The Book-Hunter
The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris.
The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
The Cause of Bibliomania all over the World.
It will be seen that this accomplished black-letterer must have been
under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but
pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious
of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this
trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in
fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter
our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers
substituted for it the letter y as most nearly resembling it in shape,
hence the "ye" which occurs sometimes in old books, but much more
frequently in modern imitations of them.
The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol of
knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their
representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open his
refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide in the
potent _vin du pays_ to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, and the
others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge successive
glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged "to fery
respectaple persons," probably to the chief landed gentry of his
entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not induce him
to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world," being unable to
foresee what influence the utterance of words so unusual and so
suspiciously savouring of demonology might exercise over his future
destiny.]
The club thus abruptly formed, consisted of affluent collectors, some of
them noble, with a sprinkling of zealous practical men, who assisted
them in their great purchases, while doing minor strokes of business for
themselves. These, who in some measure fed on the crumbs that fell from
the master's table, were in a position rather too closely resembling the
professionals in a hunt or cricket club. The circle was a very exclusive
one, however; the number limited to thirty-one members, "one black ball
excluding;" and it used to be remarked, that it was easier to get into
the Peerage or the Privy Council than into "the Roxburghe."
Nothing has done so much to secure the potent influence of clubs as the
profound secrecy in which their internal or domestic transactions have
generally been buried. The great safeguard of this secrecy will be found
in that rigid rule of our social code which prohibits every gentleman
from making public the affairs of the private circle; and if from lack
of discretion, as it is sometimes gently termed, this law is supposed to
have a lax hold on any one, he is picked off by the "one," "two," "three
black balls." It is singular that a club so small and exclusive as the
Roxburghe should have proved an exception to the rule of secrecy, and
that the world has been favoured with revelations of its doings which
have made it the object of more amusement than reverence. In fact,
through failure of proper use of the black ball, it got possession of a
black sheep, in the person of a certain Joseph Hazlewood. He had
achieved a sort of reputation in the book-hunting community by
discovering the hidden author of Drunken Barnaby's Journal. In reality,
however, he was a sort of literary Jack Brag. As that amusing creation
of Theodore Hook's practical imagination mustered himself with sporting
gentlemen through his command over the technicalities or slang of the
kennel and the turf, so did Hazlewood sit at the board with scholars and
aristocratic book-collectors through a free use of their technical
phraseology. In either case, if the indulgence in these terms descended
into a motley grotesqueness, it was excused as excessive fervour
carrying the enthusiast off his feet. When Hazlewood's treasures--for he
was a collector in his way--were brought to the hammer, the scraps and
odds and ends it contained were found classified in groups under such
headings as these--Garlands of Gravity, Poverty's Pot Pourri, Wallat of
Wit, Beggar's Balderdash, Octagonal Olio, Zany's Zodiac, Noddy's
Nuncheon, Mumper's Medley, Quaffing Quavers to Quip Queristers,
Tramper's Twattle, or Treasure and Tinsel from the Tewksbury Tank, and
the like. He edited reprints of some rare books--that is to say, he saw
them accurately reprinted letter by letter. Of these one has a name
which--risking due castigation if I betray gross ignorance by the
supposition--I think he must certainly have himself bestowed on it, as
it excels the most outrageous pranks of the alliterative age. It is
called, "Green-Room Gossip; or, Gravity Gallinipt; A Gallimaufry got up
to guile Gymnastical and Gyneocratic Governments; Gathered and Garnished
by Gridiron Gabble, Gent., Godson to Mother Goose."
The name of Joseph Hazlewood sounds well; it is gentleman-like, and its
owner might have passed it into such friendly commemoration as that of
Bliss, Cracherode, Heber, Sykes, Utterson, Townley, Markland, Hawtrey,
and others generally understood to be gentlemen, and, in virtue of their
bookish propensities, scholars. He might even, for the sake of his
reprints, have been thought an "able editor," had it not been for his
unfortunate efforts to chronicle the doings of the club he had got
into.[69] His History, in manuscript, was sold with his other treasures
after his death, and was purchased by the proprietor of the Athenaeum,
where fragments of it were printed some fifteen years ago, along with
editorial comments, greatly to the amusement, if not to the edification,
of the public.
