The Book-Hunter
celebrated brother of the lyre appropriating his ewe lamb in a flagrant
plagiarism. There was at least one man who had the opportunity of being
acquainted with the productions of his unappreciated muse--the printer.
To him, accordingly, he appealed for confirmation of his suspicions,
demanding if he did not see in the two productions a similarity that in
some places even approached identity. The referee turned over page after
page with the scrupulous attention of one whose acuteness is on trial.
After due deliberation he admitted that there was a very striking
similarity, only it seemed to him that the other's brevier was a shade
thinner in the hair-stroke than his own, and the small caps. would go a
thought more to the pound; while as to the semicolons and marks of
interrogation, they looked as if they came out of a different font
altogether.
It is pleasant to be remembered for something, and the present author
has the assurance that these pages will be imprinted on the memory of
the "chapel" by the decorated capitals and Gothic devices with which a
better taste than his own has strewed them. The position, indeed,
conceded to him in the book-hunting field through the influence of these
becoming decorations has communicated to him something of the uneasiness
of Juvenal's
"Miserum est aliorum incubere famae,
Ne collapsa ruant subductis tecta columnis."
And having so disburdened himself, he rejoices in the thought that
whoever compliments him again on the taste and talent displayed in the
printing and adorning of this volume, will only prove that he has not
read it.
Returning to compositors, and what they note and do not note, if the
fresh author has happened to feel it a rather damping forecast of his
reception by the public that those who have had the first and closest
contact with his efforts are not in any way aroused by their remarkable
originality, yet one who may have had opportunities of taking a wide
view of the functions of the compositor will not wonder that, like the
deaf adder, he systematically closes his ear to the voice of the
charmer.
That the uninitiated reader may form some practical conception of my
meaning, I propose to set down a few items from the weekly contents of a
compositor's "bill-book," slightly enlarging his brief entries with the
view of rendering them the more intelligible.
"1. A time job--viz., inserting, as per author's proof, 50 'hear hears'
and 20 'great cheerings' in report of speech to be delivered by Alderman
Noddles at the great meeting on the social system.
"2. Picking out all the 'hear hears' and 'great cheerings' from said
speech, in respect it was not permitted to be delivered, the meeting
having dispersed when the alderman stood up; and breaking up the same
into pages, with title, 'A plan for the immediate and total extirpation
of intemperance by prohibiting the manufacture of bottles.'
"3. A sheet of a volume of poems, titled 'Life thoughts by a Life
thinker,' beginning--
"'Far I dipt beneath the surface, through the texture of the earth,
Till my heart's triumphant musings dreamt the dream of that new birth,
When the engineer's deep science through the mighty sphere shall probe,
And the railway trains to Melbourne sweep the centre of the globe,
And the electro-motive engine renders it no more absurd
That a human being should be in two places like a bird.'
"Item--Introduction, explaining the difficulties in the way of the
poet's success, in an age devoted to forms and superficialities, by
reason of his muscular originality, impulsive grasping at the infinite,
and resolute disdain of popular and conventional models; but expressing
opinion that, as he turns round on the pivot of his own individual
idiosyncrasy, he will come out all right.
"4. Advertisement by a disinterested draper, beginning, 'awful
sacrifices,' and ending, 'early application necessary to prevent
disappointment.'
"5. Two sticks of prayer for a devotional work which has had an
unexpected run, and is largely distributed over the office for an
expeditious issue of a new edition.
"6. Part of an accountant's report, containing 45 schemes for the
ranking of the creditors on ten bankrupt estates, each of which has
drawn accommodation bills on all the others.
"7. Signature YY of 'A treatise on the form and material of the sickle
used by the Welsh Druids in cutting the mistletoe,' being a series of
quotations in Arabic, Hindoo, Greek, German, and Gaelic, cemented
together by thin lines of English. This is a stock job which keeps the
office going like a balance-wheel when there is nothing else specially
pressing, and is rather popular, as it contains a good many ethnological
and etymological tables, implying scheme-work, which the compositors who
are adepts in that department contemplate with great satisfaction as
they put it together."
It is surely pleasant to suppose that the compositor has acquired the
faculty of passing such dizzying whirls of heterogeneous elements
without absorbing them all, and that, when his day's labour is over, he
may find his own special intellectual food in his Milton or his Locke.
In this view, his apathy to the literary matter passing through his
hands may be contemplated as among the special beneficences in the
providential order of things, like the faculty of healthy vitality to
throw off morbid influences; and perhaps it has still closer analogy to
that professional coolness which separates the surgeon from a nervous
sympathy with the sufferings of those on whom he operates--a phenomenon
which, though sometimes denounced as professional callousness, is one
of the most beneficent specialties in the lot of mankind.
