designed for +very luxurious and expensive books; for others, men contented themselves +with a bald simplicity, which has prevailed till our own time. In recent +years the employment of publishers’ devices has been less unusual and +more agreeable. Thus Poulet Malassis had his _armes parlantes_, a +chicken very uncomfortably perched on a rail. In England we have the +cipher and bees of Messrs. Macmillan, the Trees of Life and Knowledge of +Messrs. Kegan Paul and Trench, the Ship, which was the sign of Messrs. +Longman’s early place of business, and doubtless other symbols, all +capable of being quaintly treated in a title-page. + + + + +_A BOOKMAN’S PURGATORY_. + + +THOMAS BLINTON was a book-hunter. He had always been a book-hunter, ever +since, at an extremely early age, he had awakened to the errors of his +ways as a collector of stamps and monograms. In book-hunting he saw no +harm; nay, he would contrast its joys, in a rather pharisaical style, +with the pleasures of shooting and fishing. He constantly declined to +believe that the devil came for that renowned amateur of black letter, G. +Steevens. Dibdin himself, who tells the story (with obvious anxiety and +alarm), pretends to refuse credit to the ghastly narrative. “His +language,” says Dibdin, in his account of the book-hunter’s end, “was, +too frequently, the language of imprecation.” This is rather good, as if +Dibdin thought a gentleman might swear pretty often, but not “_too_ +frequently.” “Although I am not disposed to admit,” Dibdin goes on, “the +_whole_ of the testimony of the good woman who watched by Steevens’s +bedside, although my prejudices (as they may be called) will not allow me +to believe that the windows shook, and that strange noises and deep +groans were heard at midnight in his room, yet no creature of common +sense (and this woman possessed the quality in an eminent degree) could +mistake oaths for prayers;” and so forth. In short, Dibdin clearly holds +that the windows did shake “without a blast,” like the banners in +Branxholme Hall when somebody came for the Goblin Page. + +But Thomas Blinton would hear of none of these things. He said that his +taste made him take exercise; that he walked from the City to West +Kensington every day, to beat the covers of the book-stalls, while other +men travelled in the expensive cab or the unwholesome Metropolitan +Railway. We are all apt to hold favourable views of our own amusements, +and, for my own part, I believe that trout and salmon are incapable of +feeling pain. But the flimsiness of Blinton’s theories must be apparent +to every unbiassed moralist. His “harmless taste” really involved most +of the deadly sins, or at all events a fair working majority of them. He +coveted his neighbours’ books. When he got the chance he bought books in +a cheap market and sold them in a dear market, thereby degrading +literature to the level of trade. He took advantage of the ignorance of +uneducated persons who kept book-stalls. He was envious, and grudged the +good fortune of others, while he rejoiced in their failures. He turned a +deaf ear to the appeals of poverty. He was luxurious, and laid out more +money than he should have done on his selfish pleasures, often adorning a +volume with a morocco binding when Mrs. Blinton sighed in vain for some +old _point d’Alençon_ lace. Greedy, proud, envious, stingy, extravagant, +and sharp in his dealings, Blinton was guilty of most of the sins which +the Church recognises as “deadly.” + +On the very day before that of which the affecting history is now to be +told, Blinton had been running the usual round of crime. He had (as far +as intentions went) defrauded a bookseller in Holywell Street by +purchasing from him, for the sum of two shillings, what he took to be a +very rare Elzevir. It is true that when he got home and consulted +‘Willems,’ he found that he had got hold of the wrong copy, in which the +figures denoting the numbers of pages are printed right, and which is +therefore worth exactly “nuppence” to the collector. But the intention +is the thing, and Blinton’s intention was distinctly fraudulent. When he +discovered his error, then “his language,” as Dibdin says, “was that of +imprecation.” Worse (if possible) than this, Blinton had gone to a sale, +begun to bid for ‘Les Essais de Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne’ (Foppens, +MDCLIX.), and, carried away by excitement, had “plunged” to the extent of +£15, which was precisely the amount of money he owed his plumber and +gasfitter, a worthy man with a large family. Then, meeting a friend (if +the book-hunter has friends), or rather an accomplice in lawless +enterprise, Blinton had remarked the glee on the other’s face. The poor +man had purchased a little old Olaus Magnus, with woodcuts, representing +were-wolves, fire-drakes, and other fearful wild-fowl, and was happy in +his bargain. But Blinton, with fiendish joy, pointed out to him that the +index was imperfect, and left him sorrowing. + +Deeds more foul have yet to be told. Thomas Blinton had discovered a new +sin, so to speak, in the collecting way. Aristophanes says of one of his +favourite blackguards, “Not only is he a villain, but he has invented an +original villainy.” Blinton was like this. He maintained that every man +who came to notoriety had, at some period, published a volume of poems +which he had afterwards repented of and withdrawn. It was Blinton’s +hideous pleasure to collect stray copies of these unhappy volumes, these +‘Péchés de Jeunesse,’ which, always and invariably, bear a gushing +inscription from the author to a friend. He had all Lord John Manners’s +poems, and even Mr. Ruskin’s. He had the ‘Ode to