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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Library, by Andrew Lang, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Library
+
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2014  [eBook #2018]
+[This file was first posted on April 4, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1881 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pgflaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+                         [Picture: Frontispiece]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE LIBRARY
+
+
+                                    BY
+                               ANDREW LANG
+
+                            WITH A CHAPTER ON
+                   MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY
+                              AUSTIN DOBSON
+
+               [Picture: Decorative graphic, ‘Art at Home’]
+
+                                  London
+                             MACMILLAN & CO.
+                                   1881
+
+                 _The right of reproduction is reserved_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARKE, _Edinburgh_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    TO
+                              DR. JOHN BROWN
+                                AUTHOR OF
+                          _RAB AND HIS FRIENDS_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+THE pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the
+exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet)
+have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also written on
+early printed books (pp. 94–95).  The pages on the Biblioklept (pp.
+46–56) are reprinted, with the Editor’s kind permission, from the
+_Saturday Review_; and a few remarks on the moral lessons of bookstalls
+are taken from an essay in the same journal.
+
+Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub-Librarian of
+the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs of chapters I.,
+II., and III., and suggested some alterations.
+
+Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls College,
+for two plates from his “Book-bindings in All Souls Library” (printed for
+private circulation), which he has been good enough to lend me.  The
+plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by Dr. J. J. Wild.  Messrs.
+George Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., and Messrs. Chatto &
+Windus, must be thanked for the use of some of the woodcuts which
+illustrate the concluding chapter.
+
+                                                                     A. L.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                       PAGE
+                CHAPTER I.
+AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER            1
+“Every man his own Librarian”—Bibliography
+and Literature—Services of the French to
+Bibliography—A defence of the taste of the
+Book-collector—Should Collectors buy for
+the purpose of selling again?—The sport of
+Book-hunting—M. de Resbecq’s
+anecdotes—Stories of success of
+Book-hunters—The lessons of old
+Bookstalls—Booksellers’
+catalogues—Auctions of Books—Different
+forms of the taste for collecting—The
+taste serviceable to critical
+Science—Books considered as literary
+relics—Examples—The “Imitatio Christi” of
+J. J. Rousseau—A brief vision of mighty
+Book-hunters.
+                CHAPTER II.
+THE LIBRARY                              31
+The size of modern collections—The Library
+in English houses—Bookcases—Enemies of
+Books—Damp, dust, dirt—The
+bookworm—Careless readers—Book
+plates—Borrowers—Book stealers—Affecting
+instance of the Spanish Monk—The
+Book-ghoul—Women the natural foes of
+books—Some touching exceptions—Homage to
+Madame Fertiault—Modes of preserving
+books; binding—Various sorts of coverings
+for books—Half-bindings—Books too good to
+bind, how to be entertained—Iniquities of
+Binders—Cruel case of a cropped play of
+Molière—Recipes (not infallible) for
+cleaning books—Necessity of possessing
+bibliographical works, such as catalogues.
+               CHAPTER III.
+THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR               76
+Manuscripts, early and late—Early Printed
+Books—How to recognise them—Books printed
+on VELLUM—“Uncut” copies—“Livres de Luxe,”
+and Illustrated Books—Invective against
+“Christmas Books”—The “Hypnerotomachia
+Poliphili”—Old woodcuts—French vignettes
+of the eighteenth century—Books of the
+Aldi—Books of the Elzevirs—“Curious”
+Books—Singular old English poems—First
+editions—Changes of fashion in
+Book-collecting—Examples of the variations
+in prices—Books valued for their bindings,
+and as relics—Anecdotes of Madame du Barry
+and Marie Antoinette.
+                CHAPTER IV.
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS                       123
+Beginnings of Modern Book-Illustration in
+England—Stothard, Blake, Flaxman—Boydell’s
+“Shakespeare,” Macklin’s “Bible,” Martin’s
+“Milton”—The “Annuals”—Rogers’s “Italy”
+and “Poems”—Revival of
+Wood-Engraving—Bewick—Bewick’s Pupils—The
+“London School”—Progress of
+Wood-Engraving—Illustrated “Christmas” and
+other Books—The Humorous
+Artists—Cruikshank—Doyle—Thackeray—Leech—
+Tenniel—Du Maurier—Sambourne—Keene—Minor
+Humorous Artists—Children’s
+Books—Crane—Miss Greenaway—Caldecott—The
+“New American School”—Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                               PLATES.
+                                                                  PAGE
+M. ANNEI LUCANI DE BELLO CIVILI LIBRI X.  APUD SEB.                 62
+GRYPHIUM LUGDUNI.  1551  _To face_
+PUB. VIRGILII MARONIS OPERA PARISIIS.  APUD HIERONYMUM DE           64
+MARNEF, SUB PELICANO, MONTE D’HILURII.  1558  _To face_
+TITLE-PAGE of “Le Rommant de la Rose,” Paris, 1539  _To             94
+face_
+                              WOODCUTS.
+FRONTISPIECE.  _Drawn by Walter Crane_; _engraved by
+Swain_.
+INITIAL.  _Drawn by Walter Crane_; _engraved by Swain_               1
+GROUP OF CHILDREN.  _Drawn by Kate Greenaway_; _engraved by        122
+O. Lacour_
+INITIAL.  From Hughes’s “Scouring of the White Horse,              123
+1858.”  _Drawn by Richard Doyle_; _engraved by W. J.
+Linton_
+“INFANT JOY.”  From Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” 1789.            129
+_Engraved by J. F. Jungling_
+“COUNSELLOR, KING, WARRIOR, MOTHER AND CHILD, IN THE TOMB.”        131
+From Blair’s “Grave,” 1808.  _Designed by William Blake_;
+_facsimiled on wood from the engraving by Louis
+Schiavonetti_
+“THE WOODCOCK.”  From Jackson & Chatto’s “History of               141
+Wood-Engraving,” 1839.  _Engraved_, _after T. Bewick_, _by
+John Jackson_
+TAILPIECE.  From the same.  _Engraved_, _after T. Bewick_,         143
+_by John Jackson_
+HEADPIECE.  From Rogers’s “Pleasures of Memory, with other         145
+Poems,” 1810.  _Drawn by T. Stothard_; _engraved_, _after
+Luke Clennell_, _by O. Lacour_
+“GOLDEN HEAD BY GOLDEN HEAD.”  From Christina Rossetti’s           149
+“Goblin Market and other Poems,” 1862.  _Drawn by D. G.
+Rossetti_; _engraved by W. J. Linton_
+“THE DEAF POST-BOY.”  From Clarke’s “Three Courses and a           153
+Dessert,” 1830.  _Drawn by G. Cruikshank_; _engraved by S.
+Williams_ [?]
+“THE MAD TEA-PARTY.”  From “Alice’s Adventures in                  162
+Wonderland,” 1865.  _Drawn by John Tenniel_; _engraved by
+Dalziel Brothers_
+BLACK KITTEN.  From “Through the Looking-Glass,” 1871.             163
+_Drawn by John Tenniel_; _engraved by Dalziel Brothers_
+“THE MUSIC OF THE PAST.”  From “Punch’s Almanack,” 1877.           165
+_Drawn by George du Maurier_; _engraved by Swain_
+LION AND TUB.  From “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” 1879.  _Drawn by        167
+Linley Sambourne_; _engraved by Swain_
+BOY AND HIPPOCAMPUS.  From Miss E. Keary’s “Magic Valley,”         171
+1877.  _Drawn by_ “_E. V. B._” (Hon. Mrs. Boyle); _engraved
+by T. Quartley_
+“LOVE CHARMS.”  From Irving’s “Bracebridge Hall,” 1876.            173
+_Drawn by Randolph Caldecott_; _engraved by J. D. Cooper_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    Books, books again, and books once more!
+    These are our theme, which some miscall
+    Mere madness, setting little store
+    By copies either short or tall.
+    But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
+    We rather write for you that hold
+    Patched folios dear, and prize “the small,
+    Rare volume, black with tarnished gold.”
+
+                                                                     A. D.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER
+
+
+“ALL men,” says Dr. Dibdin, “like to be their own librarians.”  A writer
+on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the books that
+even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to collect.  There are
+books which no lover of literature can afford to be without; classics,
+ancient and modern, on which the world has pronounced its verdict.  These
+works, in whatever shape we may be able to possess them, are the
+necessary foundations of even the smallest collections.  Homer, Dante and
+Milton Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristophanes and Molière, Thucydides,
+Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and Scott,—these every lover of letters will
+desire to possess in the original languages or in translations.  The list
+of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the tastes of
+men begin to differ very widely.  An assortment of broadsheet ballads and
+scrap-books, bought in boyhood, was the nucleus of Scott’s library, rich
+in the works of poets and magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists.  A
+childish liking for coloured prints of stage characters, may be the germ
+of a theatrical collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin.
+People who are studying any past period of human history, or any old
+phase or expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little
+contemporary volumes which seem trash to other amateurs.  For example, to
+a student of Molière, it is a happy chance to come across “La Carte du
+Royaume des Prétieuses”—(The map of the kingdom of the
+“Précieuses”)—written the year before the comedian brought out his famous
+play “Les Précieuses Ridicules.”  This geographical tract appeared in the
+very “Recueil des Pieces Choisies,” whose authors Magdelon, in the play,
+was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his appearance.  There
+is a faculty which Horace Walpole named “serendipity,”—the luck of
+falling on just the literary document which one wants at the moment.  All
+collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the exercise of
+serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways.  One man will go home
+hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of
+catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide
+great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he
+went a book-hunting.  Others are captivated by black letter, others by
+the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne.  But however
+various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one
+point,—the love of printed paper.  Even an Elzevir man can sympathise
+with Charles Lamb’s attachment to “that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which
+he dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden.”  But it is
+another thing when Lamb says, “I do not care for a first folio of
+Shakespeare.”  A bibliophile who could say this could say anything.
+
+No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from their
+literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for themselves,
+then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness.  These books
+are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and
+illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of
+the past, or for their rarity.  It is about these books, the method of
+preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them,
+that the following pages are to treat.  It is a subject more closely
+connected with the taste for curiosities than with art, strictly so
+called.  We are to be occupied, not so much with literature as with
+books, not so much with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint
+_duenna_ of literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its
+humours.  And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions and
+anecdotes derived from French writers.  These are as unavoidable, almost,
+as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in fencing.  In
+bibliography, in the care for books _as_ books, the French are still the
+teachers of Europe, as they were in tennis and are in fencing.  Thus,
+Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his “Philobiblon:”
+“Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as
+often as I have a chance of going to Paris!  There the days seem always
+short; there are the goodly collections on the delicate fragrant
+book-shelves.”  Since Dante wrote of—
+
+    “L’onor di quell’ arte
+    Ch’ allumare è chiamata in Parisi,”
+
+“the art that is called illuminating in Paris,” and all the other arts of
+writing, printing, binding books, have been most skilfully practised by
+France.  She improved on the lessons given by Germany and Italy in these
+crafts.  Twenty books about books are written in Paris for one that is
+published in England.  In our country Dibdin is out of date (the second
+edition of his “Bibliomania” was published in 1811), and Mr. Hill
+Burton’s humorous “Book-hunter” is out of print.  Meanwhile, in France,
+writers grave and gay, from the gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier’s
+quaint fancy, and Janin’s wit, and the always entertaining bibliophile
+Jacob (Paul Lacroix), have written, or are writing, on books,
+manuscripts, engravings, editions, and bindings.  In England, therefore,
+rare French books are eagerly sought, and may be found in all the
+booksellers’ catalogues.  On the continent there is no such care for our
+curious or beautiful editions, old or new.  Here a hint may be given to
+the collector.  If he “picks up” a rare French book, at a low price, he
+would act prudently in having it bound in France by a good craftsman.
+Its value, when “the wicked day of destiny” comes, and the collection is
+broken up, will thus be made secure.  For the French do not suffer our
+English bindings gladly; while we have no narrow prejudice against the
+works of Lortic and Capé, but the reverse.  For these reasons then, and
+also because every writer is obliged to make the closest acquaintance
+with books in the direction where his own studies lie, the writings of
+French authorities are frequently cited in the following pages.
+
+This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste and passion
+of book-collecting, and of the class of men known invidiously as
+book-worms and book-hunters.  They and their simple pleasures are the
+butts of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who cannot endure in others
+a taste which is absent in themselves.  Important new books have actually
+been condemned of late years because they were printed on good paper, and
+a valuable historical treatise was attacked by reviewers quite angrily
+because its outward array was not mean and forbidding.  Of course,
+critics who take this view of new books have no patience with persons who
+care for “margins,” and “condition,” and early copies of old books.  We
+cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not necessary to be
+disturbed by his clamour.  People are happier for the possession of a
+taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons of
+Scripture, possess them.  The wise collector gets instruction and
+pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long run, he
+and his family do not lose money.  The amusement may chance to prove a
+very fair investment.
+
+As to this question of making money by collecting, Mr. Hill Burton speaks
+very distinctly in “The Book-hunter:” “Where money is the object let a
+man speculate or become a miser. . . Let not the collector ever, unless
+in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any of his
+treasures.  Let him not even have recourse to that practice called
+barter, which political philosophers tell us is the universal resource of
+mankind preparatory to the invention of money.  Let him confine all his
+transactions in the market to purchasing only.  No good comes of
+gentlemen-amateurs buying and selling.”  There is room for difference of
+opinion here, but there seems to be most reason on the side of Mr. Hill
+Burton.  It is one thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the
+money he expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find
+themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste.  It is
+quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to
+sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers.  It is necessary also
+to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes.  He must buy
+experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to
+disappoint him.  He will pay dearly for the wrong “Cæsar” of 1635, the
+one _without_ errors in pagination; and this is only a common example of
+the beginner’s blunders.  Collecting is like other forms of sport; the
+aim is not certain at first, the amateur is nervous, and, as in angling,
+is apt to “strike” (a bargain) too hurriedly.
+
+I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of sport.
+People talk of “book-hunting,” and the old Latin motto says that “one
+never wearies of the chase in this forest.”  But the analogy to angling
+seems even stronger.  A collector walks in the London or Paris streets,
+as he does by Tweed or Spey.  Many a lordly mart of books he passes, like
+Mr. Quaritch’s, Mr. Toovey’s, or M. Fontaine’s, or the shining store of
+M.M. Morgand et Fatout, in the Passage des Panoramas.  Here I always feel
+like Brassicanus in the king of Hungary’s collection, “non in
+Bibliotheca, sed in gremio Jovis;” “not in a library, but in paradise.”
+It is not given to every one to cast angle in these preserves.  They are
+kept for dukes and millionaires.  Surely the old Duke of Roxburghe was
+the happiest of mortals, for to him both the chief bookshops and auction
+rooms, and the famous salmon streams of Floors, were equally open, and he
+revelled in the prime of book-collecting and of angling.  But there are
+little tributary streets, with humbler stalls, shy pools, as it were,
+where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an Elzevir, or an old
+French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a Restoration comedy.  It is
+usually a case of hope unfulfilled; but the merest nibble of a rare book,
+say Marston’s poems in the original edition, or Beddoes’s “Love’s Arrow
+Poisoned,” or Bankes’s “Bay Horse in a Trance,” or the “Mel Heliconicum”
+of Alexander Ross, or “Les Oeuvres de Clement Marot, de Cahors, Vallet de
+Chambre du Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre Gaultier, 1551;” even a chance at
+something of this sort will kindle the waning excitement, and add a
+pleasure to a man’s walk in muddy London.  Then, suppose you purchase for
+a couple of shillings the “Histoire des Amours de Henry IV, et autres
+pieces curieuses, A Leyde, Chez Jean Sambyx (Elzevir), 1664,” it is
+certainly not unpleasant, on consulting M. Fontaine’s catalogue, to find
+that he offers the same work at the ransom of £10.  The beginner thinks
+himself in singular luck, even though he has no idea of vending his
+collection, and he never reflects that _condition_—spotless white leaves
+and broad margins, make the market value of a book.
+
+Setting aside such bare considerations of profit, the sport given by
+bookstalls is full of variety and charm.  In London it may be pursued in
+most of the cross streets that stretch a dirty net between the British
+Museum and the Strand.  There are other more shy and less frequently
+poached resorts which the amateur may be allowed to find out for himself.
+In Paris there is the long sweep of the _Quais_, where some eighty
+_bouquinistes_ set their boxes on the walls of the embankment of the
+Seine.  There are few country towns so small but that books, occasionally
+rare and valuable, may be found lurking in second-hand furniture
+warehouses.  This is one of the advantages of living in an old country.
+The Colonies are not the home for a collector.  I have seen an Australian
+bibliophile enraptured by the rare chance of buying, in Melbourne, an
+early work on—the history of Port Jackson!  This seems but poor game.
+But in Europe an amateur has always occupation for his odd moments in
+town, and is for ever lured on by the radiant apparition of Hope.  All
+collectors tell their anecdotes of wonderful luck, and magnificent
+discoveries.  There is a volume “Voyages Littéraires sur les Quais de
+Paris” (Paris, Durand, 1857), by M. de Fontaine de Resbecq, which might
+convert the dullest soul to book-hunting.  M. de Resbecq and his friends
+had the most amazing good fortune.  A M. N— found six original plays of
+Molière (worth perhaps as many hundreds of pounds), bound up with Garth’s
+“Dispensary,” an English poem which has long lost its vogue.  It is worth
+while, indeed, to examine all volumes marked “Miscellanea,” “Essays,” and
+the like, and treasures may possibly lurk, as Snuffy Davy knew, within
+the battered sheepskin of school books.  Books lie in out of the way
+places.  Poggio rescued “Quintilian” from the counter of a wood merchant.
+The best time for book-hunting in Paris is the early morning.  “The
+take,” as anglers say, is “on” from half-past seven to half-past nine
+a.m.  At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares, and the
+agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up everything worth
+having.  These agents quite spoil the sport of the amateur.  They keep a
+strict watch on every country dealer’s catalogue, snap up all he has
+worth selling, and sell it over again, charging pounds in place of
+shillings.  But M. de Resbecq vows that he once picked up a copy of the
+first edition of La Rochefoucauld’s “Maxims” out of a box which two
+booksellers had just searched.  The same collector got together very
+promptly all the original editions of La Bruyère, and he even found a
+copy of the Elzevir “Pastissier Français,” at the humble price of six
+sous.  Now the “ Pastissier Français,” an ill-printed little cookery-book
+of the Elzevirs, has lately fetched £600 at a sale.  The Antiquary’s
+story of Snuffy Davy and the “Game of Chess,” is dwarfed by the luck of
+M. de Resbecq.  Not one amateur in a thousand can expect such good
+fortune.  There is, however, a recent instance of a Rugby boy, who picked
+up, on a stall, a few fluttering leaves hanging together on a flimsy
+thread.  The old woman who kept the stall could hardly be induced to
+accept the large sum of a shilling for an original quarto of
+Shakespeare’s “King John.”  These stories are told that none may despair.
+That none may be over confident, an author may recount his own
+experience.  The only odd _trouvaille_ that ever fell to me was a clean
+copy of “La Journée Chrétienne,” with the name of Léon Gambetta, 1844, on
+its catholic fly-leaf.  Rare books grow rarer every day, and often ’tis
+only Hope that remains at the bottom of the fourpenny boxes.  Yet the
+Paris book-hunters cleave to the game.  August is their favourite season;
+for in August there is least competition.  Very few people are, as a
+rule, in Paris, and these are not tempted to loiter.  The bookseller is
+drowsy, and glad not to have the trouble of chaffering.  The English go
+past, and do not tarry beside a row of dusty boxes of books.  The heat
+threatens the amateur with sunstroke.  Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a
+prose _ballade_ of book-hunters—then, calm, glad, heroic, the
+_bouquineurs_ prowl forth, refreshed with hope.  The brown old calf-skin
+wrinkles in the sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the
+cover of a quarto.  The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees
+seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is
+walking the streets.  Under his vast umbrella the book-hunter is secure
+and content; he enjoys the pleasures of the sport unvexed by poachers,
+and thinks less of the heat than does the deer-stalker on the bare
+hill-side.
+
+There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in the stalls.
+The decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of
+ambition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections.  The
+presentation volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his
+heart to the poet who was his “Master,” to the critic whom he feared, to
+the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration.  The critic
+has not even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely torn three or four
+apart with his finger and thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let
+the poems slip into some corner of his library, whence they were removed
+on some day of doom and of general clearing out.  The sale of the library
+of a late learned prelate who had Boileau’s hatred of a dull book was a
+scene to be avoided by his literary friends.  The Bishop always gave the
+works which were offered to him a fair chance.  He read till he could
+read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress could
+be traced like that of a backwoodsman who “blazes” his way through a
+primeval forest.  The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty before the
+thirtieth page.  The melancholy of the book-hunter is aroused by two
+questions, “Whence?” and “Whither?”  The bibliophile asks about his books
+the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul.  Whence came
+they?  Their value depends a good deal on the answer.  If they are
+stamped with arms, then there is a book (“Armorial du Bibliophile,” by M.
+Guigard) which tells you who was their original owner.  Any one of twenty
+coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of the
+volume which it covers.  If there is no such mark, the fancy is left to
+devise a romance about the first owner, and all the hands through which
+the book has passed.  That Vanini came from a Jesuit college, where it
+was kept under lock and key.  That copy of Agrippa “De Vanitate
+Scientiarum” is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded ink, with cynical
+Latin notes.  What pessimist two hundred years ago made his grumbling so
+permanent?  One can only guess, but part of the imaginative joys of the
+book-hunter lies ‘ in the fruitless conjecture.  That other question
+“Whither?” is graver.  Whither are our treasures to be scattered?  Will
+they find kind masters? or, worst fate of books, fall into the hands of
+women who will sell them to the trunk-maker?  Are the leaves to line a
+box or to curl a maiden’s locks?  Are the rarities to become more and
+more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices?  Some unlucky men are
+able partly to solve these problems in their own lifetime.  They are
+constrained to sell their libraries—an experience full of bitterness,
+wrath, and disappointment.
+
+Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which life has no
+worse sorrow.  A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing.  If
+you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it
+years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.  As a
+man’s tastes and opinions are developed his books put on a different
+aspect.  He hardly knows the “Poems and Ballads” he used to declaim, and
+cannot recover the enigmatic charm of “Sordello.”  Books change like
+friends, like ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in
+the contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them
+is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in
+him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days.
+The vanished past returns when we look at the pages.  The vicissitudes of
+years are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts
+of desire and hope return to their forbidden home in the heart and fancy.
+It is as well to have the power of recalling them always at hand, and to
+be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions which were so
+powerful and full of life, and now are more faded and of less account
+than the memory of the dreams of childhood.  It is because our books are
+friends that do change, and remind us of change, that we should keep them
+with us, even at a little inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the
+world to find a dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls.  We are a part of all
+that we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson’s Ulysses, and we
+owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who
+have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and the
+weakness of human purpose.  Old school and college books even have a
+reproachful and salutary power of whispering how much a man knew, and at
+the cost of how much trouble, that he has absolutely forgotten, and is
+neither the better nor the worse for it.  It will be the same in the case
+of the books he is eager about now; though, to be sure, he will read with
+less care, and forget with an ease and readiness only to be acquired by
+practice.
+
+But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches moral
+lessons, as “dauncyng” also does, according to Sir Thomas Elyot, in the
+“Boke called the Gouvernour,” but because it affords a kind of sportive
+excitement.  Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase.  Book
+catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him all the
+pleasures of the sport at home.  He reads the booksellers’ catalogues
+eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with pencil, he writes by return of
+post, or he telegraphs to the vendor.  Unfortunately he almost always
+finds that he has been forestalled, probably by some bookseller’s agent.
+When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious that Parisians have the
+pick of the market before our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M.
+Labitte.  Still the catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in
+bibliography.  You see from them how prices are ruling, and you can
+gloat, in fancy, over De Luyne’s edition of Molière, 1673, two volumes in
+red morocco, _doublé_ (“Trautz Bauzonnet”), or some other vanity
+hopelessly out of reach.  In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and Fatout
+print a facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition.  The
+bust of Molière occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as
+Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the “Précieuses Ridicules”), stand on
+either side.  In the second volume are Molière, and his wife Armande,
+crowned by the muse Thalia.  A catalogue which contains such exact
+reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a work of art,
+and serviceable to the student.  When the shop of a bookseller, with a
+promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant,
+bibliophiles have been known to rush to the spot in the grey morning,
+before the doors open.  There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay
+comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain
+outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers’ Row.  There is a length
+to which enthusiasm cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at
+rising early in the morning.  But, when we think of the sport of
+book-hunting, it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally
+turns.  Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was
+in an auction-room that Guibert de Pixérécourt, being outbid, said, in
+tones of mortal hatred, “I will have the book when your collection is
+sold after your death.”  And he kept his word.  The fever of gambling is
+not absent from the auction-room, and people “bid jealous” as they
+sometimes “ride jealous” in the hunting-field.  Yet, the neophyte, if he
+strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle.
+The chamber has the look of a rather seedy “hell.”  The crowd round the
+auctioneer’s box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at
+Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany, they
+would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour.
+Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked down for trifling
+sums.  Let the neophyte try his luck, however, and prices will rise
+wonderfully.  The fact is that the sale is a “knock out.”  The bidders
+are professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to
+distribute them afterwards among themselves.  Thus an amateur can have a
+good deal of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper
+value, and by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to
+“run him up.”  The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of
+gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the
+owner of the books.  A bidder must be able to command his temper, both
+that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to bid recklessly,
+and that he may disregard the not very carefully concealed sneers of the
+professionals.
+
+In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the
+collector.  One man is for bibles, another for ballads.  Some pursue
+plays, others look for play bills.  “He was not,” says Mr. Hill Burton,
+speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, “he was not a black-letter man, or a tall
+copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early-English
+dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old
+brown calf man, or a Grangerite, {1} or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt
+topper, or a marbled insider, or an _editio princeps_ man.”  These
+nicknames briefly dispose into categories a good many species of
+collectors.  But there are plenty of others.  You may be a
+historical-bindings man, and hunt for books that were bound by the great
+artists of the past and belonged to illustrious collectors.  Or you may
+be a Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the
+friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical “Marginalia.”  Or you may
+covet the earliest editions of modern poets—Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson,
+or even Ebenezer Jones.  Or the object of your desires may be the books
+of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830.  Or, being
+a person of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country
+histories.  Again, your heart may be set on the books illustrated by
+Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century.
+Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and for
+the books of the Giunta press.  In fact, as many as are the species of
+rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of collectors.  There
+is one sort of men, modest but not unwise in their generations, who buy
+up the pretty books published in very limited editions by French
+booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and Jouaust.  Already their reprints of
+Rochefoucauld’s first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the
+lyrics attributed to Molière, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch
+high prices in the market.  By a singular caprice, the little volumes of
+Mr. Thackeray’s miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when
+they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their old
+modest price is increased twenty fold.  It is not always easy to account
+for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting there are
+certain definite laws.  “Why do you pay a large price for a dingy, old
+book,” outsiders ask, “when a clean modern reprint can be procured for
+two or three shillings?”  To this question the collector has several
+replies, which he, at least, finds satisfactory.  In the first place,
+early editions, published during a great author’s lifetime, and under his
+supervision, have authentic texts.  The changes in them are the changes
+that Prior or La Bruyère themselves made and approved.  You can study, in
+these old editions, the alterations in their taste, the history of their
+minds.  The case is the same even with contemporary authors.  One likes
+to have Mr. Tennyson’s “Poems, chiefly Lyrical” (London: Effingham
+Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830).  It is fifty years old, this
+little book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a
+stately tree.  In half a century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn
+much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his
+“Mariana” is a masterpiece.  “Mariana” is in all the collections, but
+pieces of which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the
+old volume of 1830.  In the same way “The Strayed Reveller, and other
+poems, by A.”  (London: B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much
+that Mr. Matthew Arnold has altered, and this volume, like the suppressed
+“Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A.” (1852), appeals more to the
+collector than do the new editions which all the world may possess.
+There are verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough’s “Ambarvalia”
+(1849), which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which
+“repay perusal.”  These minutiæ of literary history become infinitely
+more important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and
+the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of critical
+science.  The preservation of rare books, and the collection of materials
+for criticism, are the useful functions, then, of book-collecting.  But
+it is not to be denied that the sentimental side of the pursuit gives it
+most of its charm.  Old books are often literary _relics_, and as dear
+and sacred to the lover of literature as are relics of another sort to
+the religious devotee.  The amateur likes to see the book in its form as
+the author knew it.  He takes a pious pleasure in the first edition of
+“Les Précieuses Ridicules,” (M.DC.LX.) just as Molière saw it, when he
+was fresh in the business of authorship, and wrote “Mon Dieu, qu’un
+Autheur est neuf, la première fois qu’on l’imprime.”  All editions
+published during a great man’s life have this attraction, and seem to
+bring us closer to his spirit.  Other volumes are relics, as we shall see
+later, of some famed collector, and there is a certain piety in the care
+we give to books once dear to Longepierre, or Harley, or d’Hoym, or
+Buckle, to Madame de Maintenon, or Walpole, to Grolier, or Askew, or De
+Thou, or Heber.  Such copies should be handed down from worthy owners to
+owners not unworthy; such servants of literature should never have
+careless masters.  A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good clear
+reprint.  M. Charpentier’s “Montaigne” serves the turn, but it is natural
+to treasure more “Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne,” that were
+printed by Francoise le Febre, of Lyon, in 1595.  It is not a beautiful
+book; the type is small, and rather blunt, but William Drummond of
+Hawthornden has written on the title-page his name and his device,
+_Cipresso e Palma_.  There are a dozen modern editions of Molière more
+easily read than the four little volumes of Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698),
+but these contain reduced copies of the original illustrations, and here
+you see Arnolphe and Agnes in their habits as they lived, Molière and
+Mdlle. de Brie as the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred
+years ago.  Suckling’s “Fragmenta Aurea” contain a good deal of dross,
+and most of the gold has been gathered into Miscellanies, but the
+original edition of 1646, “after his own copies,” with the portrait of
+the jolly cavalier who died _ætatis suae_ 28, has its own allurement.
+Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth’s edition, or
+Ziegler’s; but that which Zacharias Calliergi printed in Rome (1516),
+with an excommunication from Leo X. against infringement of copyright,
+will always be a beautiful and desirable book, especially when bound by
+Derome.  The gist of the pious Prince Conti’s strictures on the
+wickedness of comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is
+natural to like his “Traité de la Comedie selon la tradition de l’Eglise,
+Tirée des Conciles et des saints Pères,” published by Lovys Billaine in
+1660, especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous
+black morocco.
+
+These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little library,
+a “twopenny treasure-house,” but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the
+nature of the collector’s passion,—the character of his innocent
+pleasures.  He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more
+personal character than mere first editions.  A lucky collector lately
+bought Shelley’s copy of Ossian, with the poet’s signature on the
+title-page, in Booksellers’ Row.  Another possesses a copy of Foppens’s
+rare edition of Petrarch’s “Le Sage Resolu contre l’une et l’autre
+Fortune,” which once belonged to Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon,
+and may have fortified, by its stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew
+the extremes of either fortune, the captive of St. Helena.  But the best
+example of a book, which is also a relic, is the “Imitatio Christi,”
+which belonged to J. J. Rousseau.  Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the
+happy owner of this possession, tell his own story of his treasure: It
+was in 1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre.
+Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the
+“Imitatio Christi.”  M. de Latour, like other bibliophiles, was not in
+the habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were
+of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of
+the “Imitatio,” a book which brings considerable prices.  However, by
+some lucky chance, some Socratic dæmon whispering, may be, in his ear, he
+picked up the little dingy volume of the last century.  It was of a Paris
+edition, 1751, but what was the name on the fly-leaf.  M. de Latour read
+_à J. J. Rousseau_.  There was no mistake about it, the good bibliophile
+knew Rousseau’s handwriting perfectly well; to make still more sure he
+paid his seventy-five centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont
+des Arts, to his bookbinder’s, where he had a copy of Rousseau’s works,
+with a _facsimile_ of his handwriting.  As he walked, M. de Latour read
+in his book, and found notes of Rousseau’s on the margin.  The
+_facsimile_ proved that the inscription was genuine.  The happy de Latour
+now made for the public office in which he was a functionary, and rushed
+into the bureau of his friend the Marquis de V.  The Marquis, a man of
+great strength of character, recognised the signature of Rousseau with
+but little display of emotion.  M. de Latour now noticed some withered
+flowers among the sacred pages; but it was reserved for a friend to
+discover in the faded petals Rousseau’s favourite flower, the periwinkle.
+Like a true Frenchman, like Rousseau himself in his younger days, M. de
+Latour had not recognised the periwinkle when he saw it.  That night, so
+excited was M. de Latour, he never closed an eye!  What puzzled him was
+that he could not remember, in all Rousseau’s works, a single allusion to
+the “Imitatio Christi.”  Time went on, the old book was not rebound, but
+kept piously in a case of Russia leather.  M. de Latour did not suppose
+that “dans ce bas monde it fût permis aux joies du bibliophile d’aller
+encore plus loin.”  He imagined that the delights of the amateur could
+only go further, in heaven.  It chanced, however, one day that he was
+turning over the “Oeuvres Inédites” of Rousseau, when he found a letter,
+in which Jean Jacques, writing in 1763, asked Motiers-Travers to send him
+the “Imitatio Christi.”  Now the date 1764 is memorable, in Rousseau’s
+“Confessions,” for a burst of sentiment over a periwinkle, the first he
+had noticed particularly since his residence at _Les Charmettes_, where
+the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens.  Thus M. Tenant de
+Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle, which caused the tear
+of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
+
+We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau.  But M. de Latour was an
+enthusiast, and this little anecdote of his explains the sentimental side
+of the bibliophile’s pursuit.  Yes, it is _sentiment_ that makes us feel
+a lively affection for the books that seem to connect us with great poets
+and students long ago dead.  Their hands grasp ours across the ages.  I
+never see the first edition of Homer, that monument of typography and of
+enthusiasm for letters, printed at Florence (1488) at the expense of
+young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli, and of their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli,
+but I feel moved to cry with Heyne, “salvete juvenes, nobiles et
+generosi; _χαίρετέ μοι καὶ ἐιν Άΐδαο δόμοισι_.”
+
+Such is our apology for book-collecting.  But the best defence of the
+taste would be a list of the names of great collectors, a “vision of
+mighty book-hunters.”  Let us say nothing of Seth and Noah, for their
+reputation as amateurs is only based on the authority of the tract _De
+Bibliothecis Antediluvianis_.  The library of Assurbanipal I pass over,
+for its volumes were made, as Pliny says, of _coctiles laterculi_, of
+baked tiles, which have been deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith.
+Philosophers as well as immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on
+our side.  It was objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap
+scribblers of to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred minae (£360)
+for three treatises of Philolaus, while Aristotle paid nearly thrice the
+sum for a few books that had been in the library of Speusippus.  Did not
+a Latin philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety to purchase an
+Odyssey “as old as Homer,” and what would not Cicero, that great
+collector, have given for the Ascraean _editio princeps_ of Hesiod,
+scratched on mouldy old plates of lead?  Perhaps Dr. Schliemann may find
+an original edition of the “Iliad” at Orchomenos; but of all early copies
+none seems so attractive as that engraved on the leaden plates which
+Pausanias saw at Ascra.  Then, in modern times, what “great allies” has
+the collector, what brethren in book-hunting?  The names are like the
+catalogue with which Villon fills his “Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps
+Jadis.”  A collector was “le preux Charlemaigne” and our English Alfred.
+The Kings of Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus; the Kings of France, and their
+queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all amateurs.  So was
+our Henry VIII., and James I., who “wished he could be chained to a shelf
+in the Bodleian.”  The middle age gives us Richard de Bury, among
+ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts Sir Thomas More, with that
+“pretty fardle of books, in the small type of Aldus,” which he carried
+for a freight to the people of Utopia.  Men of the world, like Bussy
+Rabutin, queens like our Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers
+like Colbert (who made the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for
+bindings); men of letters like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and
+Paul Lacroix; warriors like Junot and Prince Eugène; these are only
+leaders of companies in the great army of lovers of books, in which it is
+honourable enough to be a private soldier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE LIBRARY
+
+
+THE Library which is to be spoken of in these pages, is all unlike the
+halls which a Spencer or a Huth fills with treasure beyond price.  The
+age of great libraries has gone by, and where a collector of the old
+school survives, he is usually a man of enormous wealth, who might, if he
+pleased, be distinguished in parliament, in society, on the turf itself,
+or in any of the pursuits where unlimited supplies of money are strictly
+necessary.  The old amateurs, whom La Bruyère was wont to sneer at, were
+not satisfied unless they possessed many thousands of books.  For a
+collector like Cardinal Mazarin, Naudé bought up the whole stock of many
+a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper as if a
+tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away.  In our modern times, as
+the industrious Bibliophile Jacob, says, the fashion of book-collecting
+has changed; “from the vast hall that it was, the library of the amateur
+has shrunk to a closet, to a mere book-case.  Nothing but a neat article
+of furniture is needed now, where a great gallery or a long suite of
+rooms was once required.  The book has become, as it were, a jewel, and
+is kept in a kind of jewel-case.”  It is not quantity of pages, nor lofty
+piles of ordinary binding, nor theological folios and classic quartos,
+that the modern amateur desires.  He is content with but a few books of
+distinction and elegance, masterpieces of printing and binding, or relics
+of famous old collectors, of statesmen, philosophers, beautiful dead
+ladies; or, again, he buys illustrated books, or first editions of the
+modern classics.  No one, not the Duc d’Aumale, or M. James Rothschild
+himself, with his 100 books worth £40,000, can possess very many copies
+of books which are inevitably rare.  Thus the adviser who would offer
+suggestions to the amateur, need scarcely write, like Naudé and the old
+authorities, about the size and due position of the library.  He need
+hardly warn the builder to make the _salle_ face the east, “because the
+eastern winds, being warm and dry of their nature, greatly temper the
+air, fortify the senses, make subtle the humours, purify the spirits,
+preserve a healthy disposition of the whole body, and, to say all in one
+word, are most wholesome and salubrious.”  The east wind, like the
+fashion of book-collecting, has altered in character a good deal since
+the days when Naudé was librarian to Cardinal Mazarin.  One might as well
+repeat the learned Isidorus his counsels about the panels of green marble
+(that refreshes the eye), and Boethius his censures on library walls of
+ivory and glass, as fall back on the ancient ideas of librarians dead and
+gone.
+
+The amateur, then, is the person we have in our eye, and especially the
+bibliophile who has but lately been bitten with this pleasant mania of
+collecting.  We would teach him how to arrange and keep his books orderly
+and in good case, and would tell him what to buy and what to avoid.  By
+the _library_ we do not understand a study where no one goes, and where
+the master of the house keeps his boots, an assortment of walking-sticks,
+the “Waverley Novels,” “Pearson on the Creed,” “Hume’s Essays,” and a
+collection of sermons.  In, alas! too many English homes, the Library is
+no more than this, and each generation passes without adding a book,
+except now and then a Bradshaw or a railway novel, to the collection on
+the shelves.  The success, perhaps, of circulating libraries, or, it may
+be, the Aryan tendencies of our race, “which does not read, and lives in
+the open air,” have made books the rarest of possessions in many houses.
+There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are
+fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather, and
+these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and manuals,
+some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an English
+household.  But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be
+satisfied with these commonplace supplies.  He has a taste for books more
+or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in short, for books, in the
+fabrication of which _art_ has not been absent.  He loves to have his
+study, like Montaigne’s, remote from the interruption of servants, wife,
+and children; a kind of shrine, where he may be at home with himself,
+with the illustrious dead, and with the genius of literature.  The room
+may look east, west, or south, provided that it be dry, warm, light, and
+airy.  Among the many enemies of books the first great foe is _damp_, and
+we must describe the necessary precautions to be taken against this
+peril.  We will suppose that the amateur keeps his ordinary working
+books, modern tomes, and all that serve him as literary tools, on open
+shelves.  These may reach the roof, if he has books to fill them, and it
+is only necessary to see that the back of the bookcases are slightly
+removed from contact with the walls.  The more precious and beautifully
+bound treasures will naturally be stored in a case with closely-fitting
+glass-doors. {2}  The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois
+leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact
+with the wood.  A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will
+also help to keep out humidity.  Most writers recommend that the
+bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as
+well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of
+mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth.  These
+close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is
+fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic scents of cedar, sandal
+wood, and Russia leather.  There was once a bibliophile who said that a
+man could only love one book at a time, and the darling of the moment he
+used to carry about in a charming leather case.  Others, men of few
+books, preserve them in long boxes with glass fronts, which may be
+removed from place to place as readily as the household gods of Laban.
+But the amateur who not only worships but reads books, needs larger
+receptacles; and in the open oak cases for modern authors, and for books
+with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed _armoire_ for books
+of rarity and price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of
+arranging his treasures.  His shelves will decline in height from the
+lowest, where huge folios stand at case, to the top ranges, while
+Elzevirs repose on a level with the eye.  It is well that each upper
+shelf should have a leather fringe to keep the dust away.
+
+As to the shape of the bookcases, and the furniture, and ornaments of the
+library, every amateur will please himself.  Perhaps the satin-wood or
+mahogany tabernacles of rare books are best made after the model of what
+furniture-dealers indifferently call the “Queen Anne” or the
+“Chippendale” style.  There is a pleasant quaintness in the carved
+architectural ornaments of the top, and the inlaid flowers of marquetry
+go well with the pretty florid editions of the last century, the books
+that were illustrated by Stothard and Gravelot.  Ebony suits theological
+tomes very well, especially when they are bound in white vellum.  As to
+furniture, people who can afford it will imitate the arrangements of
+Lucullus, in Mr. Hill Burton’s charming volume “The Book-hunter”
+(Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1862).—“Everything is of perfect finish,—the
+mahogany-railed gallery, the tiny ladders, the broad winged lecterns,
+with leathern cushions on the edges to keep the wood from grazing the
+rich bindings, the books themselves, each shelf uniform with its facings,
+or rather backings, like well-dressed lines at a review.”  The late Sir
+William Stirling-Maxwell, a famous bibliophile, invented a very nice
+library chair.  It is most comfortable to sit on; and, as the top of the
+back is broad and flat, it can be used as a ladder of two high steps,
+when one wants to reach a book on a lofty shelf.  A kind of square
+revolving bookcase, an American invention, manufactured by Messrs.
+Trübner, is useful to the working man of letters.  Made in oak, stained
+green, it is not unsightly.  As to ornaments, every man to his taste.
+You may have a “pallid bust of Pallas” above your classical collection,
+or fill the niches in a shrine of old French light literature, pastoral
+and comedy, with delicate shepherdesses in Chelsea china.  On such
+matters a modest writer, like Mr. Jingle when Mr. Pickwick ordered
+dinner, “will not presume to dictate.”
+
+Next to damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of books.  At short
+intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur himself.
+Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of volumes lent to
+him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own books.  Boswell found
+him one day with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his
+library, as was his custom.  There is nothing so hideous as a dirty
+thumb-mark on a white page.  These marks are commonly made, not because
+the reader has unwashed hands, but because the dust which settles on the
+top edge of books falls in, and is smudged when they are opened.
+Gilt-top edges should be smoothed with a handkerchief, and a small brush
+should be kept for brushing the tops of books with rough edges, before
+they are opened.  But it were well that all books had the top edge gilt.
+There is no better preservative against dust.  Dust not only dirties
+books, it seems to supply what Mr. Spencer would call a fitting
+environment for book-worms.  The works of book-worms speak for
+themselves, and are manifest to all.  How many a rare and valuable volume
+is spoiled by neat round holes drilled through cover and leaves!  But as
+to the nature of your worm, authorities differ greatly.  The ancients
+knew this plague, of which Lucian speaks.  Mr. Blades mentions a white
+book-worm, slain by the librarian of the Bodleian.  In Byzantium the
+black sort prevailed.  Evenus, the grammarian, wrote an epigram against
+the black book-worm (“Anthol.  Pal.,” ix. 251):—
+
+    Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies that lurkest,
+    Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil;
+    Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm! wert thou born for the evil thou
+    workest?
+    Wherefore thine own foul form shap’st thou with envious toil?