In the several phases of the book-hunter, he whose peculiar glory it is
to have his books illustrated--the Grangerite, as he is technically
termed--must not be omitted. "Illustrating" a volume consists in
inserting in or binding up with it portraits, landscapes, and other
works of art bearing a reference to its contents. This is materially
different from the other forms of the pursuit, in as far as the quarry
hunted down is the raw material, the finished article being a result of
domestic manufacture. The Illustrator is the very Ishmaelite of
collectors--his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is
against him. He destroys unknown quantities of books to supply portraits
or other illustrations to a single volume of his own; and as it is not
always known concerning any book that he has been at work on it, many a
common book-buyer has cursed him on inspecting his own last bargain, and
finding that it is deficient in an interesting portrait or two. Tales
there are, fitted to make the blood run cold in the veins of the most
sanguine book-hunter, about the devastations committed by those who are
given over to this special pursuit. It is generally understood that they
received the impulse which has rendered them an important sect, from the
publication of Granger's Biographical History--hence their name of
Grangerites. So it has happened that this industrious and respectable
compiler is contemplated with mysterious awe as a sort of literary
Attila or Gengis Khan, who has spread terror and ruin around him. In
truth the illustrator, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that
doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to become excited with his work,
and to go on ever widening the circle of his purveyances, and opening
new avenues toward the raw material on which he works. To show how
widely such a person may levy contributions, I propose to take, not a
whole volume, not even a whole page, but still a specific and
distinguished piece of English literature, and describe the way in which
a devotee of this peculiar practice would naturally proceed in
illustrating it. The piece of literature to be illustrated is as
follows:--
"How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!"
The first thing to be done is to collect every engraved portrait of the
author, Isaac Watts. The next, to get hold of any engravings of the
house in which he was born, or houses in which he lived. Then will come
all kinds of views of Southampton--of its Gothic gate, and its older
than Gothic wall. Any scrap connected with the inauguration of the Watts
statue must of course be scrupulously gathered. To go but a step beyond
such commonplaces--there is a traditional story about the boyhood of
Isaac which has been told as follows. He took precociously to rhyming:
like Pope, he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. It happened that
this practice was very offensive to his father, a practical man, who,
finding his admonitions useless, resolved to stop it in an effectual
manner. He accordingly, after the practice of his profession--being a
schoolmaster--assailed with a leathern thong, duly prepared, the cuticle
of that portion of the body which has from time immemorial been devoted
to such inflictions. Under torture, the divine songster abjured his
propensity in the following very hopeful shape--
"Oh, father, do some pity take,
And I will no more verses make."
It is not likely that this simple domestic scene has been engraved
either for the Divine Hymns, or the Improvement of the Mind. The
illustrator will therefore require to get a picture of it for his own
special use, and will add immensely to the value of his treasure, while
he gives scope to the genius of a Cruikshank or a Doyle.
We are yet, it will be observed, only on the threshold. We have next to
illustrate the substance of the poetry. All kinds of engravings of bees
Attic and other, and of bee-hives, will be appropriate, and will be
followed by portraits of Huber and other great writers on bees, and
views of Mount Hybla and other honey districts. Some Scripture prints
illustrative of the history of Samson, who had to do with honey and
bees, will be appropriate, as well as any illustrations of the fable of
the Bear and the Bees, or of the Roman story of the _Sic vos non vobis_.
A still more appropriate form of illustration may, however, be drawn
upon by remembering that a periodical called The Bee was edited by Dr
Anderson; and it is important to observe that the name was adopted in
the very spirit which inspired Watts. In both instances the most
respected of all winged insects was brought forward as the type of
industry. Portraits, then, of Dr Anderson, and any engravings that can
be connected with himself and his pursuits, will have their place in the
collection. It will occur, perhaps, to the intelligent illustrator, that
Dr Anderson was the grandfather of Sir James Outram, and he will thus
have the satisfaction of opening his collection for all illustrations of
the career of that distinguished officer. Having been aptly called the
Bayard of the Indian service, the collector who has exhausted him and
his services will be justified by the principles of the craft in
following up the chase, and picking up any woodcuts or engravings
referring to the death of the false Bourbon, or any other scene in the
career of the knight without fear or reproach. Here, by a fortunate and
interesting coincidence, through the Bourbons the collector gets at the
swarms of bees which distinguish the insignia of royalty in France.
When the illustrator comes to the last line, which invites him to add to
what he has already collected a representation of "every opening
flower," it is easy to see that he has indeed a rich garden of delights
before him.
In a classification of book-hunters, the aspirants after large-paper
copies deserve special notice, were it only for the purpose of guarding
against a common fallacy which confounds them with the lovers of tall