Despair’ of Smith (now +a comic writer), and the ‘Love Lyrics’ of Brown, who is now a permanent +under-secretary, than which nothing can be less gay nor more permanent. +He had the amatory songs which a dignitary of the Church published and +withdrew from circulation. Blinton was wont to say he expected to come +across ‘Triolets of a Tribune,’ by Mr. John Bright, and ‘Original Hymns +for Infant Minds,’ by Mr. Henry Labouchere, if he only hunted long +enough. + +On the day of which I speak he had secured a volume of love-poems which +the author had done his best to destroy, and he had gone to his club and +read all the funniest passages aloud to friends of the author, who was on +the club committee. Ah, was this a kind action? In short, Blinton had +filled up the cup of his iniquities, and nobody will be surprised to hear +that he met the appropriate punishment of his offence. Blinton had +passed, on the whole, a happy day, notwithstanding the error about the +Elzevir. He dined well at his club, went home, slept well, and started +next morning for his office in the City, walking, as usual, and intending +to pursue the pleasures of the chase at all the book-stalls. At the very +first, in the Brompton Road, he saw a man turning over the rubbish in the +cheap box. Blinton stared at him, fancied he knew him, thought he +didn’t, and then became a prey to the glittering eye of the other. The +Stranger, who wore the conventional cloak and slouched soft hat of +Strangers, was apparently an accomplished mesmerist, or thought-reader, +or adept, or esoteric Buddhist. He resembled Mr. Isaacs, Zanoni (in the +novel of that name), Mendoza (in ‘Codlingsby’), the soul-less man in ‘A +Strange Story,’ Mr. Home, Mr. Irving Bishop, a Buddhist adept in the +astral body, and most other mysterious characters of history and fiction. +Before his Awful Will, Blinton’s mere modern obstinacy shrank back like a +child abashed. The Stranger glided to him and whispered, “Buy these.” + +“These” were a complete set of Auerbach’s novels, in English, which, I +need not say, Blinton would never have dreamt of purchasing had he been +left to his own devices. + +“Buy these!” repeated the Adept, or whatever he was, in a cruel whisper. +Paying the sum demanded, and trailing his vast load of German romance, +poor Blinton followed the fiend. + +They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, Glatigny’s ‘Jour de l’An +d’un Vagabond’ was exposed. + +“Look,” said Blinton, “there is a book I have wanted some time. +Glatignys are getting rather scarce, and it is an amusing trifle.” + +“Nay, buy _that_,” said the implacable Stranger, pointing with a hooked +forefinger at Alison’s ‘History of Europe’ in an indefinite number of +volumes. Blinton shuddered. + +“What, buy _that_, and why? In heaven’s name, what could I do with it?” + +“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, “and _that_” (indicating the ‘Ilios’ +of Dr. Schliemann, a bulky work), “and _these_” (pointing to all Mr. +Theodore Alois Buckley’s translations of the Classics), “and _these_” +(glancing at the collected writings of the late Mr. Hain Friswell, and at +a ‘Life,’ in more than one volume, of Mr. Gladstone). + +The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along carrying the bargains under +his arm. Now one book fell out, now another dropped by the way. +Sometimes a portion of Alison came ponderously to earth; sometimes the +‘Gentle Life’ sunk resignedly to the ground. The Adept kept picking them +up again, and packing them under the arms of the weary Blinton. + +The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and tried to +enter into conversation with his tormentor. + +“He _does_ know about books,” thought Blinton, “and he must have a weak +spot somewhere.” + +So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational style. He +talked of bindings, of Maioli, of Grolier, of De Thou, of Derome, of +Clovis Eve, of Roger Payne, of Trautz, and eke of Bauzonnet. He +discoursed of first editions, of black letter, and even of illustrations +and vignettes. He approached the topic of Bibles, but here his tyrant, +with a fierce yet timid glance, interrupted him. + +“Buy those!” he hissed through his teeth. + +“Those” were the complete publications of the Folk Lore Society. + +Blinton did not care for folk lore (very bad men never do), but he had to +act as he was told. + +Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire the ‘Ethics’ of +Aristotle, in the agreeable versions of Williams and Chase. Next he +secured ‘Strathmore,’ ‘Chandos,’ ‘Under Two Flags,’ and ‘Two Little +Wooden Shoes,’ and several dozens more of Ouida’s novels. The next stall +was entirely filled with school-books, old geographies, Livys, +Delectuses, Arnold’s ‘Greek Exercises,’ Ollendorffs, and what not. + +“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and piled them +on Blinton’s head. + +He tied up Ouida’s novels, in two parcels, with string, and fastened each +to one of the buttons above the tails of Blinton’s coat. + +“You are tired?” asked the tormentor. “Never mind, these books will soon +be off your hands.” + +So speaking, the Stranger, with amazing speed, hurried Blinton back +through Holywell Street, along the Strand, and up to Piccadilly, stopping +at last at the door of Blinton’s famous and very expensive binder. + +The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of Blinton’s +treasures. Then the miserable Blinton found himself, as it were +automatically and without any exercise of his will, speaking thus:— + +“Here are some things I have picked up,—extremely rare,—and you will +oblige me by binding them in your best manner, regardless of expense. +Morocco, of