+
+The learned Mentzelius says he hath heard the book-worm crow like a cock
+unto his mate, and “I knew not,” says he, “whether some local fowl was
+clamouring or whether there was but a beating in mine ears.  Even at that
+moment, all uncertain as I was, I perceived, in the paper whereon I was
+writing, a little insect that ceased not to carol like very chanticleer,
+until, taking a magnifying glass, I assiduously observed him.  He is
+about the bigness of a mite, and carries a grey crest, and the head low,
+bowed over the bosom; as to his crowing noise, it comes of his clashing
+his wings against each other with an incessant din.”  Thus far
+Mentzelius, and more to the same purpose, as may be read in the “Memoirs
+of famous Foreign Academies” (Dijon, 1755–59, 13 vol. in quarto).  But,
+in our times, the learned Mr. Blades having a desire to exhibit
+book-worms in the body to the Caxtonians at the Caxton celebration, could
+find few men that had so much as seen a book-worm, much less heard him
+utter his native wood-notes wild.  Yet, in his “Enemies of Books,” he
+describes some rare encounters with the worm.  Dirty books, damp books,
+dusty books, and books that the owner never opens, are most exposed to
+the enemy; and “the worm, the proud worm, is the conqueror still,” as a
+didactic poet sings, in an ode on man’s mortality.  As we have quoted
+Mentzelius, it may not be amiss to give D’Alembert’s theory of
+book-worms: “I believe,” he says, “that a little beetle lays her eggs in
+books in August, thence is hatched a mite, like the cheese-mite, which
+devours books merely because it is compelled to gnaw its way out into the
+air.”  Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but D’Alembert
+adds that they cannot endure absinthe.  Mr. Blades finds too that they
+disdain to devour our adulterate modern paper.
+
+“Say, shall I sing of rats,” asked Grainger, when reading to Johnson his
+epic, the “Sugar-cane.”  “No,” said the Doctor; and though rats are the
+foe of the bibliophile, at least as much as of the sugar-planter, we do
+not propose to sing of them.  M. Fertiault has done so already in “Les
+Sonnets d’un Bibliophile,” where the reader must be pleased with the
+beautiful etchings of rats devouring an illuminated MS., and battening on
+morocco bindings stamped with the bees of De Thou.  It is unnecessary and
+it would be undignified, to give hints on rat-catching, but the amateur
+must not forget that these animals have a passion for bindings.
+
+The book-collector must avoid gas, which deposits a filthy coat of oil
+that catches dust.  Mr. Blades found that three jets of gas in a small
+room soon reduced the leather on his book-shelves to a powder of the
+consistency of snuff, and made the backs of books come away in his hand.
+Shaded lamps give the best and most suitable light for the library.  As
+to the risks which books run at the hands of the owner himself, we surely
+need not repeat the advice of Richard de Bury.  Living in an age when
+tubs (if not unknown as M. Michelet declares) were far from being common,
+the old collector inveighed against the dirty hands of readers, and
+against their habit of marking their place in a book with filthy straws,
+or setting down a beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages
+open.  But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who
+love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the
+latter, and light their pipes with the former.  After seeing the wreck of
+a book which these persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine
+Greek hyperbole.  The Greeks did not speak of “thumbing” but of “walking
+up and down” on a volume (_πατεῖν_).  To such fellows it matters not that
+they make a book dirty and greasy, cutting the pages with their fingers,
+and holding the boards over the fire till they crack.  All these
+slatternly practices, though they destroy a book as surely as the flames
+of Cæsar’s soldiers at Alexandria, seem fine manly acts to the grobians
+who use them.  What says Jules Janin, who has written “Contre
+l’indifference des Philistins,” “il faut à l’homme sage et studieux un
+tome honorable et digne de sa louange.”  The amateur, and all decent men,
+will beware of lending books to such rude workers; and this consideration
+brings us to these great foes of books, the borrowers and robbers.  The
+lending of books, and of other property, has been defended by some great
+authorities; thus Panurge himself says, “it would prove much more easy in
+nature to have fish entertained in the air, and bullocks fed in the
+bottom of the ocean, than to support or tolerate a rascally rabble of
+people that will not lend.”  Pirckheimer, too, for whom Albert Durer
+designed a book-plate, was a lender, and took for his device _Sibi et
+Amicis_; and _Jo. Grolierii et amicorum_, was the motto of the renowned
+Grolier, whom mistaken writers vainly but frequently report to have been
+a bookbinder.  But as Mr. Leicester Warren says, in his “Study of
+Book-plates” (Pearson, 1880), “Christian Charles de Savigny leaves all
+the rest behind, exclaiming _non mihi sed aliis_.”  But the majority of
+amateurs have chosen wiser, though more churlish devices, as “the ungodly
+borroweth and payeth not again,” or “go to them that sell, and buy for
+yourselves.”  David Garrick engraved on his book-plate, beside a bust of
+Shakspeare, these words of Ménage, “La première chose qu’on doit faire,
+quand on a emprunte’ un livre, c’est de le lire, afin de pouvoir le
+rendre plûtôt.”  But the borrower is so minded that the last thing he
+thinks of is to read a borrowed book, and the penultimate subject of his
+reflections is its restoration.  Ménage (Menagiana, Paris, 1729, vol. i.
+p. 265), mentions, as if it were a notable misdeed, this of Angelo
+Politian’s, “he borrowed a ‘Lucretius’ from Pomponius Laetus, and kept it
+for four years.”  Four years! in the sight of the borrower it is but a
+moment.  Ménage reports that a friend kept his “Pausanias” for three
+years, whereas four months was long enough.
+
+    “At quarto saltem mense redire decet.”
+
+There is no satisfaction in lending a book; for it is rarely that
+borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for new stores,
+as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr. Johnson, who “greased and
+dogs-eared such volumes as were confided to his tender mercies, with the
+same indifference wherewith he singed his own wigs.”  But there is a race
+of mortals more annoying to a conscientious man than borrowers.  These
+are the spontaneous lenders, who insist that you shall borrow their
+tomes.  For my own part, when I am oppressed with the charity of such, I
+lock their books up in a drawer, and behold them not again till the day
+of their return.  There is no security against borrowers, unless a man
+like Guibert de Pixérécourt steadfastly refuses to lend.  The device of
+Pixérécourt was _un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais_.  But he knew
+that our books change when they have been borrowed, like our friends when
+they have been married; when “a lady borrows them,” as the fairy queen
+says in the ballad of “Tamlane.”
+
+    “But had I kenn’d, Tamlane,” she says,
+    “A lady wad borrowed thee,
+    I wad ta’en out thy twa gray een,
+    Put in twa een o’ tree!
+
+    “Had I but kenn’d, Tamlane,” she says,
+    “Before ye came frae hame,
+    I wad ta’en out your heart o’ flesh,
+    Put in a heart o’ stane!”
+
+Above the lintel of his library door, Pixérécourt had this couplet
+carved—
+
+    “Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté,
+    Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté.”
+
+M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own daughter.
+Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little value.  Pixérécourt
+frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto.
+“Yes,” said M. Lacroix, “but I thought that verse applied to every one
+but me.”  So Pixérécourt made him a present of the volume.
+
+We cannot all imitate this “immense” but unamiable amateur.  Therefore,
+bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates,
+quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their
+claims to the possession of their own dear volumes.  Mr. Leicester Warren
+and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of
+art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate
+his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore not again.  The
+process is futile, but may comfort the heart, like the curses against
+thieves which the Greeks were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and
+deposit in the temple of Demeter.  Each amateur can exercise his own
+taste in the design of a book-plate; and for such as love and collect
+rare editions of “Homer,” I venture to suggest this motto, which may move
+the heart of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic—
+
+    _πέμψον ἐπισταμένως_, _δύνασαι γάρ_
+    _ὥς κε γάλ’ ἀσκηθὴς ἣν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἵκηται_. {3}
+
+Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, “The Enemies of Books”
+(Trübner), makes no account of the book-thief or biblioklept.  “If they
+injure the owners,” says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, “they do no
+harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them from one set of
+book-shelves to another.”  This sentence has naturally caused us to
+reflect on the ethical character of the biblioklept.  He is not always a
+bad man.  In old times, when language had its delicacies, and moralists
+were not devoid of sensibility, the French did not say “un voleur de
+livres,” but “un chipeur de livres;” as the papers call lady shoplifters
+“kleptomaniacs.”  There are distinctions.  M. Jules Janin mentions a
+great Parisian bookseller who had an amiable weakness.  He was a
+bibliokleptomaniac.  His first motion when he saw a book within reach was
+to put it in his pocket.  Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was
+lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to
+the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price.  When he went to a private
+view of books about to be sold, the officials at the door would ask him,
+as he was going out, if he did not happen to have an Elzevir Horace or an
+Aldine Ovid in his pocket.  Then he would search those receptacles and
+exclaim, “Yes, yes, here it is; so much obliged to you; I am so absent.”
+M. Janin mentions an English noble, a “Sir Fitzgerald,” who had the same
+tastes, but who unluckily fell into the hands of the police.  Yet M.
+Janin has a tenderness for the book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover
+of books.  The moral position of the malefactor is so delicate and
+difficult that we shall attempt to treat of it in the severe, though
+_rococo_, manner of Aristotle’s “Ethics.”  Here follows an extract from
+the lost Aristotelian treatise “Concerning Books”:—
+
+    “Among the contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books.  Now
+    this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess,
+    and its defect.  The defect is indifference, and the man who is
+    defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance.
+    Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine.  This man will
+    cut the leaves of his own or his friend’s volumes with the
+    butter-knife at breakfast.  Also he is just the person wilfully to
+    mistake the double sense of the term ‘fly-leaves,’ and to stick the
+    ‘fly-leaves’ of his volumes full of fly-hooks.  He also loves
+    dogs’-ears, and marks his place with his pipe when he shuts a book in
+    a hurry; or he will set the leg of his chair on a page to keep it
+    open.  He praises those who tear off margins for pipe-lights, and he
+    makes cigarettes with the tissue-paper that covers engravings.  When
+    his books are bound, he sees that the margin is cut to the quick.  He
+    tells you too, that ‘_he_ buys books to read them.’ But he does not
+    say why he thinks it needful to spoil them.  Also he will drag off
+    bindings—or should we perhaps call this crime _θηριοτης_, or
+    brutality, rather than mere vice? for vice is essentially human, but
+    to tear off bindings is bestial.  Thus they still speak of a certain
+    monster who lived during the French Revolution, and who, having
+    purchased volumes attired in morocco, and stamped with the devices of
+    the oligarchs, would rip off the leather or vellum, and throw them
+    into the fire or out of the window, saying that ‘now he could read
+    with unwashed hands at his ease.’  Such a person, then, is the man
+    indifferent to books, and he sins by way of defect, being deficient
+    in the contemplative virtue of book-loving.  As to the man who is
+    exactly in the right mean, we call him the book-lover.  His happiness
+    consists not in reading, which is an active virtue, but in the
+    contemplation of bindings, and illustrations, and title-pages.  Thus
+    his felicity partakes of the nature of the bliss we attribute to the
+    gods, for that also is contemplative, and we call the book-lover
+    ‘happy,’ and even ‘blessed,’ but within the limits of mortal
+    happiness.  But, just as in the matter of absence of fear there is a
+    mean which we call courage, and a defect which we call cowardice, and
+    an excess which is known as foolhardiness; so it is in the case of
+    the love of books.  As to the mean, we have seen that it is the
+    virtue of the true book-lover, while the defect constitutes the sin
+    of the Robustious Philistine.  But the extreme is found in
+    covetousness, and the covetous man who is in the extreme state of
+    book-loving, is the biblioklept, or book-stealer.  Now his vice shows
+    itself, not in contemplation (for of contemplation there can be no
+    excess), but in action.  For books are procured, as we say, by
+    purchase, or by barter, and these are voluntary exchanges, both the
+    seller and the buyer being willing to deal.  But books are, again,
+    procured in another way, by involuntary contract—that is, when the
+    owner of the book is unwilling to part with it, but he whose own the
+    book is not is determined to take it.  The book-stealer is such a man
+    as this, and he possesses himself of books with which the owner does
+    not intend to part, by virtue of a series of involuntary contracts.
+    Again, the question may be raised, whether is the Robustious
+    Philistine who despises books, or the biblioklept who adores them out
+    of measure and excessively, the worse citizen?  Now, if we are to
+    look to the consequences of actions only (as the followers of Bentham
+    advise), clearly the Robustious Philistine is the worse citizen, for
+    he mangles, and dirties, and destroys books which it is the interest
+    of the State to preserve.  But the biblioklept treasures and adorns
+    the books he has acquired; and when he dies, or goes to prison, the
+    State receives the benefit at his sale.  Thus Libri, who was the
+    greatest of biblioklepts, rescued many of the books he stole from
+    dirt and misuse, and had them bound royally in purple and gold.
+    Also, it may be argued that books naturally belong to him who can
+    appreciate them; and if good books are in a dull or indifferent man’s
+    keeping, this is the sort of slavery which we call “unnatural” in our
+    _Politics_, and which is not to be endured.  Shall we say, then, that
+    the Robustious Philistine is the worse citizen, while the Biblioklept
+    is the worse man?  But this is perhaps matter for a separate
+    disquisition.”
+
+This fragment of the lost Aristotelian treatise “Concerning Books,” shows
+what a difficulty the Stagirite had in determining the precise nature of
+the moral offence of the biblioklept.  Indeed, both as a collector and as
+an intuitive moralist, Aristotle must have found it rather difficult to
+condemn the book-thief.  He, doubtless, went on to draw distinctions
+between the man who steals books to sell them again for mere pecuniary
+profit (which he would call “chrematistic,” or “unnatural,”
+book-stealing), and the man who steals them because he feels that he is
+their proper and natural possessor.  The same distinction is taken by
+Jules Janin, who was a more constant student of Horace than of Aristotle.
+In his imaginary dialogue of bibliophiles, Janin introduces a character
+who announces the death of M. Libri.  The tolerant person who brings the
+sad news proposes “to cast a few flowers on the melancholy tomb.  He was
+a bibliophile, after all.  What do you say to it?  Many a good fellow has
+stolen books, and died in grace at the last.”  “Yes,” replies the
+president of the club, “but the good fellows did not sell the books they
+stole . . . Cest une grande honte, une grande misère.”  This Libri was an
+Inspector-General of French Libraries under Louis Philippe.  When he was
+tried, in 1848, it was calculated that the sum of his known thefts
+amounted to £20,000.  Many of his robberies escaped notice at the time.
+It is not long since Lord Ashburnham, according to a French journal, “Le
+Livre,” found in his collection some fragments of a Pentateuch.  These
+relics had been in the possession of the Lyons Library, whence Libri
+stole them in 1847.  The late Lord Ashburnham bought them, without the
+faintest idea of Libri’s dishonesty; and when, after eleven years, the
+present peer discovered the proper owners of his treasure, he immediately
+restored the Pentateuch to the Lyons Library.
+
+Many eminent characters have been biblioklepts.  When Innocent X. was
+still Monsignor Pamphilio, he stole a book—so says Tallemant des
+Réaux—from Du Monstier, the painter.  The amusing thing is that Du
+Monstier himself was a book-thief.  He used to tell how he had lifted a
+book, of which he had long been in search, from a stall on the Pont-Neuf;
+“but,” says Tallemant (whom Janin does not seem to have consulted),
+“there are many people who don’t think it thieving to steal a book unless
+you sell it afterwards.”  But Du Monstier took a less liberal view where
+his own books were concerned.  The Cardinal Barberini came to Paris as
+legate, and brought in his suite Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards
+became Innocent X.  The Cardinal paid a visit to Du Monstier in his
+studio, where Monsignor Pamphilio spied, on a table, “L’Histoire du
+Concile de Trent”—the good edition, the London one.  “What a pity,”
+thought the young ecclesiastic, “that such a man should be, by some
+accident, the possessor of so valuable a book.”  With these sentiments
+Monsignor Pamphilio slipped the work under his _soutane_.  But little Du
+Monstier observed him, and said furiously to the Cardinal, that a holy
+man should not bring thieves and robbers in his company.  With these
+words, and with others of a violent and libellous character, he recovered
+the “History of the Council of Trent,” and kicked out the future Pope.
+Amelot de la Houssaie traces to this incident the hatred borne by
+Innocent X. to the Crown and the people of France.  Another Pope, while
+only a cardinal, stole a book from Ménage—so M. Janin reports—but we have
+not been able to discover Ménage’s own account of the larceny.  The
+anecdotist is not so truthful that cardinals need flush a deeper scarlet,
+like the roses in Bion’s “Lament for Adonis,” on account of a scandal
+resting on the authority of Ménage.  Among Royal persons, Catherine de
+Medici, according to Brantôme, was a biblioklept.  “The Marshal Strozzi
+had a very fine library, and after his death the Queen-Mother seized it,
+promising some day to pay the value to his son, who never got a farthing
+of the money.”  The Ptolemies, too, were thieves on a large scale.  A
+department of the Alexandrian Library was called “The Books from the
+Ships,” and was filled with rare volumes stolen from passengers in
+vessels that touched at the port.  True, the owners were given copies of
+their ancient MSS., but the exchange, as Aristotle says, was an
+“involuntary” one, and not distinct from robbery.
+
+The great pattern of biblioklepts, a man who carried his passion to the
+most regrettable excesses, was a Spanish priest, Don Vincente, of the
+convent of Pobla, in Aragon.  When the Spanish revolution despoiled the
+convent libraries, Don Vincente established himself at Barcelona, under
+the pillars of Los Encantes, where are the stalls of the merchants of
+_bric-à-brac_ and the seats of them that sell books.  In a gloomy den the
+Don stored up treasures which he hated to sell.  Once he was present at
+an auction where he was out-bid in the competition for a rare, perhaps a
+unique, volume.  Three nights after that, the people of Barcelona were
+awakened by cries of “Fire!”  The house and shop of the man who had
+bought “Ordinacions per los gloriosos reys de Arago” were blazing.  When
+the fire was extinguished, the body of the owner of the house was found,
+with a pipe in his blackened hand, and some money beside him.  Every one
+said, “He must have set the house on fire with a spark from his pipe.”
+Time went on, and week by week the police found the bodies of slain men,
+now in the street, now in a ditch, now in the river.  There were young
+men and old, all had been harmless and inoffensive in their lives,
+and—all had been _bibliophiles_.  A dagger in an invisible hand had
+reached their hearts but the assassin had spared their purses, money, and
+rings.  An organised search was made in the city, and the shop of Don
+Vincente was examined.  There, in a hidden recess, the police discovered
+the copy of “Ordinacions per los gloriosis reys de Arago,” which ought by
+rights to have been burned with the house of its purchaser.  Don Vincente
+was asked how he got the book.  He replied in a quiet voice, demanded
+that his collection should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and
+then confessed a long array of crimes.  He had strangled his rival,
+stolen the “Ordinacions,” and burned the house.  The slain men were
+people who had bought from him books which he really could not bear to
+part with.  At his trial his counsel tried to prove that his confession
+was false, and that he might have got his books by honest means.  It was
+objected that there was in the world only one book printed by Lambert
+Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen this, the only
+copy, from the library where it was treasured.  The defendant’s counsel
+proved that there was another copy in the Louvre; that, therefore, there
+might be more, and that the defendant’s might have been honestly
+procured.  Here Don Vincente, previously callous, uttered an hysterical
+cry.  Said the Alcalde:—“At last, Vincente, you begin to understand the
+enormity of your offence?”  “Ah, Señor Alcalde, my error was clumsy
+indeed.  If you only knew how miserable I am!”  “If human justice prove
+inflexible, there is another justice whose pity is inexhaustible.
+Repentance is never too late.”  “Ah, Señor Alcalde, but my copy was not
+unique!”  With the story of this impenitent thief we may close the roll
+of biblioklepts, though Dibdin pretends that Garrick was of the company,
+and stole Alleyne’s books at Dulwich.
+
+There is a thievish nature more hateful than even the biblioklept.  The
+Book-Ghoul is he who combines the larceny of the biblioklept with the
+abominable wickedness of breaking up and mutilating the volumes from
+which he steals.  He is a collector of title-pages, frontispieces,
+illustrations, and book-plates.  He prowls furtively among public and
+private libraries, inserting wetted threads, which slowly eat away the
+illustrations he covets; and he broods, like the obscene demon of Arabian
+superstitions, over the fragments of the mighty dead.  His disgusting
+tastes vary.  He prepares books for the American market.  Christmas books
+are sold in the States stuffed with pictures cut out of honest volumes.
+Here is a quotation from an American paper:—
+
+    “Another style of Christmas book which deserves to be mentioned,
+    though it is out of the reach of any but the very rich, is the
+    historical or literary work enriched with inserted plates.  There has
+    never, to our knowledge, been anything offered in America so
+    supremely excellent as the $5000 book on Washington, we
+    think—exhibited by Boston last year, but not a few fine specimens of
+    books of this class are at present offered to purchasers.  Scribner
+    has a beautiful copy of Forster’s ‘Life of Dickens,’ enlarged from
+    three volumes octavo to nine volumes quarto, by taking to pieces,
+    remounting, and inlaying.  It contains some eight hundred engravings,
+    portraits, views, playbills, title-pages, catalogues, proof
+    illustrations from Dickens’s works, a set of the Onwhyn plates, rare
+    engravings by Cruikshank and ‘Phiz,’ and autograph letters.  Though
+    this volume does not compare with Harvey’s Dickens, offered for $1750
+    two years ago, it is an excellent specimen of books of this sort, and
+    the veriest tyro in bibliographical affairs knows how scarce are
+    becoming the early editions of Dickens’s works and the plates
+    illustrating them. {4}  Anything about Dickens in the beginning of
+    his career is a sound investment from a business point of view.
+    Another work of the same sort, valued at $240, is Lady Trevelyan’s
+    edition of Macaulay, illustrated with portraits, many of them very
+    rare.  Even cheaper, all things considered, is an extra-illustrated
+    copy of the ‘Histoire de la Gravure,’ which, besides its
+    seventy-three reproductions of old engravings, is enriched with two
+    hundred fine specimens of the early engravers, many of the
+    impressions being in first and second states.  At $155 such a book is
+    really a bargain, especially for any one who is forming a collection
+    of engravings.  Another delightful work is the library edition of
+    Bray’s ‘Evelyn,’ illustrated with some two hundred and fifty
+    portraits and views, and valued at $175; and still another is
+    Boydell’s ‘Milton,’ with plates after Westall, and further
+    illustrations in the shape of twenty-eight portraits of the painter
+    and one hundred and eighty-one plates, and many of them before
+    letter.  The price of this book is $325.”
+
+But few book-ghouls are worse than the moral ghoul.  He defaces, with a
+pen, the passages, in some precious volume, which do not meet his idea of
+moral propriety.  I have a Pine’s “Horace,” with the engravings from
+gems, which has fallen into the hands of a moral ghoul.  Not only has he
+obliterated the verses which hurt his delicate sense, but he has actually
+scraped away portions of the classical figures, and “the breasts of the
+nymphs in the brake.”  The soul of Tartuffe had entered into the body of
+a sinner of the last century.  The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages
+and colophons.  The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials out of
+manuscripts.  The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic ghoul of our own
+days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books for the purpose of
+cribbing the book-plates.  An old “Complaint of a Book-plate,” in dread
+of the wet sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by Mr. Austin
+Dobson:—{5}
+
+                          THE BOOK-PLATE’S PETITION.
+
+                       _By a Gentleman of the Temple_.
+
+    While cynic CHARLES still trimm’d the vane
+    ’Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
+    In days that shocked JOHN EVELYN,
+    My First Possessor fix’d me in.
+    In days of Dutchmen and of frost,
+    The narrow sea with JAMES I cross’d,
+    Returning when once more began
+    The Age of Saturn and of ANNE.
+    I am a part of all the past;
+    I knew the GEORGES, first and last;
+    I have been oft where else was none
+    Save the great wig of ADDISON;
+    And seen on shelves beneath me grope
+    The little eager form of POPE.
+    I lost the Third that own’d me when
+    French NOAILLES fled at Dettingen;
+    The year JAMES WOLFE surpris’d Quebec,
+    The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
+    The day that WILLIAM HOGARTH dy’d,
+    The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
+    This was a Scholar, one of those
+    Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;
+    He lov’d old Books and nappy ale,
+    So liv’d at Streatham, next to THRALE.
+    ’Twas there this stain of grease I boast
+    Was made by Dr. JOHNSON’S toast.
+    (He did it, as I think, for Spite;
+    My Master call’d him Jacobite!)
+    And now that I so long to-day
+    Have rested post discrimina,
+    Safe in the brass-wir’d book-case where
+    I watch’d the Vicar’s whit’ning hair,
+    Must I these travell’d bones inter
+    In some Collector’s sepulchre!
+    Must I be torn from hence and thrown
+    With frontispiece and colophon!
+    With vagrant E’s, and I’s, and O’s,
+    The spoil of plunder’d Folios!
+    With scraps and snippets that to ME
+    Are naught but kitchen company!
+    Nay, rather, FRIEND, this favour grant me:
+    Tear me at once; but don’t transplant me.
+
+    CHELTENHAM, _Septr_. 31, 1792.
+
+The conceited ghoul writes his notes across our fair white margins, in
+pencil, or in more baneful ink.  Or he spills his ink bottle at large
+over the pages, as André Chénier’s friend served his copy of Malherbe.
+It is scarcely necessary to warn the amateur against the society of
+book-ghouls, who are generally snuffy and foul in appearance, and by no
+means so insinuating as that fair lady-ghoul, Amina, of the Arabian
+Nights.
+
+Another enemy of books must be mentioned with the delicacy that befits
+the topic.  Almost all women are the inveterate foes, not of novels, of
+course, nor peerages and popular volumes of history, but of books worthy
+of the name.  It is true that Isabelle d’Este, and Madame de Pompadour,
+and Madame de Maintenon, were collectors; and, doubtless, there are other
+brilliant exceptions to a general rule.  But, broadly speaking, women
+detest the books which the collector desires and admires.  First, they
+don’t understand them; second, they are jealous of their mysterious
+charms; third, books cost money; and it really is a hard thing for a lady
+to see money expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper
+scored with crabbed characters.  Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war
+against booksellers’ catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have
+had to practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase
+across their own frontier.  Thus many married men are reduced to
+collecting Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot
+smuggle a folio volume easily.  This inveterate dislike of books often
+produces a very deplorable result when an old collector dies.  His
+“womankind,” as the Antiquary called them, sell all his treasures for the
+price of waste-paper, to the nearest country bookseller.  It is a
+melancholy duty which forces one to introduce such topics into a volume
+on “Art at Home.”  But this little work will not have been written in
+vain if it persuades ladies who inherit books not to sell them hastily,
+without taking good and disinterested opinion as to their value.  They
+often dispose of treasures worth thousands, for a ten pound note, and
+take pride in the bargain.  Here, let history mention with due honour the
+paragon of her sex and the pattern to all wives of book-collecting
+men—Madame Fertiault.  It is thus that she addresses her lord in a
+charming triolet (“Les Amoureux du Livre,” p. xxxv):—
+
+    “Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+    Moi, j’ai ton coeur, et sans partage.
+    Puis-je désirer davantage?
+    Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+    Heureuse de te voir joyeux,
+    Je t’en voudrais . . . tout un étage.
+    Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+    Moi, j’ai ton coeur, et sans partage.”
+
+    Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+    Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
+    What more can I require of thee?
+    Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+    Contented when thy bliss I see,
+    I wish a world of books thine own.
+    Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+    Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
+
+  [Picture: M. Annei Lucani de Bello Civili Libri X.  Apud Seb. Gryphium
+                             Lugduni.  1551]
+
+There is one method of preserving books, which, alas, only tempts the
+borrower, the stealer, the rat, and the book-worm; but which is
+absolutely necessary as a defence against dust and neglect.  This is
+binding.  The bookbinder’s art too often destroys books when the artist
+is careless, but it is the only mode of preventing our volumes from
+falling to pieces, and from being some day disregarded as waste-paper.  A
+well-bound book, especially a book from a famous collection, has its
+price, even if its literary contents be of trifling value.  A leather
+coat fashioned by Derome, or Le Gascon, or Duseuil, will win respect and
+careful handling for one specimen of an edition whereof all the others
+have perished.  Nothing is so slatternly as the aspect of a book merely
+stitched, in the French fashion, when the threads begin to stretch, and
+the paper covers to curl and be torn.  Worse consequences follow, whole
+sheets are lost, the volume becomes worthless, and the owner must often
+be at the expense of purchasing another copy, if he can, for the edition
+may now be out of print.  Thus binding of some sort not only adds a grace
+to the library, presenting to the eye the cheerful gilded rows of our
+volumes, but is a positive economy.  In the case of our cloth-covered
+English works, the need of binding is not so immediately obvious.  But
+our publishers have a taste for clothing their editions in tender tones
+of colour, stamped, often, with landscapes printed in gold, in white, or
+what not.  Covers like this, may or may not please the eye while they are
+new and clean, but they soon become dirty and hideous.  When a book is
+covered in cloth of a good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound,
+but the primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid of the binder.
+
+   [Picture: Pub. Virgilii Maronis Opera Parisiis.  Apud Hieronymum de
+              Marnef, sub Pelicano, Monte D’Hilurii.  1558]
+
+Much has been written of late about book-binding.  In a later part of
+this manual we shall have something to say about historical examples of
+the art, and the performances of the great masters.  At present one must
+begin by giving the practical rule, that a book should be bound in
+harmony with its character and its value.  The bibliophile, if he could
+give the rein to his passions, would bind every book he cares to possess
+in a full coat of morocco, or (if it did not age so fast) of Russia
+leather.  But to do this is beyond the power of most of us.  Only works
+of great rarity or value should be full bound in morocco.  If we have the
+luck to light on a Shakespeare quarto, on some masterpiece of Aldus
+Manutius, by all means let us entrust it to the most competent binder,
+and instruct him to do justice to the volume.  Let old English books, as
+More’s “Utopia,” have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf.  Let the
+binder clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by
+Grolier, in leather tooled with geometrical patterns.  Let a Molière or
+Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon, where
+the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian point-lace,
+for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself.  Let a binding, _à la
+fanfare_, in the style of Thouvenin, denote a novelist of the last
+century, let panelled Russia leather array a folio of Shakespeare, and
+let English works of a hundred years ago be clothed in the sturdy fashion
+of Roger Payne.  Again, the bibliophile may prefer to have the leather
+stamped with his arms and crest, like de Thou, Henri III., D’Hoym, Madame
+du Barry, and most of the collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries.  Yet there are books of great price which one would hesitate
+to bind in new covers.  An Aldine or an Elzevir, in its old vellum or
+paper wrapper, with uncut leaves, should be left just as it came from the
+presses of the great printers.  In this condition it is a far more
+interesting relic.  But a morocco case may be made for the book, and
+lettered properly on the back, so that the volume, though really unbound,
+may take its place with the bound books on the shelves.  A copy of any of
+Shelley’s poems, in the original wrappers, should I venture to think be
+treated thus, and so should the original editions of Keats’s and of Mr.
+Tennyson’s works.  A collector, who is also an author, will perhaps like
+to have copies of his own works in morocco, for their coats will give
+them a chance of surviving the storms of time.  But most other books, not
+of the highest rarity and interest, will be sufficiently clothed in
+half-bindings, that is, with leather backs and corners, while the rest of
+the cover is of cloth or paper, or whatever other substance seems most
+appropriate.  An Oxford tutor used to give half-binding as an example of
+what Aristotle calls _Μικροπρέπεια_, or “shabbiness,” and when we
+recommend such coverings for books it is as a counsel of expediency, not
+of perfection.  But we cannot all be millionaires; and, let it be
+remembered, the really wise amateur will never be extravagant, nor let
+his taste lead him into “the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary
+embarrassment.”  Let the example of Charles Nodier be our warning; nay,
+let us remember that while Nodier could get out of debt by selling his
+collection, _ours_ will probably not fetch anything like what we gave for
+it.  In half-bindings there is a good deal of room for the exercise of
+the collector’s taste.  M. Octave Uzanne, in a tract called “Les Caprices
+d’un Bibliophile,” gives some hints on this topic, which may be taken or
+let alone.  M. Uzanne has noticed the monotony, and the want of meaning
+and suggestion in ordinary half-bindings.  The paper or cloth which
+covers the greater part of the surface of half-bound books is usually
+inartistic and even ugly.  He proposes to use old scraps of brocade,
+embroidery, Venice velvet, or what not; and doubtless a covering made of
+some dead fair lady’s train goes well with a romance by Crébillon, and
+engravings by Marillier.  “Voici un cartonnage Pompadour de notre
+invention,” says M. Uzanne, with pride; but he observes that it needs a
+strong will to make a bookbinder execute such orders.  For another class
+of books, which our honest English shelves reject with disgust, M. Uzanne
+proposes a binding of the skin of the boa constrictor; undoubtedly
+appropriate and “admonishing.”  The leathers of China and Japan, with
+their strange tints and gilded devices may be used for books of fantasy,
+like “Gaspard de la Nuit,” or the “Opium Eater,” or Poe’s poems, or the
+verses of Gérard de Nerval.  Here, in short, is an almost unexplored
+field for the taste of the bibliophile, who, with some expenditure of
+time, and not much of money, may make half-binding an art, and give
+modern books a peculiar and appropriate raiment.
+
+M. Ambrose Firmin Didot has left some notes on a more serious topic,—the
+colours to be chosen when books are full-bound in morocco.  Thus he would
+have the “Iliad” clothed in red, the “Odyssey” in blue, because the old
+Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the Wrath of
+Achilles, a blue one when they chanted of the Return of Odysseus.  The
+writings of the great dignitaries of the Church, M. Didot would array in
+violet; scarlet goes well with the productions of cardinals; philosophers
+have their sober suit of black morocco, poets like Panard may be dressed
+in rose colour.  A collector of this sort would like, were it possible,
+to attire Goldsmith’s poems in a “coat of Tyrian bloom, satin grain.”  As
+an antithesis to these extravagant fancies, we may add that for ordinary
+books no binding is cheaper, neater, and more durable, than a coat of
+buckram.
+
+The conditions of a well bound book may be tersely enumerated.  The
+binding should unite solidity and elegance.  The book should open easily,
+and remain open at any page you please.  It should never be necessary, in
+reading, to squeeze back the covers; and no book, however expensively
+bound, has been properly treated, if it does not open with ease.  It is a
+mistake to send recently printed books to the binder, especially books
+which contain engravings.  The printing ink dries slowly, and, in the
+process called “beating,” the text is often transferred to the opposite
+page.  M. Rouveyre recommends that one or two years should pass before
+the binding of a newly printed book.  The owner will, of course, implore
+the binder to, spare the margins; and, almost equally of course, the
+binder, _durus arator_, will cut them down with his abominable plough.
+One is almost tempted to say that margins should always be left
+untouched, for if once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist
+the seductive joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed
+matter.  Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over
+some Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back _minus_ £500
+worth of margin.  Margins make a book worth perhaps £400, while their
+absence reduces the same volume to the box marked “all these at
+fourpence.”  _Intonsis capillis_, with locks unshorn, as Motteley the old
+dealer used to say, an Elzevir in its paper wrapper may be worth more
+than the same tome in morocco, stamped with Longepierre’s fleece of gold.
+But these things are indifferent to bookbinders, new and old.  There lies
+on the table, as I write, “Les Provinciales, ou Les Lettres Ecrites par
+Louis de Montalte à un Provincial de ses amis, & aux R.R. P.P. Jesuites.
+A Cologne, Ches PIERRE de la VALLÉE, M.DC.LVIII.”  It is the Elzevir
+edition, or what passes for such; but the binder has cut down the margin
+so that the words “Les Provinciales” almost touch the top of the page.
+Often the wretch—he lived, judging by his style, in Derome’s time, before
+the Revolution—has sliced into the head-titles of the pages.  Thus the
+book, with its old red morocco cover and gilded flowers on the back, is
+no proper companion for “Les Pensées de M. PASCAL (Wolfganck, 1672),”
+which some sober Dutchman has left with a fair allowance of margin, an
+inch “taller” in its vellum coat than its neighbour in morocco.  Here
+once more, is “LES FASCHEUX, Comedie de I. B. P. MOLIÈRE, Representee sur
+Le _Theatre du Palais Royal_.  A Paris, Chez GABRIEL QUINET, au Palais,
+dans la Galerie des Prisonniers, à l’Ange Gabriel, M.DCLXIII.  Avec
+privilege du Roy.”  What a crowd of pleasant memories the bibliophile,
+and he only, finds in these dry words of the title.  Quinet, the
+bookseller, lived “au Palais,” in that pretty old arcade where Corneille
+cast the scene of his comedy, “La Galerie du Palais.”  In the Geneva
+edition of Corneille, 1774, you can see Gravelot’s engraving of the
+place; it is a print full of exquisite charm (engraved by Le Mure in
+1762).  Here is the long arcade, in shape exactly like the galleries of
+the Bodleian Library at Oxford.  The bookseller’s booth is arched over,
+and is open at front and side.  Dorimant and Cléante are looking out; one
+leans on the books on the window-sill, the other lounges at the door, and
+they watch the pretty Hippolyte who is chaffering with the lace-seller at
+the opposite shop.  “Ce visage vaut mieux que toutes vos chansons,” says
+Dorimant to the bookseller.  So they loitered, and bought books, and
+flirted in their lace ruffles, and ribbons, and flowing locks, and wide
+_canons_, when Molière was young, and when this little old book was new,
+and lying on the shelves of honest Quinet in the Palace Gallery.  The
+very title-page, and pagination, not of this second edition, but of the
+first of “Les Fascheux,” had their own fortunes, for the dedication to
+Fouquet was perforce withdrawn.  That favourite entertained La Vallière
+and the King with the comedy at his house of Vaux, and then instantly
+fell from power and favour, and, losing his place and his freedom,
+naturally lost the flattery of a dedication.  But _retombons à nos
+__coches_, as Montaigne says.  This pleasant little copy of the play,
+which is a kind of relic of Molière and his old world, has been
+ruthlessly bound up with a treatise, “Des Pierres Précieuses,” published
+by Didot in 1776.  Now the play is naturally a larger book than the
+treatise on precious stones, so the binder has cut down the margins to
+the size of those of the work on amethysts and rubies.  As the Italian
+tyrant chained the dead and the living together, as Procrustes maimed his
+victims on his cruel bed, so a hard-hearted French binder has tied up,
+and mutilated, and spoiled the old play, which otherwise would have had
+considerable value as well as interest.
+
+We have tried to teach the beginner how to keep his books neat and clean;
+what men and monsters he should avoid; how he should guard himself
+against borrowers, book-worms, damp, and dirt.  But we are sometimes
+compelled to buy books already dirty and dingy, foxed, or spotted with
+red, worn by greasy hands, stained with ink spots, or covered with MS.
+notes.  The art of man has found a remedy for these defects.  I have
+never myself tried to wash a book, and this care is best left to
+professional hands.  But the French and English writers give various
+recipes for cleaning old books, which the amateur may try on any old
+rubbish out of the fourpenny box of a bookstall, till he finds that he
+can trust his own manipulations.  There are “fat stains” on books, as
+thumb marks, traces of oil (the midnight oil), flakes of old pasty crust
+left in old Shakespeares, and candle drippings.  There are “thin stains,”
+as of mud, scaling-wax, ink, dust, and damp.  To clean a book you first
+carefully unbind it, take off the old covers, cut the old stitching, and
+separate sheet from sheet.  Then take a page with “fat stains” of any
+kind of grease (except finger-marks), pass a hot flat iron over it, and
+press on it a clean piece of blotting paper till the paper sucks up the
+grease.  Then charge a camel-hair brush with heated turpentine, and pass
+it over the places that were stained.  If the paper loses its colour
+press softly over it a delicate handkerchief, soaked in heated spirits of
+wine.  Finger-marks you will cover with clean soap, leave this on for
+some hours, and then rub with a sponge filled with hot water.  Afterwards
+dip in weak acid and water, and then soak the page in a bath of clean
+water.  Ink-stained pages you will first dip in a strong solution of
+oxalic acid and then in hydrochloric acid mixed in six times its quantity
+of water.  Then bathe in clean water and allow to dry slowly.
+
+Some English recipes may also be given.  “Grease or wax spots,” says
+Hannett, in “Bibliopegia,” “may be removed by washing the part with
+ether, chloroform, or benzine, and placing it between pieces of white
+blotting paper, then pass a hot iron over it.”  “Chlorine water,” says
+the same writer, removes ink stains, and bleaches the paper at the same
+time.  Of chloride of lime, “a piece the size of a nut” (a cocoa nut or a
+hazel nut?) in a pint of water, may be applied with a camel’s hair
+pencil, and plenty of patience.  To polish old bindings, “take the yolk
+of an egg, beat it up with a fork, apply it with a sponge, having first
+cleaned the leather with a dry flannel.”  The following, says a writer in
+“Notes and Queries,” with perfect truth, is “an easier if not a better
+method; purchase some bookbinder’s varnish,” and use it as you did the
+rudimentary omelette of the former recipe.  Vellum covers may be cleaned
+with soap and water, or in bad cases by a weak solution of salts of
+lemon.
+
+Lastly, the collector should acquire such books as Lowndes’s
+“Bibliography,” Brunet’s “Manuel,” and as many priced catalogues as he
+can secure.  The catalogues of Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Bohn, M. Fontaine, M.M.
+Morgand et Fatout, are excellent guides to a knowledge of the market
+value of books.  Other special works, as Renouard’s for Aldines,
+Willems’s for Elzevirs, and Cohen’s for French engravings, will be
+mentioned in their proper place.  Dibdin’s books are inaccurate and
+long-winded, but may occasionally be dipped into with pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR.
+
+
+THE easiest way to bring order into the chaos of desirable books, is,
+doubtless, to begin historically with manuscripts.  Almost every age that
+has left any literary remains, has bequeathed to us relics which are
+cherished by collectors.  We may leave the clay books of the Chaldeans
+out of the account.  These tomes resemble nothing so much as sticks of
+chocolate, and, however useful they may be to the student, the clay MSS.
+of Assurbanipal are not coveted by the collector.  He finds his earliest
+objects of desire in illuminated manuscripts.  The art of decorating
+manuscripts is as old as Egypt; but we need not linger over the beautiful
+papyri, which are silent books to all but a few Egyptologists.  Greece,
+out of all her tomes, has left us but a few ill-written papyri.  Roman
+and early Byzantine art are represented by a “Virgil,” and fragments of
+an “Iliad”; the drawings in the latter have been reproduced in a splendid
+volume (Milan 1819), and shew Greek art passing into barbarism.  The
+illumination of MSS. was a favourite art in the later empire, and is said
+to have been practised by Boethius.  The iconoclasts of the Eastern
+empire destroyed the books which contained representations of saints and
+of the persons of the Trinity, and the monk Lazarus, a famous artist, was
+cruelly tortured for his skill in illuminating sacred works.  The art was
+decaying in Western Europe when Charlemagne sought for painters of MSS.
+in England and Ireland, where the monks, in their monasteries, had
+developed a style with original qualities.  The library of Corpus Christi
+at Cambridge, contains some of the earliest and most beautiful of extant
+English MSS.  These parchments, stained purple or violet, and inscribed
+with characters of gold; are too often beyond the reach of the amateur
+for whom we write.  The MSS. which he can hope to acquire are neither
+very early nor very sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of secular books are
+apt to be out of his reach.
+
+Yet a collection of MSS. has this great advantage over a collection of
+printed books, that every item in it is absolutely unique, no two MSS.
+being ever really the same.  This circumstance alone would entitle a good
+collection of MSS. to very high consideration on the part of
+book-collectors.  But, in addition to the great expense of such a
+collection, there is another and even more serious drawback.  It is
+sometimes impossible, and is often extremely difficult, to tell whether a
+MS. is perfect or not.
+
+This difficulty can only be got over by an amount of learning on the part
+of the collector to which, unfortunately, he is too often a stranger.  On
+the other hand, the advantages of collecting MSS. are sometimes very
+great.
+
+In addition to the pleasure—a pleasure at once literary and
+artistic—which the study of illuminated MSS. affords, there is the
+certainty that, as years go on, the value of such a collection increases
+in a proportion altogether marvellous.
+
+I will take two examples to prove this point.  Some years ago an eminent
+collector gave the price of £30 for a small French book of Hours, painted
+in _grisaille_.  It was in a country town that he met with this treasure,
+for a treasure he considered the book, in spite of its being of the very
+latest school of illumination.  When his collection was dispersed a few
+years ago this one book fetched £260.
+
+In the celebrated Perkins sale, in 1873, a magnificent early MS., part of
+which was written in gold on a purple ground, and which was dated in the
+catalogue “ninth or tenth century,” but was in reality of the end of the
+tenth or beginning of the eleventh, was sold for £565 to a dealer.  It
+found its way into Mr. Bragge’s collection, at what price I do not know,
+and was resold, three years later, for £780.
+
+Any person desirous of making a collection of illuminated MSS., should
+study seriously for some time at the British Museum, or some such place,
+until he is thoroughly acquainted (1) with the styles of writing in use
+in the Middle Ages, so that he can at a glance make a fairly accurate
+estimate of the age of the book submitted to him; and (2) with the proper
+means of collating the several kinds of service-books, which, in nine
+cases out of ten, were those chosen for illumination.
+
+A knowledge of the styles of writing can be acquired at second hand in a
+book lately published by Mr. Charles Trice Martin, F.S.A., being a new
+edition of “Astle’s Progress of Writing.”  Still better, of course, is
+the actual inspection and comparison of books to which a date can be with
+some degree of certainty assigned.