[Footnote 69: A voice from the other side of the Atlantic reveals the
portentous nature of the machinery with which Mr Hazlewood conducted his
editorial labours. The following is taken from the book on the Private
Libraries of New York, already so freely quoted:--
"A unique book of unusual interest to the bibliophile in this department
is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy,
edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1815. This is
Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decorated by him in the
most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school in which he held so
eminent a position. It is illustrated throughout with portraits, some of
which are very rare; it contains all the letters which the editor
received in relation to it from the eminent literary antiquarians of his
day; and not only these, but all the collations and memoranda of any
consequence which were made for him during its progress, frequently by
men of literary distinction. To these are added all the announcements of
the work, together with the impressions of twelve cancelled pages,
printed four in one form and eight in another, apparently by way of
experiment, with other cancelled matter; tracings of the facsimile
woodcuts of the title to Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, with a
proof of it on India paper, and three impressions of this title, one all
in black, one with the letter in black and the device in red, and the
third _vice versa_; tracings for, and proofs of, other woodcuts; an
impression of a leaf printed to be put into a single copy of the work,
&c. &c.; for we must stop, although we have but indicated the nature
rather than the quantity of the matter, all of it unique, which gives
this book its peculiar value. But it should be remarked besides, that
the editorial part of the work is interleaved for the purpose of
receiving Mr Hazlewood's explanations and corrections, and those that he
received from literary friends, which alone would give this copy a
singular interest. It is bound by Clarke in maroon morocco."]
In these revelations we find how long a probation the system of book
clubs had to pass through, before it shook off the convivial
propensities which continued to cluster round the normal notion of a
club, and reached the dry asceticism and attention to the duties of
printing and editing, by which the greater number of book clubs are
distinguished. It was at first a very large allowance of sack to the
proportion of literary food, and it was sarcastically remarked that the
club had spent a full thousand pounds in guzzling before it had produced
a single valuable volume. We have some of the bills of fare at the
"Roxburghe Revels," as they were called. In one, for instance, there may
be counted, in the first course, turtle cooked five different ways,
along with turbot, john dory, tendrons of lamb, souchee of haddock, ham,
chartreuse, and boiled chickens. The bill amounted to L5, 14s. a-head;
or, as Hazlewood expresses it, "according to the long-established
principles of 'Maysterre Cockerre,' each person had L5, 14s. to pay."
Some illustrious strangers appear to have been occasionally invited to
attend the symposium. If the luxurious table spread for them may have
occasioned them some surprise, they must have experienced still more in
the tenor of the invitation to be present, which, coming in the name of
certain "Lions of Literature," as their historian and the author of the
invitation calls them, was expressed in these terms--"The honour of your
company is requested to dine with the Roxburghe dinner, on Wednesday the
17th instant." One might be tempted to offer the reader a fuller
specimen of the historian's style; but unfortunately its
characteristics, grotesque as they are, cannot be exemplified in their
full breadth without being also given at full length. The accounts of
the several dinners read like photographs of a mind wandering in the
mazes of indigestion-begotten nightmare.[70]
[Footnote 70: It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was
considerable within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for
himself; so, if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading
through small print, he may read the following specimen of Mr
Hazlewood's style. He would certainly himself not have objected to its
being taken as a criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of
it.
"Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts,
foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to
friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the
incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes,
or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune,
that can converse, and each willing to give and receive information,
more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered conviviality--a
social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom; combining all that Anacreon
was famed for, tempered with the reason of Demosthenes, and intersected
with the archness of Scaliger. It is true we had not any Greek verses in
praise of the grape; but we had, as a tolerable substitute, the ballad
of the 'Bishop of Hereford and Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was
of his own composing. It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing
the absentees, the cabinet council, or any other set of men; but there
was not a man present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the
cloth was removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superior
to any record of antiquity. It is true, no trace of wit is going to be
here preserved, for the flashes were too general, and what is the
critical sagacity of a Scaliger compared to our chairman? Ancients
believe it! We were not dead drunk, and therefore lie quiet under the
table for once, and let a few moderns be uppermost."
The following chronicle of the third dinner and second anniversary
records an interesting little personal incident:--
"After Lord Spencer left the chair, it was taken, I believe, by Mr
Heber, who kept it up to a late hour,--Mr Dodd very volatile and