course; crushed levant morocco, _doublé_, every book of them, +_petits fers_, my crest and coat of arms, plenty of gilding. Spare no +cost. Don’t keep me waiting, as you generally do;” for indeed +book-binders are the most dilatory of the human species. + +Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary questions, +Blinton’s tormentor had hurried that amateur out of the room. + +“Come on to the sale,” he cried. + +“What sale?” said Blinton. + +“Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky day.” + +“But I have forgotten my catalogue.” + +“Where is it?” + +“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of the ebony +book-case at home.” + +The stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated itself till +the hand disappeared from view round the corner. In a moment the hand +returned with the catalogue. The pair sped on to Messrs. Sotheby’s +auction-rooms in Wellington Street. Every one knows the appearance of a +great book-sale. The long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles +from a little distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort +of excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct himself. +If he bids in his own person some bookseller will outbid him, partly +because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows little about books, and +suspects that the amateur may, in this case, know more. Besides, +professionals always dislike amateurs, and, in this game, they have a +very great advantage. Blinton knew all this, and was in the habit of +giving his commissions to a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally) +as if a demon had entered into him. ‘Tirante il Bianco Valorosissimo +Cavaliere’ was being competed for, an excessively rare romance of +chivalry, in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari’s library. +The book is one of the rarest of the Venetian Press, and beautifully +adorned with Canevari’s device,—a simple and elegant affair in gold and +colours. “Apollo is driving his chariot across the green waves towards +the rock, on which winged Pegasus is pawing the ground,” though why this +action of a horse should be called “pawing” (the animal notoriously not +possessing paws) it is hard to say. Round this graceful design is the +inscription ΟΡΘΩΣ ΚΑΙ ΜΗ ΑΟΞΙΩΣ (straight not crooked). In his ordinary +mood Blinton could only have admired ‘Tirante il Bianco’ from a distance. +But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into the lists, and +challenged the great Mr. —, the Napoleon of bookselling. The price had +already reached five hundred pounds. + +“Six hundred,” cried Blinton. + +“Guineas,” said the great Mr. —. + +“Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton. + +“Guineas,” replied the other. + +This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. — struck his flag, with +a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said “Six thousand.” The cheers of +the audience rewarded the largest bid ever made for any book. As if he +had not done enough, the Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with +Mr. — for every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally +fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the brain, +when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless wealth, and is +determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for the last time. Blinton +owed some fifty thousand pounds, and exclaimed audibly, as the influence +of the fiend died out, “I am a ruined man.” + +“Then your books must be sold,” cried the Stranger, and, leaping on a +chair, he addressed the audience:— + +“Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton’s sale, which will immediately +take place. The collection contains some very remarkable early English +poets, many first editions of the French classics, most of the rarer +Aldines, and a singular assortment of Americana.” + +In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room were filled with +Blinton’s books, all tied up in big lots of some thirty volumes each. +His early Molières were fastened to old French dictionaries and +school-books. His Shakespeare quartos were in the same lot with tattered +railway novels. His copy (almost unique) of Richard Barnfield’s much too +‘Affectionate Shepheard’ was coupled with odd volumes of ‘Chips from a +German Workshop’ and a cheap, imperfect example of ‘Tom Brown’s +School-Days.’ Hookes’s ‘Amanda’ was at the bottom of a lot of American +devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus and the +Aldine ‘Hypnerotomachia.’ The auctioneer put up lot after lot, and +Blinton plainly saw that the whole affair was a “knock-out.” His most +treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an +awful thing to be present at one’s own sale. No man would bid above a +few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the +plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last his +‘Adonais,’ uncut, bound by Lortic, went, in company with some old +‘Bradshaws,’ the ‘Court Guide’ of 1881, and an odd volume of the ‘Sunday +at Home,’ for sixpence. The Stranger smiled a smile of peculiar +malignity. Blinton leaped up to protest; the room seemed to shake around +him, but words would not come to his lips. + +Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp shook his +shoulder,— + +“Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying!” + +He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep after dinner, and +Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him from his awful vision. +Beside him lay ‘L’Enfer du Bibliophile, vu et décrit par Charles +Asselineau.’ (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX.) + + * * * * * + +If this were an ordinary tract, I should have to tell how Blinton’s eyes +were opened, how he gave up book-collecting, and took to gardening, or +politics, or something of that sort. But truth compels me to admit that +Blinton’s repentance had vanished by the end of the week, when he was +discovered marking M. Claudin’s catalogue, surreptitiously, before +breakfast. Thus, indeed, end all our remorses. “Lancelot falls to his +own love again,” as in the romance. Much, and justly, as theologians +decry a death-bed repentance, it is, perhaps, the only repentance that we +do not repent of. All others leave us ready, when occasion comes, to +fall to our old love again; and may that love never be worse than the +taste for old books! Once a collector, always a collector. _Moi qui +parle_, I have sinned, and struggled, and fallen. I have thrown +catalogues, unopened, into the waste-paper basket. I have withheld my +feet from the paths that lead to Sotheby’s and to Puttick’s. I have +crossed the street to avoid a book-stall. In fact, like the prophet +Nicholas, “I have been known to be steady for weeks at a time.” And then +the fatal moment of temptation has arrived, and I have succumbed to the +soft seductions of Eisen, or Cochin, or an old book on Angling. Probably +Grolier was thinking of such weaknesses when he chose his devices +_Tanquam Ventus_, and _quisque suos patimur Manes_. Like the wind we are +blown about, and, like the people in the Æneid, we are obliged to suffer +the consequences of our own extravagance. + + + + +_BALLADE OF THE UNATTAINABLE_. + + + THE Books I cannot hope to buy, + Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel, + They pass before the dreaming eye, + Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal. + A kind of literary reel + They dance; how fair the bindings shine! + Prose cannot tell them what I feel,— + The Books that never can be mine! + + There frisk Editions rare and shy, + Morocco clad from head to heel; + Shakspearian quartos; Comedy + As first she flashed from Richard Steele; + And quaint De Foe on Mrs. Veal; + And, lord of landing net and line, + Old Izaak with his fishing creel,— + The Books that never can be mine! + + Incunables! for you I sigh, + Black letter, at thy founts I kneel, + Old tales of Perrault’s nursery, + For you I’d go without a meal! + For Books wherein did Aldus deal + And rare Galliot du Pré I pine. + The watches of the night reveal + The Books that never can be mine! + + ENVOY. + + Prince, bear a hopeless Bard’s appeal; + Reverse the rules of Mine and Thine; + Make it legitimate to steal + The Books that never can be mine! + + + + +_LADY BOOK-LOVERS_. + + +THE biographer of Mrs. Aphra Behn refutes the vulgar error that “a +Dutchman cannot love.” Whether or not a lady can love books is a +question that may not be so readily settled. Mr. Ernest Quentin Bauchart +has contributed to the discussion of this problem by publishing a +bibliography, in two quarto volumes, of books which have been in the +libraries of famous beauties of old, queens and princesses of France. +There can be no doubt that these ladies were possessors of exquisite +printed books and manuscripts wonderfully bound, but it remains uncertain +whether the owners, as a rule, were bibliophiles; whether their hearts +were with their treasures. Incredible as it may seem to us now, +literature was highly respected in the past, and was even fashionable. +Poets were in favour at court, and Fashion decided that the great must +possess books, and not only books, but books produced in the utmost +perfection of art, and bound with all the skill at the disposal of Clovis +Eve, and Padeloup, and Duseuil. Therefore, as Fashion gave her commands, +we cannot hastily affirm that the ladies who obeyed were really +book-lovers. In our more polite age, Fashion has decreed that ladies +shall smoke, and bet, and romp, but it would be premature to assert that +all ladies who do their duty in these matters are born romps, or have an +unaffected liking for cigarettes. History, however, maintains that many +of the renowned dames whose books are now the most treasured of literary +relics were actually inclined to study as well as to pleasure, like +Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de Verrue, and even Madame de +Pompadour. Probably books and arts were more to this lady’s liking than +the diversions by which she beguiled the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a +time she would rather have been quiet with her plays and novels than +engaged in conscientiously conducted but distasteful revels. + +Like a true Frenchman, M. Bauchart has only written about French lady +book-lovers, or about women who, like Mary Stuart, were more than half +French. Nor would it be easy for an English author to name, outside the +ranks of crowned heads, like Elizabeth, any Englishwomen of distinction +who had a passion for the material side of literature, for binding, and +first editions, and large paper, and engravings in early “states.” The +practical sex, when studious, is like the same sex when fond of +equestrian exercise. “A lady says, ‘My heyes, he’s an ’orse, and he must +go,’” according to Leech’s groom. In the same way, a studious girl or +matron says, “This is a book,” and reads it, if read she does, without +caring about the date, or the state, or the publisher’s name, or even +very often about the author’s. I remember, before the publication of a +novel now celebrated, seeing a privately printed vellum-bound copy on +large paper in the hands of a literary lady. She was holding it over the +fire, and had already made the vellum covers curl wide open like the +shells of an afflicted oyster. + +When I asked what the volume was, she explained that “It is a book which +a poor man has written, and he’s had it printed to see whether some one +won’t be kind enough to publish it.” I ventured, perhaps pedantically, +to point out that the poor man could not be so very poor, or he would not +have made so costly an experiment on Dutch paper. But the lady said she +did not know how that might be, and she went on toasting the experiment. +In all this there is a fine contempt for everything but the spiritual +aspect of literature; there is an aversion to the mere coquetry and +display of morocco and red letters, and the toys which amuse the minds of +men. Where ladies have caught “the Bibliomania,” I fancy they have taken +this pretty fever from the other sex. But it must be owned that the +books they have possessed, being rarer and more romantic, are even more +highly prized by amateurs than examples from the libraries of Grolier, +and Longepierre, and D’Hoym. M. Bauchart’s book is a complete guide to +the collector of these expensive relics. He begins his dream of fair +women who have owned books with the pearl of the Valois, Marguerite +d’Angoulême, the sister of Francis I. The remains of her library are +chiefly devotional manuscripts. Indeed, it is to be noted that all these +ladies, however frivolous, possessed the most devout and pious books, and +whole collections of prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with +miniatures. Marguerite’s library was bound in morocco, stamped with a +crowned M in _interlacs_ sown with daisies, or, at least, with +conventional flowers which may have been meant for daisies. If one could +choose, perhaps the most desirable of the specimens extant is ‘Le Premier +Livre du Prince des Poètes, Homère,’ in Salel’s translation. For this +translation Ronsard writes a prologue, addressed to the _manes_ of Salel, +in which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry. He draws a +characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium, among the learned +lovers: + + qui parmi les fleurs devisent + Au giron de leur dame. + +Marguerite’s manuscript copy of the First Book of the Iliad is a small +quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and the crowned M. It is in +the Duc d’Aumale’s collection at Chantilly. The books of Diane de +Poitiers are more numerous and more famous. When first a widow she +stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb, and the motto, +“Sola vivit in illo.” But when she consoled herself with Henri II. she +suppressed the tomb, and made the motto meaningless. Her crescent shone +not only on her books, but on the palace walls of France, in the Louvre, +Fontainebleau, and Anet, and her initial D. is inextricably interlaced +with the H. of her royal lover. Indeed, Henri added the D to his own +cypher, and this must have been so embarrassing for his wife Catherine, +that people have good-naturedly tried to read the curves of the D’s as +C’s. The D’s, and the crescents, and the bows of his Diana are impressed +even on the covers of Henri’s Book of Hours. Catherine’s own cypher is a +double C enlaced with an H, or double K’s (Katherine) combined in the +same manner. These, unlike the D.H., are surmounted with a crown—the one +advantage which the wife possessed over the favourite. Among Diane’s +books are various treatises on medicines and on surgery, and plenty of +poetry and Italian novels. Among the books exhibited at the British +Museum in glass cases is Diane’s copy of Bembo’s ‘History of Venice.’ An +American collector, Mr. Barlow, of New York, is happy enough to possess +her ‘Singularitez de la France Antarctique’ (Antwerp, 1558). + +Catherine de Medicis got splendid books on the same terms as foreign +pirates procure English novels—she stole them. The Marshal Strozzi, +dying in the French service, left a noble collection, on which Catherine +laid her hands. Brantôme says that Strozzi’s son often expressed to him +a candid opinion about this transaction. What with her own collection +and what with the Marshal’s, Catherine possessed about four thousand +volumes. On her death they were in peril of being seized by her +creditors, but her almoner carried them to his own house, and De Thou had +them placed in the royal library. Unluckily it was thought wiser to +strip the books of the coats with Catherine’s compromising device, lest +her creditors should single them out, and take them away in their +pockets. Hence, books with her arms and cypher are exceedingly rare. At +the sale of the collections of the Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of +Catherine’s was sold for £2,400. + +Mary Stuart of Scotland was one of the lady book-lovers whose taste was +more than a mere following of the fashion. Some of her books, like one +of Marie Antoinette’s, were the companions of her captivity, and still +bear the sad complaints which she entrusted to these last friends of +fallen royalty. Her note-book, in which she wrote her Latin prose +exercises when a girl, still survives, bound in red morocco, with the +arms of France. In a Book of Hours, now the property of the Czar, may be +partly deciphered the quatrains which she composed in her sorrowful +years, but many of them are mutilated by the binder’s shears. The Queen +used the volume as a kind of album: it contains the signatures of the +“Countess of Schrewsbury” (as M. Bauchart has it), of Walsingham, of the +Earl of Sussex, and of Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham. There is also +the signature, “Your most infortunat, ARBELLA SEYMOUR;” and “Fr. Bacon.” + +This remarkable manuscript was purchased in Paris, during