The Book-Hunter
As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor,
And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar,
His diet too acid, his temper too sour,
Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more.
But one volume, my friends, one volume more--
We'll dine on roast beef, and print one volume more."
I am tempted to add a word or two of prosaic gossip and comment to the
characteristics thus so happily hit off in verse. John Pinkerton was,
upon the whole, a man of simple character. The simplicity consisted in
the thorough belief that never, in any country or at any period of the
world's history, had there been created a human being destined to be
endowed with even an approach to the genius, wisdom, and learning of
which he was himself possessed. He never said a word in praise of any
fellow-being, for none had ever risen so much above the wretched level
of the stupid world he looked down upon as to deserve such a
distinction. He condescended, however, to distribute censure, and that
with considerable liberality. For instance, take his condensed notice of
an unfortunate worker in his own field, Walter Goodal, whose works are
"fraught with furious railing, contemptible scurrility, low prejudice,
small reading, and vulgar error." Thus having dealt with an unfortunate
and rather obscure author, he shows his impartiality by dealing with
Macpherson, then in the zenith of his fame, in this wise: "His
etymological nonsense he assists with gross falsehoods, and pretends to
skill in the Celtic without quoting one single MS. In short, he deals
wholly in assertion and opinion, and it is clear that he had not even an
idea what learning and science are." Nor less emphatic is his railing at
the plaid and blaspheming at the claymore. Donald and his brethren are
thus described: "Being mere savages, but one degree above brutes, they
remain still in much the same state of society as in the days of Julius
Caesar; and he who travels among the Scottish Highlanders, the old Welsh,
or wild Irish, may see at once the ancient and modern state of women
among the Celts, when he beholds these savages stretched in their huts,
and their poor women toiling like beasts of burden for their unmanly
husbands;" and finally, "being absolute savages, and, like Indians and
negroes, will ever continue so, all we can do is to plant colonies among
them, and by this, and encouraging their emigration, try to get rid of
the breed."
This fervency is all along of the question whether the Picts, or Piks,
as Pinkerton chooses to call them, were Celts or Goths. If we turn to
the books of his opponent on this question, Joseph Ritson, we find him
paid back in his own coin, and that so genuine, that, on reading about
gross ignorance, falsehood, and folly, one would think he was still
enjoying Pinkerton's own flowers of eloquence, were it not that the
tenor of the argument has somehow turned to the opposite side. I drop
into the note below a specimen from the last words of this controversy,
as characteristic of the way in which it was conducted, and a sample of
the kind of dry fuel which, when ignited by these incendiaries, blazed
into so much rage.[72]
[Footnote 72: "See Pinkerton's Enquiry, i. 173, &c., 369. He explains
the _Vecturiones_ of Marcellinus, '_Vectveriar_, or _Pikish_ men, as,'
he untruly says, 'the Icelandic writers call them in their Norwegian
seats _Vik-veriar_,' and, either ignorantly or dishonestly to
countenance this most false and absurd hypothesis, corrupts the Pihtas
of the Saxons into Pihtar, a termination impossible to their language.
It is true, indeed, that he has stumbled upon a passage in Rudbeck's
Atlantica, i. 672, in which that very fanciful and extravagant writer
speaks of the _Packar_, _Baggar_, _Paikstar_, _Baggeboar_, _Pitar_, and
_Medel Pakcar_, whom he pretends '_Britanni_ vero _Peiktar_ appellant,
et _Peictonum_ tam eorum qui in Galliis quam in Britannia resident
genitores faciunt.' He finds these Pacti also in the Argonauticks, v.
1067; and his whole work seems the composition of a man whom 'much
learning hath made mad.'"--Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, &c., i.
81.]
Ritson was a man endowed with almost superhuman irritability of temper,
and he had a genius fertile in devising means of giving scope to its
restless energies. I have heard that it was one of his obstinate
fancies, when addressing a letter to a friend of the male sex, instead
of using the ordinary prefix of Mr or the affix Esq., to use the term
"Master," as Master John Pinkerton, Master George Chalmers. The
agreeable result of this was, that his communications on intricate and
irritating antiquarian disputes were delivered to, and perused by, the
young gentlemen of the family, so opening up new little intricate
avenues, fertile in controversy and misunderstanding. But he had another
and more inexhaustible resource for his superabundant irritability. In
his numerous books he insisted on adopting a peculiar spelling. It was
not phonetic, nor was it etymological; it was simply Ritsonian. To
understand the efficacy of this arrangement, it must be remembered that
the instinct of a printer is to spell according to rule, and that every
deviation from the ordinary method can only be carried out by a special
contest over each word. General instructions on such a matter are apt to
produce unexpected results. One very sad instance I can now recall; it
was that of a French author who, in a new edition of his works, desired
to alter the old-fashioned spelling of the imperfect tense from o to a.
