The Book-Hunter
crime. This is by "illustrating" the trial, through a process resembling
that which has been already supposed to have been applied to one of
Watts's hymns. In this instance there will be all the newspaper
scraps--all the hawker's broadsides--the portraits of the criminal, of
the chief witnesses, the judges, the counsel, and various other
persons,--everything in literature or art that bears on the great
question.
He who inherits or has been able to procure a collection of such
illustrated trials, a century or so old, is deemed fortunate among
collectors, for he can at any time raise up for himself the spectre as
it were of the great mystery and exposure that for weeks was the
absorbing topic of attraction for millions. The curtains are down--the
fire burns bright--the cat purrs on the rug; Atticus, soused in his
easy-chair, cannot be at the trouble of going to see Macbeth or
Othello--he will sup full of horrors from his own stores. Accordingly he
takes down an unseemly volume, characterised by a flabby obesity by
reason of the unequal size of the papers contained in it, all being
bound to the back, while the largest only reach the margin. The first
thing at opening is the dingy pea-green-looking paragraph from the
provincial newspaper, describing how the reapers, going to their work at
dawn, saw the clay beaten with the marks of struggle, and, following the
dictates of curiosity, saw a bloody rag sticking on a tree, the leaves
also streaked with red, and, lastly, the instrument of violence hidden
in the moss; next comes from another source the lamentations for a young
woman who had left her home--then the excitement of putting that and
that together--the search, and the discovery of the body. The next
paragraph turns suspense into exulting wrath: the perpetrator has been
found with his bloody shirt on--a scowling murderous villain as ever was
seen--an eminent poacher, and fit for anything. But the next paragraph
turns the tables. The ruffian had his own secrets of what he had been
about that night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a
bad business for him at any other time, but now he is a revealing angel,
for he noted this and that in the course of his own little game, and
gives justice the thread which leads to a wonderful romance, and brings
home desperate crime to that quarter where, from rank, education, and
profession, it was least likely to be found. Then comes the trial and
the execution; and so, at a sitting, has been swallowed all that
excitement which, at some time long ago, chained up the public in
protracted suspense for weeks.
The reader will see, from what I have just been saying, that I am not
prepared to back Charles Lamb's Index Expurgatorius.[49] It is
difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something
either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be
applied. I know books that are curious, and really amusing, from their
excessive badness. If you want to find precisely how a thing ought not
to be said, you take one of them down, and make it perform the service
of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some volumes in which, at a
chance opening, you are certain to find a mere platitude delivered in
the most superb and amazing climax of big words, and others in which you
have a like happy facility in finding every proposition stated with its
stern forward, as sailors say, or in some other grotesque mismanagement
of composition. There are no better farces on or off the stage than when
two or three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind, and compete
with each other in taking fun out of them.
[Footnote 49: "In this catalogue of _books which are no books--biblia a
biblia_--I reckon court calendars, directories, pocket-books,
draught-boards bound and lettered on the back, scientific treatises,
almanacs, statutes at large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson,
Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes which 'no
gentleman's library should be without;' the histories of Flavius
Josephus (that learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these
exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so
catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these
_things in books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints,
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out
the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a
volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what
'seem its leaves,' to come bolt upon a withering population essay. To
expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a
well-arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or
Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe
of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios,
would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look
like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long
to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils."--Essays of
Elia.]
There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring spirit, but in a manner
which reminds one of deep calling unto deep, about the dark
superstitions of a country which was once a separate European kingdom. I
feel a peculiar interest in it, from the author having informed me, by
way of communicating an important fact in literary history, and also as
an example to be followed by literary aspirants, that, before committing
the book to the press, he had written it over sixteen times. It would
have been valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only that one
might form some idea of the steps by which he had brought it into the
condition in which it was printed. But its perusal in that condition was
not entirely thrown away, since I was able to recommend it to a teacher
of composition, as containing, within a moderate compass--after the
manner, in fact, of a handbook--good practical specimens of every
description of depravity of style of which the English language is
susceptible.