+
+It is very common for the age of a book to be misstated in the catalogues
+of sales, for the simple reason that the older the writing, the plainer,
+in all probability, it is.  Let the student compare writing of the
+twelfth century with that of the sixteenth, and he will be able to judge
+at once of the truth of this assertion.  I had once the good fortune to
+“pick up” a small Testament of the early part of the twelfth century, if
+not older, which was catalogued as belonging to the fifteenth, a date
+which would have made it of very moderate value.
+
+With regard to the second point, the collation of MSS., I fear there is
+no royal road to knowing whether a book is perfect or imperfect.  In some
+cases the catchwords remain at the foot of the pages.  It is then of
+course easy to see if a page is lost, but where no such clue is given the
+student’s only chance is to be fully acquainted with what a book _ought_
+to contain.  He can only do this when he has a knowledge of the different
+kinds of service-books which were in use, and of their most usual
+contents.
+
+I am indebted to a paper, read by the late Sir William Tite at a meeting
+of the Society of Antiquaries, for the collation of “Books of Hours,” but
+there are many kinds of MSS. besides these, and it is well to know
+something of them.  The Horae, or Books of Hours, were the latest
+development of the service-books used at an earlier period.  They cannot,
+in fact, be strictly called service-books, being intended only for
+private devotion.  But in the thirteenth century and before it, Psalters
+were in use for this purpose, and the collation of a Psalter is in truth
+more important than that of a Book of Hours.  It will be well for a
+student, therefore, to begin with Psalters, as he can then get up the
+Hours in their elementary form.  I subjoin a bibliographical account of
+both kinds of MSS.  In the famous Exhibition at the Burlington Club in
+1874, a number of volumes was arranged to show how persistent one type of
+the age could be.  The form of the decorations, and the arrangement of
+the figures in borders, once invented, was fixed for generations.  In a
+Psalter of the thirteenth century there was, under the month of January
+in the calendar, a picture of a grotesque little figure warming himself
+at a stove.  The hearth below, the chimney-pot above, on which a stork
+was feeding her brood, with the intermediate chimney shaft used as a
+border, looked like a scientific preparation from the interior anatomy of
+a house of the period.  In one of the latest of the MSS. exhibited on
+that occasion was the self-same design again.  The little man was no
+longer a grotesque, and the picture had all the high finish and
+completeness in drawing that we might expect in the workmanship of a
+contemporary of Van Eyck.  There was a full series of intermediate books,
+showing the gradual growth of the picture.
+
+With regard to chronology, it may be roughly asserted that the earliest
+books which occur are Psalters of the thirteenth century.  Next to them
+come Bibles, of which an enormous issue took place before the middle of
+the fourteenth century.  These are followed by an endless series of books
+of Hours, which, as the sixteenth century is reached, appear in several
+vernacular languages.  Those in English, being both very rare and of
+great importance in liturgical history, are of a value altogether out of
+proportion to the beauty of their illuminations.  Side by side with this
+succession are the Evangelistina, which, like the example mentioned
+above, are of the highest merit, beauty, and value; followed by sermons
+and homilies, and the Breviary, which itself shows signs of growth as the
+years go on.  The real Missal, with which all illuminated books used to
+be confounded, is of rare occurrence, but I have given a collation of it
+also.  Besides these devotional or religious books, I must mention
+chronicles and romances, and the semi-religious and moral allegories,
+such as the “Pélérinage de l’Ame,” which is said to have given Bunyan the
+machinery of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Chaucer’s and Gower’s poetry
+exists in many MSS., as does the “Polychronicon” of Higden; but, as a
+rule, the mediæval chronicles are of single origin, and were not copied.
+To collate MSS. of these kinds is quite impossible, unless by carefully
+reading them, and seeing that the pages run on without break.
+
+I should advise the young collector who wishes to make sure of success
+not to be too catholic in his tastes at first, but to confine his
+attention to a single period and a single school.  I should also advise
+him to make from time to time a careful catalogue of what he buys, and to
+preserve it even after he has weeded out certain items.  He will then be
+able to make a clear comparative estimate of the importance and value of
+his collection, and by studying one species at a time, to become
+thoroughly conversant with what it can teach him.  When he has, so to
+speak, burnt his fingers once or twice, he will find himself able to
+distinguish at sight what no amount of teaching by word of mouth or by
+writing could ever possibly impart to any advantage.
+
+One thing I should like if possible to impress very strongly upon the
+reader.  That is the fact that a MS. which is not absolutely perfect, if
+it is in a genuine state, is of much more value than one which has been
+made perfect by the skill of a modern restorer.  The more skilful he is,
+that is to say the better he can forge the style of the original, the
+more worthless he renders the volume.
+
+Printing seems to have superseded the art of the illuminator more
+promptly and completely in England than on the Continent.  The _dames
+galantes_ of Brantôme’s memoirs took pleasure in illuminated Books of
+Hours, suited to the nature of their devotions.  As late as the time of
+Louis XIV., Bussy Rabutin had a volume of the same kind, illuminated with
+portraits of “saints,” of his own canonisation.  The most famous of these
+modern examples of costly MSS. was “La Guirlande de Julie,” a collection
+of madrigals by various courtly hands, presented to the illustrious
+Julie, daughter of the Marquise de Rambouillet, most distinguished of the
+_Précieuses_, and wife of the Duc de Montausier, the supposed original of
+Molière’s Alceste.  The MS. was copied on vellum by Nicholas Jarry, the
+great calligraph of his time.  The flowers on the margin were painted by
+Robert.  Not long ago a French amateur was so lucky as to discover the
+MS. book of prayers of Julie’s noble mother, the Marquise de Rambouillet.
+The Marquise wrote these prayers for her own devotions, and Jarry, the
+illuminator, declared that he found them most edifying, and delightful to
+study.  The manuscript is written on vellum by the famous Jarry, contains
+a portrait of the fair Julie herself, and is bound in morocco by Le
+Gascon.  The happy collector who possesses the volume now, heard vaguely
+that a manuscript of some interest was being exposed for sale at a
+trifling price in the shop of a country bookseller.  The description of
+the book, casual as it was, made mention of the monogram on the cover.
+This was enough for the amateur.  He rushed to a railway station,
+travelled some three hundred miles, reached the country town, hastened to
+the bookseller’s shop, and found that the book had been withdrawn by its
+owner.  Happily the possessor, unconscious of his bliss, was at home.
+The amateur sought him out, paid the small sum demanded, and returned to
+Paris in triumph.  Thus, even in the region of manuscript-collecting,
+there are extraordinary prizes for the intelligent collector.
+
+
+
+TO KNOW IF A MANUSCRIPT IS PERFECT.
+
+
+If the manuscript is of English or French writing of the twelfth,
+thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth centuries, it is probably either—(1)
+a Bible, (2) a Psalter, (3) a book of Hours, or (4), but rarely, a
+Missal.  It is not worth while to give the collation of a gradual, or a
+hymnal, or a processional, or a breviary, or any of the fifty different
+kinds of service-books which are occasionally met with, but which are
+never twice the same.
+
+To collate one of them, the reader must go carefully through the book,
+seeing that the catch-words, if there are any, answer to the head lines;
+and if there are “signatures,” that is, if the foot of the leaves of a
+sheet of parchment has any mark for enabling the binder to “gather” them
+correctly, going through them, and seeing that each signed leaf has its
+corresponding “blank.”
+
+1.  To collate a Bible, it will be necessary first to go through the
+catch-words, if any, and signatures, as above; then to notice the
+contents.  The first page should contain the Epistle of St. Jerome to the
+reader.  It will be observed that there is nothing of the nature of a
+title-page, but I have often seen title-pages supplied by some ignorant
+imitator in the last century, with the idea that the book was imperfect
+without one.  The books of the Bible follow in order—but the order not
+only differs from ours, but differs in different copies.  The Apocryphal
+books are always included.  The New Testament usually follows on the Old
+without any break; and the book concludes with an index of the Hebrew
+names and their signification in Latin, intended to help preachers to the
+figurative meaning of the biblical types and parables.  The last line of
+the Bible itself usually contains a colophon, in which sometimes the name
+of the writer is given, sometimes the length of time it has taken him to
+write, and sometimes merely the “Explicit. Laus Deo,” which has found its
+way into many modern books.  This colophon, which comes as a rule
+immediately before the index, often contains curious notes, hexameters
+giving the names of all the books, biographical or local memoranda, and
+should always be looked for by the collector.  One such line occurs to
+me.  It is in a Bible written in Italy in the thirteenth century—
+
+    “Qui scripsit scribat.  Vergilius spe domini vivat.”
+
+Vergilius was, no doubt, in this case the scribe.  The Latin and the
+writing are often equally crabbed.  In the Bodleian there is a Bible with
+this colophon—
+
+    “Finito libro referemus gratias Christo m.cc.lxv. indict. viij.
+    Ego Lafräcus de Päcis de Cmoa scriptor scripsi.”
+
+This was also written in Italy.  English colophons are often very
+quaint—“Qui scripsit hunc librum fiat collocatus in Paradisum,” is an
+example.  The following gives us the name of one Master Gerard, who, in
+the fourteenth century, thus poetically described his ownership:—
+
+    “Si Ge ponatur—et _rar_ simul associatur—
+    Et _dus_ reddatur—cui pertinet ita vocatur.”
+
+In a Bible written in England, in the British Museum, there is a long
+colophon, in which, after the name of the writer—“hunc librum scripsit
+Wills de Hales,”—there is a prayer for Ralph of Nebham, who had called
+Hales to the writing of the book, followed by a date—“Fes. fuit liber
+anno M.cc.i. quarto ab incarnatione domini.”  In this Bible the books of
+the New Testament were in the following order:—the Evangelists, the Acts,
+the Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. John, the Epistles of S. Paul,
+and the Apocalypse.  In a Bible at Brussels I found the colophon after
+the index:—“Hic expliciunt interpretationes Hebrayorum nominum Do gris
+qui potens est p. süp. omia.”  Some of these Bibles are of marvellously
+small dimensions.  The smallest I ever saw was at Ghent, but it was very
+imperfect.  I have one in which there are thirteen lines of writing in an
+inch of the column.  The order of the books of the New Testament in
+Bibles of the thirteenth century is usually according to one or other of
+the three following arrangements:—
+
+(1.)  The Evangelists, Romans to Hebrews, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S.
+James, and S. John, Apocalypse.
+
+(2.)  The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. John,
+Epistles of S. Paul, Apocalypse.  This is the most common.
+
+(3.)  The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. John,
+Apocalypse, and Epistles of S. Paul.
+
+On the fly leaves of these old Bibles there are often very curious
+inscriptions.  In one I have this:—“Hæc biblia emi Haquinas prior
+monasterii Hatharbiensis de dono domini regis Norwegie.”  Who was this
+King of Norway who, in 1310, gave the Prior of Hatherby money to buy a
+Bible, which was probably written at Canterbury?  And who was Haquinas?
+His name has a Norwegian sound, and reminds us of St. Thomas of that
+surname.  In another manuscript I have seen:—
+
+    “Articula Fidei:—
+    Nascitur, abluitur, patitur, descendit at ima
+    Surgit et ascendit, veniens discernere cuncta.”
+
+In another this:—
+
+    “Sacramenta ecclesiæ:—
+    Abluo, fumo, cibo, piget, ordinat, uxor et ungit.”
+
+I will conclude these notes on MS. Bibles with the following colophon
+from a copy written in Italy in the fifteenth century:—
+
+    “Finito libro vivamus semper in Christo—
+    Si semper in Christo carebimus ultimo leto.
+    Explicit Deo gratias; Amen.  Stephanus de
+    Tantaldis scripsit in pergamo.”
+
+2.  The “Psalter” of the thirteenth century is usually to be considered a
+forerunner of the “Book of Hours.”  It always contains, and usually
+commences with, a Calendar, in which are written against certain days the
+“obits” of benefactors and others, so that a well-filled Psalter often
+becomes a historical document of high value and importance.  The first
+page of the psalms is ornamented with a huge B, which often fills the
+whole page, and contains a representation of David and Goliath
+ingeniously fitted to the shape of the letter.  At the end are usually to
+be found the hymns of the Three Children, and others from the Bible
+together with the Te Deum; and sometimes, in late examples, a litany.  In
+some psalters the calendar is at the end.  These Psalters, and the Bibles
+described above, are very frequently of English work; more frequently,
+that is, than the books of Hours and Missals.  The study of the
+Scriptures was evidently more popular in England than in the other
+countries of Europe during the Middle Ages; and the early success of the
+Reformers here, must in part, no doubt, be attributed to the wide
+circulation of the Bible even before it had been translated from the
+Latin.  I need hardly, perhaps, observe that even fragments of a Psalter,
+a Testament, or a Bible in English, are so precious as to be practically
+invaluable.
+
+3.  We are indebted to Sir W. Tite for the following collation of a
+Flemish “Book of Hours”:—
+
+  1.  The Calendar.
+
+  2.  Gospels of the Nativity and the Resurrection.
+
+  3.  Preliminary Prayers (inserted occasionally).
+
+  4.  Horæ—(Nocturns and Matins).
+
+  5.  ,, (Lauds).
+
+  6.  ,, (Prime).
+
+  7.  ,, (Tierce).
+
+  8.  ,, (Sexte).
+
+  9.  ,, (None).
+
+  10.  ,, (Vespers).
+
+  11.  ,, (Compline).
+
+  12.  The seven penitential Psalms
+
+  13.  The Litany.
+
+  14.  Hours of the Cross.
+
+  15.  Hours of the Holy Spirit.
+
+  16.  Office of the Dead.
+
+  17.  The Fifteen Joys of B. V. M.
+
+  18.  The seven requests to our Lord.
+
+  19.  Prayers and Suffrages to various Saints.
+
+  20.  Several prayers, petitions, and devotions.
+
+This is an unusually full example, but the calendar, the hours, the seven
+psalms, and the litany, are in almost all the MSS.  The buyer must look
+carefully to see that no miniatures have been cut out; but it is only by
+counting the leaves in their gatherings that he can make sure.  This is
+often impossible without breaking the binding.
+
+The most valuable “Horæ” are those written in England.  Some are of the
+English use (Sarum or York, or whatever it may happen to be), but were
+written abroad, especially in Normandy, for the English market.  These
+are also valuable, even when imperfect.  Look for the page before the
+commencement of the Hours (No. 4 in the list above), and at the end will
+be found a line in red,—“Incipit Horæ secundum usum Sarum,” or otherwise,
+as the case may be.
+
+4.  Missals do not often occur, and are not only very valuable but very
+difficult to collate, unless furnished with catch-words or signatures.
+But no Missal is complete without the Canon of the Mass, usually in the
+middle of the book, and if there are any illuminations throughout the
+volume, there will be a full page Crucifixion, facing the Canon.  Missals
+of large size and completeness contain—(1) a Calendar; (2) “the proper of
+the Season;” (3) the ordinary and Canon of the Mass; (4) the Communal of
+Saints; (5) the proper of Saints and special occasions; (6) the lessons,
+epistles, and gospels; with (7) some hymns, “proses,” and canticles.
+This is Sir W. Tite’s list; but, as he remarks, MS. Missals seldom
+contain so much.  The collector will look for the Canon, which is
+invariable.
+
+Breviaries run to an immense length, and are seldom illuminated.  It
+would be impossible to give them any kind of collation, and the same may
+be said of many other kinds of old service-books, and of the chronicles,
+poems, romances, and herbals, in which mediæval literature abounded, and
+which the collector must judge as best he can.
+
+The name of “missal” is commonly and falsely given to all old
+service-books by the booksellers, but the collector will easily
+distinguish one when he sees it, from the notes I have given.  In a Sarum
+Missal, at Alnwick, there is a colophon quoted by my lamented friend Dr.
+Rock in his “Textile Fabrics.”  It is appropriate both to the labours of
+the old scribes and also to those of their modern readers:—
+
+    “Librum Scribendo—Jon Whas Monachus laborabat—
+    Et mane Surgendo—multum corpus macerabat.”
+
+It is one of the charms of manuscripts that they illustrate, in their
+minute way, all the art, and even the social condition, of the period in
+which they were produced.  Apostles, saints, and prophets wear the
+contemporary costume, and Jonah, when thrown to the hungry whale, wears
+doublet and trunk hose.  The ornaments illustrate the architectural taste
+of the day.  The backgrounds change from diapered patterns to landscapes,
+as the modern way of looking at nature penetrates the monasteries and
+reaches the _scriptorium_ where the illuminator sits and refreshes his
+eyes with the sight of the slender trees and blue distant hills.  Printed
+books have not such resources.  They can only show varieties of type,
+quaint frontispieces, printers’ devices, and _fleurons_ at the heads of
+chapters.  These attractions, and even the engravings of a later day,
+seem meagre enough compared with the allurements of manuscripts.  Yet
+printed books must almost always make the greater part of a collection,
+and it may be well to give some rules as to the features that distinguish
+the productions of the early press.  But no amount of “rules” is worth
+six months’ practical experience in bibliography.  That experience the
+amateur, if he is wise, will obtain in a public library, like the British
+Museum or the Bodleian.  Nowhere else is he likely to see much of the
+earliest of printed books, which very seldom come into the market.
+
+      [Picture: Title-page of “Le Rommant de la Rose,” Paris, 1539]
+
+Those of the first German press are so rare that practically they never
+reach the hands of the ordinary collector.  Among them are the famous
+Psalters printed by Fust and Schoffer, the earliest of which is dated
+1457; and the bible known as the Mazarine Bible.  Two copies of this last
+were in the Perkins sale.  I well remember the excitement on that
+occasion.  The first copy put up was the best, being printed upon vellum.
+The bidding commenced at £1000, and very speedily rose to £2200, at which
+point there was a long pause; it then rose in hundreds with very little
+delay to £3400, at which it was knocked down to a bookseller.  The second
+copy was on paper, and there were those present who said it was better
+than the other, which had a suspicion attaching to it of having been
+“restored” with a facsimile leaf.  The first bid was again £1000, which
+the buyer of the previous copy made guineas, and the bidding speedily
+went up to £2660, at which price the first bidder paused.  A third bidder
+had stepped in at £1960, and now, amid breathless excitement, bid £10
+more.  This he had to do twice before the book was knocked down to him at
+£2690.
+
+A scene like this has really very little to do with book-collecting.  The
+beginner must labour hard to distinguish different kinds of printing; he
+must be able to recognise at a glance even fragments from the press of
+Caxton.  His eye must be accustomed to all the tricks of the trade and
+others, so that he may tell a facsimile in a moment, or detect a forgery.
+
+But now let us return to the distinctive marks of early printed books.
+The first is, says M. Rouveyre,—
+
+1.  _The absence of a separate title-page_.  It was not till 1476–1480
+that the titles of books were printed on separate pages.  The next mark
+is—
+
+2.  _The absence of capital letters at the beginnings of divisions_.  For
+example, in an Aldine Iliad, the fifth book begins thus—
+
+                Νθ αυ τὖδέιδῃ Διυμήδεῑ
+    ἔ          παλλὰς ἀθήνη
+                δῶκε μένος καὶ θάρσος  ἵν’
+                ἔκδηλος μετὰ  πᾶσιν
+    ἀργείοισι γένοιτο, ἰδέ κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἄροιτο.
+
+It was intended that the open space, occupied by the small epsilon (ἔ),
+should be filled up with a coloured and gilded initial letter by the
+illuminator.  Copies thus decorated are not very common, but the Aldine
+“Homer” of Francis I., rescued by M. Didot from a rubbish heap in an
+English cellar, had its due illuminations.  In the earliest books the
+guide to the illuminator, the small printed letter, does not appear, and
+he often puts in the wrong initial.
+
+3.  _Irregularity and rudeness of type_ is a “note” of the primitive
+printing press, which very early disappeared.  Nothing in the history of
+printing is so remarkable as the beauty of almost its first efforts.
+Other notes are—
+
+4.  _The absence of figures at the top of the pages_, _and of signatures
+at the foot_.  The thickness and solidity of the paper, the absence of
+the printer’s name, of the date, and of the name of the town where the
+press stood, and the abundance of crabbed abbreviations, are all marks,
+more or less trustworthy, of the antiquity of books.  It must not be
+supposed that all books published, let us say before 1500, are rare, or
+deserve the notice of the collector.  More than 18,000 works, it has been
+calculated, left the press before the end of the fifteenth century.  All
+of these cannot possibly be of interest, and many of them that are
+“rare,” are rare precisely because they are uninteresting.  They have not
+been preserved because they were thought not worth preserving.  This is a
+great cause of rarity; but we must not hastily conclude that because a
+book found no favour in its own age, therefore it has no claim on our
+attention.  A London bookseller tells me that he bought the “remainder”
+of Keats’s “Endymion” for fourpence a copy!  The first edition of
+“Endymion” is now rare and valued.  In trying to mend the binding of an
+old “Odyssey” lately, I extracted from the vellum covers parts of two
+copies of a very scarce and curious French dictionary of slang, “Le
+Jargon, ou Langage de l’Argot Reformé.”  This treatise may have been
+valueless, almost, when it appeared, but now it is serviceable to the
+philologist, and to all who care to try to interpret the slang _ballades_
+of the poet Villon.  An old pamphlet, an old satire, may hold the key to
+some historical problem, or throw light on the past of manners and
+customs.  Still, of the earliest printed books, collectors prefer such
+rare and beautiful ones as the oldest printed Bibles: German, English,—as
+Taverner’s and the Bishop’s,—or Hebrew and Greek, or the first editions
+of the ancient classics, which may contain the readings of MSS. now lost
+or destroyed.  Talking of early Bibles, let us admire the luck and
+prudence of a certain Mr. Sandford.  He always longed for the first
+Hebrew Bible, but would offer no fancy price, being convinced that the
+book would one day fall in his way.  His foreboding was fulfilled, and he
+picked up his treasure for ten shillings in a shop in the Strand.  The
+taste for _incunabula_, or very early printed books, slumbered in the
+latter half of the sixteenth, and all the seventeenth century.  It
+revived with the third jubilee of printing in 1740, and since then has
+refined itself, and only craves books very early, very important, or
+works from the press of Caxton, the St. Albans Schoolmaster, or other
+famous old artists.  Enough has been said to show the beginner, always
+enthusiastic, that all old books are not precious.  For further
+information, the “Biography and Typography of William Caxton,” by Mr.
+Blades (Trübner, London, 1877), may be consulted with profit.
+
+Following the categories into which M. Brunet classifies desirable books
+in his invaluable manual, we now come to books printed on vellum, and on
+peculiar papers.  At the origin of printing, examples of many books,
+probably presentation copies, were printed on vellum.  There is a vellum
+copy of the celebrated Florentine first edition of Homer; but it is truly
+sad to think that the twin volumes, Iliad and Odyssey, have been
+separated, and pine in distant libraries.  Early printed books on vellum
+often have beautifully illuminated capitals.  Dibdin mentions in
+“Bibliomania” (London, 1811), p. 90, that a M. Van Praet was compiling a
+catalogue of works printed on vellum, and had collected more than 2000
+articles.  When hard things are said about Henry VIII., let us remember
+that this monarch had a few copies of his book against Luther printed on
+vellum.  The Duke of Marlborough’s library possessed twenty-five books on
+vellum, all printed before 1496.  The chapter-house at Padua has a
+“Catullus” of 1472 on vellum; let Mr. Robinson Ellis think wistfully of
+that treasure.  The notable Count M’Carthy of Toulouse had a wonderful
+library of books in _membranis_, including a book much coveted for its
+rarity, oddity, and the beauty of its illustrations, the
+“Hypnerotomachia” of Poliphilus (Venice, 1499).  Vellum was the favourite
+“vanity” of Junot, Napoleon’s general.  For reasons connected with its
+manufacture, and best not inquired into, the Italian vellum enjoyed the
+greatest reputation for smooth and silky whiteness.  Dibdin calls “our
+modern books on vellum little short of downright wretched.”  But the
+editor of this series could, I think, show examples that would have made
+Dibdin change his opinion.
+
+Many comparatively expensive papers, large in _format_, are used in
+choice editions of books.  Whatman papers, Dutch papers, Chinese papers,
+and even _papier vergé_, have all their admirers.  The amateur will soon
+learn to distinguish these materials.  As to books printed on coloured
+paper—green, blue, yellow, rhubarb-coloured, and the like, they are an
+offence to the eyes and to the taste.  Yet even these have their admirers
+and collectors, and the great Aldus himself occasionally used azure
+paper.  Under the head of “large paper,” perhaps “uncut copies” should be
+mentioned.  Most owners of books have had the edges of the volumes gilded
+or marbled by the binders.  Thus part of the margin is lost, an offence
+to the eye of the bibliomaniac, while copies untouched by the binder’s
+shears are rare, and therefore prized.  The inconvenience of uncut copies
+is, that one cannot easily turn over the leaves.  But, in the present
+state of the fashion, a really rare uncut Elzevir may be worth hundreds
+of pounds, while a cropped example scarcely fetches as many shillings.  A
+set of Shakespeare’s quartoes, uncut, would be worth more than a
+respectable landed estate in Connemara.  For these reasons the amateur
+will do well to have new books of price bound “uncut.”  It is always easy
+to have the leaves pared away; but not even the fabled fountain at Argos,
+in which Hera yearly renewed her maidenhood, could restore margins once
+clipped away.  So much for books which are chiefly precious for the
+quantity and quality of the material on which they are printed.  Even
+this rather foolish weakness of the amateur would not be useless if it
+made our publishers more careful to employ a sound clean hand-made paper,
+instead of drugged trash, for their more valuable new productions.
+Indeed, a taste for hand-made paper is coming in, and is part of the
+revolt against the passion for everything machine-made, which ruined art
+and handiwork in the years between 1840 and 1870.
+
+The third of M. Brunet’s categories of books of prose, includes _livres
+de luxe_, and illustrated literature.  Every Christmas brings us _livres
+de luxe_ in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt and magenta
+covers, and great staring illustrations.  These are regarded as
+drawing-room ornaments by people who never read.  It is scarcely
+necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of unregulated
+Christmas generosity.  All ages have not produced quite such garish
+_livres de luxe_ as ours.  But, on the whole, a book brought out merely
+for the sake of display, is generally a book ill “got up,” and not worth
+reading.  Moreover, it is generally a folio, or quarto, so large that he
+who tries to read it must support it on a kind of scaffolding.  In the
+class of illustrated books two sorts are at present most in demand.  The
+ancient woodcuts and engravings, often the work of artists like Holbein
+and Dürer, can never lose their interest.  Among old illustrated books,
+the most famous, and one of the rarest, is the “Hypnerotomachia
+Poliphili,” “wherein all human matters are proved to be no more than a
+dream.”  This is an allegorical romance, published in 1499, for Francesco
+Colonna, by Aldus Manucius.  _Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna
+peramavit_.  “Brother Francesco Colonna dearly loved Polia,” is the
+inscription and device of this romance.  Poor Francesco, of the order of
+preachers, disguised in this strange work his passion for a lady of
+uncertain name.  Here is a translation of the passage in which the lady
+describes the beginning of his affection.  “I was standing, as is the
+manner of women young and fair, at the window, or rather on the balcony,
+of my palace.  My yellow hair, the charm of maidens, was floating round
+my shining shoulders.  My locks were steeped in unguents that made them
+glitter like threads of gold, and they were slowly drying in the rays of
+the burning sun.  A handmaid, happy in her task, was drawing a comb
+through my tresses, and surely these of Andromeda seemed not more lovely
+to Perseus, nor to Lucius the locks of Photis. {6}  On a sudden,
+Poliphilus beheld me, and could not withdraw from me his glances of fire,
+and even in that moment a ray of the sun of love was kindled in his
+heart.”
+
+The fragment is itself a picture from the world of the Renaissance.  We
+watch the blonde, learned lady, dreaming of Perseus, and Lucius, Greek
+lovers of old time, while the sun gilds her yellow hair, and the young
+monk, passing below, sees and loves, and “falls into the deep waters of
+desire.”  The lover is no less learned than the lady, and there is a
+great deal of amorous archæology in his account of his voyage to Cythera.
+As to the designs in wood, quaint in their vigorous effort to be
+classical, they have been attributed to Mantegna, to Bellini, and other
+artists.  Jean Cousin is said to have executed the imitations, in the
+Paris editions of 1546, 1556, and 1561.
+
+The “Hypnerotomachia” seems to deserve notice, because it is the very
+type of the books that are dear to collectors, as distinct from the books
+that, in any shape, are for ever valuable to the world.  A cheap
+Tauchnitz copy of the Iliad and Odyssey, or a Globe Shakespeare, are,
+from the point of view of literature, worth a wilderness of
+“Hypnerotomachiæ.”  But a clean copy of the “Hypnerotomachia,” especially
+on VELLUM, is one of the jewels of bibliography.  It has all the right
+qualities; it is very rare, it is very beautiful as a work of art, it is
+curious and even _bizarre_, it is the record of a strange time, and a
+strange passion; it is a relic, lastly, of its printer, the great and
+good Aldus Manutius.
+
+Next to the old woodcuts and engravings, executed in times when artists
+were versatile and did not disdain even to draw a book-plate (as Dürer
+did for Pirckheimer), the designs of the French “little masters,” are at
+present in most demand.  The book illustrations of the seventeenth
+century are curious enough, and invaluable as authorities on manners and
+costume.  But the attitudes of the figures are too often stiff and
+ungainly; while the composition is frequently left to chance.  England
+could show nothing much better than Ogilby’s translations of Homer,
+illustrated with big florid engravings in sham antique style.  The years
+between 1730 and 1820, saw the French “little masters” in their
+perfection.  The dress of the middle of the eighteenth century, of the
+age of Watteau, was precisely suited to the gay and graceful pencils of
+Gravelot, Moreau, Eisen, Boucher, Cochin, Marillier, and Choffard.  To
+understand their merits, and the limits of their art, it is enough to
+glance through a series of the designs for Voltaire, Corneille, or
+Molière.  The drawings of society are almost invariably dainty and
+pleasing, the serious scenes of tragedy leave the spectator quite
+unmoved.  Thus it is but natural that these artists should have shone
+most in the illustration of airy trifles like Dorat’s “Baisers,” or tales
+like Manon Lescaut, or in designing tailpieces for translations of the
+Greek idyllic poets, such as Moschus and Bion.  In some of his
+illustrations of books, especially, perhaps, in the designs for “La
+Physiologie de Gout” (Jouaust, Paris, 1879), M. Lalauze has shown himself
+the worthy rival of Eisen and Cochin.  Perhaps it is unnecessary to add
+that the beauty and value of all such engravings depends almost entirely
+on their “state.”  The earlier proofs are much more brilliant than those
+drawn later, and etchings on fine papers are justly preferred.  For
+example, M. Lalauze’s engravings on “Whatman paper,” have a beauty which
+could scarcely be guessed by people who have only seen specimens on
+“papier vergé.”  Every collector of the old French _vignettes_, should
+possess himself of the “Guide de l’amateur,” by M. Henry Cohen
+(Rouquette, Paris, 1880).  Among English illustrated books, various
+tastes prefer the imaginative works of William Blake, the etchings of
+Cruikshank, and the woodcuts of Bewick.  The whole of the last chapter of
+this sketch is devoted, by Mr. Austin Dobson, to the topic of English
+illustrated books.  Here it may be said, in passing, that an early copy
+of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” written, illustrated, printed,
+coloured, and boarded by the author’s own hand, is one of the most
+charming objects that a bibliophile can hope to possess.  The verses of
+Blake, in a framework of birds, and flowers, and plumes, all softly and
+magically tinted, seem like some book out of King Oberon’s library in
+fairyland, rather than the productions of a mortal press.  The pictures
+in Blake’s “prophetic books,” and even his illustrations to “Job,” show
+an imagination more heavily weighted by the technical difficulties of
+drawing.
+
+The next class of rare books is composed of works from the famous presses
+of the Aldi and the Elzevirs.  Other presses have, perhaps, done work as
+good, but Estienne, the Giunta, and Plantin, are comparatively neglected,
+while the taste for the performances of Baskerville and Foulis is not
+very eager.  A safe judgment about Aldines and Elzevirs is the gift of
+years and of long experience.  In this place it is only possible to say a
+few words on a wide subject.  The founder of the Aldine press, Aldus Pius
+Manutius, was born about 1450, and died at Venice in 1514.  He was a man
+of careful and profound learning, and was deeply interested in Greek
+studies, then encouraged by the arrival in Italy of many educated Greeks
+and Cretans.  Only four Greek authors had as yet been printed in Italy,
+when (1495) Aldus established his press at Venice.  Theocritus, Homer,
+Æsop, and Isocrates, probably in very limited editions, were in the hands
+of students.  The purpose of Aldus was to put Greek and Latin works,
+beautifully printed in a convenient shape, within the reach of all the
+world.  His reform was the introduction of books at once cheap,
+studiously correct, and convenient in actual use.  It was in 1498 that he
+first adopted the small octavo size, and in his “Virgil” of 1501, he
+introduced the type called _Aldine_ or _Italic_.  The letters were united
+as in writing, and the type is said to have been cut by Francesco da
+Bologna, better known as Francia, in imitation of the hand of Petrarch.
+For full information about Aldus and his descendants and successors, the
+work of M. Firmin Didot, (“Alde Manuce et l’Hellénisme à Venise: Paris
+1875),” and the Aldine annals of Renouard, must be consulted.  These two
+works are necessary to the collector, who will otherwise be deceived by
+the misleading assertions of the booksellers.  As a rule, the volumes
+published in the lifetime of Aldus Manutius are the most esteemed, and of
+these the Aristotle, the first Homer, the Virgil, and the Ovid, are
+perhaps most in demand.  The earlier Aldines are consulted almost as
+studiously as MSS. by modern editors of the classics.
+
+Just as the house of Aldus waned and expired, that of the great Dutch
+printers, the Elzevirs, began obscurely enough at Leyden in 1583.  The
+Elzevirs were not, like Aldus, ripe scholars and men of devotion to
+learning.  Aldus laboured for the love of noble studies; the Elzevirs
+were acute, and too often “smart” men of business.  The founder of the
+family was Louis (born at Louvain, 1540, died 1617).  But it was in the
+second and third generations that Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevir began
+to publish at Leyden, their editions in small duodecimo.  Like Aldus,
+these Elzevirs aimed at producing books at once handy, cheap, correct,
+and beautiful in execution.  Their adventure was a complete success.  The
+Elzevirs did not, like Aldus, surround themselves with the most learned
+scholars of their time.  Their famous literary adviser, Heinsius, was
+full of literary jealousies, and kept students of his own calibre at a
+distance.  The classical editions of the Elzevirs, beautiful, but too
+small in type for modern eyes, are anything but exquisitely correct.
+Their editions of the contemporary.  French authors, now classics
+themselves, are lovely examples of skill in practical enterprise.  The
+Elzevirs treated the French authors much as American publishers treat
+Englishmen.  They stole right and left, but no one complained much in
+these times of slack copyright; and, at all events, the piratic larcenous
+publications of the Dutch printers were pretty, and so far satisfactory.
+They themselves, in turn, were the victims of fraudulent and
+untradesmanlike imitations.  It is for this, among other reasons, that
+the collector of Elzevirs must make M. Willems’s book (“Les Elzevier,”
+Brussels and Paris, 1880) his constant study.  Differences so minute that
+they escape the unpractised eye, denote editions of most various value.
+In Elzevirs a line’s breadth of margin is often worth a hundred pounds,
+and a misprint is quoted at no less a sum.  The fantastic caprice of
+bibliophiles has revelled in the bibliography of these Dutch editions.
+They are at present very scarce in England, where a change in fashion
+some years ago had made them common enough.  No Elzevir is valuable
+unless it be clean and large in the margins.  When these conditions are
+satisfied the question of rarity comes in, and Remy Belleau’s Macaronic
+poem, or “Le Pastissier Français,” may rise to the price of four or five
+hundred pounds.  A Rabelais, Molière, or Corneille, of a “good” edition,
+is now more in request than the once adored “Imitatio Christi”
+(dateless), or the “Virgil”’ of 1646, which is full of gross errors of
+the press, but is esteemed for red characters in the letter to Augustus,
+and another passage at page 92.  The ordinary marks of the Elzevirs were
+the sphere, the old hermit, the Athena, the eagle, and the burning
+faggot.  But all little old books marked with spheres are not Elzevirs,
+as many booksellers suppose.  Other printers also stole the designs for
+the tops of chapters, the Aegipan, the Siren, the head of Medusa, the
+crossed sceptres, and the rest.  In some cases the Elzevirs published
+their books, especially when they were piracies, anonymously.  When they
+published for the Jansenists, they allowed their clients to put fantastic
+pseudonyms on the title pages.  But, except in four cases, they had only
+two pseudonyms used on the titles of books published by and for
+themselves.  These disguises are “Jean Sambix” for Jean and Daniel
+Elzevir, at Leyden, and for the Elzevirs of Amsterdam, “Jacques le
+Jeune.”  The last of the great representatives of the house, Daniel, died
+at Amsterdam, 1680.  Abraham, an unworthy scion, struggled on at Leyden
+till 1712.  The family still prospers, but no longer prints, in Holland.
+It is common to add duodecimos of Foppens, Wolfgang, and other printers,
+to the collections of the Elzevirs.  The books of Wolfgang have the sign
+of the fox robbing a wild bee’s nest, with the motto _Quaerendo_.
+
+_Curious and singular books_ are the next in our classification.  The
+category is too large.  The books that be “curious” (not in the
+booksellers’ sense of “prurient” and “disgusting,”) are innumerable.  All
+suppressed and condemned books, from “Les Fleurs du Mal” to Vanini’s
+“Amphitheatrum,” or the English translation of Bruno’s “Spaccia della
+Bestia Trionfante,” are more or less rare, and more or less curious.
+Wild books, like William Postel’s “Three Marvellous Triumphs of Women,”
+are “curious.”  Freakish books, like macaronic poetry, written in a
+medley of languages, are curious.  Books from private presses are
+singular.  The old English poets and satirists turned out many a book
+curious to the last degree, and priced at a fantastic value.  Such are
+“Jordan’s Jewels of Ingenuity,” “Micro-cynicon, six Snarling Satyres”
+(1599), and the “Treatize made of a Galaunt,” printed by Wynkyn de Worde,
+and found pasted into the fly-leaf, on the oak-board binding of an
+imperfect volume of Pynson’s “Statutes.”  All our early English poems and
+miscellanies are curious; and, as relics of delightful singers, are most
+charming possessions.  Such are the “Songes and Sonnettes of Surrey”
+(1557), the “Paradyce of daynty Deuices” (1576), the “Small Handful of
+Fragrant Flowers,” and “The Handful of Dainty Delights, gathered out of
+the lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture, fit for any worshipful Gentlewoman
+to smell unto,” (1584).  “The Teares of Ireland” (1642), are said, though
+one would not expect it, to be “extremely rare,” and, therefore,
+precious.  But there is no end to the list of such desirable rarities.
+If we add to them all books coveted as early editions, and, therefore, as
+relics of great writers, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Milton, Sterne, Walton, and
+the rest, we might easily fill a book with remarks on this topic alone.
+The collection of such editions is the most respectable, the most useful,
+and, alas, the most expensive of the amateur’s pursuits.  It is curious
+enough that the early editions of Swift, Scott, and Byron, are little
+sought for, if not wholly neglected; while early copies of Shelley,
+Tennyson, and Keats, have a great price set on their heads.  The quartoes
+of Shakespeare, like first editions of Racine, are out of the reach of
+any but very opulent purchasers, or unusually lucky, fortunate
+book-hunters.  Before leaving the topic of books which derive their value
+from the taste and fantasy of collectors, it must be remarked that, in
+this matter, the fashion of the world changes.  Dr. Dibdin lamented,
+seventy years ago, the waning respect paid to certain editions of the
+classics.  He would find that things have become worse now, and modern
+German editions, on execrable paper, have supplanted his old favourites.
+Fifty years ago, M. Brunet expressed his contempt for the designs of
+Boucher; now they are at the top of the fashion.  The study of old
+booksellers’ catalogues is full of instruction as to the changes of
+caprice.  The collection of Dr. Rawlinson was sold in 1756.  “The Vision
+of Pierce Plowman” (1561), and the “Creede of Pierce Plowman” (1553),
+brought between them no more than three shillings and sixpence.  Eleven
+shillings were paid for the “Boke of Chivalrie” by Caxton.  The “Boke of
+St. Albans,” by Wynkyn de Worde, cost £ 1: 1s., and this was the highest
+sum paid for any one of two hundred rare pieces of early English
+literature.  In 1764, a copy of the “Hypnerotomachia” was sold for two
+shillings, “A Pettie Pallace of Pettie his Pleasures,” (ah, what a
+thought for the amateur!) went for three shillings, while “Palmerin of
+England” (1602), attained no more than the paltry sum of fourteen
+shillings.  When Osborne sold the Harley collection, the scarcest old
+English books fetched but three or four shillings.  If the wandering Jew
+had been a collector in the last century he might have turned a pretty
+profit by selling his old English books in this age of ours.  In old
+French, too, Ahasuerus would have done a good stroke of business, for the
+prices brought by old Villons, Romances of the Rose, “Les Marguerites de
+Marguerite,” and so forth, at the M’Carthy sale, were truly pitiable.  A
+hundred years hence the original editions of Thackeray, or of Miss
+Greenaway’s Christmas books, or “Modern Painters,” may be the ruling
+passion, and Aldines and Elzevirs, black letter and French vignettes may
+all be despised.  A book which is commonplace in our century is curious
+in the next, and disregarded in that which follows.  Old books of a
+heretical character were treasures once, rare unholy possessions.  Now we
+have seen so many heretics that the world is indifferent to the
+audacities of Bruno, and the veiled impieties of Vanini.
+
+The last of our categories of books much sought by the collector includes
+all volumes valued for their ancient bindings, for the mark and stamp of
+famous amateurs.  The French, who have supplied the world with so many
+eminent binders,—as Eve, Padeloup, Duseuil, Le Gascon, Derome, Simier,
+Bozérian, Thouvenin, Trautz-Bauzonnet, and Lortic—are the chief patrons
+of books in historical bindings.  In England an historical binding, a
+book of Laud’s, or James’s, or Garrick’s, or even of Queen Elizabeth’s,
+does not seem to derive much added charm from its associations.  But, in
+France, peculiar bindings are now the objects most in demand among
+collectors.  The series of books thus rendered precious begins with those
+of Maioli and of Grolier (1479–1565), remarkable for their mottoes and
+the geometrical patterns on the covers.  Then comes De Thou (who had
+three sets of arms), with his blazon, the bees stamped on the morocco.
+The volumes of Marguerite of Angoulême are sprinkled with golden daisies.
+Diane de Poictiers had her crescents and her bow, and the initial of her
+royal lover was intertwined with her own.  The three daughters of Louis
+XV. had each their favourite colour, and their books wear liveries of
+citron, red, and olive morocco.  The Abbé Cotin, the original of
+Molière’s Trissotin, stamped his books with intertwined C’s.  Henri III.
+preferred religious emblems, and sepulchral mottoes—skulls, crossbones,
+tears, and the insignia of the Passion.  _Mort m’est vie_ is a favourite
+device of the effeminate and voluptuous prince.  Molière himself was a
+collector, _il n’es pas de bouquin qui s’échappe de ses mains_,—“never an
+old book escapes him,” says the author of “La Guerre Comique,” the last
+of the pamphlets which flew from side to side in the great literary
+squabble about “L’École des Femmes.”  M. Soulié has found a rough
+catalogue of Molière’s library, but the books, except a little Elzevir,
+have disappeared. {7}  Madame de Maintenon was fond of bindings.  Mr.
+Toovey possesses a copy of a devotional work in red morocco, tooled and
+gilt, which she presented to a friendly abbess.  The books at Saint-Cyr
+were stamped with a crowned cross, besprent with _fleurs-de-lys_.  The
+books of the later collectors—Longepierre, the translator of Bion and
+Moschus; D’Hoym the diplomatist; McCarthy, and La Vallière, are all
+valued at a rate which seems fair game for satire.
+
+Among the most interesting bibliophiles of the eighteenth century is
+Madame Du Barry.  In 1771, this notorious beauty could scarcely read or
+write.  She had rooms, however, in the Château de Versailles, thanks to
+the kindness of a monarch who admired those native qualities which
+education may polish, but which it can never confer.  At Versailles,
+Madame Du Barry heard of the literary genius of Madame de Pompadour.  The
+Pompadour was a person of taste.  Her large library of some four thousand
+works of the lightest sort of light literature was bound by Biziaux.  Mr.
+Toovey possesses the Brantôme of this _dame galante_.  Madame herself had
+published etchings by her own fair hands; and to hear of these things
+excited the emulation of Madame Du Barry.  She might not be _clever_, but
+she could have a library like another, if libraries were in fashion.  One
+day Madame Du Barry astonished the Court by announcing that her
+collection of books would presently arrive at Versailles.  Meantime she
+took counsel with a bookseller, who bought up examples of all the cheap
+“remainders,” as they are called in the trade, that he could lay his
+hands upon.  The whole assortment, about one thousand volumes in all, was
+hastily bound in rose morocco, elegantly gilt, and stamped with the arms
+of the noble house of Du Barry.  The bill which Madame Du Barry owed her
+enterprising agent is still in existence.  The thousand volumes cost
+about three francs each; the binding (extremely cheap) came to nearly as
+much.  The amusing thing is that the bookseller, in the catalogue which
+he sent with the improvised library, marked the books which Madame Du
+Barry possessed _before_ her large order was so punctually executed.