the Revolution, +by Peter Dubrowsky, who carried it to Russia. Another Book of Hours of +the Queen’s bears this inscription, in a sixteenth-century hand: “Ce sont +les Heures de Marie Setuart Renne. Marguerite de Blacuod de Rosay.” In +De Blacuod it is not very easy to recognise “Blackwood.” Marguerite was +probably the daughter of Adam Blackwood, who wrote a volume on Mary +Stuart’s sufferings (Edinburgh, 1587). + +The famous Marguerite de Valois, the wife of Henri IV., had certainly a +noble library, and many beautifully bound books stamped with daisies are +attributed to her collections. They bear the motto, “Expectata non +eludet,” which appears to refer, first to the daisy (“Margarita”), which +is punctual in the spring, or rather is “the constellated flower that +never sets,” and next, to the lady, who will “keep tryst.” But is the +lady Marguerite de Valois? Though the books have been sold at very high +prices as relics of the leman of La Mole, it seems impossible to +demonstrate that they were ever on her shelves, that they were bound by +Clovis Eve from her own design. “No mention is made of them in any +contemporary document, and the judicious are reduced to conjectures.” +Yet they form a most important collection, systematically bound, science +and philosophy in citron morocco, the poets in green, and history and +theology in red. In any case it is absurd to explain “Expectata non +eludet” as a reference to the lily of the royal arms, which appears on +the centre of the daisy-pied volumes. The motto, in that case, would +run, “Expectata (lilia) non eludent.” As it stands, the feminine +adjective, “expectata,” in the singular, must apply either to the lady +who owned the volumes, or to the “Margarita,” her emblem, or to both. +Yet the ungrammatical rendering is that which M. Bauchart suggests. Many +of the books, Marguerite’s or not, were sold at prices over £100 in +London, in 1884 and 1883. The Macrobius, and Theocritus, and Homer are +in the Cracherode collection at the British Museum. The daisy crowned +Ronsard went for £430 at the Beckford sale. These prices will probably +never be reached again. + +If Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., was a bibliophile, she may +be suspected of acting on the motive, “Love me, love my books.” About +her affection for Cardinal Mazarin there seems to be no doubt: the +Cardinal had a famous library, and his royal friend probably imitated his +tastes. In her time, and on her volumes, the originality and taste of +the skilled binder, Le Gascon, begin to declare themselves. The +fashionable passion for lace, to which La Fontaine made such sacrifices, +affected the art of book decorations, and Le Gascon’s beautiful patterns +of gold points and dots are copies of the productions of Venice. The +Queen-Mother’s books include many devotional treatises, for, whatever +other fashions might come and go, piety was always constant before the +Revolution. Anne of Austria seems to have been particularly fond of the +lives and works of Saint Theresa, and Saint François de Sales, and John +of the Cross. But she was not unread in the old French poets, such as +Coquillart; she condescended to Ariosto; she had that dubious character, +Théophile de Viaud, beautifully bound; she owned the Rabelais of 1553; +and, what is particularly interesting, M. de Lignerolles possesses her +copy of ‘L’Eschole des Femmes, Comédie par J. B. P. Molière. Paris: +Guillaume de Luynes, 1663.’ In 12°, red morocco, gilt edges, and the +Queen’s arms on the covers. This relic is especially valuable when we +remember that ‘L’Ecole des Femmes’ and Arnolphe’s sermon to Agnès, and +his comic threats of future punishment first made envy take the form of +religious persecution. The devout Queen-Mother was often appealed to by +the enemies of Molière, yet Anne of Austria had not only seen his comedy, +but possessed this beautiful example of the first edition. M. Paul +Lacroix supposes that this copy was offered to the Queen-Mother by +Molière himself. The frontispiece (Arnolphe preaching to Agnès) is +thought to be a portrait of Molière, but in the reproduction in M. Louis +Lacour’s edition it is not easy to see any resemblance. Apparently Anne +did not share the views, even in her later years, of the converted Prince +de Conty, for several comedies and novels remain stamped with her arms +and device. + +The learned Marquise de Rambouillet, the parent of all the ‘Précieuses,’ +must have owned a good library, but nothing is chronicled save her +celebrated book of prayers and meditations, written out and decorated by +Jarry. It is bound in red morocco, _doublé_ with green, and covered with +V’s in gold. The Marquise composed the prayers for her own use, and +Jarry was so much struck with their beauty that he asked leave to +introduce them into the Book of Hours which he had to copy, “for the +prayers are often so silly,” said he, “that I am ashamed to write them +out.” + +Here is an example of the devotions which Jarry admired, a prayer to +Saint Louis. It was published in ‘Miscellanies Bibliographiques’ by M. +Prosper Blanchemain. + + PRIÈRE À SAINT-LOUIS, + ROY DE FRANCE. + + Grand Roy, bien que votre couronne ayt esté des plus esclatantes de + la Terre, celle que vous portez dans le ciel est incomparablement + plus précieuse. L’une estoit perissable l’autre est immortelle et + ces lys dont la blancheur se pouvoit ternir, sont maintenant + incorruptibles. Vostre obeissance envers vostre mère; vostre justice + envers vos sujets; et vos guerres contre les infideles, vous ont + acquis la veneration de tous les peuples; et la France doit à vos + travaux et à vostre piété l’inestimable tresor de la sanglante