The Book-Hunter
own home gleaners. They do not find now and then a buried Hamlet, or
Paradise Lost, or Hudibras--though, by the way, the Poetical Remains of
Butler, which in wit and sarcasm are second only to his great work, were
rescued from oblivion by the drudging antiquary Thyer, who was so
conceited of the performance that he had the portrait of his own
respectable and stupid face engraved beside that of Butler, in order
perhaps that all men might see how incapable he was of fabricating the
pieces to which it is prefixed. There is a good deal of the poetry of
the club books of which it may at least be said, that worse is printed
and praised as the produce of our contemporaries.
It is not so much, however, in Poetry or the Drama as in Historical
literature that the clubs develop their strength. It is difficult to
estimate the greatness of the obligations of British history to these
institutions. They have dug up, cleansed, and put in order for immediate
inspection and use, a multitude of written monuments bearing on the
greatest events and the most critical epochs in the progress of the
empire. The time thus saved to investigators is great and priceless. In
no other department of knowledge can the intellectual labourer more
forcibly apply the Latin proverb which warns him that his work is
indefinite, but his life brief. In the ordinary sciences the philosopher
may and often does content himself with the well-rounded and professedly
completed system of the day. But no one can grapple with history without
feeling its inexhaustibleness. Its final boundaries seem only to retreat
to a farther distance the more ground we master, as Mr Buckle found,
when he betook himself, like another Atlas, to grapple with the history
of the whole world.
The more an investigator finds his materials printed for him, the
farther he can go. No doubt it is sometimes desirable, even necessary,
to look to some manuscript authority for the clearing-up of a special
point; but too often the profession of having perused a great mass of
manuscript authorities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who
searches for and finds the truth in any considerable portion of history,
performs too great an achievement to care for the praise of deciphering
a few specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the sense hidden
in certain words couched in obsolete spelling. If casual discoveries of
this kind do really help him to great truths, it is well; but it too
often happens that he exaggerates their value, because they are his own
game, shot on his own manor. Until he has exhausted all that is in
print, the student of history wastes his time in struggling with
manuscripts. Hence the value of the services of the book clubs in
immensely widening the arena of his immediate materials. To him their
volumes are as new tools to the mechanic, or new machinery to the
manufacturer. They economise, as it is termed, his labour: more
correctly speaking, they increase its productiveness.
These books are fortunately rich in memorials of the great internal
contest of the seventeenth century. The notes, for instance, of the
proceedings of the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited for the
Camden by Mr Bruce, come upon us fresh from that scene of high debate,
carrying with them the very marks of strife. The editor informs us that
the manuscript is written almost entirely in pencil on slips of foolscap
paper, which seem to have been so folded as to be conveniently placed on
the knee, and transferred to the pocket as each was completed. "They
are," he says, "full of abrupt terminations, as if the writer
occasionally gave up the task of following a rapid speaker who had got
beyond him, and began his note afresh. When they relate to resolutions
of the House, they often contain erasures, alterations, or other marks
of the haste with which the notes were jotted down, and of the changes
which took place in the subject-matter during the progress towards
completion. On several important occasions, and especially in the
instance of the debate on the Protestation [as to the impeachment of
Strafford], the confusion and irregularity of the notes give evidence to
the excitement of the House; and when the public discord rose higher,
the notes become more brief and less personal, and speeches are less
frequently assigned to their speakers, either from greater difficulty in
reporting, or from an increased feeling of the danger of the time, and
the possible use that might be made of notes of violent remarks. On
several of the sheets there are marks evidently made by the writer's
pencil having been forced upwards suddenly, as if by some one, in a full
House, pressing hastily against his elbow while he was in the act of
taking his note."
John Spalding.
Looking from the opposite end of the island, and from a totally
different social position, another watchful observer recorded the events
of the great contest. This was John Spalding, commonly supposed to have
been Commissary-Clerk of Aberdeen, but positively known in no other
capacity than as author of the book aptly entitled The Troubles, or,
more fully, "Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland and in England," from
1624 to 1645. Little, probably, did the Commissary-Clerk imagine, when
he entered on his snug quiet office, where he recorded probates of wills
and the proceedings in questions of marriage law, that he was to witness
and record one of the most momentous conflicts that the world ever
beheld--that contest which has been the prototype of all later European
convulsions. Less still could he have imagined that fame would arise for
him after two hundred years--that vehement though vain efforts should be
made to endow the simple name of John Spalding with the antecedents and
subsequents of a biographical existence, and that the far-off
descendants of many of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he
noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument to his memory in an
institution called by his name. He was evidently a thoroughly retiring
man, for he has left no vestige whatever of his individuality. Some
specimens of his formal official work might have been found in the
archives of his office--these would have been especially valuable for
the identification of his handwriting and the settlement of disputed
questions about the originality of manuscripts; but these documents, as
it happens, were all burnt early in last century with the building
containing them. So ardent and hot has been the chase after vestiges of
this man, that the fact was once discovered that with his own hand he
had written a certain deed concerning a feu-duty or rent-charge of L25,
7s. 4d., bearing date 31st January 1663; but in spite of the most
resolute efforts, this interesting document has not been found.