+There were two “Mémoires de Du Barry,” an old newspaper, two or three
+plays, and “L’Historie Amoureuse de Pierre le Long.”  Louis XV. observed
+with pride that, though Madame Pompadour had possessed a larger library,
+that of Madame Du Barry was the better selected.  Thanks to her new
+collection, the lady learned to read with fluency, but she never overcame
+the difficulties of spelling.
+
+A lady collector who loved books not very well perhaps, but certainly not
+wisely, was the unhappy Marie Antoinette.  The controversy in France
+about the private character of the Queen has been as acrimonious as the
+Scotch discussion about Mary Stuart.  Evidence, good and bad, letters as
+apocryphal as the letters of the famous “casket,” have been produced on
+both sides.  A few years ago, under the empire, M. Louis Lacour found a
+manuscript catalogue of the books in the Queen’s _boudoir_.  They were
+all novels of the flimsiest sort,—“L’Amitié Dangereuse,” “Les Suites d’un
+Moment d’Erreur,” and even the stories of Louvet and of Rétif de la
+Bretonne.  These volumes all bore the letters “C. T.” (Château de
+Trianon), and during the Revolution they were scattered among the various
+public libraries of Paris.  The Queen’s more important library was at the
+Tuileries, but at Versailles she had only three books, as the
+commissioners of the Convention found, when they made an inventory of the
+property of _la femme Capet_.  Among the three was the “Gerusalemme
+Liberata,” printed, with eighty exquisite designs by Cochin, at the
+expense of “Monsieur,” afterwards Louis XVIII.  Books with the arms of
+Marie Antoinette are very rare in private collections; in sales they are
+as much sought after as those of Madame Du Barry.
+
+With these illustrations of the kind of interest that belongs to books of
+old collectors, we may close this chapter.  The reader has before him a
+list, with examples, of the kinds of books at present most in vogue among
+amateurs.  He must judge for himself whether he will follow the fashion,
+by aid either of a long purse or of patient research, or whether he will
+find out new paths for himself.  A scholar is rarely a rich man.  He
+cannot compete with plutocrats who buy by deputy.  But, if he pursues the
+works he really needs, he may make a valuable collection.  He cannot go
+far wrong while he brings together the books that he finds most congenial
+to his own taste and most useful to his own studies.  Here, then, in the
+words of the old “sentiment,” I bid him farewell, and wish “success to
+his inclinations, provided they are virtuous.”  There is a set of
+collectors, alas! whose inclinations are not virtuous.  The most famous
+of them, a Frenchman, observed that his own collection of bad books was
+unique.  That of an English rival, he admitted, was respectable,—“_mais
+milord se livre à des autres préoccupations_!”  He thought a collector’s
+whole heart should be with his treasures.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   En bouquinant se trouve grand soulas.
+   Soubent m’en vay musant, à petis pas,
+   Au long des quais, pour flairer maint bieux livre.
+   Des Elzevier la Sphere me rend yure,
+   Et la Sirène aussi m’esmeut.  Grand cas
+   Fais-je d’Estienne, Aide, ou Dolet.  Mais Ias!
+   Le vieux Caxton ne se rencontre pas,
+   Plus qu’ agneau d’or parmi jetons de cuivre,
+   En bouquinant!
+
+   Pour tout plaisir que l’on goute icy-bas
+   La Grace a Dieu.  Mieux vaut, sans altercas,
+   Chasser bouquin: Nul mal n’en peult s’ensuivre.
+   Dr sus au livre: il est le grand appas.
+   Clair est le ciel.  Amis, qui veut me suivre
+   En bouquinant?
+
+                                                                     A. L.
+
+  [Picture: Group of Children.  Drawn by Kate Greenaway; engraved by O.
+                                 Lacour]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS {123}
+
+
+[Picture: Highly decorative letter M, first letter of Modern] ODERN
+English book-illustration—to which the present chapter is restricted—has
+no long or doubtful history, since to find its first beginnings, it is
+needless to go farther back than the last quarter of the eighteenth
+century.  Not that “illustrated” books of a certain class were by any
+means unknown before that period.  On the contrary, for many years
+previously, literature had boasted its “sculptures” of be-wigged and
+be-laurelled “worthies,” its “prospects” and “land-skips,” its phenomenal
+monsters and its “curious antiques.”  But, despite the couplet in the
+“Dunciad” respecting books where
+
+    “ . . .  the pictures for the page atone,
+    And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own;”—
+
+illustrations, in which the designer attempted the actual delineation of
+scenes or occurrences in the text, were certainly not common when Pope
+wrote, nor were they for some time afterwards either very numerous or
+very noteworthy.  There are Hogarth’s engravings to “Hudibras” and “Don
+Quixote;” there are the designs of his crony Frank Hayman to Theobald’s
+“Shakespeare,” to Milton, to Pope, to Cervantes; there are Pine’s
+“Horace” and Sturt’s “Prayer-Book” (in both of which text and ornament
+were alike engraved); there are the historical and topographical drawings
+of Sandby, Wale, and others; and yet—notwithstanding all these—it is with
+Bewick’s cuts to Gay’s “Fables” in 1779, and Stothard’s plates to
+Harrison’s “Novelist’s Magazine” in 1780, that book-illustration by
+imaginative compositions really begins to flourish in England.  Those
+little masterpieces of the Newcastle artist brought about a revival of
+wood-engraving which continues to this day; but engraving upon metal, as
+a means of decorating books, practically came to an end with the
+“Annuals” of thirty years ago.  It will therefore be well to speak first
+of illustrations upon copper and steel.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Stothard, Blake, and Flaxman are the names that come freshest to memory
+in this connection.  For a period of fifty years Stothard stands
+pre-eminent in illustrated literature.  Measuring time by poets, he may
+be said to have lent something of his fancy and amenity to most of the
+writers from Cowper to Rogers.  As a draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak:
+his figures are often limp and invertebrate, and his type of beauty
+insipid.  Still, regarded as groups, the majority of his designs are
+exquisite, and he possessed one all-pervading and un-English quality—the
+quality of grace.  This is his dominant note.  Nothing can be more
+seductive than the suave flow of his line, his feeling for costume, his
+gentle and chastened humour.  Many of his women and children are models
+of purity and innocence.  But he works at ease only within the limits of
+his special powers; he is happier in the pastoral and domestic than the
+heroic and supernatural, and his style is better fitted to the formal
+salutations of “Clarissa” and “Sir Charles Grandison,” than the rough
+horse-play of “Peregrine Pickle.”  Where Rowlandson would have revelled,
+Stothard would be awkward and constrained; where Blake would give us a
+new sensation, Stothard would be poor and mechanical.  Nevertheless the
+gifts he possessed were thoroughly recognised in his own day, and brought
+him, if not riches, at least competence and honour.  It is said that more
+than three thousand of his drawings have been engraved, and they are
+scattered through a hundred publications.  Those to the “Pilgrim’s
+Progress” and the poems of Rogers are commonly spoken of as his best,
+though he never excelled some of the old-fashioned plates (with their
+pretty borders in the style of Gravelot and the Frenchmen) to
+Richardson’s novels, and such forgotten “classics” as “Joe Thompson”,
+“Jessamy,” “Betsy Thoughtless,” and one or two others in Harrison’s very
+miscellaneous collection.
+
+Stothard was fortunate in his engravers.  Besides James Heath, his best
+interpreter, Schiavonetti, Sharp, Finden, the Cookes, Bartolozzi, most of
+the fashionable translators into copper were busily employed upon his
+inventions.  Among the rest was an artist of powers far greater than his
+own, although scarcely so happy in turning them to profitable account.
+The genius of William Blake was not a marketable commodity in the same
+way as Stothard’s talent.  The one caught the trick of the time with his
+facile elegance; the other scorned to make any concessions, either in
+conception or execution, to the mere popularity of prettiness.
+
+    “Give pensions to the learned pig,
+    Or the hare playing on a tabor;
+    Anglus can never see perfection
+    But in the journeyman’s labour,”—
+
+he wrote in one of those rough-hewn and bitter epigrams of his.  Yet the
+work that was then so lukewarmly received—if, indeed, it can be said to
+have been received at all—is at present far more sought after than
+Stothard’s, and the prices now given for the “Songs of Innocence and
+Experience,” the “Inventions to the Book of Job,” and even “The Grave,”
+would have brought affluence to the struggling artist, who (as Cromek
+taunted him) was frequently “reduced so low as to be obliged to live on
+half a guinea a week.”  Not that this was entirely the fault of his
+contemporaries.  Blake was a visionary, and an untuneable man; and, like
+others who work for the select public of all ages, he could not always
+escape the consequence that the select public of his own, however
+willing, were scarcely numerous enough to support him.  His most
+individual works are the “Songs of Innocence,” 1789, and the “Songs of
+Experience,” 1794.  These, afterwards united in one volume, were unique
+in their method of production; indeed, they do not perhaps strictly come
+within the category of what is generally understood to be copperplate
+engraving.  The drawings were outlined and the songs written upon the
+metal with some liquid that resisted the action of acid, and the
+remainder of the surface of the plate was eaten away with _aqua-fortis_,
+leaving the design in bold relief, like a rude stereotype.  This was then
+printed off in the predominant tone—blue, brown, or yellow, as the case
+might be—and delicately tinted by the artist in a prismatic and ethereal
+fashion peculiarly his own.  Stitched and bound in boards by Mrs. Blake,
+a certain number of these leaflets—twenty-seven in the case of the first
+issue—made up a tiny _octavo_ of a wholly exceptional kind.  Words indeed
+fail to exactly describe the flower-like beauty—the fascination of these
+“fairy missals,” in which, it has been finely said, “the thrilling music
+of the verse, and the gentle bedazzlement of the lines and colours so
+intermingle, that the mind hangs in a pleasant uncertainty as to whether
+it is a picture that is singing, or a song which has newly budded and
+blossomed into colour and form.”  The accompanying woodcut, after one of
+the illustrations to the “Songs of Innocence,” gives some indication of
+the general composition, but it can convey no hint of the gorgeous
+purple, and crimson, and orange of the original.
+
+    [Picture: “Infant Joy.”  From Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” 1789.
+                       Engraved by J. F. Jungling]
+
+Of the “Illustrations to the Book of Job,” 1826, there are excellent
+reduced facsimiles by the recently-discovered photo-intaglio process, in
+the new edition of Gilchrist’s “Life.”  The originals were engraved by
+Blake himself in his strong decisive fashion, and they are his best work.
+A kind of _deisidaimonia_—a sacred awe—falls upon one in turning over
+these wonderful productions of the artist’s declining years and failing
+hand.
+
+    “Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
+    That stand upon the threshold of the new,”
+
+sings Waller; and it is almost possible to believe for a moment that
+their creator was (as he said) “under the direction of messengers from
+Heaven.”  But his designs for Blair’s “Grave,” 1808, popularised by the
+burin of Schiavonetti, attracted greater attention at the time of
+publication; and, being less rare, they are even now perhaps better known
+than the others.  The facsimile here given is from the latter book.  The
+worn old man, the trustful woman, and the guileless child are sleeping
+peacefully; but the king with his sceptre, and the warrior with his hand
+on his sword-hilt, lie open-eyed, waiting the summons of the trumpet.
+One cannot help fancying that the artist’s long vigils among the Abbey
+tombs, during his apprenticeship to James Basire, must have been present
+to his mind when he selected this impressive monumental subject.
+
+  [Picture: “Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child, in the Tomb.”
+  From Blair’s “Grave,” 1808.  Designed by William Blake; facsimiled on
+              wood from the engraving by Louis Schiavonetti]
+
+To one of Blake’s few friends—to the “dear Sculptor of Eternity,” as he
+wrote to Flaxman from Felpham—the world is indebted for some notable book
+illustrations.  Whether the greatest writers—the Homers, the
+Shakespeares, the Dantes—can ever be “illustrated” without loss may
+fairly be questioned.  At all events, the showy dexterities of the Dorés
+and Gilberts prove nothing to the contrary.  But now and then there comes
+to the graphic interpretation of a great author an artist either so
+reverential, or so strongly sympathetic at some given point, that, in
+default of any relation more narrowly intimate, we at once accept his
+conceptions as the best attainable.  In this class are Flaxman’s outlines
+to Homer and Æschylus.  Flaxman was not a Hellenist as men are Hellenists
+to-day.  Nevertheless, his Roman studies had saturated him with the
+spirit of antique beauty, and by his grand knowledge of the nude, his
+calm, his restraint, he is such an illustrator of Homer as is not likely
+to arise again.  For who—with all our added knowledge of classical
+antiquity—who, of our modern artists, could hope to rival such thoroughly
+Greek compositions as the ball-play of Nausicaa in the “Odyssey,” or that
+lovely group from Æschylus of the tender-hearted, womanly Oceanides,
+cowering like flowers beaten by the storm under the terrible anger of
+Zeus?  In our day Flaxman’s drawings would have been reproduced by some
+of the modern facsimile processes, and the gain would have been great.
+As it is, something is lost by their transference to copper, even though
+the translators be Piroli and Blake.  Blake, in fact, did more than he is
+usually credited with, for (beside the acknowledged and later “Hesiod,”
+1817) he really engraved the whole of the “Odyssey,” Piroli’s plates
+having been lost on the voyage to England.  The name of the Roman artist,
+nevertheless, appears on the title-page (1793).  But Blake was too
+original to be a successful copyist of other men’s work, and to
+appreciate the full value of Flaxman’s drawings, they should be studied
+in the collections at University College, the Royal Academy, and
+elsewhere. {9}
+
+Flaxman and Blake had few imitators.  But a host of clever designers,
+such as Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Westall, Uwins, Smirke, Burney,
+Corbould, Dodd, and others, vied with the popular Stothard in
+“embellishing” the endless “Poets,” “novelists,” and “essayists” of our
+forefathers.  Some of these, and most of the recognised artists of the
+period, lent their aid to that boldly-planned but unhappily-executed
+“Shakespeare” of Boydell,—“black and ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum
+Northcotes, straddling Fuselis,” as Thackeray calls it.  They are
+certainly not enlivening—those cumbrous “atlas” _folios_ of 1803–5, and
+they helped to ruin the worthy alderman.  Even courtly Sir Joshua is
+clearly ill at ease among the pushing Hamiltons and Mortimers; and, were
+it not for the whimsical discovery that Westall’s “Ghost of Cæsar”
+strangely resembles Mr. Gladstone, there would be no resting-place for
+the modern student of these dismal masterpieces.  The truth is, Reynolds
+excepted, there were no contemporary painters strong enough for the task,
+and the honours of the enterprise belong almost exclusively to Smirke’s
+“Seven Ages” and one or two plates from the lighter comedies.  The great
+“Bible” of Macklin, a rival and even more incongruous publication, upon
+which some of the same designers were employed, has fallen into completer
+oblivion.  A rather better fate attended another book of this class,
+which, although belonging to a later period, may be briefly referred to
+here.  The “Milton” of John Martin has distinct individuality, and some
+of the needful qualities of imagination.  Nevertheless, posterity has
+practically decided that scenic grandeur and sombre effects alone are not
+a sufficient pictorial equipment for the varied story of “Paradise Lost.”
+
+It is to Boydell of the Shakespeare gallery that we owe the “Liber
+Veritatis” of Claude, engraved by Richard Earlom; and indirectly, since
+rivalry of Claude prompted the attempt, the famous “Liber Studiorum” of
+Turner.  Neither of these, however—which, like the “Rivers of France” and
+the “Picturesque Views in England and Wales” of the latter artist, are
+collections of engravings rather than illustrated books—belongs to the
+present purpose.  But Turner’s name may fitly serve to introduce those
+once familiar “Annuals” and “Keepsakes,” that, beginning in 1823 with
+Ackermann’s “Forget-me-Not,” enjoyed a popularity of more than thirty
+years.  Their general characteristics have been pleasantly satirised in
+Thackeray’s account of the elegant miscellany of Bacon the publisher, to
+which Mr. Arthur Pendennis contributed his pretty poem of “The Church
+Porch.”  His editress, it will be remembered, was the Lady Violet Lebas,
+and his colleagues the Honourable Percy Popjoy, Lord Dodo, and the gifted
+Bedwin Sands, whose “Eastern Ghazuls” lent so special a distinction to
+the volume in watered-silk binding.  The talented authors, it is true,
+were in most cases under the disadvantage of having to write to the
+plates of the talented artists, a practice which even now is not extinct,
+though it is scarcely considered favourable to literary merit.  And the
+real “Annuals” were no exception to the rule.  As a matter of fact, their
+general literary merit was not obtrusive, although, of course, they
+sometimes contained work which afterwards became famous.  They are now so
+completely forgotten and out of date, that one scarcely expects to find
+that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macaulay, and Southey, were among the
+occasional contributors.  Lamb’s beautiful “Album verses” appeared in the
+“Bijou,” Scott’s “Bonnie Dundee” in the “Christmas Box,” and Tennyson’s
+“St. Agnes’ Eve” in the “Keepsake.”  But the plates were, after all, the
+leading attraction.  These, prepared for the most part under the
+superintendence of the younger Heath, and executed on the steel which by
+this time had supplanted the old “coppers,” were supplied by, or were
+“after,” almost every contemporary artist of note.  Stothard, now growing
+old and past his prime, Turner, Etty, Stanfield, Leslie, Roberts, Danby,
+Maclise, Lawrence, Cattermole, and numbers of others, found profitable
+labour in this fashionable field until 1856, when the last of the
+“Annuals” disappeared, driven from the market by the rapid development of
+wood engraving.  About a million, it is roughly estimated, was squandered
+in producing them.
+
+In connection with the “Annuals” must be mentioned two illustrated books
+which were in all probability suggested by them—the “Poems” and “Italy”
+of Rogers.  The designs to these are chiefly by Turner and Stothard,
+although there are a few by Prout and others.  Stothard’s have been
+already referred to; Turner’s are almost universally held to be the most
+successful of his many vignettes.  It has been truly said—in a recent
+excellent life of this artist {10}—that it would be difficult to find in
+the whole of his works two really greater than the “Alps at Daybreak,”
+and the “Datur Hora Quieti,” in the former of these volumes.  Almost
+equally beautiful are the “Valombré Falls” and “Tornaro’s misty brow.”
+Of the “Italy” set Mr. Ruskin writes:—“They are entirely exquisite;
+poetical in the highest and purest sense, exemplary and delightful beyond
+all praise.”  To such words it is not possible to add much.  But it is
+pretty clear that the poetical vitality of Rogers was secured by these
+well-timed illustrations, over which he is admitted by his nephew Mr.
+Sharpe to have spent about £7000, and far larger sums have been named by
+good authorities.  The artist received from fifteen to twenty guineas for
+each of the drawings; the engravers (Goodall, Miller, Wallis, Smith, and
+others), sixty guineas a plate.  The “Poems” and the “Italy,” in the
+original issues of 1830 and 1834, are still precious to collectors, and
+are likely to remain so.  Turner also illustrated Scott, Milton,
+Campbell, and Byron; but this series of designs has not received equal
+commendation from his greatest eulogist, who declares them to be “much
+more laboured, and more or less artificial and unequal.”  Among the
+numerous imitations directly induced by the Rogers books was the “Lyrics
+of the Heart,” by Alaric Attila Watts, a forgotten versifier and sometime
+editor of “Annuals,” but it did not meet with similar success.
+
+Many illustrated works, originating in the perfection and opportunities
+of engraving on metal, are necessarily unnoticed in this rapid summary.
+As far, however, as book-illustration is concerned, copper and steel
+plate engraving may be held to have gone out of fashion with the
+“Annuals.”  It is still, indeed, to be found lingering in that mine of
+modern art-books—the “Art Journal;” and, not so very long ago, it made a
+sumptuous and fugitive reappearance in Doré’s “Idylls of the King,”
+Birket Foster’s “Hood,” and one or two other imposing volumes.  But it
+was badly injured by modern wood-engraving; it has since been crippled
+for life by photography; and it is more than probable that the present
+rapid rise of modern etching will give it the _coup de grace_. {11}
+
+By the end of the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood had
+fallen into disuse.  Writing _circa_ 1770, Horace Walpole goes so far as
+to say that it “never was executed in any perfection in England;” and,
+speaking afterwards of Papillon’s “Traité de la Gravure,” 1766, he takes
+occasion to doubt if that author would ever “persuade the world to return
+to wooden cuts.”  Nevertheless, with Bewick, a few years later,
+wood-engraving took a fresh departure so conspicuous that it amounts to a
+revival.  In what this consisted it is clearly impossible to show here
+with any sufficiency of detail; but between the method of the old
+wood-cutters who reproduced the drawings of Dürer, and the method of the
+Newcastle artist, there are two marked and well-defined differences.  One
+of these is a difference in the preparation of the wood and the tool
+employed.  The old wood-cutters carved their designs with knives and
+chisels on strips of wood sawn lengthwise—that is to say, upon the
+_plank_; Bewick used a graver, and worked upon slices of box or pear cut
+across the grain,—that is to say upon the _end_ of the wood.  The other
+difference, of which Bewick is said to have been the inventor, is less
+easy to describe.  It consisted in the employment of what is technically
+known as “white line.”  In all antecedent wood-cutting the cutter had
+simply cleared away those portions of the block left bare by the design,
+so that the design remained in relief to be printed from like type.
+Using the smooth box block as a uniform surface from which, if covered
+with printing ink, a uniformly black impression might be obtained,
+Bewick, by cutting white lines across it at greater or lesser intervals,
+produced gradations of shade, from the absolute black of the block to the
+lightest tints.  The general result of this method was to give a greater
+depth of colouring and variety to the engraving, but its advantages may
+perhaps be best understood by a glance at the background of the
+“Woodcock” on the following page.
+
+Bewick’s first work of any importance was the Gay’s “Fables” of 1779.  In
+1784 he did another series of “Select Fables.”  Neither of these books,
+however, can be compared with the “General History of Quadrupeds,” 1790,
+and the “British Land and Water Birds,” 1797 and 1804.  The illustrations
+to the “Quadrupeds” are in many instances excellent, and large additions
+were made to them in subsequent issues.  But in this collection Bewick
+laboured to a great extent under the disadvantage of representing animals
+with which he was familiar only through the medium of stuffed specimens
+or incorrect drawings.  In the “British Birds,” on the contrary, his
+facilities for study from the life were greater, and his success was
+consequently more complete.  Indeed, it may be safely affirmed that of
+all the engravers of the present century, none have excelled Bewick for
+beauty of black and white, for skilful rendering of plumage and foliage,
+and for fidelity of detail and accessory.  The “Woodcock” (here given),
+the “Partridge,” the “Owl,” the “Yellow-Hammer,” the “Yellow-Bunting,”
+the “Willow-Wren,” are popular examples of these qualities.  But there
+are a hundred others nearly as good.
+
+      [Picture: “The Woodcock.”  From Jackson & Chatto’s “History of
+   Wood-Engraving,” 1839.  Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John Jackson]
+
+Among sundry conventional decorations after the old German fashion in the
+first edition of the “Quadrupeds,” there are a fair number of those
+famous tail-pieces which, to a good many people, constitute Bewick’s
+chief claim to immortality.  That it is not easy to imitate them is plain
+from the failure of Branston’s attempts, and from the inferior character
+of those by John Thompson in Yarrell’s “Fishes.”  The genius of Bewick
+was, in fact, entirely individual and particular.  He had the humour of a
+Hogarth in little, as well as some of his special
+characteristics,—notably his faculty of telling a story by suggestive
+detail.  An instance may be taken at random from vol. I. of the “Birds.”
+A man, whose wig and hat have fallen off, lies asleep with open mouth
+under some bushes.  He is manifestly drunk, and the date “4 June,” on a
+neighbouring stone, gives us the reason and occasion of his catastrophe.
+He has been too loyally celebrating the birthday of his majesty King
+George III.  Another of Bewick’s gifts is his wonderful skill in
+foreshadowing a tragedy.  Take as an example, this truly appalling
+incident from the “Quadrupeds.”  The tottering child, whose nurse is seen
+in the background, has strayed into the meadow, and is pulling at the
+tail of a vicious-looking colt, with back-turned eye and lifted heel.
+Down the garden-steps the mother hurries headlong; but she can hardly be
+in time.  And of all this—sufficient, one would say, for a fairly-sized
+canvas—the artist has managed to give a vivid impression in a block of
+three inches by two!  Then, again, like Hogarth once more, he rejoices in
+multiplications of dilemma.  What, for instance, can be more comically
+pathetic than the head-piece to the “Contents” in vol. I. of the “Birds”?
+The old horse has been seized with an invincible fit of stubbornness.
+The day is both windy and rainy.  The rider has broken his stick and lost
+his hat; but he is too much encumbered with his cackling and excited
+stock to dare to dismount.  Nothing can help him but a _Deus ex
+machinâ_,—of whom there is no sign.
+
+ [Picture: Tailpiece.  From the same.  Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John
+                                 Jackson]
+
+Besides his humour, Bewick has a delightfully rustic side, of which
+Hogarth gives but little indication.  From the starved ewe in the snow
+nibbling forlornly at a worn-out broom, to the cow which has broken
+through the rail to reach the running water, there are numberless designs
+which reveal that faithful lover of the field and hillside, who, as he
+said, “would rather be herding sheep on Mickle bank top” than remain in
+London to be made premier of England.  He loved the country and the
+country-life; and he drew them as one who loved them.  It is this rural
+quality which helps to give such a lasting freshness to his quaint and
+picturesque fancies; and it is this which will continue to preserve their
+popularity, even if they should cease to be valued for their wealth of
+whimsical invention.
+
+In referring to these masterpieces of Bewick’s, it must not be forgotten
+that he had the aid of some clever assistants.  His younger brother John
+was not without talent, as is clear from his work for Somervile’s
+“Chace,” 1796, and that highly edifying book, the “Blossoms of Morality.”
+Many of the tail-pieces to the “Water Birds” were designed by Robert
+Johnson, who also did most of the illustrations to Bewick’s “Fables” of
+1818, which were engraved by Temple and Harvey, two other pupils.
+Another pupil was Charlton Nesbit, an excellent engraver, who was
+employed upon the “Birds,” and did good work in Ackermann’s “Religious
+Emblems” of 1808, and the second series of Northcote’s “Fables.”  But by
+far the largest portion of the tail-pieces in the second volume of the
+“Birds” was engraved by Luke Clennell, a very skilful but unfortunate
+artist, who ultimately became insane.  To him we owe the woodcuts, after
+Stothard’s charming sketches, to the Rogers volume of 1810, an edition
+preceding those already mentioned as illustrated with steel-plates, and
+containing some of the artist’s happiest pictures of children and
+_amorini_.  Many of these little groups would make admirable designs for
+gems, if indeed they are not already derived from them, since one at
+least is an obvious copy of a well-known sardonyx—(“The Marriage of Cupid
+and Psyche.”)  This volume, generally known by the name of the
+“Firebrand” edition, is highly prized by collectors; and, as intelligent
+renderings of pen and ink, there is little better than these engravings
+of Clennell’s. {12}  Finally, among others of Bewick’s pupils, must be
+mentioned William Harvey, who survived to 1866.  It has been already
+stated that he engraved part of the illustrations to Bewick’s “Fables,”
+but his best known block is the large one of Haydon’s “Death of
+Dentatus.”  Soon after this he relinquished wood-engraving in favour of
+design, and for a long period was one of the most fertile and popular of
+book-illustrators.  His style, however, is unpleasantly mannered; and it
+is sufficient to make mention of his masterpiece, the “Arabian Nights” of
+Lane, the illustrations to which, produced under the supervision of the
+translator, are said to be so accurate as to give the appropriate turbans
+for every hour of the day.  They show considerable freedom of invention
+and a large fund of Orientalism.
+
+   [Picture: Headpiece.  From Rogers’s “Pleasures of Memory, with other
+Poems,” 1810.  Drawn by T. Stothard; engraved, after Luke Clennell, by O.
+                                 Lacour]
+
+Harvey came to London in 1817; Clennell had preceded him by some years;
+and Nesbit lived there for a considerable time.  What distinguishes these
+pupils of Bewick especially is, that they were artists as well as
+engravers, capable of producing the designs they engraved.  The “London
+School” of engravers, on the contrary, were mostly engravers, who
+depended upon others for their designs.  The foremost of these was Robert
+Branston, a skilful renderer of human figures and indoor scenes.  He
+worked in rivalry with Bewick and Nesbit; but he excelled neither, while
+he fell far behind the former.  John Thompson, one of the very best of
+modern English engravers on wood, was Branston’s pupil.  His range was of
+the widest, and he succeeded as well in engraving fishes and birds for
+Yarrell and Walton’s “Angler,” as in illustrations to Molière and
+“Hudibras.”  He was, besides, a clever draughtsman, though he worked
+chiefly from the designs of Thurston and others.  One of the most
+successful of his illustrated books is the “Vicar of Wakefield,” after
+Mulready, whose simplicity and homely feeling were well suited to
+Goldsmith’s style.  Another excellent engraver of this date is Samuel
+Williams.  There is an edition of Thomson’s “Seasons,” with cuts both
+drawn and engraved by him, which is well worthy of attention, and (like
+Thompson and Branston) he was very skilful in reproducing the designs of
+Cruikshank.  Some of his best work in this way is to be found in Clarke’s
+“Three Courses and a Dessert,” published by Vizetelly in 1830.
+
+From this time forth, however, one hears less of the engraver and more of
+the artist.  The establishment of the “Penny Magazine” in 1832, and the
+multifarious publications of Charles Knight, gave an extraordinary
+impetus to wood-engraving.  Ten years later came “Punch,” and the
+“Illustrated London News,” which further increased its popularity.
+Artists of eminence began to draw on or for the block, as they had drawn,
+and were still drawing, for the “Annuals.”  In 1842–6 was issued the
+great “Abbotsford” edition of the “Waverley Novels,” which, besides 120
+plates, contained nearly 2000 wood-engravings; and with the “Book of
+British Ballads,” 1843, edited by Mr. S. C. Hall, arose that long series
+of illustrated Christmas books, which gradually supplanted the “Annuals,”
+and made familiar the names of Gilbert, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir,
+John Absolon, and a crowd of others.  The poems of Longfellow,
+Montgomery, Burns, “Barry Cornwall,” Poe, Miss Ingelow, were all
+successively “illustrated.”  Besides these, there were numerous
+selections, such as Willmott’s “Poets of the Nineteenth Century,” Wills’s
+“Poets’ Wit and Humour,” and so forth.  But the field here grows too wide
+to be dealt with in detail, and it is impossible to do more than mention
+a few of the books most prominent for merit or originality.  Amongst
+these there is the “Shakespeare” of Sir John Gilbert.  Regarded as an
+interpretative edition of the great dramatist, this is little more than a
+brilliant _tour de force_; but it is nevertheless infinitely superior to
+the earlier efforts of Kenny Meadows in 1843, and also to the fancy
+designs of Harvey in Knight’s “Pictorial Shakespeare.”  The “Illustrated
+Tennyson” of 1858 is also a remarkable production.  The Laureate, almost
+more than any other, requires a variety of illustrators; and here, for
+his idylls, he had Mulready and Millais, and for his romances Rossetti
+and Holman Hunt.  His “Princess” was afterwards illustrated by Maclise,
+and his “Enoch Arden” by Arthur Hughes; but neither of these can be said
+to be wholly adequate.  The “Lalla Rookh” of John Tenniel, 1860, albeit
+somewhat stiff and cold, after this artist’s fashion, is a superb
+collection of carefully studied oriental designs.  With these may be
+classed the illustrations to Aytoun’s “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,”
+by Sir Noel Paton, which have the same finished qualities of composition
+and the same academic hardness.  Several good editions of the “Pilgrim’s
+Progress” have appeared,—notably those of C. H. Bennett, J. D. Watson,
+and G. H. Thomas.  Other books are Millais’s “Parables of our Lord,”
+Leighton’s “Romola,” Walker’s “Philip” and “Denis Duval,” the “Don
+Quixote,” “Dante,” “La Fontaine” and other works of Doré, Dalziel’s
+“Arabian Nights,” Leighton’s “Lyra Germanica” and “Moral Emblems,” and
+the “Spiritual Conceits” of W. Harry Rogers.  These are some only of the
+number, which does not include books like Mrs. Hugh Blackburn’s “British
+Birds,” Wolf’s “Wild Animals,” Wise’s “New Forest,” Linton’s “Lake
+Country,” Wood’s “Natural History,” and many more.  Nor does it take in
+the various illustrated periodicals which have multiplied so freely
+since, in 1859, “Once a Week” first began to attract and train such
+younger draughtsmen as Sandys, Lawless, Pinwell, Houghton, Morten, and
+Paul Grey, some of whose best work in this way has been revived in the
+edition of Thornbury’s “Ballads and Songs,” recently published by Chatto
+and Windus.  Ten years later came the “Graphic,” offering still wider
+opportunities to wood-cut art, and bringing with it a fresh school of
+artists.  Herkomer, Fildes, Small, Green, Barnard, Barnes, Crane,
+Caldecott, Hopkins, and others,—_quos nunc perscribere longum est_—have
+contributed good work to this popular rival of the older, but still
+vigorous, “Illustrated.”  And now again, another promising serial, the
+“Magazine of Art,” affords a supplementary field to modern refinements
+and younger energies.
+
+    [Picture: “Golden head by golden head.”  From Christina Rossetti’s
+“Goblin Market and other Poems,” 1862.  Drawn by D. G. Rossetti; engraved
+                             by W. J. Linton]
+
+Not a few of the artists named in the preceding paragraph have also
+earned distinction in separate branches of the pictorial art, and
+specially in that of humorous design,—a department which has always been
+so richly recruited in this country that it deserves more than a passing
+mention.  From the days of Hogarth onwards there has been an almost
+unbroken series of humorous draughtsmen, who, both on wood and metal,
+play a distinguished part in our illustrated literature.  Rowlandson, one
+of the earliest, was a caricaturist of inexhaustible facility, and an
+artist who scarcely did justice to his own powers.  He illustrated
+several books, but he is chiefly remembered in this way by his plates to
+Combe’s “Three Tours of Dr. Syntax.”  Gillray, his contemporary, whose
+bias was political rather than social, is said to have illustrated “The
+Deserted Village” in his youth; but he is not famous as a
+book-illustrator.  Another of the early men was Bunbury, whom
+“quality”-loving Mr. Walpole calls “the second Hogarth, and first
+imitator who ever fully equalled his original (!);” but whose prints to
+“Tristram Shandy,” are nevertheless completely forgotten, while, if he be
+remembered at all, it is by the plate of “The Long Minuet,” and the
+vulgar “Directions to Bad Horsemen.”  With the first years of the
+century, however, appears the great master of modern humorists, whose
+long life ended only a few years since, “the veteran George
+Cruikshank”—as his admirers were wont to style him.  He indeed may justly
+be compared to Hogarth, since, in tragic power and intensity he
+occasionally comes nearer to him than any artist of our time.  It is
+manifestly impossible to mention here all the more important efforts of
+this indefatigable worker, from those far-away days when he caricatured
+“Boney” and championed Queen Caroline, to that final frontispiece for
+“The Rose and the Lily”—“designed and etched (according to the
+inscription) by George Cruikshank, age 83;” but the plates to the “Points
+of Humour,” to Grimm’s “Goblins,” to “Oliver Twist,” “Jack Sheppard,”
+Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion,” and the “Table Book,” are sufficiently
+favourable and varied specimens of his skill with the needle, while the
+woodcuts to “Three Courses and a Dessert,” one of which is here given,
+are equally good examples of his work on the block.  The “Triumph of
+Cupid,” which begins the “Table Book,” is an excellent instance of his
+lavish wealth of fancy, and it contains beside, one—nay more than one—of
+the many portraits of the artist.  He is shown _en robe de chambre_,
+smoking (this was before his regenerate days!) in front of a blazing
+fire, with a pet spaniel on his knee.  In the cloud which curls from his
+lips is a motley procession of sailors, sweeps, jockeys, Greenwich
+pensioners, Jew clothesmen, flunkies, and others more illustrious,
+chained to the chariot wheels of Cupid, who, preceded by cherubic
+acolytes and banner-bearers, winds round the top of the picture towards
+an altar of Hymen on the table.  When, by the aid of a pocket-glass, one
+has mastered these swarming figures, as well as those in the foreground,
+it gradually dawns upon one that all the furniture is strangely
+vitalised.  Masks laugh round the border of the tablecloth, the markings
+of the mantelpiece resolve themselves into rows of madly-racing figures,
+the tongs leers in a _degagé_ and cavalier way at the artist, the shovel
+and poker grin in sympathy; there are faces in the smoke, in the fire, in
+the fireplace,—the very fender itself is a ring of fantastic creatures
+who jubilantly hem in the ashes.  And it is not only in the grotesque and
+fanciful that Cruikshank excels; he is master of the strange, the
+supernatural, and the terrible.  In range of character (the comparison is
+probably a hackneyed one), both by his gifts and his limitations, he
+resembles Dickens; and had he illustrated more of that writer’s works the
+resemblance would probably have been more evident.  In “Oliver Twist,”
+for example, where Dickens is strong, Cruikshank is strong; where Dickens
+is weak, he is weak too.  His Fagin, his Bill Sikes, his Bumble, and
+their following, are on a level with Dickens’s conceptions; his Monk and
+Rose Maylie are as poor as the originals.  But as the defects of Dickens
+are overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank’s strength is far in excess
+of his weakness.  It is not to his melodramatic heroes or wasp-waisted
+heroines that we must look for his triumphs; it is to his delineations,
+from the moralist’s point of view, of vulgarity and vice,—of the “rank
+life of towns,” with all its squalid tragedy and comedy.  Here he finds
+his strongest ground, and possibly, notwithstanding his powers as a comic
+artist and caricaturist, his loftiest claim to recollection.
+
+    [Picture: “The Deaf Post-Boy.”  From Clarke’s “Three Courses and a
+  Dessert,” 1830.  Drawn by G. Cruikshank; engraved by S. Williams [?]]
+
+Cruikshank was employed on two only of Dickens’s books—“Oliver Twist” and
+the “Sketches by Boz.” {13}  The great majority of them were illustrated
+by Hablot K. Browne, an artist who followed the ill-fated Seymour on the
+“Pickwick Papers.”  To “Phiz,” as he is popularly called, we are indebted
+for our pictorial ideas of Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle, and
+most of the author’s characters, down to the “Tale of Two Cities.”
+“Phiz” also illustrated a great many of Lever’s novels, for which his
+skill in hunting and other Lever-like scenes especially qualified him.
+
+With the name of Richard Doyle we come to the first of a group of artists
+whose main work was, or is still, done for the time-honoured miscellany
+of Mr. Punch.  So familiar an object is “Punch” upon our tables, that one
+is sometimes apt to forget how unfailing, and how good on the whole, is
+the work we take so complacently as a matter of course.  And of this good
+work, in the earlier days, a large proportion was done by Mr. Doyle.  He
+is still living, although he has long ceased to gladden those sprightly
+pages.  But it was to “Punch” that he contributed his masterpiece, the
+“Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe,” a series of outlines illustrating
+social life in 1849, and cleverly commented by a shadowy “Mr. Pips,” a
+sort of fetch or double of the bustling and garrulous old Caroline
+diarist.  In these captivating pictures the life of thirty years ago is
+indeed, as the title-page has it, “drawn from ye quick.”  We see the
+Molesworths and Cantilupes of the day parading the Park; we watch
+Brougham fretting at a hearing in the Lords, or Peel holding forth to the
+Commons (where the Irish members are already obstructive); we squeeze in
+at the Haymarket to listen to Jenny Lind, or we run down the river to
+Greenwich Fair, and visit “Mr. Richardson, his show.”  Many years after,
+in the “Bird’s Eye Views of Society,” which appeared in the early numbers
+of the “Cornhill Magazine,” Mr. Doyle returned to this attractive theme.
+But the later designs were more elaborate, and not equally fortunate.
+They bear the same relationship to Mr. Pips’s pictorial chronicle, as the
+laboured “Temperance Fairy Tales” of Cruikshank’s old age bear to the
+little-worked Grimm’s “Goblins” of his youth.  So hazardous is the
+attempt to repeat an old success!  Nevertheless, many of the initial
+letters to the “Bird’s Eye Views” are in the artist’s best and most
+frolicsome manner.  “The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones, and Robinson” is
+another of his happy thoughts for “Punch;” and some of his most popular
+designs are to be found in Thackeray’s “Newcomes,” where his satire and
+fancy seem thoroughly suited to his text.  He has also illustrated
+Locker’s well-known “London Lyrics,” Ruskin’s “King of the Golden River,”
+and Hughes’s “Scouring of the White Horse,” from which last the initial
+at the beginning of this chapter has been borrowed.  His latest important
+effort was the series of drawings called “In Fairy Land,” to which Mr.
+William Allingham contributed the verses.
+
+In speaking of the “Newcomes,” one is reminded that its illustrious
+author was himself a “Punch” artist, and would probably have been a
+designer alone, had it not been decreed “that he should paint in colours
+which will never crack and never need restoration.”  Everyone knows the
+story of the rejected illustrator of “Pickwick,” whom that and other
+rebuffs drove permanently to letters.  To his death, however, he clung
+fondly to his pencil.  In _technique_ he never attained to certainty or
+strength, and his genius was too quick and creative—perhaps also too
+desultory—for finished work, while he was always indifferent to costume
+and accessory.  But many of his sketches for “Vanity Fair,” for
+“Pendennis,” for “The Virginians,” for “The Rose and the Ring,” the
+Christmas books, and the posthumously published “Orphan of Pimlico,” have
+a vigour of impromptu, and a happy suggestiveness which is better than
+correct drawing.  Often the realisation is almost photographic.  Look,
+for example, at the portrait in “Pendennis” of the dilapidated Major as
+he crawls downstairs in the dawn after the ball at Gaunt House, and then
+listen to the inimitable context: “That admirable and devoted Major above
+all,—who had been for hours by Lady Clavering’s side ministering to her
+and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and her ear with
+everything that was sweet and flattering—oh! what an object he was!  The
+rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs themselves
+were like the plovers’ eggs whereof Lady Clavering and Blanche had each
+tasted; the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a
+silver stubble, _like an elderly morning dew_, was glittering on his
+chin, and alongside the dyed whiskers, now limp and out of curl.”  A good
+deal of this—that fine touch in italics especially—could not possibly be
+rendered in black and white, and yet how much is indicated, and how
+thoroughly the whole is felt!  One turns to the woodcut from the words,
+and back again to the words from the woodcut with ever-increasing
+gratification.  Then again, Thackeray’s little initial letters are
+charmingly arch and playful.  They seem to throw a shy side-light upon
+the text, giving, as it were, an additional and confidential hint of the
+working of the author’s mind.  To those who, with the present writer,
+love every tiny scratch and quirk and flourish of the Master’s hand,
+these small but priceless memorials are far beyond the frigid appraising
+of academics and schools of art.
+
+After Doyle and Thackeray come a couple of well-known artists—John Leech
+and John Tenniel.  The latter still lives (may he long live!) to delight
+and instruct us.  Of the former, whose genial and manly “Pictures of Life
+and Character” are in every home where good-humoured raillery is prized
+and appreciated, it is scarcely necessary to speak.  Who does not
+remember the splendid languid swells, the bright-eyed rosy girls (“with
+no nonsense about them!”) in pork pie hats and crinolines, the
+superlative “Jeames’s,” the hairy “Mossoos,” the music-grinding Italian
+desperadoes whom their kind creator hated so?  And then the intrepidity
+of “Mr. Briggs,” the Roman rule of “Paterfamilias,” the vagaries of the
+“Rising Generation!”  There are things in this gallery over which the
+severest misanthrope must chuckle—they are simply irresistible.  Let any
+one take, say that smallest sketch of the hapless mortal who has turned
+on the hot water in the bath and cannot turn it off again, and see if he
+is able to restrain his laughter.  In this one gift of producing instant
+mirth Leech is almost alone.  It would be easy to assail his manner and
+his skill, but for sheer fun, for the invention of downright humorous
+situation, he is unapproached, except by Cruikshank.  He did a few
+illustrations to Dickens’s Christmas books; but his best-known
+book-illustrations properly so called are to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the
+“Comic Histories” of A’Beckett, the “Little Tour in Ireland,” and certain
+sporting novels by the late Mr. Surtees.  Tenniel now confines himself
+almost exclusively to the weekly cartoons with which his name is
+popularly associated.  But years ago he used to invent the most daintily
+fanciful initial letters; and many of his admirers prefer the
+serio-grotesque designs of “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” “Alice in Wonderland,”
+and “Through the Looking-Glass,” to the always correctly-drawn but
+sometimes stiffly-conceived cartoons.  What, for example, could be more
+delightful than the picture, in “Alice in Wonderland,” of the “Mad Tea
+Party?”  Observe the hopelessly distraught expression of the March hare,
+and the eager incoherence of the hatter!  A little further on the pair
+are trying to squeeze the dormouse into the teapot; and a few pages back
+the blue caterpillar is discovered smoking his hookah on the top of a
+mushroom.  He was exactly three inches long, says the veracious
+chronicle, but what a dignity!—what an oriental flexibility of gesture!