In the present day, when few scholars have opportunities of enriching
the world with their prison hours, perhaps the best conditions for
testing how far any volume or portion of printed matter, however
hopeless-looking, may yet yield edifying or amusing matter to a
sufficient pressure, will occur when a bookish person finds himself
imprisoned in a country inn, say for twenty-four hours. Such things are
not impossible in this age of rapid movement. It is not long since a
train, freighted with musical artistes, sent express to perform at a
provincial concert and be back immediately in town for other
engagements, were caught by a great snow-storm which obliterated the
railway, and had to live for a week or two in a wayside alehouse, in one
of the dreariest districts of Scotland. The possessor and user of a
large library undergoing such a calamity in a modified shape will be
able to form a conception of the resources at his disposal, and to
calculate how long it will take him to exhaust the intellectual
treasures at his command, just as a millionaire, haunted as such people
sometimes are by the dread of coming on the parish, might test how long
a life his invested capital would support by spending a winter in a
Shetland cottage, and living on what he could procure. Having exhausted
all other sources of excitement and interest, the belated traveller is
supposed to call for the literature of the establishment. Perhaps the
Directory of the county town is the only available volume. Who shall say
what the belated traveller may make of this? He may do a turn in local
statistics, or, if his ambition rises higher, he may pursue some
valuable ethnological inquiries, trying whether Celtic or Saxon names
prevail, and testing the justice of Mr Thierry's theory by counting the
Norman patronymics, and observing whether any of them are owned by
persons following plebeian and sordid occupations. If in after-life the
sojourner should come in contact with people interested in the politics
or business of that county town, he will surprise them by exhibiting his
minute acquaintance with its affairs.
If, besides the Directory, an Almanac, old or new, is to be had, the
analysis may be conducted on a greatly widened basis. The rotations of
the changes of the seasons may at the same time suggest many appropriate
reflections on the progress of man from the cradle to the grave, and all
that he meets with between the alpha and omega; and if the prisoner is
a man of genius, the announcements of eclipses and other solar phenomena
will suggest trains of thought which he can carry up to any height of
sublimity. A person in the circumstances supposed, after he has
exhausted the Directory and the Almanac, may perhaps be led to read (if
he can get) Zimmerman On Solitude, Hervey's Meditations, Watts on the
Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what
he may be reduced to? I remember the great Irish liberator telling how,
when once detained in an inn in Switzerland, he could find no book to
beguile the time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. I have no
doubt that the coerced perusal of them to which he had to submit did him
a deal of good.
Let us imagine that nothing better is to be found than the advertising
sheet of an old newspaper--never mind. Let the unfortunate man fall to
and read the advertisements courageously, and make the best of them. An
advertisement is itself a fact, though it may sometimes be the vehicle
of a falsehood; and, as some one has remarked, he who has a fact in hand
is like a turner with a piece of wood in his lathe, which he can
manipulate to his liking, tooling it in any way, as a plain cylinder or
a richly ornamented toy. There have been fortunate instances of people
driven to read them finding good jokes and other enjoyable things in
advertisements--such things as make one almost regret that so little
attention has been paid to this department of literature.[50] Besides
the spontaneous undesigned attractions to be found in it, there have
been men of distinguished parts whose powers have found development in
the advertisement line. George Robins, a hero in his day, is surely not
yet quite forgotten; and though he were, doubtless his works will be
restored to notice by future philosophers who will perhaps find in them
the true spirit of the nineteenth century. Advertisements, more prosaic
than his, however, bring us into the very heart of life and business,
and contain a world of interest. Suppose that the dirty broadside you
pick up in the dingy inn's soiled room contains the annual announcement
of the reassembling of the school in which you spent your own years of
schoolboy life--what a mingled and many-figured romance does it recall
of all that has befallen to yourself and others since the day when the
same advertisement made you sigh, because the hour was close at hand
when you were to leave home and all its homely ways to dwell among
strangers! Going onward, you remember how each one after another ceased
to be a stranger, and twined himself about your heart; and then comes
the reflection, Where are they all now? You remember how
"He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life."
You recall to your memory also those two inseparables--linked together,
it would seem, because they were so unlike. The one, gentle, dreamy, and
romantic, was to be the genius of the set; but alas, he "took to bad
habits," and oozed into the slime of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting
no creature but himself--unless it may be that to some parent or other