The Book-Hunter
not so much in possessing for one's self, as in dispossessing him. This
spirit is said to burn with still fiercer flame in the breasts of those
whose pursuit would externally seem to be the most innocent in the
world, and the least excitive of the bad passions--namely, among
flower-fanciers. From some mysterious cause, it has been known to
develop itself most flagrantly among tulip-collectors, insomuch that
there are legends of Dutch devotees of this pursuit who have paid their
thousands of dollars for a duplicate tuber, that they might have the
satisfaction of crushing it under the heel.[28] This line of practice is
not entirely alien to the book-hunter. Peignot tells us that it is of
rare occurrence among his countrymen, and yet, as we have seen, he
thought it necessary to correct the technical term applied to this kind
of practitioner, by calling him a Bibliothapte when he conceals books--a
Bibliolyte when he destroys them. Dibdin warmed his convivial guests at
a comfortable fire, fed by the woodcuts from which had been printed the
impression of the Bibliographical Decameron. It was a quaint fancy, and
deemed to be a pretty and appropriate form of hospitality, while it
effectually assured the subscribers to his costly volumes that the
vulgar world who buy cheap books was definitively cut off from
participating in their privileges.
[Footnote 28: "The great point of view in a collector is to possess that
not possessed by any other. It is said of a collector lately deceased,
that he used to purchase scarce prints at enormous prices in order to
destroy them, and thereby render the remaining impressions more scarce
and valuable."--Grose's Olio, p. 57. I do not know to whom Grose
alludes; but it strikes me, in realising a man given to such
propensities--taking them as a reality and not a joke--that it would be
interesting to know how, in his moments of serious thought, he could
contemplate his favourite pursuit--as, for instance, when the
conscientious physician may have thought it necessary to warn him in
time of the approaching end--how he could reckon up his good use of the
talents bestowed on him, counting among them his opportunities for the
encouragement of art as an elevator and improver of the human race.]
Let us, however, summon a more potent spirit of this order. He is a
different being altogether from those gentle shadows who have flitted
past us already. He was known in the body by many hard names, such as
the Vampire, the Dragon, &c. He was an Irish absentee, or, more
accurately, a refugee, since he had made himself so odious on his ample
estate that he could not live there. How on earth he should have set
about collecting books is one of the inscrutable mysteries which ever
surround the diagnosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his using
his books by reading them as out of the question, he yet was never known
to indulge in that fondling and complacent examination of their exterior
and general condition, which, to Inchrule and others of his class,
seemed to afford the highest gratification that, as sojourners through
this vale of tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuriate in
the collective pride--like that of David when he numbered his people--of
beholding how his volumes increased in multitude, and ranged with one
another, like well-sized and properly dressed troops, along an ample
area of book-shelves. His collection--if it deserved the name--was piled
in great heaps in garrets, cellars, and warerooms, like unsorted goods.
They were accumulated, in fact, not so much that the owner might have
them, as that other people might not. If there were a division of the
order into positive, or those who desire to make collections--and
negative, or those who desire to prevent them being made, his case would
properly belong to the latter. Imagine the consternation created in a
small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting among them of a _helluo
librorum_ with such propensities, armed with illimitable means, enabling
him to desolate the land like some fiery dragon! What became of the
chaotic mass of literature he had brought together no one knew. It was
supposed to be congenial to his nature to have made a great bonfire of
it before he left the world; but a little consideration showed such a
feat to be impossible, for books may be burnt in detail by extraneous
assistance, but it is a curious fact that, combustible as paper is
supposed to be, books won't burn. If you doubt this, pitch that folio
Swammerdam or Puffendorf into a good rousing fire, and mark the result.
No--it is probable that, stored away in some forgotten repositories,
these miscellaneous relics still remain; and should they be brought
forth, some excitement might be created; for, ignorant as the monster
was, he had an instinct for knowing what other people wanted, and was
thus enabled to snatch rare and curious volumes from the grasp of
systematic collectors. It was his great glory to get hold of a unique
book and shut it up. There were known to be just two copies of a spare
quarto called Rout upon Rout, or the Rabblers Rabbled, by Felix Nixon,
Gent. He possessed one copy; the other, by indomitable perseverance, he
also got hold of, and then his heart was glad within him; and he felt it
glow with well-merited pride when an accomplished scholar, desiring to
complete an epoch in literary history on which that book threw some
light, besought the owner to allow him a sight of it, were it but for a
few minutes, and the request was refused. "I might as well ask him,"
said the animal, who was rather proud of his firmness than ashamed of
his churlishness, "to make me a present of his brains and reputation."