+Speaking of animals, it must not be forgotten that Tenniel is a master in
+this line.  His “British Lion,” in particular, is a most imposing
+quadruped, and so often in request that it is not necessary to go back to
+the famous cartoons on the Indian mutiny to seek for examples of that
+magnificent presence.  As a specimen of the artist’s treatment of the
+lesser _felidæ_, the reader’s attention is invited to this charming
+little kitten from “Through the Looking-Glass.”
+
+ [Picture: “The Mad Tea-Party.”  From “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,”
+       1865.  Drawn by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers]
+
+[Picture: Black Kitten.  From “Through the Looking-Glass,” 1871.  Drawn
+by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers] Mr. Tenniel is a link
+between Leech and the younger school of “Punch” artists, of whom Mr.
+George du Maurier, Mr. Linley Sambourne, and Mr. Charles Keene are the
+most illustrious.  The first is nearly as popular as Leech, and is
+certainly a greater favourite with cultivated audiences.  He is not so
+much a humorist as a satirist of the Thackeray type,—unsparing in his
+denunciation of shams, affectations, and flimsy pretences of all kinds.
+A master of composition and accomplished draughtsman, he excels in the
+delineation of “society”—its bishops, its “professional beauties” and
+“æsthetes,” its _nouveaux riches_, its distinguished foreigners,—while
+now and then (but not too often) he lets us know that if he chose he
+could be equally happy in depicting the lowest classes.  There was a
+bar-room scene not long ago in “Punch” which gave the clearest evidence
+of this.  Some of those for whom no good thing is good enough complain,
+it is said, that he lacks variety—that he is too constant to one type of
+feminine beauty.  But any one who will be at the pains to study a group
+of conventional “society” faces from any of his “At Homes” or “Musical
+Parties” will speedily discover that they are really very subtly
+diversified and contrasted.  For a case in point, take the decorously
+sympathetic group round the sensitive German musician, who is “veeping”
+over one of his own compositions.  Or follow the titter running round
+that amused assembly to whom the tenor warbler is singing “Me-e-e-et me
+once again,” with such passionate emphasis that the domestic cat mistakes
+it for a well-known area cry.  As for his ladies, it may perhaps be
+conceded that his type is a little persistent.  Still it is a type so
+refined, so graceful, so attractive altogether, that in the jarring of
+less well-favoured realities it is an advantage to have it always before
+our eyes as a standard to which we can appeal.  Mr. du Maurier is a
+fertile book-illustrator, whose hand is frequently seen in the
+“Cornhill,” and elsewhere.  Some of his best work of this kind is in
+Douglas Jerrold’s “Story of a Feather,” in Thackeray’s “Ballads,” and the
+large edition of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” to which Leech, Tenniel, and
+Cruikshank also contributed.  One of his prettiest compositions is the
+group here reproduced from “Punch’s Almanack” for 1877.  The talent of
+his colleague, Mr. Linley Sambourne, may fairly be styled unique.  It is
+difficult to compare it with anything in its way, except some of the
+happier efforts of the late Mr. Charles Bennett, to which, nevertheless,
+it is greatly superior in execution.  To this clever artist’s invention
+everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic accessory so
+whimsically inexhaustible that it almost overpowers one with its
+prodigality.  Each fresh examination of his designs discloses something
+overlooked or unexpected.  Let the reader study for a moment the famous
+“Birds of a Feather” of 1875, or that ingenious skit of 1877 upon the
+rival Grosvenor Gallery and Academy, in which the late President of the
+latter is shown as the proudest of peacocks, the eyes of whose tail are
+portraits of Royal Academicians, and whose body-feathers are paint
+brushes and shillings of admission.  Mr. Sambourne is excellent, too, at
+adaptations of popular pictures,—witness the more than happy parodies of
+Herrman’s “À Bout d’Arguments,” and “Une Bonne Histoire.”  His
+book-illustrations have been comparatively few, those to Burnand’s
+laughable burlesque of “Sandford and Merton” being among the best.
+Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged upon Kingsley’s “Water
+Babies,” a subject which might almost be supposed to have been created
+for his pencil.  There are indications, it may be added, that Mr.
+Sambourne’s talents are by no means limited to the domain in which for
+the present he chooses to exercise them, and it is not impossible that he
+may hereafter take high rank as a cartoonist.  Mr. Charles Keene, a
+selection from whose sketches has recently been issued under the title of
+“Our People,” is unrivalled in certain _bourgeois_, military, and
+provincial types.  No one can draw a volunteer, a monthly nurse, a
+Scotchman, an “ancient mariner” of the watering-place species, with such
+absolutely humorous verisimilitude.  Personages, too, in whose eyes—to
+use Mr. Swiveller’s euphemism—“the sun has shone too strongly,” find in
+Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of their “pleasant vices.”  Like Leech, he
+has also a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the
+fewest possible touches.  His book-illustrations have been mainly
+confined to magazines and novels.  Those in “Once a Week” to a “Good
+Fight,” the tale subsequently elaborated by Charles Reade into the
+“Cloister and the Hearth,” present some good specimens of his earlier
+work.  One of these, in which the dwarf of the story is seen climbing up
+a wall with a lantern at his back, will probably be remembered by many.
+
+[Picture: “The Music of the Past.”  From “Punch’s Almanack,” 1877.  Drawn
+                 by George du Maurier; engraved by Swain]
+
+   [Picture: Lion and Tub.  From “Punch’s Pocket-Book,” 1879.  Drawn by
+                   Linley Sambourne; engraved by Swain]
+
+After the “Punch” school there are other lesser luminaries.  Mr. W. S.
+Gilbert’s drawings to his own inimitable “Bab Ballads” have a perverse
+drollery which is quite in keeping with that erratic text.  Mr. F.
+Barnard, whose exceptional talents have not been sufficiently recognised,
+is a master of certain phases of strongly marked character, and, like Mr.
+Charles Green, has contributed some excellent sketches to the “Household
+Edition” of Dickens.  Mr. Sullivan of “Fun,” whose grotesque studies of
+the “British Tradesman” and “Workman” have recently been republished, has
+abounding _vis comica_, but he has hitherto done little in the way of
+illustrating books.  For minute pictorial stocktaking and photographic
+retention of detail, Mr. Sullivan’s artistic memory may almost be
+compared to the wonderful literary memory of Mr. Sala.  Mr. John Proctor,
+who some years ago (in “Will o’ the Wisp”) seemed likely to rival Tenniel
+as a cartoonist, has not been very active in this way; while Mr. Matthew
+Morgan, the clever artist of the “Tomahawk,” has transferred his services
+to the United States.  Of Mr. Bowcher of “Judy,” and various other
+professedly humorous designers, space permits no further mention.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+There remains, however, one popular branch of book-illustration, which
+has attracted the talents of some of the most skilful and original of
+modern draughtsmen, i.e. the embellishment of children’s books.  From the
+days when Mulready drew the old “Butterfly’s Ball” and “Peacock at Home”
+of our youth, to those of the delightfully Blake-like fancies of E. V.
+B., whose “Child’s Play” has recently been re-published for the
+delectation of a new generation of admirers, this has always been a
+popular and profitable employment; but of late years it has been raised
+to the level of a fine art.  Mr. H. S. Marks, Mr. J. D. Watson, Mr.
+Walter Crane, have produced specimens of nursery literature which, for
+refinement of colouring and beauty of ornament, cannot easily be
+surpassed.  The equipments of the last named, especially, are of a very
+high order.  He began as a landscapist on wood; he now chiefly devotes
+himself to the figure; and he seems to have the decorative art at his
+fingers’ ends as a natural gift.  Such work as “King Luckieboy’s Party”
+was a revelation in the way of toy books, while the “Baby’s Opera” and
+“Baby’s Bouquet” are _petits chefs d’oeuvre_, of which the sagacious
+collector will do well to secure copies, not for his nursery, but his
+library.  Nor can his “Mrs. Mundi at Home” be neglected by the curious in
+quaint and graceful invention. {14}  Another book—the “Under the Window”
+of Miss Kate Greenaway—comes within the same category.  Since Stothard,
+no one has given us such a clear-eyed, soft-faced, happy-hearted
+childhood; or so poetically “apprehended” the coy reticences, the
+simplicities, and the small solemnities of little people.  Added to this,
+the old-world costume in which she usually elects to clothe her
+characters, lends an arch piquancy of contrast to their innocent rites
+and ceremonies.  Her taste in tinting, too, is very sweet and
+spring-like; and there is a fresh, pure fragrance about all her pictures
+as of new-gathered nosegays; or, perhaps, looking to the fashions that
+she favours, it would be better to say “bow-pots.”  But the latest “good
+genius” of this branch of book-illustrating is Mr. Randolph Caldecott, a
+designer assuredly of the very first order.  There is a spontaneity of
+fun, an unforced invention about everything he does, that is infinitely
+entertaining.  Other artists draw to amuse us; Mr. Caldecott seems to
+draw to amuse himself,—and this is his charm.  One feels that he must
+have chuckled inwardly as he puffed the cheeks of his “Jovial Huntsmen;”
+or sketched that inimitably complacent dog in the “House that Jack
+Built;” or exhibited the exploits of the immortal “train-band captain” of
+“famous London town.”  This last is his masterpiece.  Cowper himself must
+have rejoiced at it,—and Lady Austen.  There are two sketches in this
+book—they occupy the concluding pages—which are especially fascinating.
+On one, John Gilpin, in a forlorn and flaccid condition, is helped into
+the house by the sympathising (and very attractive) Betty; on the other
+he has donned his slippers, refreshed his inner man with a cordial, and
+over the heaving shoulder of his “spouse,” who lies dissolved upon his
+martial bosom, he is taking the spectators into his confidence with a
+wink worthy of the late Mr. Buckstone.  Nothing more genuine, more
+heartily laughable, than this set of designs has appeared in our day.
+And Mr. Caldecott has few limitations.  Not only does he draw human
+nature admirably, but he draws animals and landscapes equally well, so
+one may praise him without reserve.  Though not children’s books, mention
+should here be made of his “Bracebridge Hall,” and “Old Christmas,” the
+illustrations to which are the nearest approach to that _beau-ideal_,
+perfect sympathy between the artist and the author, with which the writer
+is acquainted.  The cut on page 173 is from the former of these works.
+
+   [Picture: Boy and Hippocampus.  From Miss E. Keary’s “Magic Valley,”
+  1877.  Drawn by “E. V. B.” (Hon. Mrs. Boyle); engraved by T. Quartley]
+
+ [Picture: “Love Charms.”  From Irving’s “Bracebridge Hall,” 1876.  Drawn
+             by Randolph Caldecott; engraved by J. D. Cooper]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Many of the books above mentioned are printed in colours by various
+processes, and they are not always engraved on wood.  But—to close the
+account of modern wood-engraving—some brief reference must be made to
+what is styled the “new American School,” as exhibited for the most part
+in “Scribner’s” and other Transatlantic magazines.  Authorities, it is
+reported, shake their heads over these performances. “_C’est magnifique_,
+_mais ce nest pas la gravure_,” they whisper.  Into the matter in
+dispute, it is perhaps presumptuous for an “atechnic” to adventure
+himself.  But to the outsider it would certainly seem as if the chief
+ground of complaint is that the new comers do not play the game according
+to the old rules, and that this (alleged) irregular mode of procedure
+tends to lessen the status of the engraver as an artist.  False or true,
+this, it may fairly be advanced, has nothing whatever to do with the
+matter, as far, at least, as the public are concerned.  For them the
+question is, simply and solely—What is the result obtained?  The new
+school, availing themselves largely of the assistance of photography, are
+able to dispense, in a great measure, with the old tedious method of
+drawing on the block, and to leave the artist to choose what medium he
+prefers for his design—be it oil, water-colour, or black and
+white—concerning themselves only to reproduce its characteristics on the
+wood.  This is, of course, a deviation from the method of Bewick.  But
+would Bewick have adhered to his method in these days?  Even in his last
+hours he was seeking for new processes.  What we want is to get nearest
+to the artist himself with the least amount of interpretation or
+intermediation on the part of the engraver.  Is engraving on copper to be
+reproduced, we want a facsimile if possible, and not a rendering into
+something which is supposed to be the orthodox utterance of
+wood-engraving.  Take, for example, the copy of Schiavonetti’s engraving
+of Blake’s _Death’s Door_ in “Scribner’s Magazine” for June 1880, or the
+cut from the same source at page 131 of this book.  These are faithful
+line for line transcriptions, as far as wood can give them, of the
+original copper-plates; and, this being the case, it is not to be
+wondered at that the public, who, for a few pence can have practical
+facsimiles of Blake, of Cruikshank, or of Whistler, are loud in their
+appreciation of the “new American School.”  Nor are its successes
+confined to reproduction in facsimile.  Those who look at the exquisite
+illustrations, in the same periodical, to the “Tile Club at Play,” to
+Roe’s “Success with Small Fruits,” and Harris’s “Insects Injurious to
+Vegetation,”—to say nothing of the selected specimens in the recently
+issued “Portfolios”—will see that the latest comers can hold their own on
+all fields with any school that has gone before. {15}
+
+Besides copperplate and wood, there are many processes which have been
+and are still employed for book-illustrations, although the brief limits
+of this chapter make any account of them impossible.  Lithography was at
+one time very popular, and, in books like Roberts’s “Holy Land,”
+exceedingly effective.  The “Etching Club” issued a number of books
+_circa_ 1841–52; and most of the work of “Phiz” and Cruikshank was done
+with the needle.  It is probable that, as we have already seen, the
+impetus given to modern etching by Messrs. Hamerton, Seymour Haden, and
+Whistler, will lead to a specific revival of etching as a means of
+book-illustration.  Already beautiful etchings have for some time
+appeared in “L’Art,” the “Portfolio,” and the “Etcher;” and at least one
+book of poems has been entirely illustrated in this way,—the poems of Mr.
+W. Bell Scott.  For reproducing old engravings, maps, drawings, and the
+like, it is not too much to say that we shall never get anything much
+closer than the facsimiles of M. Amand-Durand and the Typographic Etching
+and Autotype Companies.  But further improvements will probably have to
+be made before these can compete commercially with wood-engraving as
+practised by the “new American School.”
+
+    “Of making many books,” ’twais said,
+    “There is no end;” and who thereon
+    The ever-running ink doth shed
+    But probes the words of Solomon:
+    Wherefore we now, for colophon,
+    From London’s city drear and dark,
+    In the year Eighteen Eight-One,
+    Reprint them at the press of Clark.
+
+                                                                     A. D.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{1}  This is the technical name for people who “illustrate” books with
+engravings from other works.  The practice became popular when Granger
+published his “Biographical History of England.”
+
+{2}  Mr. William Blades, in his “Enemies of Books” (Trübner, 1880),
+decries glass-doors,—“the absence of ventilation will assist the
+formation of mould.”  But M. Rouveyre bids us open the doors on sunny
+days, that the air may be renewed, and, close them in the evening hours,
+lest moths should enter and lay their eggs among the treasures.  And,
+with all deference to Mr. Blades, glass-doors do seem to be useful in
+excluding dust.
+
+{3}  “Send him back carefully, for you can if you like, that all unharmed
+he may return to his own place.”
+
+{4}  No wonder the books are scarce, if they are being hacked to pieces
+by Grangerites.
+
+{5}  These lines appeared in “Notes and Queries,” Jan. 8, 1881.
+
+{6}  In the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which Polia should not have read.
+
+{7}  M. Arsène Houssaye seems to think he has found them; marked on the
+fly-leaves with an impression, in wax, of a seal engraved with the head
+of Epicurus.
+
+{123}  This chapter was written by Austin Dobson.—DP
+
+{9}  The recent Winter Exhibition of the Old Masters (1881) contained a
+fine display of Flaxman’s drawings, a large number of which belonged to
+Mr. F. T. Palgrave.
+
+{10}  By Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse.
+
+{11}  These words were written before the “Art Journal” had published its
+programme for 1881.  From this it appears that the present editor fully
+recognises the necessity for calling in the assistance of the needle.
+
+{12}  The example, here copied on the wood by M. Lacour, is a very
+successful reproduction of Clennell’s style.
+
+{13}  He also illustrated the “Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.”  But this was
+simply “edited” by “Boz.”
+
+{14}  The reader will observe that this volume is indebted to Mr. Crane
+for its beautiful frontispiece.
+
+{15}  Since this paragraph was first written an interesting paper on the
+illustrations in “Scribner,” from the pen of Mr. J. Comyns Carr, has
+appeared in “L’Art.”
+
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>The Library, by Andrew Lang</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Library, by Andrew Lang, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Library
+
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2014  [eBook #2018]
+[This file was first posted on April 4, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1881 Macmillan and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pgflaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+ src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Frontispiece"
+title=
+"Frontispiece"
+ src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>THE LIBRARY</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+ANDREW LANG</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WITH A
+CHAPTER ON</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
+BY</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AUSTIN DOBSON</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic, &lsquo;Art at Home&rsquo;"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic, &lsquo;Art at Home&rsquo;"
+ src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">London<br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO.<br />
+1881</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>The right
+of reproduction is reserved</i></span><span
+class="GutSmall">.</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagevi"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. vi</span><i>Printed by</i> R. &amp; R. <span
+class="smcap">Clarke</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagevii"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. vii</span><span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br
+/>
+DR. JOHN BROWN<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR OF</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall"><i>RAB AND HIS FRIENDS</i></span><span
+class="GutSmall">.</span></p>
+<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+ix</span>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> pages in this volume on
+illuminated and other MSS. (with the exception of some anecdotes
+about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet) have been
+contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also written on
+early printed books (pp. 94&ndash;95).&nbsp; The pages on the
+Biblioklept (pp. 46&ndash;56) are reprinted, with the
+Editor&rsquo;s kind permission, from the <i>Saturday Review</i>;
+and a few remarks on the moral lessons of bookstalls are taken
+from an essay in the same journal.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately
+sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the
+proofs of chapters I., II., and III., and suggested some
+alterations.</p>
+<p>Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls
+College, for two plates from his &ldquo;Book-bindings in All
+Souls Library&rdquo; (printed for private circulation), which he
+has been good <a name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+x</span>enough to lend me.&nbsp; The plates are beautifully drawn
+and coloured by Dr. J. J. Wild.&nbsp; Messrs. George Bell &amp;
+Sons, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, &amp; Co., and Messrs. Chatto
+&amp; Windus, must be thanked for the use of some of the woodcuts
+which illustrate the concluding chapter.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. L.</p>
+<h2><a name="pagexi"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xi</span>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">CHAPTER I.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">An Apology for the
+Book-hunter</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>&ldquo;Every man his own
+Librarian&rdquo;&mdash;Bibliography and Literature&mdash;Services
+of the French to Bibliography&mdash;A defence of the taste of the
+Book-collector&mdash;Should Collectors buy for the purpose of
+selling again?&mdash;The sport of Book-hunting&mdash;M. de
+Resbecq&rsquo;s anecdotes&mdash;Stories of success of
+Book-hunters&mdash;The lessons of old
+Bookstalls&mdash;Booksellers&rsquo; catalogues&mdash;Auctions of
+Books&mdash;Different forms of the taste for collecting&mdash;The
+taste serviceable to critical Science&mdash;Books considered as
+literary relics&mdash;Examples&mdash;The &ldquo;Imitatio
+Christi&rdquo; of J. J. Rousseau&mdash;A brief vision of mighty
+Book-hunters.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">CHAPTER II.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Library</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page31">31</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>The size of modern collections&mdash;The
+Library in English houses&mdash;Bookcases&mdash;Enemies of
+Books&mdash;Damp, dust, dirt&mdash;The bookworm&mdash;Careless
+readers&mdash;Book plates&mdash;Borrowers&mdash;Book
+stealers&mdash;Affecting instance of the Spanish Monk&mdash;The
+Book-ghoul&mdash;Women the natural foes of books&mdash;Some
+touching exceptions&mdash;Homage to Madame Fertiault&mdash;Modes
+of preserving books; binding&mdash;Various sorts of coverings for
+books&mdash;Half-bindings&mdash;Books too good to bind, how to be
+entertained&mdash;Iniquities of Binders&mdash;Cruel case of a
+cropped play of Moli&egrave;re&mdash;Recipes (not infallible) for
+cleaning books&mdash;Necessity of possessing bibliographical
+works, such as catalogues.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><a
+name="pagexii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xii</span>CHAPTER
+III.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Books of the Collector</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page76">76</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>Manuscripts, early and late&mdash;Early
+Printed Books&mdash;How to recognise them&mdash;Books printed on
+<span class="smcap">Vellum</span>&mdash;&ldquo;Uncut&rdquo;
+copies&mdash;&ldquo;Livres de Luxe,&rdquo; and Illustrated
+Books&mdash;Invective against &ldquo;Christmas
+Books&rdquo;&mdash;The &ldquo;Hypnerotomachia
+Poliphili&rdquo;&mdash;Old woodcuts&mdash;French vignettes of the
+eighteenth century&mdash;Books of the Aldi&mdash;Books of the
+Elzevirs&mdash;&ldquo;Curious&rdquo; Books&mdash;Singular old
+English poems&mdash;First editions&mdash;Changes of fashion in
+Book-collecting&mdash;Examples of the variations in
+prices&mdash;Books valued for their bindings, and as
+relics&mdash;Anecdotes of Madame du Barry and Marie
+Antoinette.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">CHAPTER IV.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Illustrated Books</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page123">123</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>Beginnings of Modern Book-Illustration in
+England&mdash;Stothard, Blake, Flaxman&mdash;Boydell&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Shakespeare,&rdquo; Macklin&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bible,&rdquo;
+Martin&rsquo;s &ldquo;Milton&rdquo;&mdash;The
+&ldquo;Annuals&rdquo;&mdash;Rogers&rsquo;s &ldquo;Italy&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Poems&rdquo;&mdash;Revival of
+Wood-Engraving&mdash;Bewick&mdash;Bewick&rsquo;s Pupils&mdash;The
+&ldquo;London School&rdquo;&mdash;Progress of
+Wood-Engraving&mdash;Illustrated &ldquo;Christmas&rdquo; and
+other Books&mdash;The Humorous
+Artists&mdash;Cruikshank&mdash;Doyle&mdash;Thackeray&mdash;Leech&mdash;Tenniel&mdash;Du
+Maurier&mdash;Sambourne&mdash;Keene&mdash;Minor Humorous
+Artists&mdash;Children&rsquo;s Books&mdash;Crane&mdash;Miss
+Greenaway&mdash;Caldecott&mdash;The &ldquo;New American
+School&rdquo;&mdash;Conclusion.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="pagexiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xiii</span>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">PLATES.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>M. <span class="smcap">Annei Lucani de Bello Civili
+Libri</span> X.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Apud Seb. Gryphium
+Lugduni</span>.&nbsp; 1551&nbsp; <i>To face</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page62">62</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Pub. Virgilii Maronis Opera
+Parisiis</span>.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Apud Hieronymum de
+Marnef, sub Pelicano, Monte D&rsquo;Hilurii</span>.&nbsp;
+1558&nbsp; <i>To face</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page64">64</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Title-page</span> of &ldquo;Le Rommant
+de la Rose,&rdquo; Paris, 1539&nbsp; <i>To face</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page94">94</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">WOODCUTS.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Frontispiece</span>.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by
+Walter Crane</i>; <i>engraved by Swain</i>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Initial</span>.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by
+Walter Crane</i>; <i>engraved by Swain</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Group of Children</span>.&nbsp;
+<i>Drawn by Kate Greenaway</i>; <i>engraved by O. Lacour</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page122">122</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Initial</span>.&nbsp; From
+Hughes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Scouring of the White Horse,
+1858.&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>Drawn by Richard Doyle</i>; <i>engraved by
+W. J. Linton</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page123">123</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><a name="pagexiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xiv</span>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Infant
+Joy</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Blake&rsquo;s &ldquo;Songs of
+Innocence,&rdquo; 1789.&nbsp; <i>Engraved by J. F.
+Jungling</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page129">129</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Counsellor, King, Warrior,
+Mother and Child, in the Tomb</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From
+Blair&rsquo;s &ldquo;Grave,&rdquo; 1808.&nbsp; <i>Designed by
+William Blake</i>; <i>facsimiled on wood from the engraving by
+Louis Schiavonetti</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page131">131</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">The
+Woodcock</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Jackson &amp; Chatto&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;History of Wood-Engraving,&rdquo; 1839.&nbsp;
+<i>Engraved</i>, <i>after T. Bewick</i>, <i>by John
+Jackson</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page141">141</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Tailpiece</span>.&nbsp; From the
+same.&nbsp; <i>Engraved</i>, <i>after T. Bewick</i>, <i>by John
+Jackson</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page143">143</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Headpiece</span>.&nbsp; From
+Rogers&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pleasures of Memory, with other
+Poems,&rdquo; 1810.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by T. Stothard</i>;
+<i>engraved</i>, <i>after Luke Clennell</i>, <i>by O.
+Lacour</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page145">145</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Golden head by golden
+head</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Goblin Market and other Poems,&rdquo; 1862.&nbsp; <i>Drawn
+by D. G. Rossetti</i>; <i>engraved by W. J. Linton</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page149">149</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">The Deaf
+Post-Boy</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Clarke&rsquo;s &ldquo;Three
+Courses and a Dessert,&rdquo; 1830.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by G.
+Cruikshank</i>; <i>engraved by S. Williams</i> [?]</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image153">153</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">The Mad
+Tea-Party</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From &ldquo;Alice&rsquo;s
+Adventures in Wonderland,&rdquo; 1865.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by John
+Tenniel</i>; <i>engraved by Dalziel Brothers</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image162">162</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><a name="pagexv"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xv</span><span class="smcap">Black Kitten</span>.&nbsp; From
+&ldquo;Through the Looking-Glass,&rdquo; 1871.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by
+John Tenniel</i>; <i>engraved by Dalziel Brothers</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page163">163</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">The Music of the
+Past</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s
+Almanack,&rdquo; 1877.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by George du Maurier</i>;
+<i>engraved by Swain</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image165">165</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Lion and Tub</span>.&nbsp; From
+&ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s Pocket-Book,&rdquo; 1879.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by
+Linley Sambourne</i>; <i>engraved by Swain</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image167">167</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Boy and Hippocampus</span>.&nbsp; From
+Miss E. Keary&rsquo;s &ldquo;Magic Valley,&rdquo; 1877.&nbsp;
+<i>Drawn by</i> &ldquo;<i>E. V. B.</i>&rdquo; (Hon. Mrs. Boyle);
+<i>engraved by T. Quartley</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page171">171</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Love
+Charms</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Irving&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Bracebridge Hall,&rdquo; 1876.&nbsp; <i>Drawn by Randolph
+Caldecott</i>; <i>engraved by J. D. Cooper</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a
+href="#image173">173</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<blockquote><p>Books, books again, and books once more!<br />
+These are our theme, which some miscall<br />
+Mere madness, setting little store<br />
+By copies either short or tall.<br />
+But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!<br />
+We rather write for you that hold<br />
+Patched folios dear, and prize &ldquo;the small,<br />
+Rare volume, black with tarnished gold.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. D.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>CHAPTER
+I.<br />
+AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">All</span> men,&rdquo; says Dr.
+Dibdin, &ldquo;like to be their own librarians.&rdquo;&nbsp; A
+writer on the library has no business to lay down the law as to
+the books that even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to
+collect.&nbsp; There are books which no lover of literature can
+afford to be without; classics, ancient and modern, on which the
+world has pronounced its verdict.&nbsp; These works, in whatever
+shape we may be able to possess them, are the necessary
+foundations of even the smallest collections.&nbsp; Homer, Dante
+and Milton Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristophanes and
+Moli&egrave;re, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and
+Scott,&mdash;these every lover of letters will desire to possess
+in the original <a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+2</span>languages or in translations.&nbsp; The list of such
+classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the tastes of
+men begin to differ very widely.&nbsp; An assortment of
+broadsheet ballads and scrap-books, bought in boyhood, was the
+nucleus of Scott&rsquo;s library, rich in the works of poets and
+magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists.&nbsp; A childish
+liking for coloured prints of stage characters, may be the germ
+of a theatrical collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and
+Cousin.&nbsp; People who are studying any past period of human
+history, or any old phase or expression of human genius, will
+eagerly collect little contemporary volumes which seem trash to
+other amateurs.&nbsp; For example, to a student of
+Moli&egrave;re, it is a happy chance to come across &ldquo;La
+Carte du Royaume des Pr&eacute;tieuses&rdquo;&mdash;(The map of
+the kingdom of the &ldquo;Pr&eacute;cieuses&rdquo;)&mdash;written
+the year before the comedian brought out his famous play
+&ldquo;Les Pr&eacute;cieuses Ridicules.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+geographical tract appeared in the very &ldquo;Recueil des Pieces
+Choisies,&rdquo; whose authors Magdelon, in the play, was
+expecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his
+appearance.&nbsp; There is a faculty which Horace Walpole named
+&ldquo;serendipity,&rdquo;&mdash;the luck of falling on just the
+literary document which one wants at the moment.&nbsp; All
+collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the
+exercise of <a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+3</span>serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways.&nbsp;
+One man will go home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a
+bulky collection of catalogues, which would have distended the
+pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that
+Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting.&nbsp;
+Others are captivated by black letter, others by the plays of
+such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne.&nbsp; But however
+various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on
+one point,&mdash;the love of printed paper.&nbsp; Even an Elzevir
+man can sympathise with Charles Lamb&rsquo;s attachment to
+&ldquo;that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which he dragged home
+late at night from Barker&rsquo;s in Covent Garden.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+But it is another thing when Lamb says, &ldquo;I do not care for
+a first folio of Shakespeare.&rdquo;&nbsp; A bibliophile who
+could say this could say anything.</p>
+<p>No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart
+from their literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if
+not for themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a
+peculiar preciousness.&nbsp; These books are esteemed for
+curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and illustrations,
+for some connection they may have with famous people of the past,
+or for their rarity.&nbsp; It is about these books, the method of
+preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for
+them, <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>that
+the following pages are to treat.&nbsp; It is a subject more
+closely connected with the taste for curiosities than with art,
+strictly so called.&nbsp; We are to be occupied, not so much with
+literature as with books, not so much with criticism as with
+bibliography, the quaint <i>duenna</i> of literature, a study
+apparently dry, but not without its humours.&nbsp; And here an
+apology must be made for the frequent allusions and anecdotes
+derived from French writers.&nbsp; These are as unavoidable,
+almost, as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in
+fencing.&nbsp; In bibliography, in the care for books <i>as</i>
+books, the French are still the teachers of Europe, as they were
+in tennis and are in fencing.&nbsp; Thus, Richard de Bury,
+Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his
+&ldquo;Philobiblon:&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a
+rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as often as I have a
+chance of going to Paris!&nbsp; There the days seem always short;
+there are the goodly collections on the delicate fragrant
+book-shelves.&rdquo;&nbsp; Since Dante wrote of&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;L&rsquo;onor di quell&rsquo; arte<br />
+Ch&rsquo; allumare &egrave; chiamata in Parisi,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;the art that is called illuminating in Paris,&rdquo;
+and all the other arts of writing, printing, binding books, have
+been most skilfully practised by France.&nbsp; She improved on
+the lessons given by <a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+5</span>Germany and Italy in these crafts.&nbsp; Twenty books
+about books are written in Paris for one that is published in
+England.&nbsp; In our country Dibdin is out of date (the second
+edition of his &ldquo;Bibliomania&rdquo; was published in 1811),
+and Mr. Hill Burton&rsquo;s humorous &ldquo;Book-hunter&rdquo; is
+out of print.&nbsp; Meanwhile, in France, writers grave and gay,
+from the gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier&rsquo;s quaint
+fancy, and Janin&rsquo;s wit, and the always entertaining
+bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), have written, or are writing,
+on books, manuscripts, engravings, editions, and bindings.&nbsp;
+In England, therefore, rare French books are eagerly sought, and
+may be found in all the booksellers&rsquo; catalogues.&nbsp; On
+the continent there is no such care for our curious or beautiful
+editions, old or new.&nbsp; Here a hint may be given to the
+collector.&nbsp; If he &ldquo;picks up&rdquo; a rare French book,
+at a low price, he would act prudently in having it bound in
+France by a good craftsman.&nbsp; Its value, when &ldquo;the
+wicked day of destiny&rdquo; comes, and the collection is broken
+up, will thus be made secure.&nbsp; For the French do not suffer
+our English bindings gladly; while we have no narrow prejudice
+against the works of Lortic and Cap&eacute;, but the
+reverse.&nbsp; For these reasons then, and also because every
+writer is obliged to make the closest acquaintance with books in
+the direction where his <a name="page6"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 6</span>own studies lie, the writings of
+French authorities are frequently cited in the following
+pages.</p>
+<p>This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste
+and passion of book-collecting, and of the class of men known
+invidiously as book-worms and book-hunters.&nbsp; They and their
+simple pleasures are the butts of a cheap and shrewish set of
+critics, who cannot endure in others a taste which is absent in
+themselves.&nbsp; Important new books have actually been
+condemned of late years because they were printed on good paper,
+and a valuable historical treatise was attacked by reviewers
+quite angrily because its outward array was not mean and
+forbidding.&nbsp; Of course, critics who take this view of new
+books have no patience with persons who care for
+&ldquo;margins,&rdquo; and &ldquo;condition,&rdquo; and early
+copies of old books.&nbsp; We cannot hope to convert the
+adversary, but it is not necessary to be disturbed by his
+clamour.&nbsp; People are happier for the possession of a taste
+as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons of
+Scripture, possess them.&nbsp; The wise collector gets
+instruction and pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be
+that, in the long run, he and his family do not lose money.&nbsp;
+The amusement may chance to prove a very fair investment.</p>
+<p>As to this question of making money by <a
+name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>collecting, Mr.
+Hill Burton speaks very distinctly in &ldquo;The
+Book-hunter:&rdquo; &ldquo;Where money is the object let a man
+speculate or become a miser. . . Let not the collector ever,
+unless in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any
+of his treasures.&nbsp; Let him not even have recourse to that
+practice called barter, which political philosophers tell us is
+the universal resource of mankind preparatory to the invention of
+money.&nbsp; Let him confine all his transactions in the market
+to purchasing only.&nbsp; No good comes of gentlemen-amateurs
+buying and selling.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is room for difference of
+opinion here, but there seems to be most reason on the side of
+Mr. Hill Burton.&nbsp; It is one thing for the collector to be
+able to reflect that the money he expends on books is not lost,
+and that his family may find themselves richer, not poorer,
+because he indulged his taste.&nbsp; It is quite another thing to
+buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to sell again at a
+profit as soon as occasion offers.&nbsp; It is necessary also to
+warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes.&nbsp; He
+must buy experience with his books, and many of his first
+purchases are likely to disappoint him.&nbsp; He will pay dearly
+for the wrong &ldquo;C&aelig;sar&rdquo; of 1635, the one
+<i>without</i> errors in pagination; and this is only a common
+example of the beginner&rsquo;s blunders.&nbsp; Collecting is
+like other <a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+8</span>forms of sport; the aim is not certain at first, the
+amateur is nervous, and, as in angling, is apt to
+&ldquo;strike&rdquo; (a bargain) too hurriedly.</p>
+<p>I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of
+sport.&nbsp; People talk of &ldquo;book-hunting,&rdquo; and the
+old Latin motto says that &ldquo;one never wearies of the chase
+in this forest.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the analogy to angling seems
+even stronger.&nbsp; A collector walks in the London or Paris
+streets, as he does by Tweed or Spey.&nbsp; Many a lordly mart of
+books he passes, like Mr. Quaritch&rsquo;s, Mr. Toovey&rsquo;s,
+or M. Fontaine&rsquo;s, or the shining store of M.M. Morgand et
+Fatout, in the Passage des Panoramas.&nbsp; Here I always feel
+like Brassicanus in the king of Hungary&rsquo;s collection,
+&ldquo;non in Bibliotheca, sed in gremio Jovis;&rdquo; &ldquo;not
+in a library, but in paradise.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is not given to
+every one to cast angle in these preserves.&nbsp; They are kept
+for dukes and millionaires.&nbsp; Surely the old Duke of
+Roxburghe was the happiest of mortals, for to him both the chief
+bookshops and auction rooms, and the famous salmon streams of
+Floors, were equally open, and he revelled in the prime of
+book-collecting and of angling.&nbsp; But there are little
+tributary streets, with humbler stalls, shy pools, as it were,
+where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an Elzevir,
+or an old French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a <a
+name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>Restoration
+comedy.&nbsp; It is usually a case of hope unfulfilled; but the
+merest nibble of a rare book, say Marston&rsquo;s poems in the
+original edition, or Beddoes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Love&rsquo;s Arrow
+Poisoned,&rdquo; or Bankes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bay Horse in a
+Trance,&rdquo; or the &ldquo;Mel Heliconicum&rdquo; of Alexander
+Ross, or &ldquo;Les Oeuvres de Clement Marot, de Cahors, Vallet
+de Chambre du Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre Gaultier, 1551;&rdquo;
+even a chance at something of this sort will kindle the waning
+excitement, and add a pleasure to a man&rsquo;s walk in muddy
+London.&nbsp; Then, suppose you purchase for a couple of
+shillings the &ldquo;Histoire des Amours de Henry IV, et autres
+pieces curieuses, A Leyde, Chez Jean Sambyx (Elzevir),
+1664,&rdquo; it is certainly not unpleasant, on consulting M.
+Fontaine&rsquo;s catalogue, to find that he offers the same work
+at the ransom of &pound;10.&nbsp; The beginner thinks himself in
+singular luck, even though he has no idea of vending his
+collection, and he never reflects that
+<i>condition</i>&mdash;spotless white leaves and broad margins,
+make the market value of a book.</p>
+<p>Setting aside such bare considerations of profit, the sport
+given by bookstalls is full of variety and charm.&nbsp; In London
+it may be pursued in most of the cross streets that stretch a
+dirty net between the British Museum and the Strand.&nbsp; There
+are other more shy and less frequently <a name="page10"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 10</span>poached resorts which the amateur may
+be allowed to find out for himself.&nbsp; In Paris there is the
+long sweep of the <i>Quais</i>, where some eighty
+<i>bouquinistes</i> set their boxes on the walls of the
+embankment of the Seine.&nbsp; There are few country towns so
+small but that books, occasionally rare and valuable, may be
+found lurking in second-hand furniture warehouses.&nbsp; This is
+one of the advantages of living in an old country.&nbsp; The
+Colonies are not the home for a collector.&nbsp; I have seen an
+Australian bibliophile enraptured by the rare chance of buying,
+in Melbourne, an early work on&mdash;the history of Port
+Jackson!&nbsp; This seems but poor game.&nbsp; But in Europe an
+amateur has always occupation for his odd moments in town, and is
+for ever lured on by the radiant apparition of Hope.&nbsp; All
+collectors tell their anecdotes of wonderful luck, and
+magnificent discoveries.&nbsp; There is a volume &ldquo;Voyages
+Litt&eacute;raires sur les Quais de Paris&rdquo; (Paris, Durand,
+1857), by M. de Fontaine de Resbecq, which might convert the
+dullest soul to book-hunting.&nbsp; M. de Resbecq and his friends
+had the most amazing good fortune.&nbsp; A M. N&mdash; found six
+original plays of Moli&egrave;re (worth perhaps as many hundreds
+of pounds), bound up with Garth&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dispensary,&rdquo;
+an English poem which has long lost its vogue.&nbsp; It is worth
+while, indeed, to examine all volumes marked <a
+name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+11</span>&ldquo;Miscellanea,&rdquo; &ldquo;Essays,&rdquo; and the
+like, and treasures may possibly lurk, as Snuffy Davy knew,
+within the battered sheepskin of school books.&nbsp; Books lie in
+out of the way places.&nbsp; Poggio rescued
+&ldquo;Quintilian&rdquo; from the counter of a wood
+merchant.&nbsp; The best time for book-hunting in Paris is the
+early morning.&nbsp; &ldquo;The take,&rdquo; as anglers say, is
+&ldquo;on&rdquo; from half-past seven to half-past nine
+a.m.&nbsp; At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares,
+and the agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up
+everything worth having.&nbsp; These agents quite spoil the sport
+of the amateur.&nbsp; They keep a strict watch on every country
+dealer&rsquo;s catalogue, snap up all he has worth selling, and
+sell it over again, charging pounds in place of shillings.&nbsp;
+But M. de Resbecq vows that he once picked up a copy of the first
+edition of La Rochefoucauld&rsquo;s &ldquo;Maxims&rdquo; out of a
+box which two booksellers had just searched.&nbsp; The same
+collector got together very promptly all the original editions of
+La Bruy&egrave;re, and he even found a copy of the Elzevir
+&ldquo;Pastissier Fran&ccedil;ais,&rdquo; at the humble price of
+six sous.&nbsp; Now the &ldquo; Pastissier
+Fran&ccedil;ais,&rdquo; an ill-printed little cookery-book of the
+Elzevirs, has lately fetched &pound;600 at a sale.&nbsp; The
+Antiquary&rsquo;s story of Snuffy Davy and the &ldquo;Game of
+Chess,&rdquo; is dwarfed by the luck of M. de Resbecq.&nbsp; <a
+name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>Not one
+amateur in a thousand can expect such good fortune.&nbsp; There
+is, however, a recent instance of a Rugby boy, who picked up, on
+a stall, a few fluttering leaves hanging together on a flimsy
+thread.&nbsp; The old woman who kept the stall could hardly be
+induced to accept the large sum of a shilling for an original
+quarto of Shakespeare&rsquo;s &ldquo;King John.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+These stories are told that none may despair.&nbsp; That none may
+be over confident, an author may recount his own
+experience.&nbsp; The only odd <i>trouvaille</i> that ever fell
+to me was a clean copy of &ldquo;La Journ&eacute;e
+Chr&eacute;tienne,&rdquo; with the name of L&eacute;on Gambetta,
+1844, on its catholic fly-leaf.&nbsp; Rare books grow rarer every
+day, and often &rsquo;tis only Hope that remains at the bottom of
+the fourpenny boxes.&nbsp; Yet the Paris book-hunters cleave to
+the game.&nbsp; August is their favourite season; for in August
+there is least competition.&nbsp; Very few people are, as a rule,
+in Paris, and these are not tempted to loiter.&nbsp; The
+bookseller is drowsy, and glad not to have the trouble of
+chaffering.&nbsp; The English go past, and do not tarry beside a
+row of dusty boxes of books.&nbsp; The heat threatens the amateur
+with sunstroke.&nbsp; Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a prose
+<i>ballade</i> of book-hunters&mdash;then, calm, glad, heroic,
+the <i>bouquineurs</i> prowl forth, refreshed with hope.&nbsp;
+The brown old calf-skin wrinkles in the <a
+name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>sun, the
+leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover of a
+quarto.&nbsp; The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly
+trees seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm
+wind is walking the streets.&nbsp; Under his vast umbrella the
+book-hunter is secure and content; he enjoys the pleasures of the
+sport unvexed by poachers, and thinks less of the heat than does
+the deer-stalker on the bare hill-side.</p>
+<p>There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in
+the stalls.&nbsp; The decay of affection, the breaking of
+friendship, the decline of ambition, are all illustrated in these
+fourpenny collections.&nbsp; The presentation volumes are here
+which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who
+was his &ldquo;Master,&rdquo; to the critic whom he feared, to
+the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual admiration.&nbsp;
+The critic has not even cut the leaves, the poet has brusquely
+torn three or four apart with his finger and thumb, the friend
+has grown cold, and has let the poems slip into some corner of
+his library, whence they were removed on some day of doom and of
+general clearing out.&nbsp; The sale of the library of a late
+learned prelate who had Boileau&rsquo;s hatred of a dull book was
+a scene to be avoided by his literary friends.&nbsp; The Bishop
+always gave the works which were offered to him a fair
+chance.&nbsp; <a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+14</span>He read till he could read no longer, cutting the pages
+as he went, and thus his progress could be traced like that of a
+backwoodsman who &ldquo;blazes&rdquo; his way through a primeval
+forest.&nbsp; The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty before
+the thirtieth page.&nbsp; The melancholy of the book-hunter is
+aroused by two questions, &ldquo;Whence?&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Whither?&rdquo;&nbsp; The bibliophile asks about his books
+the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul.&nbsp;
+Whence came they?&nbsp; Their value depends a good deal on the
+answer.&nbsp; If they are stamped with arms, then there is a book
+(&ldquo;Armorial du Bibliophile,&rdquo; by M. Guigard) which
+tells you who was their original owner.&nbsp; Any one of twenty
+coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value
+of the volume which it covers.&nbsp; If there is no such mark,
+the fancy is left to devise a romance about the first owner, and
+all the hands through which the book has passed.&nbsp; That
+Vanini came from a Jesuit college, where it was kept under lock
+and key.&nbsp; That copy of Agrippa &ldquo;De Vanitate
+Scientiarum&rdquo; is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded ink,
+with cynical Latin notes.&nbsp; What pessimist two hundred years
+ago made his grumbling so permanent?&nbsp; One can only guess,
+but part of the imaginative joys of the book-hunter lies &lsquo;
+in the fruitless conjecture.&nbsp; That other question <a
+name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+15</span>&ldquo;Whither?&rdquo; is graver.&nbsp; Whither are our
+treasures to be scattered?&nbsp; Will they find kind masters? or,
+worst fate of books, fall into the hands of women who will sell
+them to the trunk-maker?&nbsp; Are the leaves to line a box or to
+curl a maiden&rsquo;s locks?&nbsp; Are the rarities to become
+more and more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices?&nbsp;
+Some unlucky men are able partly to solve these problems in their
+own lifetime.&nbsp; They are constrained to sell their
+libraries&mdash;an experience full of bitterness, wrath, and
+disappointment.</p>
+<p>Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which
+life has no worse sorrow.&nbsp; A book is a friend whose face is
+constantly changing.&nbsp; If you read it when you are recovering
+from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed
+surely, with the change in yourself.&nbsp; As a man&rsquo;s
+tastes and opinions are developed his books put on a different
+aspect.&nbsp; He hardly knows the &ldquo;Poems and Ballads&rdquo;
+he used to declaim, and cannot recover the enigmatic charm of
+&ldquo;Sordello.&rdquo;&nbsp; Books change like friends, like
+ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in the
+contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote
+them is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we
+believed in him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old
+self and old days.&nbsp; The vanished past returns when we look
+at the pages.&nbsp; <a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+16</span>The vicissitudes of years are printed and packed in a
+thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts of desire and hope return
+to their forbidden home in the heart and fancy.&nbsp; It is as
+well to have the power of recalling them always at hand, and to
+be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions which were
+so powerful and full of life, and now are more faded and of less
+account than the memory of the dreams of childhood.&nbsp; It is
+because our books are friends that do change, and remind us of
+change, that we should keep them with us, even at a little
+inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the world to find a
+dusty asylum in cheap bookstalls.&nbsp; We are a part of all that
+we have read, to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson&rsquo;s
+Ulysses, and we owe some respect, and house-room at least, to the
+early acquaintances who have begun to bore us, and remind us of
+the vanity of ambition and the weakness of human purpose.&nbsp;
+Old school and college books even have a reproachful and salutary
+power of whispering how much a man knew, and at the cost of how
+much trouble, that he has absolutely forgotten, and is neither
+the better nor the worse for it.&nbsp; It will be the same in the
+case of the books he is eager about now; though, to be sure, he
+will read with less care, and forget with an ease and readiness
+only to be acquired by practice.</p>
+<p><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>But we
+were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches moral
+lessons, as &ldquo;dauncyng&rdquo; also does, according to Sir
+Thomas Elyot, in the &ldquo;Boke called the Gouvernour,&rdquo;
+but because it affords a kind of sportive excitement.&nbsp;
+Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase.&nbsp; Book
+catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him
+all the pleasures of the sport at home.&nbsp; He reads the
+booksellers&rsquo; catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport
+with pencil, he writes by return of post, or he telegraphs to the
+vendor.&nbsp; Unfortunately he almost always finds that he has
+been forestalled, probably by some bookseller&rsquo;s
+agent.&nbsp; When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious
+that Parisians have the pick of the market before our slow
+letters reach M. Claudin, or M. Labitte.&nbsp; Still the
+catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in bibliography.&nbsp;
+You see from them how prices are ruling, and you can gloat, in
+fancy, over De Luyne&rsquo;s edition of Moli&egrave;re, 1673, two
+volumes in red morocco, <i>doubl&eacute;</i> (&ldquo;Trautz
+Bauzonnet&rdquo;), or some other vanity hopelessly out of
+reach.&nbsp; In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and Fatout print a
+facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition.&nbsp;
+The bust of Moli&egrave;re occupies the centre, and portraits of
+the great actor, as Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the
+&ldquo;Pr&eacute;cieuses Ridicules&rdquo;), stand on either
+side.&nbsp; In the second volume are <a name="page18"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 18</span>Moli&egrave;re, and his wife Armande,
+crowned by the muse Thalia.&nbsp; A catalogue which contains such
+exact reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself a
+work of art, and serviceable to the student.&nbsp; When the shop
+of a bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over
+night, is not too far distant, bibliophiles have been known to
+rush to the spot in the grey morning, before the doors
+open.&nbsp; There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay
+comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in
+the rain outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers&rsquo;
+Row.&nbsp; There is a length to which enthusiasm cannot go, and
+many collectors draw the line at rising early in the
+morning.&nbsp; But, when we think of the sport of book-hunting,
+it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally
+turns.&nbsp; Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation,
+and it was in an auction-room that Guibert de
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court, being outbid, said, in tones of mortal
+hatred, &ldquo;I will have the book when your collection is sold
+after your death.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he kept his word.&nbsp; The
+fever of gambling is not absent from the auction-room, and people
+&ldquo;bid jealous&rdquo; as they sometimes &ldquo;ride
+jealous&rdquo; in the hunting-field.&nbsp; Yet, the neophyte, if
+he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the
+spectacle.&nbsp; The chamber has the look of a rather seedy
+&ldquo;hell.&rdquo;&nbsp; The <a name="page19"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 19</span>crowd round the auctioneer&rsquo;s
+box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at Monte
+Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany, they
+would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian
+ardour.&nbsp; Bidding is languid, and valuable books are knocked
+down for trifling sums.&nbsp; Let the neophyte try his luck,
+however, and prices will rise wonderfully.&nbsp; The fact is that
+the sale is a &ldquo;knock out.&rdquo;&nbsp; The bidders are
+professionals, in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to
+distribute them afterwards among themselves.&nbsp; Thus an
+amateur can have a good deal of sport by bidding for a book till
+it reaches its proper value, and by then leaving in the lurch the
+professionals who combine to &ldquo;run him up.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of gentlemen
+in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the owner
+of the books.&nbsp; A bidder must be able to command his temper,
+both that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to
+bid recklessly, and that he may disregard the not very carefully
+concealed sneers of the professionals.</p>
+<p>In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste
+of the collector.&nbsp; One man is for bibles, another for
+ballads.&nbsp; Some pursue plays, others look for play
+bills.&nbsp; &ldquo;He was not,&rdquo; says Mr. Hill Burton,
+speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, <a name="page20"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 20</span>&ldquo;he was not a black-letter man,
+or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an
+early-English dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a
+pasquinader, or an old brown calf man, or a Grangerite, <a
+name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1"
+class="citation">[1]</a> or a tawny moroccoite, or a gilt topper,
+or a marbled insider, or an <i>editio princeps</i>
+man.&rdquo;&nbsp; These nicknames briefly dispose into categories
+a good many species of collectors.&nbsp; But there are plenty of
+others.&nbsp; You may be a historical-bindings man, and hunt for
+books that were bound by the great artists of the past and
+belonged to illustrious collectors.&nbsp; Or you may be a
+Jametist, and try to gather up the volumes on which Jamet, the
+friend of Louis Racine, scribbled his cynical
+&ldquo;Marginalia.&rdquo;&nbsp; Or you may covet the earliest
+editions of modern poets&mdash;Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson, or
+even Ebenezer Jones.&nbsp; Or the object of your desires may be
+the books of the French romanticists, who flourished so freely in
+1830.&nbsp; Or, being a person of large fortune and landed
+estate, you may collect country histories.&nbsp; Again, your
+heart may be set on the books illustrated by Eisen, Cochin, and
+Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last century.&nbsp; Or
+you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine classics, and
+<a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>for the
+books of the Giunta press.&nbsp; In fact, as many as are the
+species of rare and beautiful books, so many are the species of
+collectors.&nbsp; There is one sort of men, modest but not unwise
+in their generations, who buy up the pretty books published in
+very limited editions by French booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and
+Jouaust.&nbsp; Already their reprints of Rochefoucauld&rsquo;s
+first edition, of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the lyrics
+attributed to Moli&egrave;re, and other volumes, are exhausted,
+and fetch high prices in the market.&nbsp; By a singular caprice,
+the little volumes of Mr. Thackeray&rsquo;s miscellaneous
+writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when they are first
+editions), have become objects of desire, and their old modest
+price is increased twenty fold.&nbsp; It is not always easy to
+account for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting
+there are certain definite laws.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why do you pay a
+large price for a dingy, old book,&rdquo; outsiders ask,
+&ldquo;when a clean modern reprint can be procured for two or
+three shillings?&rdquo;&nbsp; To this question the collector has
+several replies, which he, at least, finds satisfactory.&nbsp; In
+the first place, early editions, published during a great
+author&rsquo;s lifetime, and under his supervision, have
+authentic texts.&nbsp; The changes in them are the changes that
+Prior or La Bruy&egrave;re themselves made and approved.&nbsp;
+You can study, <a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+22</span>in these old editions, the alterations in their taste,
+the history of their minds.&nbsp; The case is the same even with
+contemporary authors.&nbsp; One likes to have Mr.
+Tennyson&rsquo;s &ldquo;Poems, chiefly Lyrical&rdquo; (London:
+Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830).&nbsp; It is
+fifty years old, this little book of one hundred and fifty-four
+pages, this first fruit of a stately tree.&nbsp; In half a
+century the poet has altered much, and withdrawn much, but
+already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive note, and his
+&ldquo;Mariana&rdquo; is a masterpiece.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Mariana&rdquo; is in all the collections, but pieces of
+which the execution is less certain must be sought only in the
+old volume of 1830.&nbsp; In the same way &ldquo;The Strayed
+Reveller, and other poems, by A.&rdquo;&nbsp; (London: B.
+Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much that Mr. Matthew
+Arnold has altered, and this volume, like the suppressed
+&ldquo;Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A.&rdquo; (1852),
+appeals more to the collector than do the new editions which all
+the world may possess.&nbsp; There are verses, curious in their
+way, in Mr. Clough&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ambarvalia&rdquo; (1849), which
+you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which
+&ldquo;repay perusal.&rdquo;&nbsp; These minuti&aelig; of
+literary history become infinitely more important in the early
+editions of the great classical writers, and the book-collector
+may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of <a
+name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>critical
+science.&nbsp; The preservation of rare books, and the collection
+of materials for criticism, are the useful functions, then, of
+book-collecting.&nbsp; But it is not to be denied that the
+sentimental side of the pursuit gives it most of its charm.&nbsp;
+Old books are often literary <i>relics</i>, and as dear and
+sacred to the lover of literature as are relics of another sort
+to the religious devotee.&nbsp; The amateur likes to see the book
+in its form as the author knew it.&nbsp; He takes a pious
+pleasure in the first edition of &ldquo;Les Pr&eacute;cieuses
+Ridicules,&rdquo; (<span class="GutSmall">M.DC.LX.</span>) just
+as Moli&egrave;re saw it, when he was fresh in the business of
+authorship, and wrote &ldquo;Mon Dieu, qu&rsquo;un Autheur est
+neuf, la premi&egrave;re fois qu&rsquo;on
+l&rsquo;imprime.&rdquo;&nbsp; All editions published during a
+great man&rsquo;s life have this attraction, and seem to bring us
+closer to his spirit.&nbsp; Other volumes are relics, as we shall
+see later, of some famed collector, and there is a certain piety
+in the care we give to books once dear to Longepierre, or Harley,
+or d&rsquo;Hoym, or Buckle, to Madame de Maintenon, or Walpole,
+to Grolier, or Askew, or De Thou, or Heber.&nbsp; Such copies
+should be handed down from worthy owners to owners not unworthy;
+such servants of literature should never have careless
+masters.&nbsp; A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good
+clear reprint.&nbsp; M. Charpentier&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Montaigne&rdquo; serves the turn, but it is natural to
+treasure more <a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+24</span>&ldquo;Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de
+Montaigne,&rdquo; that were printed by Francoise le Febre, of
+Lyon, in 1595.&nbsp; It is not a beautiful book; the type is
+small, and rather blunt, but William Drummond of Hawthornden has
+written on the title-page his name and his device, <i>Cipresso e
+Palma</i>.&nbsp; There are a dozen modern editions of
+Moli&egrave;re more easily read than the four little volumes of
+Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698), but these contain reduced copies of
+the original illustrations, and here you see Arnolphe and Agnes
+in their habits as they lived, Moli&egrave;re and Mdlle. de Brie
+as the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred years
+ago.&nbsp; Suckling&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fragmenta Aurea&rdquo; contain
+a good deal of dross, and most of the gold has been gathered into
+Miscellanies, but the original edition of 1646, &ldquo;after his
+own copies,&rdquo; with the portrait of the jolly cavalier who
+died <i>&aelig;tatis suae</i> 28, has its own allurement.&nbsp;
+Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+edition, or Ziegler&rsquo;s; but that which Zacharias Calliergi
+printed in Rome (1516), with an excommunication from Leo X.
+against infringement of copyright, will always be a beautiful and
+desirable book, especially when bound by Derome.&nbsp; The gist
+of the pious Prince Conti&rsquo;s strictures on the wickedness of
+comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is
+natural to like his &ldquo;Trait&eacute; de la Comedie selon la
+<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>tradition
+de l&rsquo;Eglise, Tir&eacute;e des Conciles et des saints
+P&egrave;res,&rdquo; published by Lovys Billaine in 1660,
+especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous
+black morocco.</p>
+<p>These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre
+little library, a &ldquo;twopenny treasure-house,&rdquo; but they
+illustrate, on a minute scale, the nature of the
+collector&rsquo;s passion,&mdash;the character of his innocent
+pleasures.&nbsp; He occasionally lights on other literary relics
+of a more personal character than mere first editions.&nbsp; A
+lucky collector lately bought Shelley&rsquo;s copy of Ossian,
+with the poet&rsquo;s signature on the title-page, in
+Booksellers&rsquo; Row.&nbsp; Another possesses a copy of
+Foppens&rsquo;s rare edition of Petrarch&rsquo;s &ldquo;Le Sage
+Resolu contre l&rsquo;une et l&rsquo;autre Fortune,&rdquo; which
+once belonged to Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon, and may
+have fortified, by its stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew
+the extremes of either fortune, the captive of St. Helena.&nbsp;
+But the best example of a book, which is also a relic, is the
+&ldquo;Imitatio Christi,&rdquo; which belonged to J. J.
+Rousseau.&nbsp; Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the happy owner
+of this possession, tell his own story of his treasure: It was in
+1827 that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the
+Louvre.&nbsp; Among the volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby
+little copy of the &ldquo;Imitatio Christi.&rdquo;&nbsp; M. de
+Latour, like other <a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+26</span>bibliophiles, was not in the habit of examining stray
+copies of this work, except when they were of the Elzevir size,
+for the Elzevirs published a famous undated copy of the
+&ldquo;Imitatio,&rdquo; a book which brings considerable
+prices.&nbsp; However, by some lucky chance, some Socratic
+d&aelig;mon whispering, may be, in his ear, he picked up the
+little dingy volume of the last century.&nbsp; It was of a Paris
+edition, 1751, but what was the name on the fly-leaf.&nbsp; M. de
+Latour read <i>&agrave; J. J. Rousseau</i>.&nbsp; There was no
+mistake about it, the good bibliophile knew Rousseau&rsquo;s
+handwriting perfectly well; to make still more sure he paid his
+seventy-five centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont
+des Arts, to his bookbinder&rsquo;s, where he had a copy of
+Rousseau&rsquo;s works, with a <i>facsimile</i> of his
+handwriting.&nbsp; As he walked, M. de Latour read in his book,
+and found notes of Rousseau&rsquo;s on the margin.&nbsp; The
+<i>facsimile</i> proved that the inscription was genuine.&nbsp;
+The happy de Latour now made for the public office in which he
+was a functionary, and rushed into the bureau of his friend the
+Marquis de V.&nbsp; The Marquis, a man of great strength of
+character, recognised the signature of Rousseau with but little
+display of emotion.&nbsp; M. de Latour now noticed some withered
+flowers among the sacred pages; but it was reserved for a friend
+to discover in the faded petals Rousseau&rsquo;s favourite <a
+name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>flower, the
+periwinkle.&nbsp; Like a true Frenchman, like Rousseau himself in
+his younger days, M. de Latour had not recognised the periwinkle
+when he saw it.&nbsp; That night, so excited was M. de Latour, he
+never closed an eye!&nbsp; What puzzled him was that he could not
+remember, in all Rousseau&rsquo;s works, a single allusion to the
+&ldquo;Imitatio Christi.&rdquo;&nbsp; Time went on, the old book
+was not rebound, but kept piously in a case of Russia
+leather.&nbsp; M. de Latour did not suppose that &ldquo;dans ce
+bas monde it f&ucirc;t permis aux joies du bibliophile
+d&rsquo;aller encore plus loin.&rdquo;&nbsp; He imagined that the
+delights of the amateur could only go further, in heaven.&nbsp;
+It chanced, however, one day that he was turning over the
+&ldquo;Oeuvres In&eacute;dites&rdquo; of Rousseau, when he found
+a letter, in which Jean Jacques, writing in 1763, asked
+Motiers-Travers to send him the &ldquo;Imitatio
+Christi.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now the date 1764 is memorable, in
+Rousseau&rsquo;s &ldquo;Confessions,&rdquo; for a burst of
+sentiment over a periwinkle, the first he had noticed
+particularly since his residence at <i>Les Charmettes</i>, where
+the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens.&nbsp; Thus M.
+Tenant de Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle,
+which caused the tear of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of
+Jean Jacques Rousseau.</p>
+<p>We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau.&nbsp; But M. de Latour
+was an enthusiast, and this little <a name="page28"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 28</span>anecdote of his explains the
+sentimental side of the bibliophile&rsquo;s pursuit.&nbsp; Yes,
+it is <i>sentiment</i> that makes us feel a lively affection for
+the books that seem to connect us with great poets and students
+long ago dead.&nbsp; Their hands grasp ours across the
+ages.&nbsp; I never see the first edition of Homer, that monument
+of typography and of enthusiasm for letters, printed at Florence
+(1488) at the expense of young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli, and of
+their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli, but I feel moved to cry with
+Heyne, &ldquo;salvete juvenes, nobiles et generosi;
+<i>&chi;&alpha;&#8055;&rho;&epsilon;&tau;&#8051;
+&mu;&omicron;&iota; &kappa;&alpha;&#8054; &#7952;&iota;&nu;
+&#902;&#8147;&delta;&alpha;&omicron;
+&delta;&#8057;&mu;&omicron;&iota;&sigma;&iota;</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such is our apology for book-collecting.&nbsp; But the best
+defence of the taste would be a list of the names of great
+collectors, a &ldquo;vision of mighty book-hunters.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Let us say nothing of Seth and Noah, for their reputation as
+amateurs is only based on the authority of the tract <i>De
+Bibliothecis Antediluvianis</i>.&nbsp; The library of
+Assurbanipal I pass over, for its volumes were made, as Pliny
+says, of <i>coctiles laterculi</i>, of baked tiles, which have
+been deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith.&nbsp; Philosophers
+as well as immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on our
+side.&nbsp; It was objected to Plato, by persons answering to the
+cheap scribblers of to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a
+hundred minae (&pound;360) for three treatises of <a
+name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Philolaus,
+while Aristotle paid nearly thrice the sum for a few books that
+had been in the library of Speusippus.&nbsp; Did not a Latin
+philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety to purchase an
+Odyssey &ldquo;as old as Homer,&rdquo; and what would not Cicero,
+that great collector, have given for the Ascraean <i>editio
+princeps</i> of Hesiod, scratched on mouldy old plates of
+lead?&nbsp; Perhaps Dr. Schliemann may find an original edition
+of the &ldquo;Iliad&rdquo; at Orchomenos; but of all early copies
+none seems so attractive as that engraved on the leaden plates
+which Pausanias saw at Ascra.&nbsp; Then, in modern times, what
+&ldquo;great allies&rdquo; has the collector, what brethren in
+book-hunting?&nbsp; The names are like the catalogue with which
+Villon fills his &ldquo;Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps
+Jadis.&rdquo;&nbsp; A collector was &ldquo;le preux
+Charlemaigne&rdquo; and our English Alfred.&nbsp; The Kings of
+Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus; the Kings of France, and their
+queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all
+amateurs.&nbsp; So was our Henry VIII., and James I., who
+&ldquo;wished he could be chained to a shelf in the
+Bodleian.&rdquo;&nbsp; The middle age gives us Richard de Bury,
+among ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts Sir Thomas More,
+with that &ldquo;pretty fardle of books, in the small type of
+Aldus,&rdquo; which he carried for a freight to the people of
+Utopia.&nbsp; Men of the world, like Bussy Rabutin, queens like
+<a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>our
+Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers like Colbert (who
+made the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for bindings); men of
+letters like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and Paul
+Lacroix; warriors like Junot and Prince Eug&egrave;ne; these are
+only leaders of companies in the great army of lovers of books,
+in which it is honourable enough to be a private soldier.</p>
+<h2><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+31</span>CHAPTER II.<br />
+THE LIBRARY</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Library which is to be spoken
+of in these pages, is all unlike the halls which a Spencer or a
+Huth fills with treasure beyond price.&nbsp; The age of great
+libraries has gone by, and where a collector of the old school
+survives, he is usually a man of enormous wealth, who might, if
+he pleased, be distinguished in parliament, in society, on the
+turf itself, or in any of the pursuits where unlimited supplies
+of money are strictly necessary.&nbsp; The old amateurs, whom La
+Bruy&egrave;re was wont to sneer at, were not satisfied unless
+they possessed many thousands of books.&nbsp; For a collector
+like Cardinal Mazarin, Naud&eacute; bought up the whole stock of
+many a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper
+as if a tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away.&nbsp; <a
+name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>In our modern
+times, as the industrious Bibliophile Jacob, says, the fashion of
+book-collecting has changed; &ldquo;from the vast hall that it
+was, the library of the amateur has shrunk to a closet, to a mere
+book-case.&nbsp; Nothing but a neat article of furniture is
+needed now, where a great gallery or a long suite of rooms was
+once required.&nbsp; The book has become, as it were, a jewel,
+and is kept in a kind of jewel-case.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is not
+quantity of pages, nor lofty piles of ordinary binding, nor
+theological folios and classic quartos, that the modern amateur
+desires.&nbsp; He is content with but a few books of distinction
+and elegance, masterpieces of printing and binding, or relics of
+famous old collectors, of statesmen, philosophers, beautiful dead
+ladies; or, again, he buys illustrated books, or first editions
+of the modern classics.&nbsp; No one, not the Duc d&rsquo;Aumale,
+or M. James Rothschild himself, with his 100 books worth
+&pound;40,000, can possess very many copies of books which are
+inevitably rare.&nbsp; Thus the adviser who would offer
+suggestions to the amateur, need scarcely write, like
+Naud&eacute; and the old authorities, about the size and due
+position of the library.&nbsp; He need hardly warn the builder to
+make the <i>salle</i> face the east, &ldquo;because the eastern
+winds, being warm and dry of their nature, greatly temper the
+air, fortify the senses, make subtle the humours, purify the
+spirits, preserve a healthy <a name="page33"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 33</span>disposition of the whole body, and,
+to say all in one word, are most wholesome and
+salubrious.&rdquo;&nbsp; The east wind, like the fashion of
+book-collecting, has altered in character a good deal since the
+days when Naud&eacute; was librarian to Cardinal Mazarin.&nbsp;
+One might as well repeat the learned Isidorus his counsels about
+the panels of green marble (that refreshes the eye), and Boethius
+his censures on library walls of ivory and glass, as fall back on
+the ancient ideas of librarians dead and gone.</p>
+<p>The amateur, then, is the person we have in our eye, and
+especially the bibliophile who has but lately been bitten with
+this pleasant mania of collecting.&nbsp; We would teach him how
+to arrange and keep his books orderly and in good case, and would
+tell him what to buy and what to avoid.&nbsp; By the
+<i>library</i> we do not understand a study where no one goes,
+and where the master of the house keeps his boots, an assortment
+of walking-sticks, the &ldquo;Waverley Novels,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Pearson on the Creed,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hume&rsquo;s
+Essays,&rdquo; and a collection of sermons.&nbsp; In, alas! too
+many English homes, the Library is no more than this, and each
+generation passes without adding a book, except now and then a
+Bradshaw or a railway novel, to the collection on the
+shelves.&nbsp; The success, perhaps, of circulating libraries,
+or, it may be, the Aryan tendencies of our race, &ldquo;which
+does not read, and lives <a name="page34"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 34</span>in the open air,&rdquo; have made
+books the rarest of possessions in many houses.&nbsp; There are
+relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are
+fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly
+great-grandfather, and these, with a few odd numbers of
+magazines, a few primers and manuals, some sermons and novels,
+make up the ordinary library of an English household.&nbsp; But
+the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be satisfied
+with these commonplace supplies.&nbsp; He has a taste for books
+more or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in short, for
+books, in the fabrication of which <i>art</i> has not been
+absent.&nbsp; He loves to have his study, like Montaigne&rsquo;s,
+remote from the interruption of servants, wife, and children; a
+kind of shrine, where he may be at home with himself, with the
+illustrious dead, and with the genius of literature.&nbsp; The
+room may look east, west, or south, provided that it be dry,
+warm, light, and airy.&nbsp; Among the many enemies of books the
+first great foe is <i>damp</i>, and we must describe the
+necessary precautions to be taken against this peril.&nbsp; We
+will suppose that the amateur keeps his ordinary working books,
+modern tomes, and all that serve him as literary tools, on open
+shelves.&nbsp; These may reach the roof, if he has books to fill
+them, and it is only necessary to see that the back of the
+bookcases <a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+35</span>are slightly removed from contact with the walls.&nbsp;
+The more precious and beautifully bound treasures will naturally
+be stored in a case with closely-fitting glass-doors. <a
+name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2"
+class="citation">[2]</a>&nbsp; The shelves should be lined with
+velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books
+may not suffer from contact with the wood.&nbsp; A leather
+lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep
+out humidity.&nbsp; Most writers recommend that the bookcases
+should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned
+oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany,
+satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth.&nbsp; These
+close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it
+is fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic scents of cedar,
+sandal wood, and Russia leather.&nbsp; There was once a
+bibliophile who said that a man could only love one book at a
+time, and the darling of the moment he used to carry about in a
+charming leather case.&nbsp; Others, men of few books, preserve
+them in long boxes with glass fronts, which may be removed <a
+name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>from place to
+place as readily as the household gods of Laban.&nbsp; But the
+amateur who not only worships but reads books, needs larger
+receptacles; and in the open oak cases for modern authors, and
+for books with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed
+<i>armoire</i> for books of rarity and price, he will find, we
+think, the most useful mode of arranging his treasures.&nbsp; His
+shelves will decline in height from the lowest, where huge folios
+stand at case, to the top ranges, while Elzevirs repose on a
+level with the eye.&nbsp; It is well that each upper shelf should
+have a leather fringe to keep the dust away.</p>
+<p>As to the shape of the bookcases, and the furniture, and
+ornaments of the library, every amateur will please
+himself.&nbsp; Perhaps the satin-wood or mahogany tabernacles of
+rare books are best made after the model of what
+furniture-dealers indifferently call the &ldquo;Queen Anne&rdquo;
+or the &ldquo;Chippendale&rdquo; style.&nbsp; There is a pleasant
+quaintness in the carved architectural ornaments of the top, and
+the inlaid flowers of marquetry go well with the pretty florid
+editions of the last century, the books that were illustrated by
+Stothard and Gravelot.&nbsp; Ebony suits theological tomes very
+well, especially when they are bound in white vellum.&nbsp; As to
+furniture, people who can afford it will imitate the arrangements
+of Lucullus, in Mr. Hill Burton&rsquo;s <a
+name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>charming
+volume &ldquo;The Book-hunter&rdquo; (Blackwood, Edinburgh,
+1862).&mdash;&ldquo;Everything is of perfect finish,&mdash;the
+mahogany-railed gallery, the tiny ladders, the broad winged
+lecterns, with leathern cushions on the edges to keep the wood
+from grazing the rich bindings, the books themselves, each shelf
+uniform with its facings, or rather backings, like well-dressed
+lines at a review.&rdquo;&nbsp; The late Sir William
+Stirling-Maxwell, a famous bibliophile, invented a very nice
+library chair.&nbsp; It is most comfortable to sit on; and, as
+the top of the back is broad and flat, it can be used as a ladder
+of two high steps, when one wants to reach a book on a lofty
+shelf.&nbsp; A kind of square revolving bookcase, an American
+invention, manufactured by Messrs. Tr&uuml;bner, is useful to the
+working man of letters.&nbsp; Made in oak, stained green, it is
+not unsightly.&nbsp; As to ornaments, every man to his
+taste.&nbsp; You may have a &ldquo;pallid bust of Pallas&rdquo;
+above your classical collection, or fill the niches in a shrine
+of old French light literature, pastoral and comedy, with
+delicate shepherdesses in Chelsea china.&nbsp; On such matters a
+modest writer, like Mr. Jingle when Mr. Pickwick ordered dinner,
+&ldquo;will not presume to dictate.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Next to damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of
+books.&nbsp; At short intervals, books and shelves ought to be
+dusted by the amateur himself.&nbsp; <a name="page38"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 38</span>Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of
+his person, and of volumes lent to him, was careful about the
+cleanliness of his own books.&nbsp; Boswell found him one day
+with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his library,
+as was his custom.&nbsp; There is nothing so hideous as a dirty
+thumb-mark on a white page.&nbsp; These marks are commonly made,
+not because the reader has unwashed hands, but because the dust
+which settles on the top edge of books falls in, and is smudged
+when they are opened.&nbsp; Gilt-top edges should be smoothed
+with a handkerchief, and a small brush should be kept for
+brushing the tops of books with rough edges, before they are
+opened.&nbsp; But it were well that all books had the top edge
+gilt.&nbsp; There is no better preservative against dust.&nbsp;
+Dust not only dirties books, it seems to supply what Mr. Spencer
+would call a fitting environment for book-worms.&nbsp; The works
+of book-worms speak for themselves, and are manifest to
+all.&nbsp; How many a rare and valuable volume is spoiled by neat
+round holes drilled through cover and leaves!&nbsp; But as to the
+nature of your worm, authorities differ greatly.&nbsp; The
+ancients knew this plague, of which Lucian speaks.&nbsp; Mr.
+Blades mentions a white book-worm, slain by the librarian of the
+Bodleian.&nbsp; In Byzantium the black sort prevailed.&nbsp;
+Evenus, the grammarian, <a name="page39"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 39</span>wrote an epigram against the black
+book-worm (&ldquo;Anthol.&nbsp; Pal.,&rdquo; ix. 251):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies
+that lurkest,<br />
+Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil;<br />
+Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm! wert thou born for the evil
+thou workest?<br />
+Wherefore thine own foul form shap&rsquo;st thou with envious
+toil?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The learned Mentzelius says he hath heard the book-worm crow
+like a cock unto his mate, and &ldquo;I knew not,&rdquo; says he,
+&ldquo;whether some local fowl was clamouring or whether there
+was but a beating in mine ears.&nbsp; Even at that moment, all
+uncertain as I was, I perceived, in the paper whereon I was
+writing, a little insect that ceased not to carol like very
+chanticleer, until, taking a magnifying glass, I assiduously
+observed him.&nbsp; He is about the bigness of a mite, and
+carries a grey crest, and the head low, bowed over the bosom; as
+to his crowing noise, it comes of his clashing his wings against
+each other with an incessant din.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thus far
+Mentzelius, and more to the same purpose, as may be read in the
+&ldquo;Memoirs of famous Foreign Academies&rdquo; (Dijon,
+1755&ndash;59, 13 vol. in quarto).&nbsp; But, in our times, the
+learned Mr. Blades having a desire to exhibit book-worms in the
+body to the Caxtonians at the Caxton <a name="page40"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 40</span>celebration, could find few men that
+had so much as seen a book-worm, much less heard him utter his
+native wood-notes wild.&nbsp; Yet, in his &ldquo;Enemies of
+Books,&rdquo; he describes some rare encounters with the
+worm.&nbsp; Dirty books, damp books, dusty books, and books that
+the owner never opens, are most exposed to the enemy; and
+&ldquo;the worm, the proud worm, is the conqueror still,&rdquo;
+as a didactic poet sings, in an ode on man&rsquo;s
+mortality.&nbsp; As we have quoted Mentzelius, it may not be
+amiss to give D&rsquo;Alembert&rsquo;s theory of book-worms:
+&ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that a little beetle
+lays her eggs in books in August, thence is hatched a mite, like
+the cheese-mite, which devours books merely because it is
+compelled to gnaw its way out into the air.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but
+D&rsquo;Alembert adds that they cannot endure absinthe.&nbsp; Mr.
+Blades finds too that they disdain to devour our adulterate
+modern paper.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say, shall I sing of rats,&rdquo; asked Grainger, when
+reading to Johnson his epic, the &ldquo;Sugar-cane.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Doctor; and though rats are the foe of
+the bibliophile, at least as much as of the sugar-planter, we do
+not propose to sing of them.&nbsp; M. Fertiault has done so
+already in &ldquo;Les Sonnets d&rsquo;un Bibliophile,&rdquo;
+where the reader must be pleased with the beautiful etchings of
+rats devouring an illuminated MS., and battening on <a
+name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>morocco
+bindings stamped with the bees of De Thou.&nbsp; It is
+unnecessary and it would be undignified, to give hints on
+rat-catching, but the amateur must not forget that these animals
+have a passion for bindings.</p>
+<p>The book-collector must avoid gas, which deposits a filthy
+coat of oil that catches dust.&nbsp; Mr. Blades found that three
+jets of gas in a small room soon reduced the leather on his
+book-shelves to a powder of the consistency of snuff, and made
+the backs of books come away in his hand.&nbsp; Shaded lamps give
+the best and most suitable light for the library.&nbsp; As to the
+risks which books run at the hands of the owner himself, we
+surely need not repeat the advice of Richard de Bury.&nbsp;
+Living in an age when tubs (if not unknown as M. Michelet
+declares) were far from being common, the old collector inveighed
+against the dirty hands of readers, and against their habit of
+marking their place in a book with filthy straws, or setting down
+a beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages
+open.&nbsp; But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware
+of men who love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write
+notes over the latter, and light their pipes with the
+former.&nbsp; After seeing the wreck of a book which these
+persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine Greek
+hyperbole.&nbsp; The Greeks did not <a name="page42"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 42</span>speak of &ldquo;thumbing&rdquo; but
+of &ldquo;walking up and down&rdquo; on a volume
+(<i>&pi;&alpha;&tau;&epsilon;&#8150;&nu;</i>).&nbsp; To such
+fellows it matters not that they make a book dirty and greasy,
+cutting the pages with their fingers, and holding the boards over
+the fire till they crack.&nbsp; All these slatternly practices,
+though they destroy a book as surely as the flames of
+C&aelig;sar&rsquo;s soldiers at Alexandria, seem fine manly acts
+to the grobians who use them.&nbsp; What says Jules Janin, who
+has written &ldquo;Contre l&rsquo;indifference des
+Philistins,&rdquo; &ldquo;il faut &agrave; l&rsquo;homme sage et
+studieux un tome honorable et digne de sa louange.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The amateur, and all decent men, will beware of lending books to
+such rude workers; and this consideration brings us to these
+great foes of books, the borrowers and robbers.&nbsp; The lending
+of books, and of other property, has been defended by some great
+authorities; thus Panurge himself says, &ldquo;it would prove
+much more easy in nature to have fish entertained in the air, and
+bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or
+tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not
+lend.&rdquo;&nbsp; Pirckheimer, too, for whom Albert Durer
+designed a book-plate, was a lender, and took for his device
+<i>Sibi et Amicis</i>; and <i>Jo. Grolierii et amicorum</i>, was
+the motto of the renowned Grolier, whom mistaken writers vainly
+but frequently report to have been a bookbinder.&nbsp; But as Mr.
+Leicester Warren <a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+43</span>says, in his &ldquo;Study of Book-plates&rdquo;
+(Pearson, 1880), &ldquo;Christian Charles de Savigny leaves all
+the rest behind, exclaiming <i>non mihi sed
+aliis</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the majority of amateurs have chosen
+wiser, though more churlish devices, as &ldquo;the ungodly
+borroweth and payeth not again,&rdquo; or &ldquo;go to them that
+sell, and buy for yourselves.&rdquo;&nbsp; David Garrick engraved
+on his book-plate, beside a bust of Shakspeare, these words of
+M&eacute;nage, &ldquo;La premi&egrave;re chose qu&rsquo;on doit
+faire, quand on a emprunte&rsquo; un livre, c&rsquo;est de le
+lire, afin de pouvoir le rendre pl&ucirc;t&ocirc;t.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+But the borrower is so minded that the last thing he thinks of is
+to read a borrowed book, and the penultimate subject of his
+reflections is its restoration.&nbsp; M&eacute;nage (Menagiana,
+Paris, 1729, vol. i. p. 265), mentions, as if it were a notable
+misdeed, this of Angelo Politian&rsquo;s, &ldquo;he borrowed a
+&lsquo;Lucretius&rsquo; from Pomponius Laetus, and kept it for
+four years.&rdquo;&nbsp; Four years! in the sight of the borrower
+it is but a moment.&nbsp; M&eacute;nage reports that a friend
+kept his &ldquo;Pausanias&rdquo; for three years, whereas four
+months was long enough.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;At quarto saltem mense redire
+decet.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There is no satisfaction in lending a book; for it is rarely
+that borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for
+new stores, as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr.
