The Book-Hunter
neglected his person as to increase its natural defects. His greatest
mental defect was an almost entire want of imagination. From this cause
the characters of those nearest and dearest to him remained to his
life's end a sealed book.
He was fond of talking, and still fonder of writing, about character;
but even his liveliest pictures, such as that of De Quincey the
opium-eater, are but a collection of external habits or peculiarities,
not necessarily bearing at all on the real nature--the inner man. His
was the sort of mind which more naturally classifies than
individualises, in this agreeing with the late Mr Buckle, who
appreciated Dr Burton's historical labours, and was in his turn
appreciated by him. To both, individual character seemed a small subject
not worth study.
The characters of women, especially, were by Dr Burton all placed in the
same category. He conceived of them all as baby-worshippers,
flower-lovers, &c.--all alike.
Dr Burton was excessively kind-hearted within the limits placed by this
great want. To any sorrow or suffering which he could understand he
craved with characteristic impatience to carry immediate relief; and the
greatest enjoyment of his life, especially of its later years, was to
give pleasure to children, poor people, or the lower animals. Many
humble folks will remember the bunches of flowers he thrust silently
into their hands, and the refreshment he never failed to press on their
acceptance in his own peculiar manner.
He was liberal of money to a fault. He never refused any application
even from a street beggar. He quite allowed that these ought not to be
encouraged, but he urged that the municipality ought to take charge of
them, and prevent their appealing to the compassion of the public, who
could not, as he said, be expected to perform the disagreeable task of
disciplining vagrants at the wages of a penny a case. No printer's devil
or other chance messenger failed to receive his sixpence or shilling,
besides a comfortable meal. It was his constant custom to ask his sons
if any of their wants were unsupplied, if they required money for
furnishing their workshop or laboratory, or for any of their studies or
amusements. It is but just to them to add that the question was almost
always answered in the negative.
Many of the "motley crew" along with whom Dr Burton received his
education fell into difficulties in the course of their lives. An
application from one of them always met with a prompt response. To send
double the amount asked on such occasions was his rule, if money was the
object desired. In his earlier life he would also spare no trouble in
endeavouring to help these unfortunates to help themselves. As he grew
old he was less zealous, probably from being less sanguine of success,
in this service.
On Saturday the 13th of August the mortal remains of John Hill Burton
were laid beside those of his infant child in the lovely little
churchyard of Dalmeny. It had been at first intended that he should be
buried in the Dean Cemetery, where his mother and his first wife were
interred, and where his valued friend William Brodie[22] had erected a
beautiful monument over their graves; but after orders had been given to
this effect, his wife became strongly possessed by the wish to carry out
his repeatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.
[Footnote 22: Since deceased--October 30, 1881--and also buried there.]
KATHARINE BURTON.
MORTON, _20th September 1881_.
THE BOOK-HUNTER.
_PART I.--HIS NATURE._
Introductory.
Of the Title under which the contents of the following pages are ranged
I have no better justification to offer than that it appeared to suit
their discursive tenor. If they laid any claim to a scientific
character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established
department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear
under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities
conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not
only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but
am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to
have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections
and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek
an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead
language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common
talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are
scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you
are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits;
and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not
naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster sauce.
Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much
abused. The very reverence it is held in--the strong disinclination on
the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under
the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who
does it--makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of
fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and
handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student
once into palaeozoology, and he takes your other hard names--your
ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron--for
granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or
devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is
categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be
described as _sun_categorematic, one may take up a very absolute
positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.
Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit,
has sought this all-powerful protection, and called itself Archaeology.
An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and
the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect
stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the
faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the
people who placed it there, seems as it were to be rescued from the
heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the
community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If it be
large and shapeless, it may take rank as an amorphous megalith; and it
is on record that the owner of some muirland acres, finding them
described in a learned work as "richly megalithic," became suddenly
excited by hopes which were quickly extinguished when the import of the
term was fully explained to him. Should there be any remains of
sculpture on such a stone, it becomes a lithoglyph or a hieroglyph; and
if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the
adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of
title of honour, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if
any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and
destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.
The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of
Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or
other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used
frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly
adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists
ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of
Greek designations lately reached its climax, in an attempt to save
thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.
It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify the class of men to
whom the following sketches are devoted by an appropriate scientific
title, a difficulty would start up at the very beginning. As the reader
will perhaps see, from the tenor of my discourse, I would find it
difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad--to
speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should
characterise them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic.
On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and continue to stick to
the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all the more assurance that it has
been tolerated, and even liked, by readers of the kind I am most
ambitious of pleasing.[23]
[Footnote 23: To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at
a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets
of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions,
as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux
Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avises of Jean Joseph Rive:--
"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and
colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses
whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book."--"A bibliographe is a
describer of books and other literary arrangements."--"A bibliomane is
an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys,
cock-brained and purse-heavy."--"A bibliophile, the lover of books, is
the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own
pleasure."--"A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock,
or framing them in glass-cases."
The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high
admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his
supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe,
explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that
the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive,
is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer
of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a
classifier of books; and bibliopee, "_l'art d'ecrire ou de composer des
livres_," or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author. Of
the dignity with which this writer can invest the objects of his
nomenclature, take the following specimen from his description of the
bibliographe:--
"Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and nothing
more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it.
"Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all sciences, it
would appear that all subjects should come under the consideration of
the bibliographe; languages, logic, criticism, philosophy, eloquence,
mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are no strangers to him;
the history of printing and of celebrated printers is familiar to him,
as well as all the operations of the typographic art. He is continually
occupied with the works of the ancients and the moderns; he makes it his
business to know books useful, rare, and curious, not only by their
titles and form, but by their contents; he spends his life in analysing,
classifying, and describing them. He seeks out those which are
recommended by talented authors; he runs through libraries and cabinets
to increase the sum of his knowledge; he studies authors who have
treated of the science of books, he points out their errors; he chooses
from among new productions those which bear the stamp of genius, and
which will live in men's memories; he ransacks periodicals to keep
himself well up to the discoveries of his age, and compare them with
those of ages past; he is greedy of all works which treat of libraries,
particularly catalogues, when they are well constructed and well
arranged, and their price adds to their value. Such is the genuine
_Bibliographe_." This reminds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly