The Book-Hunter
Peace be with his gentle and kindly spirit, now for some time separated
from its grotesque and humble tenement of clay. It is both right and
pleasant to say that the characteristics here spoken of were not those
of his latter days. In these he was tended by affectionate hands; and I
have always thought it a wonderful instance of the power of domestic
care and management that, through the ministrations of a devoted
offspring, this strange being was so cared for, that those who came in
contact with him then, and then only, might have admired him as the
patriarchal head of an agreeable and elegant household.
Let us now, for the sake of variety, summon up a spirit of another
order--Magnus Lucullus, Esq. of Grand Priory. He is a man with a
presence--tall, and a little portly, with a handsome pleasant
countenance looking hospitality and kindliness towards friends, and a
quiet but not easily solvable reserve towards the rest of the world. He
has no literary pretensions, but you will not talk long with him without
finding that he is a scholar, and a ripe and good one. He is complete
and magnificent in all his belongings, only, as no man's qualities and
characteristics are of perfectly uniform balance and parallel action,
his library is the sphere in which his disposition for the complete and
the magnificent has most profusely developed itself.
As you enter its Gothic door a sort of indistinct slightly musky
perfume, like that said to frequent Oriental bazaars, hovers around.
Everything is of perfect finish--the mahogany-railed gallery--the tiny
ladders--the broad-winged lecterns, with leathern cushions on the edges
to keep the wood from grazing the rich bindings--the books themselves,
each shelf uniform with its facings or rather backings, like
well-dressed lines at a review. Their owner does not profess to indulge
much in quaint monstrosities, though many a book of rarity is there. In
the first place, he must have the best and most complete editions,
whether common or rare; and, in the second place, they must be in
perfect condition. All the classics are there--one complete set of
Valpy's in good russia, and many separate copies of each, valuable for
text or annotation. The copies of Bayle, Moreri, the Trevoux Dictionary,
Stephens's Lexicon, Du Cange, Mabillon's Antiquities, the Benedictine
historians, the Bollandists' Lives of the Saints, Graevius and Gronovius,
and heavy books of that order, are in their old original morocco,
without a scratch or abrasure, gilt-edged, vellum-jointed, with their
backs blazing in tooled gold. Your own dingy well-thumbed Bayle or
Moreri possibly cost you two or three pounds; his cost forty or fifty.
Further, in these affluent shelves may be found those great costly works
which cross the border of "three figures," and of which only one or two
of the public libraries can boast, such as the Celebri Famiglie Italiane
of Litta, Denon's Egypt, the great French work on the arts of the middle
ages, and the like; and many is the scholar who, unable to gratify his
cravings elsewhere, has owed it to Lucullus that he has seen something
he was in search after in one of these great books, and has been able to
put it to public use.
Throughout the establishment there is an appearance of care and order,
but not of restraint. Some inordinately richly-bound volumes have
special grooves or niches for themselves lined with soft cloth, as if
they had delicate lungs, and must be kept from catching cold. But even
these are not guarded from the hand of the guest. Lucullus says his
books are at the service of his friends; and, as a hint in the same
direction, he recommends to your notice a few volumes from the
collection of the celebrated Grollier, the most princely and liberal of
collectors, on whose classic book-stamp you find the genial motto,
"_Joannis Grollierii et amicorum._" Having conferred on you the freedom
of his library, he will not concern himself by observing how you use it.
He would as soon watch you after dinner to note whether you eschew
common sherry and show an expensive partiality for that madeira at
twelve pounds a-dozen, which other men would probably only place on the
table when it could be well invested in company worthy of the sacrifice.
Who shall penetrate the human heart, and say whether a hidden pang or
gust of wrath has vibrated behind that placid countenance, if you have
been seen to drop an ink-spot on the creamy margin of the Mentelin
Virgil, or to tumble that heavy Aquinas from the ladder and dislocate
his joints? As all the world now knows, however, men assimilate to the
conditions by which they are surrounded, and we civilise our city
savages by substituting cleanness and purity for the putrescence which
naturally accumulates in great cities. So, in a noble library, the
visitor is enchained to reverence and courtesy by the genius of the
place. You cannot toss about its treasures as you would your own rough
calfs and obdurate hogskins; as soon would you be tempted to pull out
your meerschaum and punk-box in a cathedral. It is hard to say, but I
would fain believe that even Papaverius himself might have felt some
sympathetic touch from the spotless perfection around him and the noble
reliance of the owner; and that he might perhaps have restrained himself
from tearing out the most petted rarities, as a wolf would tear a fat
lamb from the fold.