+Johnson, <a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+44</span>who &ldquo;greased and dogs-eared such volumes as were
+confided to his tender mercies, with the same indifference
+wherewith he singed his own wigs.&rdquo;&nbsp; But there is a
+race of mortals more annoying to a conscientious man than
+borrowers.&nbsp; These are the spontaneous lenders, who insist
+that you shall borrow their tomes.&nbsp; For my own part, when I
+am oppressed with the charity of such, I lock their books up in a
+drawer, and behold them not again till the day of their
+return.&nbsp; There is no security against borrowers, unless a
+man like Guibert de Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court steadfastly refuses
+to lend.&nbsp; The device of Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court was <i>un
+livre est un ami qui ne change jamais</i>.&nbsp; But he knew that
+our books change when they have been borrowed, like our friends
+when they have been married; when &ldquo;a lady borrows
+them,&rdquo; as the fairy queen says in the ballad of
+&ldquo;Tamlane.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;But had I kenn&rsquo;d, Tamlane,&rdquo; she
+says,<br />
+&ldquo;A lady wad borrowed thee,<br />
+I wad ta&rsquo;en out thy twa gray een,<br />
+Put in twa een o&rsquo; tree!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had I but kenn&rsquo;d, Tamlane,&rdquo; she says,<br />
+&ldquo;Before ye came frae hame,<br />
+I wad ta&rsquo;en out your heart o&rsquo; flesh,<br />
+Put in a heart o&rsquo; stane!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Above the lintel of his library door,
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court had this couplet carved&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+45</span>&ldquo;Tel est le triste sort de tout livre
+pr&ecirc;t&eacute;,<br />
+Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est
+g&acirc;t&eacute;.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own
+daughter.&nbsp; Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of
+little value.&nbsp; Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court frowned, and led
+his friend beneath the doorway, pointing to the motto.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said M. Lacroix, &ldquo;but I thought that
+verse applied to every one but me.&rdquo;&nbsp; So
+Pix&eacute;r&eacute;court made him a present of the volume.</p>
+<p>We cannot all imitate this &ldquo;immense&rdquo; but unamiable
+amateur.&nbsp; Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves
+with the inventions of book-plates, quaint representations,
+perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the
+possession of their own dear volumes.&nbsp; Mr. Leicester Warren
+and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender
+works of art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and
+may formulate his own anathemas on people who borrow and restore
+not again.&nbsp; The process is futile, but may comfort the
+heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks were wont
+to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of
+Demeter.&nbsp; Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the
+design of a book-plate; and for such as love and collect rare
+editions of &ldquo;Homer,&rdquo; I venture to suggest this motto,
+which may move the heart of <a name="page46"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 46</span>the borrower to send back an Aldine
+copy of the epic&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><i>&pi;&#8051;&mu;&psi;&omicron;&nu;
+&#7952;&pi;&iota;&sigma;&tau;&alpha;&mu;&#8051;&nu;&omega;&sigmaf;</i>,
+<i>&delta;&#8059;&nu;&alpha;&sigma;&alpha;&iota;
+&gamma;&#8049;&rho;</i><br />
+<i>&#8037;&sigmaf; &kappa;&epsilon; &gamma;&#8049;&lambda;&rsquo;
+&#7936;&sigma;&kappa;&eta;&theta;&#8052;&sigmaf; &#7971;&nu;
+&pi;&alpha;&tau;&rho;&#8055;&delta;&alpha;
+&gamma;&alpha;&#8150;&alpha;&nu;
+&#7989;&kappa;&eta;&tau;&alpha;&iota;</i>. <a
+name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3"
+class="citation">[3]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, &ldquo;The Enemies
+of Books&rdquo; (Tr&uuml;bner), makes no account of the
+book-thief or biblioklept.&nbsp; &ldquo;If they injure the
+owners,&rdquo; says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, &ldquo;they
+do no harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them
+from one set of book-shelves to another.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+sentence has naturally caused us to reflect on the ethical
+character of the biblioklept.&nbsp; He is not always a bad
+man.&nbsp; In old times, when language had its delicacies, and
+moralists were not devoid of sensibility, the French did not say
+&ldquo;un voleur de livres,&rdquo; but &ldquo;un chipeur de
+livres;&rdquo; as the papers call lady shoplifters
+&ldquo;kleptomaniacs.&rdquo;&nbsp; There are distinctions.&nbsp;
+M. Jules Janin mentions a great Parisian bookseller who had an
+amiable weakness.&nbsp; He was a bibliokleptomaniac.&nbsp; His
+first motion when he saw a book within reach was to put it in his
+pocket.&nbsp; Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was
+lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it
+down to the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price.&nbsp; When
+<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>he went to
+a private view of books about to be sold, the officials at the
+door would ask him, as he was going out, if he did not happen to
+have an Elzevir Horace or an Aldine Ovid in his pocket.&nbsp;
+Then he would search those receptacles and exclaim, &ldquo;Yes,
+yes, here it is; so much obliged to you; I am so
+absent.&rdquo;&nbsp; M. Janin mentions an English noble, a
+&ldquo;Sir Fitzgerald,&rdquo; who had the same tastes, but who
+unluckily fell into the hands of the police.&nbsp; Yet M. Janin
+has a tenderness for the book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover
+of books.&nbsp; The moral position of the malefactor is so
+delicate and difficult that we shall attempt to treat of it in
+the severe, though <i>rococo</i>, manner of Aristotle&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Ethics.&rdquo;&nbsp; Here follows an extract from the lost
+Aristotelian treatise &ldquo;Concerning Books&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Among the contemplative virtues we reckon
+the love of books.&nbsp; Now this virtue, like courage or
+liberality, has its mean, its excess, and its defect.&nbsp; The
+defect is indifference, and the man who is defective as to the
+love of books has no name in common parlance.&nbsp; Therefore, we
+may call him the Robustious Philistine.&nbsp; This man will cut
+the leaves of his own or his friend&rsquo;s volumes with the
+butter-knife at breakfast.&nbsp; Also he is just the person
+wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term
+&lsquo;fly-leaves,&rsquo; and to stick the <a
+name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+48</span>&lsquo;fly-leaves&rsquo; of his volumes full of
+fly-hooks.&nbsp; He also loves dogs&rsquo;-ears, and marks his
+place with his pipe when he shuts a book in a hurry; or he will
+set the leg of his chair on a page to keep it open.&nbsp; He
+praises those who tear off margins for pipe-lights, and he makes
+cigarettes with the tissue-paper that covers engravings.&nbsp;
+When his books are bound, he sees that the margin is cut to the
+quick.&nbsp; He tells you too, that &lsquo;<i>he</i> buys books
+to read them.&rsquo; But he does not say why he thinks it needful
+to spoil them.&nbsp; Also he will drag off bindings&mdash;or
+should we perhaps call this crime
+<i>&theta;&eta;&rho;&iota;&omicron;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf;</i>, or
+brutality, rather than mere vice? for vice is essentially human,
+but to tear off bindings is bestial.&nbsp; Thus they still speak
+of a certain monster who lived during the French Revolution, and
+who, having purchased volumes attired in morocco, and stamped
+with the devices of the oligarchs, would rip off the leather or
+vellum, and throw them into the fire or out of the window, saying
+that &lsquo;now he could read with unwashed hands at his
+ease.&rsquo;&nbsp; Such a person, then, is the man indifferent to
+books, and he sins by way of defect, being deficient in the
+contemplative virtue of book-loving.&nbsp; As to the man who is
+exactly in the right mean, we call him the book-lover.&nbsp; His
+happiness consists not in reading, which is an <a
+name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>active
+virtue, but in the contemplation of bindings, and illustrations,
+and title-pages.&nbsp; Thus his felicity partakes of the nature
+of the bliss we attribute to the gods, for that also is
+contemplative, and we call the book-lover &lsquo;happy,&rsquo;
+and even &lsquo;blessed,&rsquo; but within the limits of mortal
+happiness.&nbsp; But, just as in the matter of absence of fear
+there is a mean which we call courage, and a defect which we call
+cowardice, and an excess which is known as foolhardiness; so it
+is in the case of the love of books.&nbsp; As to the mean, we
+have seen that it is the virtue of the true book-lover, while the
+defect constitutes the sin of the Robustious Philistine.&nbsp;
+But the extreme is found in covetousness, and the covetous man
+who is in the extreme state of book-loving, is the biblioklept,
+or book-stealer.&nbsp; Now his vice shows itself, not in
+contemplation (for of contemplation there can be no excess), but
+in action.&nbsp; For books are procured, as we say, by purchase,
+or by barter, and these are voluntary exchanges, both the seller
+and the buyer being willing to deal.&nbsp; But books are, again,
+procured in another way, by involuntary contract&mdash;that is,
+when the owner of the book is unwilling to part with it, but he
+whose own the book is not is determined to take it.&nbsp; The
+book-stealer is such a man as this, and he possesses himself of
+books with which the owner does not intend to <a
+name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>part, by
+virtue of a series of involuntary contracts.&nbsp; Again, the
+question may be raised, whether is the Robustious Philistine who
+despises books, or the biblioklept who adores them out of measure
+and excessively, the worse citizen?&nbsp; Now, if we are to look
+to the consequences of actions only (as the followers of Bentham
+advise), clearly the Robustious Philistine is the worse citizen,
+for he mangles, and dirties, and destroys books which it is the
+interest of the State to preserve.&nbsp; But the biblioklept
+treasures and adorns the books he has acquired; and when he dies,
+or goes to prison, the State receives the benefit at his
+sale.&nbsp; Thus Libri, who was the greatest of biblioklepts,
+rescued many of the books he stole from dirt and misuse, and had
+them bound royally in purple and gold.&nbsp; Also, it may be
+argued that books naturally belong to him who can appreciate
+them; and if good books are in a dull or indifferent man&rsquo;s
+keeping, this is the sort of slavery which we call
+&ldquo;unnatural&rdquo; in our <i>Politics</i>, and which is not
+to be endured.&nbsp; Shall we say, then, that the Robustious
+Philistine is the worse citizen, while the Biblioklept is the
+worse man?&nbsp; But this is perhaps matter for a separate
+disquisition.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This fragment of the lost Aristotelian treatise
+&ldquo;Concerning Books,&rdquo; shows what a difficulty the
+Stagirite had in determining the precise nature of <a
+name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>the moral
+offence of the biblioklept.&nbsp; Indeed, both as a collector and
+as an intuitive moralist, Aristotle must have found it rather
+difficult to condemn the book-thief.&nbsp; He, doubtless, went on
+to draw distinctions between the man who steals books to sell
+them again for mere pecuniary profit (which he would call
+&ldquo;chrematistic,&rdquo; or &ldquo;unnatural,&rdquo;
+book-stealing), and the man who steals them because he feels that
+he is their proper and natural possessor.&nbsp; The same
+distinction is taken by Jules Janin, who was a more constant
+student of Horace than of Aristotle.&nbsp; In his imaginary
+dialogue of bibliophiles, Janin introduces a character who
+announces the death of M. Libri.&nbsp; The tolerant person who
+brings the sad news proposes &ldquo;to cast a few flowers on the
+melancholy tomb.&nbsp; He was a bibliophile, after all.&nbsp;
+What do you say to it?&nbsp; Many a good fellow has stolen books,
+and died in grace at the last.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;
+replies the president of the club, &ldquo;but the good fellows
+did not sell the books they stole . . . Cest une grande honte,
+une grande mis&egrave;re.&rdquo;&nbsp; This Libri was an
+Inspector-General of French Libraries under Louis Philippe.&nbsp;
+When he was tried, in 1848, it was calculated that the sum of his
+known thefts amounted to &pound;20,000.&nbsp; Many of his
+robberies escaped notice at the time.&nbsp; It is not long since
+Lord Ashburnham, according to a <a name="page52"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 52</span>French journal, &ldquo;Le
+Livre,&rdquo; found in his collection some fragments of a
+Pentateuch.&nbsp; These relics had been in the possession of the
+Lyons Library, whence Libri stole them in 1847.&nbsp; The late
+Lord Ashburnham bought them, without the faintest idea of
+Libri&rsquo;s dishonesty; and when, after eleven years, the
+present peer discovered the proper owners of his treasure, he
+immediately restored the Pentateuch to the Lyons Library.</p>
+<p>Many eminent characters have been biblioklepts.&nbsp; When
+Innocent X. was still Monsignor Pamphilio, he stole a
+book&mdash;so says Tallemant des R&eacute;aux&mdash;from Du
+Monstier, the painter.&nbsp; The amusing thing is that Du
+Monstier himself was a book-thief.&nbsp; He used to tell how he
+had lifted a book, of which he had long been in search, from a
+stall on the Pont-Neuf; &ldquo;but,&rdquo; says Tallemant (whom
+Janin does not seem to have consulted), &ldquo;there are many
+people who don&rsquo;t think it thieving to steal a book unless
+you sell it afterwards.&rdquo;&nbsp; But Du Monstier took a less
+liberal view where his own books were concerned.&nbsp; The
+Cardinal Barberini came to Paris as legate, and brought in his
+suite Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards became Innocent
+X.&nbsp; The Cardinal paid a visit to Du Monstier in his studio,
+where Monsignor Pamphilio spied, on a table,
+&ldquo;L&rsquo;Histoire du Concile de Trent&rdquo;&mdash;the good
+edition, the London one.&nbsp; <a name="page53"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 53</span>&ldquo;What a pity,&rdquo; thought
+the young ecclesiastic, &ldquo;that such a man should be, by some
+accident, the possessor of so valuable a book.&rdquo;&nbsp; With
+these sentiments Monsignor Pamphilio slipped the work under his
+<i>soutane</i>.&nbsp; But little Du Monstier observed him, and
+said furiously to the Cardinal, that a holy man should not bring
+thieves and robbers in his company.&nbsp; With these words, and
+with others of a violent and libellous character, he recovered
+the &ldquo;History of the Council of Trent,&rdquo; and kicked out
+the future Pope.&nbsp; Amelot de la Houssaie traces to this
+incident the hatred borne by Innocent X. to the Crown and the
+people of France.&nbsp; Another Pope, while only a cardinal,
+stole a book from M&eacute;nage&mdash;so M. Janin
+reports&mdash;but we have not been able to discover
+M&eacute;nage&rsquo;s own account of the larceny.&nbsp; The
+anecdotist is not so truthful that cardinals need flush a deeper
+scarlet, like the roses in Bion&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lament for
+Adonis,&rdquo; on account of a scandal resting on the authority
+of M&eacute;nage.&nbsp; Among Royal persons, Catherine de Medici,
+according to Brant&ocirc;me, was a biblioklept.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+Marshal Strozzi had a very fine library, and after his death the
+Queen-Mother seized it, promising some day to pay the value to
+his son, who never got a farthing of the money.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+Ptolemies, too, were thieves on a large scale.&nbsp; A department
+of the Alexandrian Library was <a name="page54"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 54</span>called &ldquo;The Books from the
+Ships,&rdquo; and was filled with rare volumes stolen from
+passengers in vessels that touched at the port.&nbsp; True, the
+owners were given copies of their ancient MSS., but the exchange,
+as Aristotle says, was an &ldquo;involuntary&rdquo; one, and not
+distinct from robbery.</p>
+<p>The great pattern of biblioklepts, a man who carried his
+passion to the most regrettable excesses, was a Spanish priest,
+Don Vincente, of the convent of Pobla, in Aragon.&nbsp; When the
+Spanish revolution despoiled the convent libraries, Don Vincente
+established himself at Barcelona, under the pillars of Los
+Encantes, where are the stalls of the merchants of
+<i>bric-&agrave;-brac</i> and the seats of them that sell
+books.&nbsp; In a gloomy den the Don stored up treasures which he
+hated to sell.&nbsp; Once he was present at an auction where he
+was out-bid in the competition for a rare, perhaps a unique,
+volume.&nbsp; Three nights after that, the people of Barcelona
+were awakened by cries of &ldquo;Fire!&rdquo;&nbsp; The house and
+shop of the man who had bought &ldquo;Ordinacions per los
+gloriosos reys de Arago&rdquo; were blazing.&nbsp; When the fire
+was extinguished, the body of the owner of the house was found,
+with a pipe in his blackened hand, and some money beside
+him.&nbsp; Every one said, &ldquo;He must have set the house on
+fire with a spark from his pipe.&rdquo;&nbsp; Time went on, and
+week by <a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+55</span>week the police found the bodies of slain men, now in
+the street, now in a ditch, now in the river.&nbsp; There were
+young men and old, all had been harmless and inoffensive in their
+lives, and&mdash;all had been <i>bibliophiles</i>.&nbsp; A dagger
+in an invisible hand had reached their hearts but the assassin
+had spared their purses, money, and rings.&nbsp; An organised
+search was made in the city, and the shop of Don Vincente was
+examined.&nbsp; There, in a hidden recess, the police discovered
+the copy of &ldquo;Ordinacions per los gloriosis reys de
+Arago,&rdquo; which ought by rights to have been burned with the
+house of its purchaser.&nbsp; Don Vincente was asked how he got
+the book.&nbsp; He replied in a quiet voice, demanded that his
+collection should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and then
+confessed a long array of crimes.&nbsp; He had strangled his
+rival, stolen the &ldquo;Ordinacions,&rdquo; and burned the
+house.&nbsp; The slain men were people who had bought from him
+books which he really could not bear to part with.&nbsp; At his
+trial his counsel tried to prove that his confession was false,
+and that he might have got his books by honest means.&nbsp; It
+was objected that there was in the world only one book printed by
+Lambert Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen
+this, the only copy, from the library where it was
+treasured.&nbsp; The defendant&rsquo;s counsel proved <a
+name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>that there
+was another copy in the Louvre; that, therefore, there might be
+more, and that the defendant&rsquo;s might have been honestly
+procured.&nbsp; Here Don Vincente, previously callous, uttered an
+hysterical cry.&nbsp; Said the Alcalde:&mdash;&ldquo;At last,
+Vincente, you begin to understand the enormity of your
+offence?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or Alcalde, my error
+was clumsy indeed.&nbsp; If you only knew how miserable I
+am!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;If human justice prove inflexible, there
+is another justice whose pity is inexhaustible.&nbsp; Repentance
+is never too late.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or Alcalde,
+but my copy was not unique!&rdquo;&nbsp; With the story of this
+impenitent thief we may close the roll of biblioklepts, though
+Dibdin pretends that Garrick was of the company, and stole
+Alleyne&rsquo;s books at Dulwich.</p>
+<p>There is a thievish nature more hateful than even the
+biblioklept.&nbsp; The Book-Ghoul is he who combines the larceny
+of the biblioklept with the abominable wickedness of breaking up
+and mutilating the volumes from which he steals.&nbsp; He is a
+collector of title-pages, frontispieces, illustrations, and
+book-plates.&nbsp; He prowls furtively among public and private
+libraries, inserting wetted threads, which slowly eat away the
+illustrations he covets; and he broods, like the obscene demon of
+Arabian superstitions, over the fragments of the mighty
+dead.&nbsp; His disgusting tastes vary.&nbsp; He <a
+name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>prepares
+books for the American market.&nbsp; Christmas books are sold in
+the States stuffed with pictures cut out of honest volumes.&nbsp;
+Here is a quotation from an American paper:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Another style of Christmas book which
+deserves to be mentioned, though it is out of the reach of any
+but the very rich, is the historical or literary work enriched
+with inserted plates.&nbsp; There has never, to our knowledge,
+been anything offered in America so supremely excellent as the
+$5000 book on Washington, we think&mdash;exhibited by Boston last
+year, but not a few fine specimens of books of this class are at
+present offered to purchasers.&nbsp; Scribner has a beautiful
+copy of Forster&rsquo;s &lsquo;Life of Dickens,&rsquo; enlarged
+from three volumes octavo to nine volumes quarto, by taking to
+pieces, remounting, and inlaying.&nbsp; It contains some eight
+hundred engravings, portraits, views, playbills, title-pages,
+catalogues, proof illustrations from Dickens&rsquo;s works, a set
+of the Onwhyn plates, rare engravings by Cruikshank and
+&lsquo;Phiz,&rsquo; and autograph letters.&nbsp; Though this
+volume does not compare with Harvey&rsquo;s Dickens, offered for
+$1750 two years ago, it is an excellent specimen of books of this
+sort, and the veriest tyro in bibliographical affairs knows how
+scarce are becoming the early editions of Dickens&rsquo;s works
+and the <a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+58</span>plates illustrating them. <a name="citation4"></a><a
+href="#footnote4" class="citation">[4]</a>&nbsp; Anything about
+Dickens in the beginning of his career is a sound investment from
+a business point of view.&nbsp; Another work of the same sort,
+valued at $240, is Lady Trevelyan&rsquo;s edition of Macaulay,
+illustrated with portraits, many of them very rare.&nbsp; Even
+cheaper, all things considered, is an extra-illustrated copy of
+the &lsquo;Histoire de la Gravure,&rsquo; which, besides its
+seventy-three reproductions of old engravings, is enriched with
+two hundred fine specimens of the early engravers, many of the
+impressions being in first and second states.&nbsp; At $155 such
+a book is really a bargain, especially for any one who is forming
+a collection of engravings.&nbsp; Another delightful work is the
+library edition of Bray&rsquo;s &lsquo;Evelyn,&rsquo; illustrated
+with some two hundred and fifty portraits and views, and valued
+at $175; and still another is Boydell&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Milton,&rsquo; with plates after Westall, and further
+illustrations in the shape of twenty-eight portraits of the
+painter and one hundred and eighty-one plates, and many of them
+before letter.&nbsp; The price of this book is $325.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>But few book-ghouls are worse than the moral ghoul.&nbsp; He
+defaces, with a pen, the passages, in some precious volume, which
+do not meet his idea of moral propriety.&nbsp; I have a
+Pine&rsquo;s &ldquo;Horace,&rdquo; <a name="page59"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 59</span>with the engravings from gems, which
+has fallen into the hands of a moral ghoul.&nbsp; Not only has he
+obliterated the verses which hurt his delicate sense, but he has
+actually scraped away portions of the classical figures, and
+&ldquo;the breasts of the nymphs in the brake.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+soul of Tartuffe had entered into the body of a sinner of the
+last century.&nbsp; The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages and
+colophons.&nbsp; The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials
+out of manuscripts.&nbsp; The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic
+ghoul of our own days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books
+for the purpose of cribbing the book-plates.&nbsp; An old
+&ldquo;Complaint of a Book-plate,&rdquo; in dread of the wet
+sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by Mr. Austin
+Dobson:&mdash;<a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5"
+class="citation">[5]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">THE BOOK-PLATE&rsquo;S
+PETITION.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>By a Gentleman of the
+Temple</i>.</p>
+<p>While cynic <span class="smcap">Charles</span> still
+trimm&rsquo;d the vane<br />
+&rsquo;Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,<br />
+In days that shocked <span class="smcap">John Evelyn</span>,<br
+/>
+My First Possessor fix&rsquo;d me in.<br />
+In days of Dutchmen and of frost,<br />
+The narrow sea with <span class="smcap">James</span> I
+cross&rsquo;d,<br />
+Returning when once more began<br />
+The Age of Saturn and of <span class="smcap">Anne</span>.<br />
+I am a part of all the past;<br />
+I knew the <span class="smcap">Georges</span>, first and last;<br
+/>
+<a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>I have
+been oft where else was none<br />
+Save the great wig of <span class="smcap">Addison</span>;<br />
+And seen on shelves beneath me grope<br />
+The little eager form of <span class="smcap">Pope</span>.<br />
+I lost the Third that own&rsquo;d me when<br />
+French <span class="smcap">Noailles</span> fled at Dettingen;<br
+/>
+The year <span class="smcap">James Wolfe</span> surpris&rsquo;d
+Quebec,<br />
+The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;<br />
+The day that <span class="smcap">William Hogarth</span>
+dy&rsquo;d,<br />
+The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.<br />
+This was a Scholar, one of those<br />
+Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;<br />
+He lov&rsquo;d old Books and nappy ale,<br />
+So liv&rsquo;d at Streatham, next to <span
+class="smcap">Thrale</span>.<br />
+&rsquo;Twas there this stain of grease I boast<br />
+Was made by Dr. <span class="smcap">Johnson&rsquo;s</span>
+toast.<br />
+(He did it, as I think, for Spite;<br />
+My Master call&rsquo;d him Jacobite!)<br />
+And now that I so long to-day<br />
+Have rested post discrimina,<br />
+Safe in the brass-wir&rsquo;d book-case where<br />
+I watch&rsquo;d the Vicar&rsquo;s whit&rsquo;ning hair,<br />
+Must I these travell&rsquo;d bones inter<br />
+In some Collector&rsquo;s sepulchre!<br />
+Must I be torn from hence and thrown<br />
+With frontispiece and colophon!<br />
+With vagrant E&rsquo;s, and I&rsquo;s, and O&rsquo;s,<br />
+The spoil of plunder&rsquo;d Folios!<br />
+With scraps and snippets that to <span class="smcap">Me</span><br
+/>
+Are naught but kitchen company!<br />
+Nay, rather, <span class="smcap">Friend</span>, this favour grant
+me:<br />
+Tear me at once; but don&rsquo;t transplant me.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Cheltenham</span>,
+<i>Sept</i><sup><i>r</i></sup>. 31, 1792.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The conceited ghoul writes his notes across our <a
+name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>fair white
+margins, in pencil, or in more baneful ink.&nbsp; Or he spills
+his ink bottle at large over the pages, as Andr&eacute;
+Ch&eacute;nier&rsquo;s friend served his copy of Malherbe.&nbsp;
+It is scarcely necessary to warn the amateur against the society
+of book-ghouls, who are generally snuffy and foul in appearance,
+and by no means so insinuating as that fair lady-ghoul, Amina, of
+the Arabian Nights.</p>
+<p>Another enemy of books must be mentioned with the delicacy
+that befits the topic.&nbsp; Almost all women are the inveterate
+foes, not of novels, of course, nor peerages and popular volumes
+of history, but of books worthy of the name.&nbsp; It is true
+that Isabelle d&rsquo;Este, and Madame de Pompadour, and Madame
+de Maintenon, were collectors; and, doubtless, there are other
+brilliant exceptions to a general rule.&nbsp; But, broadly
+speaking, women detest the books which the collector desires and
+admires.&nbsp; First, they don&rsquo;t understand them; second,
+they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
+money; and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money
+expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper
+scored with crabbed characters.&nbsp; Thus ladies wage a
+skirmishing war against booksellers&rsquo; catalogues, and
+history speaks of husbands who have had to practise the guile of
+smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase across their own
+frontier.&nbsp; <a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+62</span>Thus many married men are reduced to collecting
+Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot
+smuggle a folio volume easily.&nbsp; This inveterate dislike of
+books often produces a very deplorable result when an old
+collector dies.&nbsp; His &ldquo;womankind,&rdquo; as the
+Antiquary called them, sell all his treasures for the price of
+waste-paper, to the nearest country bookseller.&nbsp; It is a
+melancholy duty which forces one to introduce such topics into a
+volume on &ldquo;Art at Home.&rdquo;&nbsp; But this little work
+will not have been written in vain if it persuades ladies who
+inherit books not to sell them hastily, without taking good and
+disinterested opinion as to their value.&nbsp; They often dispose
+of treasures worth thousands, for a ten pound note, and take
+pride in the bargain.&nbsp; Here, let history mention with due
+honour the paragon of her sex and the pattern to all wives of
+book-collecting men&mdash;Madame Fertiault.&nbsp; It is thus that
+she addresses her lord in a charming triolet (&ldquo;Les Amoureux
+du Livre,&rdquo; p. xxxv):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!<br
+/>
+Moi, j&rsquo;ai ton coeur, et sans partage.<br />
+Puis-je d&eacute;sirer davantage?<br />
+Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!<br />
+Heureuse de te voir joyeux,<br />
+Je t&rsquo;en voudrais . . . tout un &eacute;tage.<br />
+Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!<br />
+Moi, j&rsquo;ai ton coeur, et sans partage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>Books
+rule thy mind, so let it be!<br />
+Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.<br />
+What more can I require of thee?<br />
+Books rule thy mind, so let it be!<br />
+Contented when thy bliss I see,<br />
+I wish a world of books thine own.<br />
+Books rule thy mind, so let it be!<br />
+Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p62b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"M. Annei Lucani de Bello Civili Libri X.  Apud Seb. Gryphium
+Lugduni.  1551"
+title=
+"M. Annei Lucani de Bello Civili Libri X.  Apud Seb. Gryphium
+Lugduni.  1551"
+ src="images/p62s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>There is one method of preserving books, which, alas, only
+tempts the borrower, the stealer, the rat, and the book-worm; but
+which is absolutely necessary as a defence against dust and
+neglect.&nbsp; This is binding.&nbsp; The bookbinder&rsquo;s art
+too often destroys books when the artist is careless, but it is
+the only mode of preventing our volumes from falling to pieces,
+and from being some day disregarded as waste-paper.&nbsp; A
+well-bound book, especially a book from a famous collection, has
+its price, even if its literary contents be of trifling
+value.&nbsp; A leather coat fashioned by Derome, or Le Gascon, or
+Duseuil, will win respect and careful handling for one specimen
+of an edition whereof all the others have perished.&nbsp; Nothing
+is so slatternly as the aspect of a book merely stitched, in the
+French fashion, when the threads begin to stretch, and the paper
+covers to curl and be torn.&nbsp; Worse consequences follow,
+whole sheets are lost, the volume becomes worthless, and the
+owner must often be at the expense of purchasing another copy, <a
+name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>if he can,
+for the edition may now be out of print.&nbsp; Thus binding of
+some sort not only adds a grace to the library, presenting to the
+eye the cheerful gilded rows of our volumes, but is a positive
+economy.&nbsp; In the case of our cloth-covered English works,
+the need of binding is not so immediately obvious.&nbsp; But our
+publishers have a taste for clothing their editions in tender
+tones of colour, stamped, often, with landscapes printed in gold,
+in white, or what not.&nbsp; Covers like this, may or may not
+please the eye while they are new and clean, but they soon become
+dirty and hideous.&nbsp; When a book is covered in cloth of a
+good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound, but the
+primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid of the
+binder.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p64b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Pub. Virgilii Maronis Opera Parisiis.  Apud Hieronymum de
+Marnef, sub Pelicano, Monte D&rsquo;Hilurii.  1558"
+title=
+"Pub. Virgilii Maronis Opera Parisiis.  Apud Hieronymum de
+Marnef, sub Pelicano, Monte D&rsquo;Hilurii.  1558"
+ src="images/p64s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Much has been written of late about book-binding.&nbsp; In a
+later part of this manual we shall have something to say about
+historical examples of the art, and the performances of the great
+masters.&nbsp; At present one must begin by giving the practical
+rule, that a book should be bound in harmony with its character
+and its value.&nbsp; The bibliophile, if he could give the rein
+to his passions, would bind every book he cares to possess in a
+full coat of morocco, or (if it did not age so fast) of Russia
+leather.&nbsp; But to do this is beyond the power of most of
+us.&nbsp; Only <a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+65</span>works of great rarity or value should be full bound in
+morocco.&nbsp; If we have the luck to light on a Shakespeare
+quarto, on some masterpiece of Aldus Manutius, by all means let
+us entrust it to the most competent binder, and instruct him to
+do justice to the volume.&nbsp; Let old English books, as
+More&rsquo;s &ldquo;Utopia,&rdquo; have a cover of stamped and
+blazoned calf.&nbsp; Let the binder clothe an early Rabelais or
+Marot in the style favoured by Grolier, in leather tooled with
+geometrical patterns.&nbsp; Let a Moli&egrave;re or Corneille be
+bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon, where the
+lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian
+point-lace, for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself.&nbsp;
+Let a binding, <i>&agrave; la fanfare</i>, in the style of
+Thouvenin, denote a novelist of the last century, let panelled
+Russia leather array a folio of Shakespeare, and let English
+works of a hundred years ago be clothed in the sturdy fashion of
+Roger Payne.&nbsp; Again, the bibliophile may prefer to have the
+leather stamped with his arms and crest, like de Thou, Henri
+III., D&rsquo;Hoym, Madame du Barry, and most of the collectors
+of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.&nbsp; Yet there are
+books of great price which one would hesitate to bind in new
+covers.&nbsp; An Aldine or an Elzevir, in its old vellum or paper
+wrapper, with uncut leaves, should be left just as it came from
+the <a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+66</span>presses of the great printers.&nbsp; In this condition
+it is a far more interesting relic.&nbsp; But a morocco case may
+be made for the book, and lettered properly on the back, so that
+the volume, though really unbound, may take its place with the
+bound books on the shelves.&nbsp; A copy of any of
+Shelley&rsquo;s poems, in the original wrappers, should I venture
+to think be treated thus, and so should the original editions of
+Keats&rsquo;s and of Mr. Tennyson&rsquo;s works.&nbsp; A
+collector, who is also an author, will perhaps like to have
+copies of his own works in morocco, for their coats will give
+them a chance of surviving the storms of time.&nbsp; But most
+other books, not of the highest rarity and interest, will be
+sufficiently clothed in half-bindings, that is, with leather
+backs and corners, while the rest of the cover is of cloth or
+paper, or whatever other substance seems most appropriate.&nbsp;
+An Oxford tutor used to give half-binding as an example of what
+Aristotle calls
+<i>&Mu;&iota;&kappa;&rho;&omicron;&pi;&rho;&#8051;&pi;&epsilon;&iota;&alpha;</i>,
+or &ldquo;shabbiness,&rdquo; and when we recommend such coverings
+for books it is as a counsel of expediency, not of
+perfection.&nbsp; But we cannot all be millionaires; and, let it
+be remembered, the really wise amateur will never be extravagant,
+nor let his taste lead him into &ldquo;the ignoble melancholy of
+pecuniary embarrassment.&rdquo;&nbsp; Let the example of Charles
+Nodier be our warning; nay, let us <a name="page67"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 67</span>remember that while Nodier could get
+out of debt by selling his collection, <i>ours</i> will probably
+not fetch anything like what we gave for it.&nbsp; In
+half-bindings there is a good deal of room for the exercise of
+the collector&rsquo;s taste.&nbsp; M. Octave Uzanne, in a tract
+called &ldquo;Les Caprices d&rsquo;un Bibliophile,&rdquo; gives
+some hints on this topic, which may be taken or let alone.&nbsp;
+M. Uzanne has noticed the monotony, and the want of meaning and
+suggestion in ordinary half-bindings.&nbsp; The paper or cloth
+which covers the greater part of the surface of half-bound books
+is usually inartistic and even ugly.&nbsp; He proposes to use old
+scraps of brocade, embroidery, Venice velvet, or what not; and
+doubtless a covering made of some dead fair lady&rsquo;s train
+goes well with a romance by Cr&eacute;billon, and engravings by
+Marillier.&nbsp; &ldquo;Voici un cartonnage Pompadour de notre
+invention,&rdquo; says M. Uzanne, with pride; but he observes
+that it needs a strong will to make a bookbinder execute such
+orders.&nbsp; For another class of books, which our honest
+English shelves reject with disgust, M. Uzanne proposes a binding
+of the skin of the boa constrictor; undoubtedly appropriate and
+&ldquo;admonishing.&rdquo;&nbsp; The leathers of China and Japan,
+with their strange tints and gilded devices may be used for books
+of fantasy, like &ldquo;Gaspard de la Nuit,&rdquo; or the
+&ldquo;Opium Eater,&rdquo; or Poe&rsquo;s poems, <a
+name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>or the verses
+of G&eacute;rard de Nerval.&nbsp; Here, in short, is an almost
+unexplored field for the taste of the bibliophile, who, with some
+expenditure of time, and not much of money, may make half-binding
+an art, and give modern books a peculiar and appropriate
+raiment.</p>
+<p>M. Ambrose Firmin Didot has left some notes on a more serious
+topic,&mdash;the colours to be chosen when books are full-bound
+in morocco.&nbsp; Thus he would have the &ldquo;Iliad&rdquo;
+clothed in red, the &ldquo;Odyssey&rdquo; in blue, because the
+old Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet cloak when they recited the
+Wrath of Achilles, a blue one when they chanted of the Return of
+Odysseus.&nbsp; The writings of the great dignitaries of the
+Church, M. Didot would array in violet; scarlet goes well with
+the productions of cardinals; philosophers have their sober suit
+of black morocco, poets like Panard may be dressed in rose
+colour.&nbsp; A collector of this sort would like, were it
+possible, to attire Goldsmith&rsquo;s poems in a &ldquo;coat of
+Tyrian bloom, satin grain.&rdquo;&nbsp; As an antithesis to these
+extravagant fancies, we may add that for ordinary books no
+binding is cheaper, neater, and more durable, than a coat of
+buckram.</p>
+<p>The conditions of a well bound book may be tersely
+enumerated.&nbsp; The binding should unite solidity and
+elegance.&nbsp; The book should open <a name="page69"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 69</span>easily, and remain open at any page
+you please.&nbsp; It should never be necessary, in reading, to
+squeeze back the covers; and no book, however expensively bound,
+has been properly treated, if it does not open with ease.&nbsp;
+It is a mistake to send recently printed books to the binder,
+especially books which contain engravings.&nbsp; The printing ink
+dries slowly, and, in the process called &ldquo;beating,&rdquo;
+the text is often transferred to the opposite page.&nbsp; M.
+Rouveyre recommends that one or two years should pass before the
+binding of a newly printed book.&nbsp; The owner will, of course,
+implore the binder to, spare the margins; and, almost equally of
+course, the binder, <i>durus arator</i>, will cut them down with
+his abominable plough.&nbsp; One is almost tempted to say that
+margins should always be left untouched, for if once the binder
+begins to clip he is unable to resist the seductive joy, and cuts
+the paper to the quick, even into the printed matter.&nbsp; Mr.
+Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over some
+Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back
+<i>minus</i> &pound;500 worth of margin.&nbsp; Margins make a
+book worth perhaps &pound;400, while their absence reduces the
+same volume to the box marked &ldquo;all these at
+fourpence.&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>Intonsis capillis</i>, with locks
+unshorn, as Motteley the old dealer used to say, an Elzevir in
+its paper wrapper may be worth more than the <a
+name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>same tome in
+morocco, stamped with Longepierre&rsquo;s fleece of gold.&nbsp;
+But these things are indifferent to bookbinders, new and
+old.&nbsp; There lies on the table, as I write, &ldquo;Les
+Provinciales, ou Les Lettres Ecrites par Louis de Montalte
+&agrave; un Provincial de ses amis, &amp; aux R.R. P.P.
+Jesuites.&nbsp; A Cologne, Ches <span class="smcap">Pierre</span>
+de la <span class="smcap">Vall&eacute;e</span>, <span
+class="GutSmall">M.DC.LVIII</span>.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is the
+Elzevir edition, or what passes for such; but the binder has cut
+down the margin so that the words &ldquo;Les Provinciales&rdquo;
+almost touch the top of the page.&nbsp; Often the wretch&mdash;he
+lived, judging by his style, in Derome&rsquo;s time, before the
+Revolution&mdash;has sliced into the head-titles of the
+pages.&nbsp; Thus the book, with its old red morocco cover and
+gilded flowers on the back, is no proper companion for &ldquo;Les
+Pens&eacute;es de M. <span class="smcap">Pascal</span>
+(Wolfganck, 1672),&rdquo; which some sober Dutchman has left with
+a fair allowance of margin, an inch &ldquo;taller&rdquo; in its
+vellum coat than its neighbour in morocco.&nbsp; Here once more,
+is &ldquo;<span class="smcap">Les Fascheux</span>, Comedie de I.
+B. P. <span class="smcap">Moli&egrave;re</span>, Representee sur
+Le <i>Theatre du Palais Royal</i>.&nbsp; A Paris, Chez <span
+class="smcap">Gabriel Quinet</span>, au Palais, dans la Galerie
+des Prisonniers, &agrave; l&rsquo;Ange Gabriel, <span
+class="GutSmall">M.DCLXIII</span>.&nbsp; Avec privilege du
+Roy.&rdquo;&nbsp; What a crowd of pleasant memories the
+bibliophile, and he only, finds in these dry words of the
+title.&nbsp; Quinet, the bookseller, lived &ldquo;au
+Palais,&rdquo; in that pretty old arcade where Corneille cast the
+scene <a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>of
+his comedy, &ldquo;La Galerie du Palais.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the
+Geneva edition of Corneille, 1774, you can see Gravelot&rsquo;s
+engraving of the place; it is a print full of exquisite charm
+(engraved by Le Mure in 1762).&nbsp; Here is the long arcade, in
+shape exactly like the galleries of the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford.&nbsp; The bookseller&rsquo;s booth is arched over, and is
+open at front and side.&nbsp; Dorimant and Cl&eacute;ante are
+looking out; one leans on the books on the window-sill, the other
+lounges at the door, and they watch the pretty Hippolyte who is
+chaffering with the lace-seller at the opposite shop.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ce visage vaut mieux que toutes vos chansons,&rdquo; says
+Dorimant to the bookseller.&nbsp; So they loitered, and bought
+books, and flirted in their lace ruffles, and ribbons, and
+flowing locks, and wide <i>canons</i>, when Moli&egrave;re was
+young, and when this little old book was new, and lying on the
+shelves of honest Quinet in the Palace Gallery.&nbsp; The very
+title-page, and pagination, not of this second edition, but of
+the first of &ldquo;Les Fascheux,&rdquo; had their own fortunes,
+for the dedication to Fouquet was perforce withdrawn.&nbsp; That
+favourite entertained La Valli&egrave;re and the King with the
+comedy at his house of Vaux, and then instantly fell from power
+and favour, and, losing his place and his freedom, naturally lost
+the flattery of a dedication.&nbsp; But <i>retombons &agrave; nos
+</i><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+72</span><i>coches</i>, as Montaigne says.&nbsp; This pleasant
+little copy of the play, which is a kind of relic of
+Moli&egrave;re and his old world, has been ruthlessly bound up
+with a treatise, &ldquo;Des Pierres Pr&eacute;cieuses,&rdquo;
+published by Didot in 1776.&nbsp; Now the play is naturally a
+larger book than the treatise on precious stones, so the binder
+has cut down the margins to the size of those of the work on
+amethysts and rubies.&nbsp; As the Italian tyrant chained the
+dead and the living together, as Procrustes maimed his victims on
+his cruel bed, so a hard-hearted French binder has tied up, and
+mutilated, and spoiled the old play, which otherwise would have
+had considerable value as well as interest.</p>
+<p>We have tried to teach the beginner how to keep his books neat
+and clean; what men and monsters he should avoid; how he should
+guard himself against borrowers, book-worms, damp, and
+dirt.&nbsp; But we are sometimes compelled to buy books already
+dirty and dingy, foxed, or spotted with red, worn by greasy
+hands, stained with ink spots, or covered with MS. notes.&nbsp;
+The art of man has found a remedy for these defects.&nbsp; I have
+never myself tried to wash a book, and this care is best left to
+professional hands.&nbsp; But the French and English writers give
+various recipes for cleaning old books, which the amateur may <a
+name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>try on any
+old rubbish out of the fourpenny box of a bookstall, till he
+finds that he can trust his own manipulations.&nbsp; There are
+&ldquo;fat stains&rdquo; on books, as thumb marks, traces of oil
+(the midnight oil), flakes of old pasty crust left in old
+Shakespeares, and candle drippings.&nbsp; There are &ldquo;thin
+stains,&rdquo; as of mud, scaling-wax, ink, dust, and damp.&nbsp;
+To clean a book you first carefully unbind it, take off the old
+covers, cut the old stitching, and separate sheet from
+sheet.&nbsp; Then take a page with &ldquo;fat stains&rdquo; of
+any kind of grease (except finger-marks), pass a hot flat iron
+over it, and press on it a clean piece of blotting paper till the
+paper sucks up the grease.&nbsp; Then charge a camel-hair brush
+with heated turpentine, and pass it over the places that were
+stained.&nbsp; If the paper loses its colour press softly over it
+a delicate handkerchief, soaked in heated spirits of wine.&nbsp;
+Finger-marks you will cover with clean soap, leave this on for
+some hours, and then rub with a sponge filled with hot
+water.&nbsp; Afterwards dip in weak acid and water, and then soak
+the page in a bath of clean water.&nbsp; Ink-stained pages you
+will first dip in a strong solution of oxalic acid and then in
+hydrochloric acid mixed in six times its quantity of water.&nbsp;
+Then bathe in clean water and allow to dry slowly.</p>
+<p>Some English recipes may also be given.&nbsp; <a
+name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>&ldquo;Grease
+or wax spots,&rdquo; says Hannett, in &ldquo;Bibliopegia,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;may be removed by washing the part with ether, chloroform,
+or benzine, and placing it between pieces of white blotting
+paper, then pass a hot iron over it.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Chlorine
+water,&rdquo; says the same writer, removes ink stains, and
+bleaches the paper at the same time.&nbsp; Of chloride of lime,
+&ldquo;a piece the size of a nut&rdquo; (a cocoa nut or a hazel
+nut?) in a pint of water, may be applied with a camel&rsquo;s
+hair pencil, and plenty of patience.&nbsp; To polish old
+bindings, &ldquo;take the yolk of an egg, beat it up with a fork,
+apply it with a sponge, having first cleaned the leather with a
+dry flannel.&rdquo;&nbsp; The following, says a writer in
+&ldquo;Notes and Queries,&rdquo; with perfect truth, is &ldquo;an
+easier if not a better method; purchase some bookbinder&rsquo;s
+varnish,&rdquo; and use it as you did the rudimentary omelette of
+the former recipe.&nbsp; Vellum covers may be cleaned with soap
+and water, or in bad cases by a weak solution of salts of
+lemon.</p>
+<p>Lastly, the collector should acquire such books as
+Lowndes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bibliography,&rdquo; Brunet&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Manuel,&rdquo; and as many priced catalogues as he can
+secure.&nbsp; The catalogues of Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Bohn, M.
+Fontaine, M.M. Morgand et Fatout, are excellent guides to a
+knowledge of the market value of books.&nbsp; Other special
+works, as Renouard&rsquo;s for Aldines, Willems&rsquo;s for
+Elzevirs, and Cohen&rsquo;s for French <a name="page75"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 75</span>engravings, will be mentioned in
+their proper place.&nbsp; Dibdin&rsquo;s books are inaccurate and
+long-winded, but may occasionally be dipped into with
+pleasure.</p>
+<h2><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+76</span>CHAPTER III.<br />
+THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> easiest way to bring order into
+the chaos of desirable books, is, doubtless, to begin
+historically with manuscripts.&nbsp; Almost every age that has
+left any literary remains, has bequeathed to us relics which are
+cherished by collectors.&nbsp; We may leave the clay books of the
+Chaldeans out of the account.&nbsp; These tomes resemble nothing
+so much as sticks of chocolate, and, however useful they may be
+to the student, the clay MSS. of Assurbanipal are not coveted by
+the collector.&nbsp; He finds his earliest objects of desire in
+illuminated manuscripts.&nbsp; The art of decorating manuscripts
+is as old as Egypt; but we need not linger over the beautiful
+papyri, which are silent books to all but a few
+Egyptologists.&nbsp; Greece, out of all her tomes, has left us
+but a few ill-written <a name="page77"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 77</span>papyri.&nbsp; Roman and early
+Byzantine art are represented by a &ldquo;Virgil,&rdquo; and
+fragments of an &ldquo;Iliad&rdquo;; the drawings in the latter
+have been reproduced in a splendid volume (Milan 1819), and shew
+Greek art passing into barbarism.&nbsp; The illumination of MSS.
+was a favourite art in the later empire, and is said to have been
+practised by Boethius.&nbsp; The iconoclasts of the Eastern
+empire destroyed the books which contained representations of
+saints and of the persons of the Trinity, and the monk Lazarus, a
+famous artist, was cruelly tortured for his skill in illuminating
+sacred works.&nbsp; The art was decaying in Western Europe when
+Charlemagne sought for painters of MSS. in England and Ireland,
+where the monks, in their monasteries, had developed a style with
+original qualities.&nbsp; The library of Corpus Christi at
+Cambridge, contains some of the earliest and most beautiful of
+extant English MSS.&nbsp; These parchments, stained purple or
+violet, and inscribed with characters of gold; are too often
+beyond the reach of the amateur for whom we write.&nbsp; The MSS.
+which he can hope to acquire are neither very early nor very
+sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of secular books are apt to be
+out of his reach.</p>
+<p>Yet a collection of MSS. has this great advantage over a
+collection of printed books, that every item in it is absolutely
+unique, no two MSS. being <a name="page78"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 78</span>ever really the same.&nbsp; This
+circumstance alone would entitle a good collection of MSS. to
+very high consideration on the part of book-collectors.&nbsp;
+But, in addition to the great expense of such a collection, there
+is another and even more serious drawback.&nbsp; It is sometimes
+impossible, and is often extremely difficult, to tell whether a
+MS. is perfect or not.</p>
+<p>This difficulty can only be got over by an amount of learning
+on the part of the collector to which, unfortunately, he is too
+often a stranger.&nbsp; On the other hand, the advantages of
+collecting MSS. are sometimes very great.</p>
+<p>In addition to the pleasure&mdash;a pleasure at once literary
+and artistic&mdash;which the study of illuminated MSS. affords,
+there is the certainty that, as years go on, the value of such a
+collection increases in a proportion altogether marvellous.</p>
+<p>I will take two examples to prove this point.&nbsp; Some years
+ago an eminent collector gave the price of &pound;30 for a small
+French book of Hours, painted in <i>grisaille</i>.&nbsp; It was
+in a country town that he met with this treasure, for a treasure
+he considered the book, in spite of its being of the very latest
+school of illumination.&nbsp; When his collection was dispersed a
+few years ago this one book fetched &pound;260.</p>
+<p>In the celebrated Perkins sale, in 1873, a magnificent <a
+name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>early MS.,
+part of which was written in gold on a purple ground, and which
+was dated in the catalogue &ldquo;ninth or tenth century,&rdquo;
+but was in reality of the end of the tenth or beginning of the
+eleventh, was sold for &pound;565 to a dealer.&nbsp; It found its
+way into Mr. Bragge&rsquo;s collection, at what price I do not
+know, and was resold, three years later, for &pound;780.</p>
+<p>Any person desirous of making a collection of illuminated
+MSS., should study seriously for some time at the British Museum,
+or some such place, until he is thoroughly acquainted (1) with
+the styles of writing in use in the Middle Ages, so that he can
+at a glance make a fairly accurate estimate of the age of the
+book submitted to him; and (2) with the proper means of collating
+the several kinds of service-books, which, in nine cases out of
+ten, were those chosen for illumination.</p>
+<p>A knowledge of the styles of writing can be acquired at second
+hand in a book lately published by Mr. Charles Trice Martin,
+F.S.A., being a new edition of &ldquo;Astle&rsquo;s Progress of
+Writing.&rdquo;&nbsp; Still better, of course, is the actual
+inspection and comparison of books to which a date can be with
+some degree of certainty assigned.</p>
+<p>It is very common for the age of a book to be misstated in the
+catalogues of sales, for the simple reason that the older the
+writing, the plainer, in <a name="page80"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 80</span>all probability, it is.&nbsp; Let the
+student compare writing of the twelfth century with that of the
+sixteenth, and he will be able to judge at once of the truth of
+this assertion.&nbsp; I had once the good fortune to &ldquo;pick
+up&rdquo; a small Testament of the early part of the twelfth
+century, if not older, which was catalogued as belonging to the
+fifteenth, a date which would have made it of very moderate
+value.</p>
+<p>With regard to the second point, the collation of MSS., I fear
+there is no royal road to knowing whether a book is perfect or
+imperfect.&nbsp; In some cases the catchwords remain at the foot
+of the pages.&nbsp; It is then of course easy to see if a page is
+lost, but where no such clue is given the student&rsquo;s only
+chance is to be fully acquainted with what a book <i>ought</i> to
+contain.&nbsp; He can only do this when he has a knowledge of the
+different kinds of service-books which were in use, and of their
+most usual contents.</p>
+<p>I am indebted to a paper, read by the late Sir William Tite at
+a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, for the collation of
+&ldquo;Books of Hours,&rdquo; but there are many kinds of MSS.