It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve, which has shrouded his
very identity, that we owe the valuable peculiarities of the
Commissary-Clerk's chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took no
ostensible side, and must have kept his own thoughts to himself,
otherwise he would have had to bear record of his own share of troubles.
In this calm serenity--folding the arms of resignation on the bosom of
patience, as the Persians say--he took his notes of the wild contest
that raged around him, setting down each event, great or small, with
systematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental philosopher
watching the phenomena of an eclipse or an eruption. Hence nowhere,
perhaps, has it been permitted to a mere reader to have so good a peep
behind the scenes of the mighty drama of war. We have plenty of
chroniclers of that epoch--marching us with swinging historic stride on
from battle unto battle--great in describing in long sentences the
musterings, the conflicts, and the retreats. In Spalding, however, we
shall find the numbers and character of the combatants, their arms,
their dresses, the persons who paid for these, and the prices paid--the
amount they obtained in pay, and the amount they were cheated out
of--their banners, distinguishing badges, watchwords, and all other like
particulars, set down with the minuteness of a bailiff making an
inventory of goods on which he has taken execution. He is very specific
in what one may term the negative side of the characteristics of
war--the misery and desolation it spreads around. The losses of this
"gudeman" and that lone widow are stated as if he were their law agent,
making up an account to go to a jury for damages for the "spulzie of
outside and inside plenishing, nolt, horse, sheep, cocks and hens, hay,
corn, peats, and fodder." He specifies all the items of mansions and
farm-houses attacked and looted, or "harried," as he calls it--the doors
staved in, the wainscoting pulled down--the windows smashed--the
furniture made firewood of--the pleasant plantations cut down to build
sleeping-huts--the linen, plate, and other valuables carried off: he
will even, perchance, tell how they were distributed--who it was that
managed to feather his nest with the plunder, and who it was that was
disappointed and cheated.
He had opportunities of bestowing his descriptive powers to good
purpose. Besides its ordinary share in the vicissitudes and calamities
of the war, his town of Aberdeen was twice pillaged by Montrose, with
laudable impartiality--once for the Covenanters and once for the
Royalists. Here is his first triumphant entry:--
"Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in order of battle, being
well armed both on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the
least, whereof he had ane carbine in his hand, two pistols by his sides,
and other two at his saddle-torr; the pikemen in their ranks with pike
and sword; the musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff,
bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company, both horse and
foot, had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other
officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and goodly
order. They had five colours or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Montrose
had one having his motto drawn in letters, 'For Religion, the Covenant,
and the Countrie.' The Earl Marechal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn had
one, and the town of Dundee had two. They had trumpeters to ilk company
of horsemen, and drummers to ilk company of footmen. They had their
meat, drink, and other provisions, bag and baggage, carried with them,
done all by advice of his Excellency Field-Marshal Leslie, whose counsel
General Montrose followed in this business. Then, in seemly order and
good array, this army came forward and entered the burgh of Aberdeen
about ten hours in the morning, at the Over Kirk gateport, syne came
down through the Broadgate, through the Castlegate, over at the Justice
Port to the Queen's Links directly. Here it is to be noted that few or
none of this haill army wanted are blue ribbon hung about his craig
[viz., neck] under his left arm, whilk they called 'the Covenanters'
ribbon,' because the Lord Gordon and some other of the Marquis's bairns
had ane ribbon, when he was dwelling in the toun, of ane red flesh
colour, which they wore in their hats, and called it 'the royal ribbon,'
as a sign of their love and loyalty to the King. In dispite or dirision
whereof this blue ribbon was worn and called 'the Covenanters' ribbon'
by the haill soldiers of this army."
The well-ordered army passed through, levying a fine on the Malignants,
and all seemed well; but because the citizens had not resisted Montrose,
the loyal barons in the neighbourhood fell on them and plundered them;
and because they had submitted to be so plundered, the Covenanting army
came back and plundered them also. "Many of this company went and brack
up the Bishop's yetts, set on good fires of his peats standing within