It was among his pleasant ways to attend book-sales, there to watch the
biddings of persons on whose judgment he relied, and cut in as the
contest was becoming critical. This practice soon betrayed to those he
had so provoked the chinks in the monster's armour. He was assailable
and punishable at last, then, this potent tyrant--but the attack must be
made warily and cautiously. Accordingly, impartial bystanders, ignorant
of the plot, began to observe that he was degenerating by degrees in the
rank of his purchases, and at last becoming utterly reckless, buying, at
the prices of the sublimest rarities, common works of ordinary
literature to be found in every book-shop. Such was the result of
judiciously drawing him on, by biddings for valueless books, on the part
of those whom he had outbid in the objects of their desire. Auctioneers
were surprised at the gradual change coming over the book-market, and a
few fortunate people obtained considerable prices for articles they were
told to expect nothing for. But this farce, of course, did not last
long; and whether or not he found out that he had been beaten at his own
weapons, the devouring monster disappeared as mysteriously as he had
come.
Reminiscences.
Such incidents bring vividly before the eye the scenes in which they
took place long long ago. If any one in his early youth has experienced
some slight symptoms of the malady under discussion, which his
constitution, through a tough struggle with the world, and a busy
training in after life, has been enabled to throw off, he will yet look
back with fond associations to the scenes of his dangerous indulgence.
The auction-room is often the centre of fatal attraction towards it,
just as the billiard-room and the _rouge-et-noir_ table are to excesses
of another kind. There is that august tribunal over which at one time
reigned Scott's genial friend Ballantyne, succeeded by the sententious
Tait, himself a man of taste and a collector, and since presided over by
the great Nisbet, whose hand has dropped the ensign of office even
before the present lot has an opportunity of obtaining from it the
crowning honour. I bow with deferential awe to the august tribunal
before which so vast a mass of literature has changed hands, and where
the future destinies of so many thousands--or, shall it be rather said,
millions--of volumes have been decided, each carrying with it its own
little train of suspense and triumph.
More congenial, however, in my recollection, is that remote and dingy
hall where rough Carfrae, like Thor, flourished his thundering hammer.
There it was that one first marked, with a sort of sympathetic awe, the
strange and varied influence of their peculiar maladies on the
book-hunters of the last generation. There it was that one first handled
those pretty little pets, the Elzevir classics, a sort of literary
bantams, which are still dear to memory, and awaken old associations by
their dwarfish ribbed backs like those of ponderous folios, and their
exquisite, but now, alas! too minute type. The eyesight that could
formerly peruse them with ease has suffered decay, but _they_ remain
unchanged; and in this they are unlike to many other objects of early
interest. Children, flowers, animals, scenery even, all have undergone
mutation, but no perceptible shade of change has passed over these
little reminders of old times.
There it was that one first could comprehend how a tattered dirty
fragment of a book once common might be worth a deal more than its
weight in gold. There it was too, that, seduced by bad example, the
present respected pastor of Ardsnischen purchased that beautiful Greek
New Testament, by Jansen of Amsterdam, which he loved so, in the
freshness of its acquisition, that he took it with him to church, and,
turning up the text, handed it to a venerable woman beside him, after
the fashion of an absorbed and absent student who was apt to forget
whether he was reading Greek or English. The presiding genius of the
place, with his strange accent, odd sayings, and angular motions,
accompanied by good-natured grunts of grotesque wrath, became a sort of
household figure. The dorsal breadth of pronunciation with which he
would expose Mr Ivory's Erskine, used to produce a titter which he was
always at a loss to understand. Though not the fashionable mart where
all the thorough libraries in perfect condition went to be hammered
off--though it was rather a place where miscellaneous collections were
sold, and therefore bargains might be expected by those who knew what
they were about--yet sometimes extraordinary and valuable collections of
rare books came under his hammer, and created an access of more than
common excitement among the denizens of the place. On one of these
occasions a succession of valuable fragments of early English poetry
brought prices so high and far beyond those of ordinary expensive books
in the finest condition, that it seemed as if their imperfections were
their merit; and the auctioneer, momentarily carried off with this
feeling, when the high prices began to sink a little, remonstrated thus,
"Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen,--this curious book--so low
as thirty shillings--and _quite imperfect_!"
Those who frequented this howf, being generally elderly men, have now
nearly all departed. The thunderer's hammer, too, has long been
silenced by the great quieter. One living memorial still exists of that
scene--the genial and then youthful assistant, whose partiality for
letters and literary pursuits made him often the monitor and kindly
guide of the raw student, and who now, in a higher field, exercises a
more important influence on the destinies of literature. I passed the
spot the other day--it was not desolate and forsaken, with the moss
growing on the hearthstone; on the contrary, it flared with many
lights--a thronged gin-palace. When one heard the sounds that issued
from the old familiar spot, the reflection not unnaturally occurred
that, after all, there are worse pursuits in the world than
book-hunting.
Classification.