The Book-Hunter
with his hands, and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, "feckless"
character with impatient disgust. When the first of The Seasons--Winter
it was, I believe--had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a
presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scepticism, and to
propitiate his good opinion he had the book handsomely bound. The old
man never looked inside, or asked what the book was about, but, turning
it round and round with his fingers in gratified admiration,
exclaimed--"Come, is that really our Jamie's doin' now?--weel, I never
thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the like!"
The feeling by which this worthy man was influenced was a mere sensible
practical respect for good workmanship. The aspirations of the
collectors, however, in this matter, go out of the boundaries of the
sphere of the utilitarian into that of the aesthetic. Their priests and
prophets, by the way, do not seem to be aware how far back this
veneration for the coverings of books may be traced, or to know how
strongly their votaries have been influenced in the direction of their
taste by the traditions of the middle ages. The binding of a book was,
of old, a shrine on which the finest workmanship in bullion and the
costliest gems were lavished. The psalter or the breviary of some early
saint, a portion of the Scriptures, or some other volume held sacred,
would be thus enshrined. It has happened sometimes that tattered
fragments of them have been preserved as effective relics within outer
shells or shrines; and in some instances, long after the books
themselves have disappeared, specimens of these old bindings have
remained to us beautiful in their decay;--but we are getting far beyond
the Inchrule.
Your affluent omnivorous collector, who has more of that kind of
business on hand than he can perform for himself, naturally brings about
him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his
importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated
degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant
of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in
the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They
are dealers who have just two things to look to--the price of their
merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of the unfortunates who
employ them. Not that they are destitute of all sympathy with the malady
which they feed. The caterer generally gets infected in a superficial
cutaneous sort of way. He has often a collection himself, which he eyes
complacently of an evening as he smokes his pipe over his
brandy-and-water, but to which he is not so distractedly devoted but
that a pecuniary consideration will tempt him to dismember it. It
generally consists, indeed, of blunders or false speculations--books
which have been obtained in a mistaken reliance on their suiting the
craving of some wealthy collector. Caterers unable to comprehend the
subtle influences at work in the mind of the book-hunter, often make
miscalculations in this way. Fitzpatrick Smart punished them so
terribly, that they at last abandoned him in despair to his own devices.
Several men of this class were under the authority of the Inchrule, and
their communings were instructive. "Thorpe's catalogue just arrived,
sir--several highly important announcements," says a portly person with
a fat volume under his arm, hustling forward with an air of assured
consequence. There is now to be a deep and solemn consultation, as when
two ambassadors are going over a heavy protocol from a third. It
happened to me to see one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless
errand of inspection to a reputed collection; he was hot and indignant
"A _collection_," he sputtered forth--"that a _collection_!--mere
rubbish, sir--irredeemable trash. What do you think, sir?--a set of the
common quarto edition of the Delphini classics, copies of Newton's works
and Bacon's works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth--nothing
better, I declare to you: and to call _that_ a collection!" Whereas, had
it contained The Pardoner and the Frere, Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, A
Knacke to knowe a Knave, Banke's Bay Horse in a Trance, or the works of
those eminent dramatists, Nabbes, May, Glapthorne, or Chettle, then
would the collection have been worthy of distinguished notice. On
another occasion, the conversation turning on a name of some repute, the
remark is ventured, that he is "said to know something about books,"
which brings forth the fatal answer--"_He_ know about books!
Nothing--nothing at all, I assure you; unless, perhaps, about their
insides."
The next slide of the lantern is to represent a quite peculiar and
abnormal case. It introduces a strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and
puerile figure, wherein, however, resided one of the most potent and
original spirits that ever frequented a tenement of clay. He shall be
called, on account of associations that may or may not be found out,
Thomas Papaverius. But how to make palpable to the ordinary human being
one so signally divested of all the material and common characteristics
of his race, yet so nobly endowed with its rarer and loftier attributes,
almost paralyses the pen at the very beginning.
In what mood and shape shall he be brought forward? Shall it be as first
we met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false
pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and
anarchical opinions regarding the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks
of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet
will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by
exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on when a
commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other stray animal had
forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the
arrival--he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can
it be? a street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's
duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned
tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-coloured
belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list-shoes, covered with snow, for
it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers--some one suggests that
they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that
Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them.
What can be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in the
world--it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest at hand. Had
chance thrown to him a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's
apron, a kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his entry.
The first impression that a boy has appeared vanishes instantly. Though
in one of the sweetest and most genial of his essays he shows how every
man retains so much in him of the child he originally was--and he
himself retained a great deal of that primitive simplicity--it was
buried within the depths of his heart--not visible externally. On the
contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous reference to an
event as being a century old, by saying that he recollected its
occurrence, one felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in
his age, so old did he appear, with his arched brow loaded with thought,
and the countless little wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering
thickly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. These lips are
speedily opened by some casual remark, and presently the flood of talk
passes forth from them, free, clear, and continuous--never rising into
declamation--never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all
consisting of sentences as exquisitely jointed together as if they were
destined to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. Still the
hours stride over each other, and still flows on the stream of gentle
rhetoric, as if it were _labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum_. It
is now far in to the night, and slight hints and suggestions are
propagated about separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas
on the progress of civilisation, the effect of habit on men in all ages,
and the power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to
the special, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours; for,
was it not the other night that, coming to what was, or what he believed
to be, his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but the old woman within
either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and,
having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme
unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might indeed nourish
kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to which it
was appropriated, but was not a comfortable place of repose for adult
man.
Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore,
he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing
on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should
get a penny and go home--a proposal which he subjected to some
philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he
had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had
eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting
articulate utterance from him. Though his costume was muddy, however,
and his communications about the material wants of life very hazy, the
ideas which he had stored up during his wandering poured themselves
forth as clear and sparkling, both in logic and language, as the purest
fountain that springs from a Highland rock.
How that wearied, worn, little body was to be refreshed was a difficult
problem: soft food disagreed with him--the hard he could not eat.
Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent
to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that
there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the
house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense. If the wine-glasses
of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was
no risk--and so the weary is at rest for a time.
At early morn a triumphant cry of _Eureka_! calls me to his place of
rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a
considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims
his attention--my best bound quarto--is spread upon a piece of bedroom
furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him pore over
it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of attire to
separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according to the
popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered a
very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very
important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from
the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it
occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch
paintings of the temptation of St Anthony.
Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant country-house, where the
enlivening talk has make a guest forget
"The lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,"
that lie between him and his place of rest. He must be instructed in his
course, but the instruction reveals more difficulties than it removes,
and there is much doubt and discussion, which Papaverius at once clears
up as effectually as he had ever dispersed a cloud of logical sophisms;
and this time the feat is performed by a stroke of the thoroughly
practical, which looks like inspiration--he will accompany the forlorn
traveller, and lead him through the difficulties of the way--for have