et + glorieuse couronne du Sauveur du monde. Priez-le incomparable Saint + qu’il donne une paix perpetuëlle au Royaume dont vous avez porté le + sceptre; qu’il le préserve d’hérésie; qu’il y face toûjours regner + saintement vostre illustre Sang; et que tous ceux qui ont l’honneur + d’en descendre soient pour jamais fidèles à son Eglise. + +The daughter of the Marquise, the fair Julie, heroine of that “long +courting” by M. de Montausier, survives in those records as the possessor +of ‘La Guirlande de Julie,’ the manuscript book of poems by eminent +hands. But this manuscript seems to have been all the library of Julie; +therein she could constantly read of her own perfections. To be sure she +had also ‘L’Histoire de Gustave Adolphe,’ a hero for whom, like Major +Dugald Dalgetty, she cherished a supreme devotion. In the ‘Guirlande’ +Chapelain’s verses turn on the pleasing fancy that the Protestant Lion of +the North, changed into a flower (like Paul Limayrac in M. Banville’s +ode), requests Julie to take pity on his altered estate: + + Sois pitoyable à ma langueur; + Et si je n’ay place en ton cœur + Que je l’aye au moins sur ta teste. + +These verses were reckoned consummate. + +The ‘Guirlande’ is still, with happier fate than attends most books, in +the hands of the successors of the Duc and Duchesse de Montausier. + +Like Julie, Madame de Maintenon was a _précieuse_, but she never had time +to form a regular library. Her books, however, were bound by Duseuil, a +binder immortal in the verse of Pope; or it might be more correct to say +that Madame de Maintenon’s own books are seldom distinguishable from +those of her favourite foundation, St. Cyr. The most interesting is a +copy of the first edition of ‘Esther,’ in quarto (1689), bound in red +morocco, and bearing, in Racine’s hand, “_A Madame la Marquise de +Maintenon_, _offert avec respect_,—_RACINE_.” + +Doubtless Racine had the book bound before he presented it. “People are +discontented,” writes his son Louis, “if you offer them a book in a +simple marbled paper cover.” I could wish that this worthy custom were +restored, for the sake of the art of binding, and also because amateur +poets would be more chary of their presentation copies. It is, no doubt, +wise to turn these gifts with their sides against the inner walls of +bookcases, to be bulwarks against the damp, but the trouble of +acknowledging worthless presents from strangers is considerable. {145} + +Another interesting example of Madame de Maintenon’s collections is +Dacier’s ‘Remarques Critiques sur les Œuvres d’Horace,’ bearing the arms +of Louis XIV., but with his wife’s signature on the fly-leaf (1681). + +Of Madame de Montespan, ousted from the royal favour by Madame de +Maintenon, who “married into the family where she had been governess,” +there survives one bookish relic of interest. This is ‘Œuvres Diverses +par un auteur de sept ans,’ in quarto, red morocco, printed on vellum, +and with the arms of the mother of the little Duc du Maine (1678). When +Madame de Maintenon was still playing mother to the children of the king +and of Madame de Montespan, she printed those “works” of her eldest +pupil. + +These ladies were only bibliophiles by accident, and were devoted, in the +first place, to pleasure, piety, or ambition. With the Comtesse de +Verrue, whose epitaph will be found on an earlier page, we come to a +genuine and even fanatical collector. Madame de Verrue (1670–1736) got +every kind of diversion out of life, and when she ceased to be young and +fair, she turned to the joys of “shopping.” In early years, “pleine de +cœur, elle le donna sans comptes.” In later life, she purchased, or +obtained on credit, everything that caught her fancy, also _sans +comptes_. “My aunt,” says the Duc de Luynes, “was always buying, and +never baulked her fancy.” Pictures, books, coins, jewels, engravings, +gems (over 8,000), tapestries, and furniture were all alike precious to +Madame de Verrue. Her snuff-boxes defied computation; she had them in +gold, in tortoise-shell, in porcelain, in lacquer, and in jasper, and she +enjoyed the delicate fragrance of sixty different sorts of snuff. +Without applauding the smoking of cigarettes in drawing-rooms, we may +admit that it is less repulsive than steady applications to tobacco in +Madame de Verrue’s favourite manner. + +The Countess had a noble library, for old tastes survived in her +commodious heart, and new tastes she anticipated. She possessed ‘The +Romance of the Rose,’ and ‘Villon,’ in editions of Galliot du Pré +(1529–1533) undeterred by the satire of Boileau. She had examples of the +‘Pleïade,’ though they were not again admired in France till 1830. She +was also in the most modern fashion of to-day, for she had the beautiful +quarto of La Fontaine’s ‘Contes,’ and Bouchier’s illustrated Molière +(large paper). And, what I envy her more, she had Perrault’s ‘Fairy +Tales,’ in blue morocco—the blue rose of the folklorist who is also a +book-hunter. It must also be confessed that Madame de Verrue had a large +number of books such as are usually kept under lock and key, books which +her heirs did not care to expose at the sale of her library. Once I +myself (_moi chétif_) owned a novel in blue morocco, which had been in +the collection of Madame de Verrue. In her old age this exemplary woman +invented a peculiarly comfortable arm-chair, which, like her novels, was +covered with citron and violet morocco; the nails were of silver. If +Madame de Verrue has met the Baroness Bernstein, their conversation in +the Elysian Fields must be of the most gallant and interesting +description. + +Another literary lady of pleasure, Madame de Pompadour, can only be +spoken