To save himself trouble, on the first instance occurring in each proof,
he put in the margin a general direction to change all such o's into
a's. The instruction was so literally and comprehensively obeyed, that,
happening to glance his eye over the volume on its completion, he found
the letter o entirely excluded from it. Even the sacred name of
Napoleon was irreverently printed Napalean, and the Revolution was the
Revalutian. Ritson had far too sharp a scent for any little matter of
controversy and irritating discussion to get into a difficulty like
this. He would fight each step of the way, and such peculiarities as the
following, profusely scattered over his books, may be looked upon as the
names of so many battles or skirmishes with his printers--_compileer_,
_writeer_, _wel_, _kil_, _onely_, _probablely_. Even when he
condescended to use the spelling common to the rest of the nation, he
could pick out little causes of quarrel with the way of putting it in
type--as, for instance, in using the word Ass, which came naturally to
him, he would not follow the practice of his day in the use of the long
and short ([s]s), but inverted the arrangement thus, s[s]. This strange
creature exemplified the opinion that every one must have some
creed--something from without having an influence over thought and
action stronger than the imperfect apparatus of human reason. Scornfully
disdaining revelation from above, he groped below, and found for himself
a little fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as fanatical a
devotee of vegetarianism as others have been of a middle state or adult
baptism; and, after having torn through a life of spiteful controversy
with his fellow-men, and ribaldry of all sacred things, he thus
expressed the one weight hanging on his conscience, that "on one
occasion, when tempteed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of
Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed under the roast,
nothing less repugnant to feelings being to be had."[73]
[Footnote 73: See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral
Duty. By Joseph Ritson.]
To return to the services of him of mightier renown, whose genial
drolleries led to these notices. Scott printed, as a contribution to his
favourite club, the record of the trial of two Highlanders for murder,
which brought forth some highly characteristic incidents. The victim was
a certain Sergeant Davis, who had charge of one of the military parties
or guards dispersed over the Highlands to keep them in order after the
'45. Davis had gone from his own post at Braemar up Glen Clunie to meet
the guard from Glenshee. He chose to send his men back and take a day's
shooting among the wild mountains at the head of the glen, and was seen
no more. How he was disposed of could easily be divined in a general
way, but there were no particulars to be had. It happened, however, that
there was one Highlander who, for reasons best known to himself--they
were never got at--had come to the resolution of bringing his brother
Highlanders, who had made away with the sergeant, to justice. It was
necessary for his own safety, however, that he should be under the
pressure of a motive or impulse sufficient to justify so heartless and
unnatural a proceeding, otherwise he would himself have been likely to
follow the sergeant's fate. Any reference to his conscience, the love of
justice, respect for the laws of the land, or the like, would of course
have been received with well-merited ridicule and scorn. He must have
some motive which a sensible Highlander could admit as probable in
itself, and sufficient for its purpose.
Accordingly the accuser said he had been visited by the sergeant's
ghost, who had told him everything, and laid on him the heavy burden of
bringing his slaughterers in the flesh to their account. If that were
not done, the troubled spirit would not cease to walk the earth, and so
long as he walked would the afflicted denouncer continue to be the
victim of his ghostly visits. The case was tried at Edinburgh, and
though the evidence was otherwise clear and complete, the Lowland jury
were perplexed and put out by the supernatural episode. A Highland
story, with a ghost acting witness at second-hand, roused all their
Saxon prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties by declining to
convict. A point was supposed to have been made, when the counsel for
the defence asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who was
English when in the flesh, spoke to the Highlander, who knew not that
language; and the witness answered, through his interpreter, that the
spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard in Lochaber. Sir Walter
Scott, however, remarks that there was no incongruity in this, if we
once get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It is curious
that Scott does not seem to have woven the particulars of this affair
into any one of his novels.
Among those who contributed to place the stamp of a higher character on
the labours of the book clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir
Alexander Boswell. A time there was, unfortunately, when his name could
not easily be dissociated from exasperating political events; but now
that the generation concerned in them has nearly passed away, it becomes
practicable, even from the side of his political opponents, to glance at
his literary abilities and accomplishments without recalling exciting
recollections. He was a member of the Roxburghe, and though he did not
live to see the improvement in the issues of that institution, or the
others which kept pace with it, he, alone and single-handed, set the
example of printing the kind of books which it was afterwards the merit
of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them, in fact, their tone. He
had at his paternal home of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare
books and manuscripts; one of these afforded the text from which the
romance of Sir Tristrem was printed. He reprinted from the one remaining
copy in his own possession the disputation between John Knox and Quentin
Kennedy, a priest who came forward against the great Reformer as the
champion of the old religion. From the Auchinleck press came also
reprints of Lodge's Fig for Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, the Book