Such, then, are some "cases" discussed in a sort of clinical lecture. It
will be seen that they have differing symptoms--some mild and genial,
others ferocious and dangerous. Before passing to another and the last
case, I propose to say a word or two on some of the minor specialties
which characterise the pursuit in its less amiable or dignified form. It
is, for instance, liable to be accompanied by an affection, known also
to the agricultural world as affecting the wheat crop, and called "the
smut." Fortunately this is less prevalent among us than the French, who
have a name for the class of books affected by this school of collectors
in the _Bibliotheque bleue_. There is a sad story connected with this
peculiar frailty. A great and high-minded scholar of the seventeenth
century had a savage trick played on him by some mad wags, who collected
a quantity of the brutalities of which Latin literature affords an
endless supply, and published them in his name. He is said not long to
have survived this practical joke; and one does not wonder at his
sinking before such a prospect, if he anticipated an age and a race of
book-buyers among whom his great critical works are forgotten, and his
name is known solely for the spurious volume, sacred to infamy, which
may be found side by side with the works of the author of Trimalcion's
Feast--"par nobile fratrum."
There is another failing, without a leaning to virtue's side, to which
some collectors have been, by reputation at least, addicted--a
propensity to obtain articles without value given for them--a tendency
to be larcenish. It is the culmination, indeed, of a sort of lax
morality apt to grow out of the habits and traditions of the class. Your
true collector--not the man who follows the occupation as a mere
expensive taste, and does not cater for himself--considers himself a
finder or discoverer rather than a purchaser. He is an industrious
prowler in unlikely regions, and is entitled to some reward for his
diligence and his skill. Moreover, it is the essence of that very skill
to find value in those things which, in the eye of the ordinary
possessor, are really worthless. From estimating them at little value,
and paying little for them, the steps are rather too short to estimating
them at nothing, and paying nothing for them. What matters it, a few
dirty black-letter leaves picked out of that volume of miscellaneous
trash--leaves which the owner never knew he had, and cannot miss--which
he would not know the value of, had you told him of them? What use of
putting notions into the greedy barbarian's head, as if one were to find
treasures for him? And the little pasquinade is _so_ curious, and will
fill a gap in that fine collection so nicely! The notions of the
collector about such spoil are indeed the converse of those which Cassio
professed to hold about his good name, for the scrap furtively removed
is supposed in no way to impoverish the loser, while it makes the
recipient rich indeed.
Those habits of the prowler which may gradually lead a mind not
strengthened by strong principle into this downward career, are hit with
his usual vivacity and wonderful truth by Scott. The speaker is our
delightful friend Oldenbuck of Monkbarns, the Antiquary, and what he
says has just enough of confession in it to show a consciousness that
the narrator has gone over dangerous ground, and, if we did not see
that the narrative is tinged with some exaggeration, has trodden a
little beyond the limits of what is gentlemanly and just.
"'See this bundle of ballads, not one of them later than 1700, and some
of them a hundred years older. I wheedled an old woman out of these, who
loved them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco, sir, snuff, and the
Complete Syren, were the equivalent! For that mutilated copy of the
Complaynt of Scotland I sat out the drinking of two dozen bottles of
strong ale with the late learned proprietor, who in gratitude bequeathed
it to me by his last will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and
trophies of many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the
Canongate, the Bow, St Mary's Wynd--wherever, in fine, there were to be
found brokers and trokers, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare
and curious. How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a
too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to
suspect the value I set upon the article!--how have I trembled lest some
passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded
each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the
stall as a rival amateur or prowling bookseller in disguise!--And then,
Mr Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration,
and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand
is trembling with pleasure!--Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier
and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this' (displaying
a little black smoked book about the size of a primer)--'to enjoy their
surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious
consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity;--these, my
young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil
and pains and sedulous attention which our profession, above all others,
so peculiarly demands!'"
There is a nice subtle meaning in the worthy man calling his weakness
his "profession," but it is in complete keeping with the mellow
Teniers-like tone of the whole picture. Ere we have done I shall
endeavour to show that the grubber among book-stalls has, with other
grubs or grubbers, his useful place in the general dispensation of the
world. But his is a pursuit exposing him to moral perils, which call for
peculiar efforts of self-restraint to save him from them; and the moral
Scott holds forth--for a sound moral he always has--is, If you go as far
as Jonathan Oldenbuck did--and I don't advise you to go so far, but hint
that you should stop earlier--say to yourself, Thus far, and no farther.
So much for one of the debased symptoms which in very bad cases
sometimes characterise an otherwise genial failing. There is another
peculiar, and, it may be said, vicious propensity, exhibited
occasionally in conjunction with the pursuit. This propensity is, like
the other, antagonistic in spirit to the tenth commandment, and consists
in a desperate coveting of the neighbour's goods, and a satisfaction,