of with modified approval. Her great fault was that she did not +check the decadence of taste and sense in the art of bookbinding. In her +time came in the habit of binding books (if binding it can be called) +with flat backs, without the nerves and sinews that are of the very +essence of book-covers. Without these no binding can be permanent, none +can secure the lasting existence of a volume. It is very deeply to be +deplored that by far the most accomplished living English artist in +bookbinding has reverted to this old and most dangerous heresy. The most +original and graceful tooling is of much less real value than permanence, +and a book bound with a flat back, without _nerfs_, might practically as +well not be bound at all. The practice was the herald of the French and +may open the way for the English Revolution. Of what avail were the +ingenious mosaics of Derome to stem the tide of change, when the books +whose sides they adorned were not really _bound_ at all? Madame de +Pompadour’s books were of all sorts, from the inevitable works of +devotions to devotions of another sort, and the ‘Hours’ of Erycina +Ridens. One of her treasures had singular fortunes, a copy of ‘Daphnis +and Chloe,’ with the Regent’s illustrations, and those of Cochin and +Eisen (Paris, quarto, 1757, red morocco). The covers are adorned with +billing and cooing doves, with the arrows of Eros, with burning hearts, +and sheep and shepherds. Eighteen years ago this volume was bought for +10 francs in a village in Hungary. A bookseller gave £8 for it in Paris. +M. Bauchart paid for it £150; and as it has left his shelves, probably he +too made no bad bargain. Madame de Pompadour’s ‘Apology for Herodotus’ +(La Haye, 1735) has also its legend. It belonged to M. Paillet, who +coveted a glorified copy of the ‘Pastissier François,’ in M. Bauchart’s +collection. M Paillet swopped it, with a number of others, for the +‘Pastissier:’ + + J’avais ‘L’Apologie + Pour Hérodote,’ en reliûre ancienne, amour + De livre provenant de chez la Pompadour + Il me le soutira! {148} + +Of Marie Antoinette, with whom our lady book-lovers of the old _régime_ +must close, there survive many books. She had a library in the +Tuileries, as well as at le petit Trianon. Of all her great and varied +collections, none is now so valued as her little book of prayers, which +was her consolation in the worst of all her evil days, in the Temple and +the Conciergerie. The book is ‘Office de la Divine Providence’ (Paris, +1757, green morocco). On the fly-leaf the Queen wrote, some hours before +her death, these touching lines: “Ce 16 Octobre, à 4 h. ½ du matin. Mon +Dieu! ayez pitié de moi! Mes yeux n’ont plus de larmes pour prier pour +vous, mes pauvres enfants. Adieu, adieu!—MARIE ANTOINETTE.” + +There can be no sadder relic of a greater sorrow, and the last +consolation of the Queen did not escape the French popular genius for +cruelty and insult. The arms on the covers of the prayer-book have been +cut out by some fanatic of Equality and Fraternity. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{12} See illustrations, pp. 114, 115. + +{19} “Slate” is a professional term for a severe criticism. Clearly the +word is originally “slat,” a narrow board of wood, with which a person +might be beaten. + +{66} _Histoire des Intrigues Amoureuses de Molière_, _et de celles de sa +femme_. (_A la Sphère_.) A Francfort, chez Frédéric Arnaud, MDCXCVII. +This anonymous tract has actually been attributed to Racine. The copy +referred to is marked with a large N in red, with an eagle’s head. + +{67a} _The Lady of the Lake_, 1810. + + _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 1806. + + “To Mrs. Robert Laidlaw, Peel. From the Author.” + +{67b} _Dictys Cretensis_. Apud Lambertum Roulland. Lut. Paris., 1680. +In red morocco, with the arms of Colbert. + +{67c} _L. Annæi Senecæ Opera Omnia_. Lug. Bat., apud Elzevirios. 1649. +With book-plate of the Duke of Sussex. + +{67d} _Stratonis Epigrammata_. Altenburgi, 1764. Straton bound up in +one volume with Epictetus! From the Beckford library. + +{67e} _Opera Helii Eobani Hessi_. Yellow morocco, with the first arms +of De Thou. Includes a poem addressed “LANGE, _decus meum_.” Quantity +of penultimate “Eobanus” taken for granted, _metri gratiâ_. + +{68a} _La Journée du Chrétien_. Coutances, 1831. With inscription, +“Léon Gambetta. Rue St. Honoré. Janvier 1, 1848.” + +{68b} _Villoison’s Homer_. Venice, 1788. With Tessier’s ticket and +Schlegel’s book-plate. + +{68c} _Les Essais de Michel_, _Seigneur de Montaigne_. “Pour François +le Febvre de Lyon, 1695.” With autograph of Gul. Drummond, and cipresso +e palma. + +{68d} “The little old foxed Molière,” once the property of William Pott, +unknown to fame. + +{73} That there ever were such editors is much disputed. The story may +be a fiction of the age of the Ptolemies. + +{74} Or, more easily, in Maury’s _Religions de la Grèce_. + +{94} See Essay on ‘Lady Book-Lovers.’ + +{102} See Essay on ‘Lady Book-Lovers.’ + +{107} For a specimen of Madame Pompadour’s binding see overleaf. She +had another Rabelais in calf, lately to be seen in a shop in Pall Mall. + +{119a} Mr. Payne does not give the date of the edition from which he +copies the cut. Apparently it is of the fifteenth century. + +{119b} Reproduced in _The Library_, p. 94. + +{145} Country papers, please copy. Poets at a distance will kindly +accept this intimation. + +{148} Bibliothèque d’un Bibliophile. Lille, 1885. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN*** + + +******* This file should be named 1961-0.txt or 1961-0.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. 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