+besides these, and it is well to know something of them.&nbsp;
+The Horae, or Books of Hours, were the latest development of the
+service-books used at an earlier period.&nbsp; They cannot, in
+fact, be strictly called service-books, being intended only for
+private devotion.&nbsp; <a name="page81"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 81</span>But in the thirteenth century and
+before it, Psalters were in use for this purpose, and the
+collation of a Psalter is in truth more important than that of a
+Book of Hours.&nbsp; It will be well for a student, therefore, to
+begin with Psalters, as he can then get up the Hours in their
+elementary form.&nbsp; I subjoin a bibliographical account of
+both kinds of MSS.&nbsp; In the famous Exhibition at the
+Burlington Club in 1874, a number of volumes was arranged to show
+how persistent one type of the age could be.&nbsp; The form of
+the decorations, and the arrangement of the figures in borders,
+once invented, was fixed for generations.&nbsp; In a Psalter of
+the thirteenth century there was, under the month of January in
+the calendar, a picture of a grotesque little figure warming
+himself at a stove.&nbsp; The hearth below, the chimney-pot
+above, on which a stork was feeding her brood, with the
+intermediate chimney shaft used as a border, looked like a
+scientific preparation from the interior anatomy of a house of
+the period.&nbsp; In one of the latest of the MSS. exhibited on
+that occasion was the self-same design again.&nbsp; The little
+man was no longer a grotesque, and the picture had all the high
+finish and completeness in drawing that we might expect in the
+workmanship of a contemporary of Van Eyck.&nbsp; There was a full
+series of intermediate books, showing the gradual growth of the
+picture.</p>
+<p><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>With
+regard to chronology, it may be roughly asserted that the
+earliest books which occur are Psalters of the thirteenth
+century.&nbsp; Next to them come Bibles, of which an enormous
+issue took place before the middle of the fourteenth
+century.&nbsp; These are followed by an endless series of books
+of Hours, which, as the sixteenth century is reached, appear in
+several vernacular languages.&nbsp; Those in English, being both
+very rare and of great importance in liturgical history, are of a
+value altogether out of proportion to the beauty of their
+illuminations.&nbsp; Side by side with this succession are the
+Evangelistina, which, like the example mentioned above, are of
+the highest merit, beauty, and value; followed by sermons and
+homilies, and the Breviary, which itself shows signs of growth as
+the years go on.&nbsp; The real Missal, with which all
+illuminated books used to be confounded, is of rare occurrence,
+but I have given a collation of it also.&nbsp; Besides these
+devotional or religious books, I must mention chronicles and
+romances, and the semi-religious and moral allegories, such as
+the &ldquo;P&eacute;l&eacute;rinage de l&rsquo;Ame,&rdquo; which
+is said to have given Bunyan the machinery of the
+&ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress.&rdquo;&nbsp; Chaucer&rsquo;s and
+Gower&rsquo;s poetry exists in many MSS., as does the
+&ldquo;Polychronicon&rdquo; of Higden; but, as a rule, the
+medi&aelig;val chronicles are of single origin, and were not
+copied.&nbsp; To collate MSS. of these kinds is <a
+name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>quite
+impossible, unless by carefully reading them, and seeing that the
+pages run on without break.</p>
+<p>I should advise the young collector who wishes to make sure of
+success not to be too catholic in his tastes at first, but to
+confine his attention to a single period and a single
+school.&nbsp; I should also advise him to make from time to time
+a careful catalogue of what he buys, and to preserve it even
+after he has weeded out certain items.&nbsp; He will then be able
+to make a clear comparative estimate of the importance and value
+of his collection, and by studying one species at a time, to
+become thoroughly conversant with what it can teach him.&nbsp;
+When he has, so to speak, burnt his fingers once or twice, he
+will find himself able to distinguish at sight what no amount of
+teaching by word of mouth or by writing could ever possibly
+impart to any advantage.</p>
+<p>One thing I should like if possible to impress very strongly
+upon the reader.&nbsp; That is the fact that a MS. which is not
+absolutely perfect, if it is in a genuine state, is of much more
+value than one which has been made perfect by the skill of a
+modern restorer.&nbsp; The more skilful he is, that is to say the
+better he can forge the style of the original, the more worthless
+he renders the volume.</p>
+<p>Printing seems to have superseded the art of <a
+name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>the
+illuminator more promptly and completely in England than on the
+Continent.&nbsp; The <i>dames galantes</i> of
+Brant&ocirc;me&rsquo;s memoirs took pleasure in illuminated Books
+of Hours, suited to the nature of their devotions.&nbsp; As late
+as the time of Louis XIV., Bussy Rabutin had a volume of the same
+kind, illuminated with portraits of &ldquo;saints,&rdquo; of his
+own canonisation.&nbsp; The most famous of these modern examples
+of costly MSS. was &ldquo;La Guirlande de Julie,&rdquo; a
+collection of madrigals by various courtly hands, presented to
+the illustrious Julie, daughter of the Marquise de Rambouillet,
+most distinguished of the <i>Pr&eacute;cieuses</i>, and wife of
+the Duc de Montausier, the supposed original of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s Alceste.&nbsp; The MS. was copied on
+vellum by Nicholas Jarry, the great calligraph of his time.&nbsp;
+The flowers on the margin were painted by Robert.&nbsp; Not long
+ago a French amateur was so lucky as to discover the MS. book of
+prayers of Julie&rsquo;s noble mother, the Marquise de
+Rambouillet.&nbsp; The Marquise wrote these prayers for her own
+devotions, and Jarry, the illuminator, declared that he found
+them most edifying, and delightful to study.&nbsp; The manuscript
+is written on vellum by the famous Jarry, contains a portrait of
+the fair Julie herself, and is bound in morocco by Le
+Gascon.&nbsp; The happy collector who possesses the volume now,
+heard vaguely that a manuscript <a name="page85"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 85</span>of some interest was being exposed
+for sale at a trifling price in the shop of a country
+bookseller.&nbsp; The description of the book, casual as it was,
+made mention of the monogram on the cover.&nbsp; This was enough
+for the amateur.&nbsp; He rushed to a railway station, travelled
+some three hundred miles, reached the country town, hastened to
+the bookseller&rsquo;s shop, and found that the book had been
+withdrawn by its owner.&nbsp; Happily the possessor, unconscious
+of his bliss, was at home.&nbsp; The amateur sought him out, paid
+the small sum demanded, and returned to Paris in triumph.&nbsp;
+Thus, even in the region of manuscript-collecting, there are
+extraordinary prizes for the intelligent collector.</p>
+<h3>TO KNOW IF A MANUSCRIPT IS PERFECT.</h3>
+<p>If the manuscript is of English or French writing of the
+twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth centuries, it is
+probably either&mdash;(1) a Bible, (2) a Psalter, (3) a book of
+Hours, or (4), but rarely, a Missal.&nbsp; It is not worth while
+to give the collation of a gradual, or a hymnal, or a
+processional, or a breviary, or any of the fifty different kinds
+of service-books which are occasionally met with, but which are
+never twice the same.</p>
+<p>To collate one of them, the reader must go <a
+name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>carefully
+through the book, seeing that the catch-words, if there are any,
+answer to the head lines; and if there are
+&ldquo;signatures,&rdquo; that is, if the foot of the leaves of a
+sheet of parchment has any mark for enabling the binder to
+&ldquo;gather&rdquo; them correctly, going through them, and
+seeing that each signed leaf has its corresponding
+&ldquo;blank.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>1.&nbsp; To collate a Bible, it will be necessary first to go
+through the catch-words, if any, and signatures, as above; then
+to notice the contents.&nbsp; The first page should contain the
+Epistle of St. Jerome to the reader.&nbsp; It will be observed
+that there is nothing of the nature of a title-page, but I have
+often seen title-pages supplied by some ignorant imitator in the
+last century, with the idea that the book was imperfect without
+one.&nbsp; The books of the Bible follow in order&mdash;but the
+order not only differs from ours, but differs in different
+copies.&nbsp; The Apocryphal books are always included.&nbsp; The
+New Testament usually follows on the Old without any break; and
+the book concludes with an index of the Hebrew names and their
+signification in Latin, intended to help preachers to the
+figurative meaning of the biblical types and parables.&nbsp; The
+last line of the Bible itself usually contains a colophon, in
+which sometimes the name of the writer is given, sometimes the
+length of time it has taken him to write, and <a
+name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>sometimes
+merely the &ldquo;Explicit. Laus Deo,&rdquo; which has found its
+way into many modern books.&nbsp; This colophon, which comes as a
+rule immediately before the index, often contains curious notes,
+hexameters giving the names of all the books, biographical or
+local memoranda, and should always be looked for by the
+collector.&nbsp; One such line occurs to me.&nbsp; It is in a
+Bible written in Italy in the thirteenth century&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Qui scripsit scribat.&nbsp; Vergilius spe
+domini vivat.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Vergilius was, no doubt, in this case the scribe.&nbsp; The
+Latin and the writing are often equally crabbed.&nbsp; In the
+Bodleian there is a Bible with this colophon&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Finito libro referemus gratias Christo
+m.cc.lxv. indict. viij.<br />
+Ego Lafr&auml;cus de P&auml;cis de Cmoa scriptor
+scripsi.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This was also written in Italy.&nbsp; English colophons are
+often very quaint&mdash;&ldquo;Qui scripsit hunc librum fiat
+collocatus in Paradisum,&rdquo; is an example.&nbsp; The
+following gives us the name of one Master Gerard, who, in the
+fourteenth century, thus poetically described his
+ownership:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Si Ge ponatur&mdash;et <i>rar</i> simul
+associatur&mdash;<br />
+Et <i>dus</i> reddatur&mdash;cui pertinet ita vocatur.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In a Bible written in England, in the British <a
+name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>Museum, there
+is a long colophon, in which, after the name of the
+writer&mdash;&ldquo;hunc librum scripsit Wills de
+Hales,&rdquo;&mdash;there is a prayer for Ralph of Nebham, who
+had called Hales to the writing of the book, followed by a
+date&mdash;&ldquo;Fes. fuit liber anno M.cc.i. quarto ab
+incarnatione domini.&rdquo;&nbsp; In this Bible the books of the
+New Testament were in the following order:&mdash;the Evangelists,
+the Acts, the Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. John, the
+Epistles of S. Paul, and the Apocalypse.&nbsp; In a Bible at
+Brussels I found the colophon after the index:&mdash;&ldquo;Hic
+expliciunt interpretationes Hebrayorum nominum Do gris qui potens
+est p. s&uuml;p. omia.&rdquo;&nbsp; Some of these Bibles are of
+marvellously small dimensions.&nbsp; The smallest I ever saw was
+at Ghent, but it was very imperfect.&nbsp; I have one in which
+there are thirteen lines of writing in an inch of the
+column.&nbsp; The order of the books of the New Testament in
+Bibles of the thirteenth century is usually according to one or
+other of the three following arrangements:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutsumm">(1.)&nbsp; The Evangelists, Romans to Hebrews,
+Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S. John,
+Apocalypse.</p>
+<p class="gutsumm">(2.)&nbsp; The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of
+S. Peter, S. James, and S. John, Epistles of S. Paul,
+Apocalypse.&nbsp; This is the most common.</p>
+<p class="gutsumm"><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+89</span>(3.)&nbsp; The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter,
+S. James, and S. John, Apocalypse, and Epistles of S. Paul.</p>
+<p>On the fly leaves of these old Bibles there are often very
+curious inscriptions.&nbsp; In one I have
+this:&mdash;&ldquo;H&aelig;c biblia emi Haquinas prior monasterii
+Hatharbiensis de dono domini regis Norwegie.&rdquo;&nbsp; Who was
+this King of Norway who, in 1310, gave the Prior of Hatherby
+money to buy a Bible, which was probably written at
+Canterbury?&nbsp; And who was Haquinas?&nbsp; His name has a
+Norwegian sound, and reminds us of St. Thomas of that
+surname.&nbsp; In another manuscript I have seen:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Articula Fidei:&mdash;<br />
+Nascitur, abluitur, patitur, descendit at ima<br />
+Surgit et ascendit, veniens discernere cuncta.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In another this:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Sacramenta ecclesi&aelig;:&mdash;<br />
+Abluo, fumo, cibo, piget, ordinat, uxor et ungit.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>I will conclude these notes on MS. Bibles with the following
+colophon from a copy written in Italy in the fifteenth
+century:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Finito libro vivamus semper in
+Christo&mdash;<br />
+Si semper in Christo carebimus ultimo leto.<br />
+Explicit Deo gratias; Amen.&nbsp; Stephanus de<br />
+Tantaldis scripsit in pergamo.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>2.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Psalter&rdquo; of the thirteenth century
+is usually to be considered a forerunner of the &ldquo;Book <a
+name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>of
+Hours.&rdquo;&nbsp; It always contains, and usually commences
+with, a Calendar, in which are written against certain days the
+&ldquo;obits&rdquo; of benefactors and others, so that a
+well-filled Psalter often becomes a historical document of high
+value and importance.&nbsp; The first page of the psalms is
+ornamented with a huge B, which often fills the whole page, and
+contains a representation of David and Goliath ingeniously fitted
+to the shape of the letter.&nbsp; At the end are usually to be
+found the hymns of the Three Children, and others from the Bible
+together with the Te Deum; and sometimes, in late examples, a
+litany.&nbsp; In some psalters the calendar is at the end.&nbsp;
+These Psalters, and the Bibles described above, are very
+frequently of English work; more frequently, that is, than the
+books of Hours and Missals.&nbsp; The study of the Scriptures was
+evidently more popular in England than in the other countries of
+Europe during the Middle Ages; and the early success of the
+Reformers here, must in part, no doubt, be attributed to the wide
+circulation of the Bible even before it had been translated from
+the Latin.&nbsp; I need hardly, perhaps, observe that even
+fragments of a Psalter, a Testament, or a Bible in English, are
+so precious as to be practically invaluable.</p>
+<p>3.&nbsp; We are indebted to Sir W. Tite for the following
+collation of a Flemish &ldquo;Book of Hours&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutindent"><a name="page91"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 91</span>1.&nbsp; The Calendar.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">2.&nbsp; Gospels of the Nativity and the
+Resurrection.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">3.&nbsp; Preliminary Prayers (inserted
+occasionally).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">4.&nbsp; Hor&aelig;&mdash;(Nocturns and
+Matins).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">5.&nbsp; ,, (Lauds).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">6.&nbsp; ,, (Prime).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">7.&nbsp; ,, (Tierce).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">8.&nbsp; ,, (Sexte).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">9.&nbsp; ,, (None).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">10.&nbsp; ,, (Vespers).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">11.&nbsp; ,, (Compline).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">12.&nbsp; The seven penitential Psalms</p>
+<p class="gutindent">13.&nbsp; The Litany.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">14.&nbsp; Hours of the Cross.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">15.&nbsp; Hours of the Holy Spirit.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">16.&nbsp; Office of the Dead.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">17.&nbsp; The Fifteen Joys of B. V. M.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">18.&nbsp; The seven requests to our
+Lord.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">19.&nbsp; Prayers and Suffrages to various
+Saints.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">20.&nbsp; Several prayers, petitions, and
+devotions.</p>
+<p>This is an unusually full example, but the calendar, the
+hours, the seven psalms, and the litany, are in almost all the
+MSS.&nbsp; The buyer must look carefully to see that no
+miniatures have been cut out; but it is only by counting the
+leaves in their gatherings that he can make sure.&nbsp; This is
+often impossible without breaking the binding.</p>
+<p>The most valuable &ldquo;Hor&aelig;&rdquo; are those written
+in England.&nbsp; Some are of the English use (Sarum or York, or
+whatever it may happen to be), but <a name="page92"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 92</span>were written abroad, especially in
+Normandy, for the English market.&nbsp; These are also valuable,
+even when imperfect.&nbsp; Look for the page before the
+commencement of the Hours (No. 4 in the list above), and at the
+end will be found a line in red,&mdash;&ldquo;Incipit Hor&aelig;
+secundum usum Sarum,&rdquo; or otherwise, as the case may be.</p>
+<p>4.&nbsp; Missals do not often occur, and are not only very
+valuable but very difficult to collate, unless furnished with
+catch-words or signatures.&nbsp; But no Missal is complete
+without the Canon of the Mass, usually in the middle of the book,
+and if there are any illuminations throughout the volume, there
+will be a full page Crucifixion, facing the Canon.&nbsp; Missals
+of large size and completeness contain&mdash;(1) a Calendar; (2)
+&ldquo;the proper of the Season;&rdquo; (3) the ordinary and
+Canon of the Mass; (4) the Communal of Saints; (5) the proper of
+Saints and special occasions; (6) the lessons, epistles, and
+gospels; with (7) some hymns, &ldquo;proses,&rdquo; and
+canticles.&nbsp; This is Sir W. Tite&rsquo;s list; but, as he
+remarks, MS. Missals seldom contain so much.&nbsp; The collector
+will look for the Canon, which is invariable.</p>
+<p>Breviaries run to an immense length, and are seldom
+illuminated.&nbsp; It would be impossible to give them any kind
+of collation, and the same may be said of many other kinds of old
+service-<a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+93</span>books, and of the chronicles, poems, romances, and
+herbals, in which medi&aelig;val literature abounded, and which
+the collector must judge as best he can.</p>
+<p>The name of &ldquo;missal&rdquo; is commonly and falsely given
+to all old service-books by the booksellers, but the collector
+will easily distinguish one when he sees it, from the notes I
+have given.&nbsp; In a Sarum Missal, at Alnwick, there is a
+colophon quoted by my lamented friend Dr. Rock in his
+&ldquo;Textile Fabrics.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is appropriate both to
+the labours of the old scribes and also to those of their modern
+readers:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Librum Scribendo&mdash;Jon Whas Monachus
+laborabat&mdash;<br />
+Et mane Surgendo&mdash;multum corpus macerabat.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is one of the charms of manuscripts that they illustrate,
+in their minute way, all the art, and even the social condition,
+of the period in which they were produced.&nbsp; Apostles,
+saints, and prophets wear the contemporary costume, and Jonah,
+when thrown to the hungry whale, wears doublet and trunk
+hose.&nbsp; The ornaments illustrate the architectural taste of
+the day.&nbsp; The backgrounds change from diapered patterns to
+landscapes, as the modern way of looking at nature penetrates the
+monasteries and reaches the <i>scriptorium</i> where the
+illuminator sits and refreshes his eyes with <a
+name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>the sight of
+the slender trees and blue distant hills.&nbsp; Printed books
+have not such resources.&nbsp; They can only show varieties of
+type, quaint frontispieces, printers&rsquo; devices, and
+<i>fleurons</i> at the heads of chapters.&nbsp; These
+attractions, and even the engravings of a later day, seem meagre
+enough compared with the allurements of manuscripts.&nbsp; Yet
+printed books must almost always make the greater part of a
+collection, and it may be well to give some rules as to the
+features that distinguish the productions of the early
+press.&nbsp; But no amount of &ldquo;rules&rdquo; is worth six
+months&rsquo; practical experience in bibliography.&nbsp; That
+experience the amateur, if he is wise, will obtain in a public
+library, like the British Museum or the Bodleian.&nbsp; Nowhere
+else is he likely to see much of the earliest of printed books,
+which very seldom come into the market.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p94b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Title-page of &ldquo;Le Rommant de la Rose,&rdquo; Paris, 1539"
+title=
+"Title-page of &ldquo;Le Rommant de la Rose,&rdquo; Paris, 1539"
+ src="images/p94s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Those of the first German press are so rare that practically
+they never reach the hands of the ordinary collector.&nbsp; Among
+them are the famous Psalters printed by Fust and Schoffer, the
+earliest of which is dated 1457; and the bible known as the
+Mazarine Bible.&nbsp; Two copies of this last were in the Perkins
+sale.&nbsp; I well remember the excitement on that
+occasion.&nbsp; The first copy put up was the best, being printed
+upon vellum.&nbsp; The bidding commenced at &pound;1000, and very
+speedily <a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+95</span>rose to &pound;2200, at which point there was a long
+pause; it then rose in hundreds with very little delay to
+&pound;3400, at which it was knocked down to a bookseller.&nbsp;
+The second copy was on paper, and there were those present who
+said it was better than the other, which had a suspicion
+attaching to it of having been &ldquo;restored&rdquo; with a
+facsimile leaf.&nbsp; The first bid was again &pound;1000, which
+the buyer of the previous copy made guineas, and the bidding
+speedily went up to &pound;2660, at which price the first bidder
+paused.&nbsp; A third bidder had stepped in at &pound;1960, and
+now, amid breathless excitement, bid &pound;10 more.&nbsp; This
+he had to do twice before the book was knocked down to him at
+&pound;2690.</p>
+<p>A scene like this has really very little to do with
+book-collecting.&nbsp; The beginner must labour hard to
+distinguish different kinds of printing; he must be able to
+recognise at a glance even fragments from the press of
+Caxton.&nbsp; His eye must be accustomed to all the tricks of the
+trade and others, so that he may tell a facsimile in a moment, or
+detect a forgery.</p>
+<p>But now let us return to the distinctive marks of early
+printed books.&nbsp; The first is, says M. Rouveyre,&mdash;</p>
+<p>1.&nbsp; <i>The absence of a separate title-page</i>.&nbsp; It
+was not till 1476&ndash;1480 that the titles of books were <a
+name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>printed on
+separate pages.&nbsp; The next mark is&mdash;</p>
+<p>2.&nbsp; <i>The absence of capital letters at the beginnings
+of divisions</i>.&nbsp; For example, in an Aldine Iliad, the
+fifth book begins thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&Nu;&theta;
+&alpha;&upsilon; &tau;&#8022;&delta;&#8051;&iota;&delta;&#8131;
+&Delta;&iota;&upsilon;&mu;&#8053;&delta;&epsilon;&#8145;<br />
+&#7956;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&pi;&alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&#8048;&sigmaf;
+&#7936;&theta;&#8053;&nu;&eta;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&delta;&#8182;&kappa;&epsilon; &mu;&#8051;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;
+&kappa;&alpha;&#8054;
+&theta;&#8049;&rho;&sigma;&omicron;&sigmaf;&nbsp;
+&#7989;&nu;&rsquo;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&#7956;&kappa;&delta;&eta;&lambda;&omicron;&sigmaf;
+&mu;&epsilon;&tau;&#8048;&nbsp; &pi;&#8118;&sigma;&iota;&nu;<br
+/>
+&#7936;&rho;&gamma;&epsilon;&#8055;&omicron;&iota;&sigma;&iota;
+&gamma;&#8051;&nu;&omicron;&iota;&tau;&omicron;,
+&#7984;&delta;&#8051; &kappa;&lambda;&#8051;&omicron;&sigmaf;
+&#7952;&sigma;&theta;&lambda;&#8056;&nu;
+&#7940;&rho;&omicron;&iota;&tau;&omicron;.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was intended that the open space, occupied by the small
+epsilon (&#7956;), should be filled up with a coloured and gilded
+initial letter by the illuminator.&nbsp; Copies thus decorated
+are not very common, but the Aldine &ldquo;Homer&rdquo; of
+Francis I., rescued by M. Didot from a rubbish heap in an English
+cellar, had its due illuminations.&nbsp; In the earliest books
+the guide to the illuminator, the small printed letter, does not
+appear, and he often puts in the wrong initial.</p>
+<p>3.&nbsp; <i>Irregularity and rudeness of type</i> is a
+&ldquo;note&rdquo; of the primitive printing press, which very
+early disappeared.&nbsp; Nothing in the history of printing is so
+remarkable as the beauty of almost its first efforts.&nbsp; Other
+notes are&mdash;</p>
+<p>4.&nbsp; <i>The absence of figures at the top of the
+pages</i>, <i>and of signatures at the foot</i>.&nbsp; The
+thickness and solidity of the paper, the absence of the
+printer&rsquo;s <a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+97</span>name, of the date, and of the name of the town where the
+press stood, and the abundance of crabbed abbreviations, are all
+marks, more or less trustworthy, of the antiquity of books.&nbsp;
+It must not be supposed that all books published, let us say
+before 1500, are rare, or deserve the notice of the
+collector.&nbsp; More than 18,000 works, it has been calculated,
+left the press before the end of the fifteenth century.&nbsp; All
+of these cannot possibly be of interest, and many of them that
+are &ldquo;rare,&rdquo; are rare precisely because they are
+uninteresting.&nbsp; They have not been preserved because they
+were thought not worth preserving.&nbsp; This is a great cause of
+rarity; but we must not hastily conclude that because a book
+found no favour in its own age, therefore it has no claim on our
+attention.&nbsp; A London bookseller tells me that he bought the
+&ldquo;remainder&rdquo; of Keats&rsquo;s &ldquo;Endymion&rdquo;
+for fourpence a copy!&nbsp; The first edition of
+&ldquo;Endymion&rdquo; is now rare and valued.&nbsp; In trying to
+mend the binding of an old &ldquo;Odyssey&rdquo; lately, I
+extracted from the vellum covers parts of two copies of a very
+scarce and curious French dictionary of slang, &ldquo;Le Jargon,
+ou Langage de l&rsquo;Argot Reform&eacute;.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+treatise may have been valueless, almost, when it appeared, but
+now it is serviceable to the philologist, and to all who care to
+try to interpret the slang <i>ballades</i> <a
+name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>of the poet
+Villon.&nbsp; An old pamphlet, an old satire, may hold the key to
+some historical problem, or throw light on the past of manners
+and customs.&nbsp; Still, of the earliest printed books,
+collectors prefer such rare and beautiful ones as the oldest
+printed Bibles: German, English,&mdash;as Taverner&rsquo;s and
+the Bishop&rsquo;s,&mdash;or Hebrew and Greek, or the first
+editions of the ancient classics, which may contain the readings
+of MSS. now lost or destroyed.&nbsp; Talking of early Bibles, let
+us admire the luck and prudence of a certain Mr. Sandford.&nbsp;
+He always longed for the first Hebrew Bible, but would offer no
+fancy price, being convinced that the book would one day fall in
+his way.&nbsp; His foreboding was fulfilled, and he picked up his
+treasure for ten shillings in a shop in the Strand.&nbsp; The
+taste for <i>incunabula</i>, or very early printed books,
+slumbered in the latter half of the sixteenth, and all the
+seventeenth century.&nbsp; It revived with the third jubilee of
+printing in 1740, and since then has refined itself, and only
+craves books very early, very important, or works from the press
+of Caxton, the St. Albans Schoolmaster, or other famous old
+artists.&nbsp; Enough has been said to show the beginner, always
+enthusiastic, that all old books are not precious.&nbsp; For
+further information, the &ldquo;Biography and Typography of
+William Caxton,&rdquo; by Mr. Blades (Tr&uuml;bner, London,
+1877), may be consulted with profit.</p>
+<p><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+99</span>Following the categories into which M. Brunet classifies
+desirable books in his invaluable manual, we now come to books
+printed on vellum, and on peculiar papers.&nbsp; At the origin of
+printing, examples of many books, probably presentation copies,
+were printed on vellum.&nbsp; There is a vellum copy of the
+celebrated Florentine first edition of Homer; but it is truly sad
+to think that the twin volumes, Iliad and Odyssey, have been
+separated, and pine in distant libraries.&nbsp; Early printed
+books on vellum often have beautifully illuminated
+capitals.&nbsp; Dibdin mentions in &ldquo;Bibliomania&rdquo;
+(London, 1811), p. 90, that a M. Van Praet was compiling a
+catalogue of works printed on vellum, and had collected more than
+2000 articles.&nbsp; When hard things are said about Henry VIII.,
+let us remember that this monarch had a few copies of his book
+against Luther printed on vellum.&nbsp; The Duke of
+Marlborough&rsquo;s library possessed twenty-five books on
+vellum, all printed before 1496.&nbsp; The chapter-house at Padua
+has a &ldquo;Catullus&rdquo; of 1472 on vellum; let Mr. Robinson
+Ellis think wistfully of that treasure.&nbsp; The notable Count
+M&rsquo;Carthy of Toulouse had a wonderful library of books in
+<i>membranis</i>, including a book much coveted for its rarity,
+oddity, and the beauty of its illustrations, the
+&ldquo;Hypnerotomachia&rdquo; of Poliphilus (Venice, <a
+name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+100</span>1499).&nbsp; Vellum was the favourite
+&ldquo;vanity&rdquo; of Junot, Napoleon&rsquo;s general.&nbsp;
+For reasons connected with its manufacture, and best not inquired
+into, the Italian vellum enjoyed the greatest reputation for
+smooth and silky whiteness.&nbsp; Dibdin calls &ldquo;our modern
+books on vellum little short of downright wretched.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+But the editor of this series could, I think, show examples that
+would have made Dibdin change his opinion.</p>
+<p>Many comparatively expensive papers, large in <i>format</i>,
+are used in choice editions of books.&nbsp; Whatman papers, Dutch
+papers, Chinese papers, and even <i>papier verg&eacute;</i>, have
+all their admirers.&nbsp; The amateur will soon learn to
+distinguish these materials.&nbsp; As to books printed on
+coloured paper&mdash;green, blue, yellow, rhubarb-coloured, and
+the like, they are an offence to the eyes and to the taste.&nbsp;
+Yet even these have their admirers and collectors, and the great
+Aldus himself occasionally used azure paper.&nbsp; Under the head
+of &ldquo;large paper,&rdquo; perhaps &ldquo;uncut copies&rdquo;
+should be mentioned.&nbsp; Most owners of books have had the
+edges of the volumes gilded or marbled by the binders.&nbsp; Thus
+part of the margin is lost, an offence to the eye of the
+bibliomaniac, while copies untouched by the binder&rsquo;s shears
+are rare, and therefore prized.&nbsp; The inconvenience of uncut
+copies is, that one cannot easily turn over the <a
+name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+101</span>leaves.&nbsp; But, in the present state of the fashion,
+a really rare uncut Elzevir may be worth hundreds of pounds,
+while a cropped example scarcely fetches as many shillings.&nbsp;
+A set of Shakespeare&rsquo;s quartoes, uncut, would be worth more
+than a respectable landed estate in Connemara.&nbsp; For these
+reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound
+&ldquo;uncut.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is always easy to have the leaves
+pared away; but not even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which
+Hera yearly renewed her maidenhood, could restore margins once
+clipped away.&nbsp; So much for books which are chiefly precious
+for the quantity and quality of the material on which they are
+printed.&nbsp; Even this rather foolish weakness of the amateur
+would not be useless if it made our publishers more careful to
+employ a sound clean hand-made paper, instead of drugged trash,
+for their more valuable new productions.&nbsp; Indeed, a taste
+for hand-made paper is coming in, and is part of the revolt
+against the passion for everything machine-made, which ruined art
+and handiwork in the years between 1840 and 1870.</p>
+<p>The third of M. Brunet&rsquo;s categories of books of prose,
+includes <i>livres de luxe</i>, and illustrated literature.&nbsp;
+Every Christmas brings us <i>livres de luxe</i> in plenty, books
+which are no books, but have gilt and magenta covers, and great
+staring illustrations.&nbsp; These are regarded as drawing-<a
+name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>room
+ornaments by people who never read.&nbsp; It is scarcely
+necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits of
+unregulated Christmas generosity.&nbsp; All ages have not
+produced quite such garish <i>livres de luxe</i> as ours.&nbsp;
+But, on the whole, a book brought out merely for the sake of
+display, is generally a book ill &ldquo;got up,&rdquo; and not
+worth reading.&nbsp; Moreover, it is generally a folio, or
+quarto, so large that he who tries to read it must support it on
+a kind of scaffolding.&nbsp; In the class of illustrated books
+two sorts are at present most in demand.&nbsp; The ancient
+woodcuts and engravings, often the work of artists like Holbein
+and D&uuml;rer, can never lose their interest.&nbsp; Among old
+illustrated books, the most famous, and one of the rarest, is the
+&ldquo;Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,&rdquo; &ldquo;wherein all human
+matters are proved to be no more than a dream.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+is an allegorical romance, published in 1499, for Francesco
+Colonna, by Aldus Manucius.&nbsp; <i>Poliam Frater Franciscus
+Columna peramavit</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Brother Francesco Colonna
+dearly loved Polia,&rdquo; is the inscription and device of this
+romance.&nbsp; Poor Francesco, of the order of preachers,
+disguised in this strange work his passion for a lady of
+uncertain name.&nbsp; Here is a translation of the passage in
+which the lady describes the beginning of his affection.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I was standing, as is the manner of women young and fair,
+at the <a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+103</span>window, or rather on the balcony, of my palace.&nbsp;
+My yellow hair, the charm of maidens, was floating round my
+shining shoulders.&nbsp; My locks were steeped in unguents that
+made them glitter like threads of gold, and they were slowly
+drying in the rays of the burning sun.&nbsp; A handmaid, happy in
+her task, was drawing a comb through my tresses, and surely these
+of Andromeda seemed not more lovely to Perseus, nor to Lucius the
+locks of Photis. <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6"
+class="citation">[6]</a>&nbsp; On a sudden, Poliphilus beheld me,
+and could not withdraw from me his glances of fire, and even in
+that moment a ray of the sun of love was kindled in his
+heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fragment is itself a picture from the world of the
+Renaissance.&nbsp; We watch the blonde, learned lady, dreaming of
+Perseus, and Lucius, Greek lovers of old time, while the sun
+gilds her yellow hair, and the young monk, passing below, sees
+and loves, and &ldquo;falls into the deep waters of
+desire.&rdquo;&nbsp; The lover is no less learned than the lady,
+and there is a great deal of amorous arch&aelig;ology in his
+account of his voyage to Cythera.&nbsp; As to the designs in
+wood, quaint in their vigorous effort to be classical, they have
+been attributed to Mantegna, to Bellini, and other artists.&nbsp;
+Jean Cousin is said to have executed the imitations, in the Paris
+editions of 1546, 1556, and 1561.</p>
+<p><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>The
+&ldquo;Hypnerotomachia&rdquo; seems to deserve notice, because it
+is the very type of the books that are dear to collectors, as
+distinct from the books that, in any shape, are for ever valuable
+to the world.&nbsp; A cheap Tauchnitz copy of the Iliad and
+Odyssey, or a Globe Shakespeare, are, from the point of view of
+literature, worth a wilderness of
+&ldquo;Hypnerotomachi&aelig;.&rdquo;&nbsp; But a clean copy of
+the &ldquo;Hypnerotomachia,&rdquo; especially on <span
+class="GutSmall">VELLUM</span>, is one of the jewels of
+bibliography.&nbsp; It has all the right qualities; it is very
+rare, it is very beautiful as a work of art, it is curious and
+even <i>bizarre</i>, it is the record of a strange time, and a
+strange passion; it is a relic, lastly, of its printer, the great
+and good Aldus Manutius.</p>
+<p>Next to the old woodcuts and engravings, executed in times
+when artists were versatile and did not disdain even to draw a
+book-plate (as D&uuml;rer did for Pirckheimer), the designs of
+the French &ldquo;little masters,&rdquo; are at present in most
+demand.&nbsp; The book illustrations of the seventeenth century
+are curious enough, and invaluable as authorities on manners and
+costume.&nbsp; But the attitudes of the figures are too often
+stiff and ungainly; while the composition is frequently left to
+chance.&nbsp; England could show nothing much better than
+Ogilby&rsquo;s translations of Homer, illustrated with big florid
+engravings in sham antique <a name="page105"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 105</span>style.&nbsp; The years between 1730
+and 1820, saw the French &ldquo;little masters&rdquo; in their
+perfection.&nbsp; The dress of the middle of the eighteenth
+century, of the age of Watteau, was precisely suited to the gay
+and graceful pencils of Gravelot, Moreau, Eisen, Boucher, Cochin,
+Marillier, and Choffard.&nbsp; To understand their merits, and
+the limits of their art, it is enough to glance through a series
+of the designs for Voltaire, Corneille, or Moli&egrave;re.&nbsp;
+The drawings of society are almost invariably dainty and
+pleasing, the serious scenes of tragedy leave the spectator quite
+unmoved.&nbsp; Thus it is but natural that these artists should
+have shone most in the illustration of airy trifles like
+Dorat&rsquo;s &ldquo;Baisers,&rdquo; or tales like Manon Lescaut,
+or in designing tailpieces for translations of the Greek idyllic
+poets, such as Moschus and Bion.&nbsp; In some of his
+illustrations of books, especially, perhaps, in the designs for
+&ldquo;La Physiologie de Gout&rdquo; (Jouaust, Paris, 1879), M.
+Lalauze has shown himself the worthy rival of Eisen and
+Cochin.&nbsp; Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that the beauty
+and value of all such engravings depends almost entirely on their
+&ldquo;state.&rdquo;&nbsp; The earlier proofs are much more
+brilliant than those drawn later, and etchings on fine papers are
+justly preferred.&nbsp; For example, M. Lalauze&rsquo;s
+engravings on &ldquo;Whatman paper,&rdquo; have a beauty which
+could scarcely be guessed by people who have only seen <a
+name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>specimens
+on &ldquo;papier verg&eacute;.&rdquo;&nbsp; Every collector of
+the old French <i>vignettes</i>, should possess himself of the
+&ldquo;Guide de l&rsquo;amateur,&rdquo; by M. Henry Cohen
+(Rouquette, Paris, 1880).&nbsp; Among English illustrated books,
+various tastes prefer the imaginative works of William Blake, the
+etchings of Cruikshank, and the woodcuts of Bewick.&nbsp; The
+whole of the last chapter of this sketch is devoted, by Mr.
+Austin Dobson, to the topic of English illustrated books.&nbsp;
+Here it may be said, in passing, that an early copy of William
+Blake&rsquo;s &ldquo;Songs of Innocence,&rdquo; written,
+illustrated, printed, coloured, and boarded by the author&rsquo;s
+own hand, is one of the most charming objects that a bibliophile
+can hope to possess.&nbsp; The verses of Blake, in a framework of
+birds, and flowers, and plumes, all softly and magically tinted,
+seem like some book out of King Oberon&rsquo;s library in
+fairyland, rather than the productions of a mortal press.&nbsp;
+The pictures in Blake&rsquo;s &ldquo;prophetic books,&rdquo; and
+even his illustrations to &ldquo;Job,&rdquo; show an imagination
+more heavily weighted by the technical difficulties of
+drawing.</p>
+<p>The next class of rare books is composed of works from the
+famous presses of the Aldi and the Elzevirs.&nbsp; Other presses
+have, perhaps, done work as good, but Estienne, the Giunta, and
+Plantin, are comparatively neglected, while the taste for the
+performances of Baskerville and Foulis is not <a
+name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>very
+eager.&nbsp; A safe judgment about Aldines and Elzevirs is the
+gift of years and of long experience.&nbsp; In this place it is
+only possible to say a few words on a wide subject.&nbsp; The
+founder of the Aldine press, Aldus Pius Manutius, was born about
+1450, and died at Venice in 1514.&nbsp; He was a man of careful
+and profound learning, and was deeply interested in Greek
+studies, then encouraged by the arrival in Italy of many educated
+Greeks and Cretans.&nbsp; Only four Greek authors had as yet been
+printed in Italy, when (1495) Aldus established his press at
+Venice.&nbsp; Theocritus, Homer, &AElig;sop, and Isocrates,
+probably in very limited editions, were in the hands of
+students.&nbsp; The purpose of Aldus was to put Greek and Latin
+works, beautifully printed in a convenient shape, within the
+reach of all the world.&nbsp; His reform was the introduction of
+books at once cheap, studiously correct, and convenient in actual
+use.&nbsp; It was in 1498 that he first adopted the small octavo
+size, and in his &ldquo;Virgil&rdquo; of 1501, he introduced the
+type called <i>Aldine</i> or <i>Italic</i>.&nbsp; The letters
+were united as in writing, and the type is said to have been cut
+by Francesco da Bologna, better known as Francia, in imitation of
+the hand of Petrarch.&nbsp; For full information about Aldus and
+his descendants and successors, the work of M. Firmin Didot,
+(&ldquo;Alde <a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+108</span>Manuce et l&rsquo;Hell&eacute;nisme &agrave; Venise:
+Paris 1875),&rdquo; and the Aldine annals of Renouard, must be
+consulted.&nbsp; These two works are necessary to the collector,
+who will otherwise be deceived by the misleading assertions of
+the booksellers.&nbsp; As a rule, the volumes published in the
+lifetime of Aldus Manutius are the most esteemed, and of these
+the Aristotle, the first Homer, the Virgil, and the Ovid, are
+perhaps most in demand.&nbsp; The earlier Aldines are consulted
+almost as studiously as MSS. by modern editors of the
+classics.</p>
+<p>Just as the house of Aldus waned and expired, that of the
+great Dutch printers, the Elzevirs, began obscurely enough at
+Leyden in 1583.&nbsp; The Elzevirs were not, like Aldus, ripe
+scholars and men of devotion to learning.&nbsp; Aldus laboured
+for the love of noble studies; the Elzevirs were acute, and too
+often &ldquo;smart&rdquo; men of business.&nbsp; The founder of
+the family was Louis (born at Louvain, 1540, died 1617).&nbsp;
+But it was in the second and third generations that Bonaventura
+and Abraham Elzevir began to publish at Leyden, their editions in
+small duodecimo.&nbsp; Like Aldus, these Elzevirs aimed at
+producing books at once handy, cheap, correct, and beautiful in
+execution.&nbsp; Their adventure was a complete success.&nbsp;
+The Elzevirs did not, like Aldus, surround themselves with the
+most learned scholars of their time.&nbsp; <a
+name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>Their
+famous literary adviser, Heinsius, was full of literary
+jealousies, and kept students of his own calibre at a
+distance.&nbsp; The classical editions of the Elzevirs,
+beautiful, but too small in type for modern eyes, are anything
+but exquisitely correct.&nbsp; Their editions of the
+contemporary.&nbsp; French authors, now classics themselves, are
+lovely examples of skill in practical enterprise.&nbsp; The
+Elzevirs treated the French authors much as American publishers
+treat Englishmen.&nbsp; They stole right and left, but no one
+complained much in these times of slack copyright; and, at all
+events, the piratic larcenous publications of the Dutch printers
+were pretty, and so far satisfactory.&nbsp; They themselves, in
+turn, were the victims of fraudulent and untradesmanlike
+imitations.&nbsp; It is for this, among other reasons, that the
+collector of Elzevirs must make M. Willems&rsquo;s book
+(&ldquo;Les Elzevier,&rdquo; Brussels and Paris, 1880) his
+constant study.&nbsp; Differences so minute that they escape the
+unpractised eye, denote editions of most various value.&nbsp; In
+Elzevirs a line&rsquo;s breadth of margin is often worth a
+hundred pounds, and a misprint is quoted at no less a sum.&nbsp;
+The fantastic caprice of bibliophiles has revelled in the
+bibliography of these Dutch editions.&nbsp; They are at present
+very scarce in England, where a change in fashion some years ago
+had made them common enough.&nbsp; No Elzevir <a
+name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>is valuable
+unless it be clean and large in the margins.&nbsp; When these
+conditions are satisfied the question of rarity comes in, and
+Remy Belleau&rsquo;s Macaronic poem, or &ldquo;Le Pastissier
+Fran&ccedil;ais,&rdquo; may rise to the price of four or five
+hundred pounds.&nbsp; A Rabelais, Moli&egrave;re, or Corneille,
+of a &ldquo;good&rdquo; edition, is now more in request than the
+once adored &ldquo;Imitatio Christi&rdquo; (dateless), or the
+&ldquo;Virgil&rdquo;&rsquo; of 1646, which is full of gross
+errors of the press, but is esteemed for red characters in the
+letter to Augustus, and another passage at page 92.&nbsp; The
+ordinary marks of the Elzevirs were the sphere, the old hermit,
+the Athena, the eagle, and the burning faggot.&nbsp; But all
+little old books marked with spheres are not Elzevirs, as many
+booksellers suppose.&nbsp; Other printers also stole the designs
+for the tops of chapters, the Aegipan, the Siren, the head of
+Medusa, the crossed sceptres, and the rest.&nbsp; In some cases
+the Elzevirs published their books, especially when they were
+piracies, anonymously.&nbsp; When they published for the
+Jansenists, they allowed their clients to put fantastic
+pseudonyms on the title pages.&nbsp; But, except in four cases,
+they had only two pseudonyms used on the titles of books
+published by and for themselves.&nbsp; These disguises are
+&ldquo;Jean Sambix&rdquo; for Jean and Daniel Elzevir, at Leyden,
+and for the Elzevirs of Amsterdam, <a name="page111"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 111</span>&ldquo;Jacques le
+Jeune.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last of the great representatives of the
+house, Daniel, died at Amsterdam, 1680.&nbsp; Abraham, an
+unworthy scion, struggled on at Leyden till 1712.&nbsp; The
+family still prospers, but no longer prints, in Holland.&nbsp; It
+is common to add duodecimos of Foppens, Wolfgang, and other
+printers, to the collections of the Elzevirs.&nbsp; The books of
+Wolfgang have the sign of the fox robbing a wild bee&rsquo;s
+nest, with the motto <i>Quaerendo</i>.</p>
+<p><i>Curious and singular books</i> are the next in our
+classification.&nbsp; The category is too large.&nbsp; The books
+that be &ldquo;curious&rdquo; (not in the booksellers&rsquo;
+sense of &ldquo;prurient&rdquo; and &ldquo;disgusting,&rdquo;)
+are innumerable.&nbsp; All suppressed and condemned books, from
+&ldquo;Les Fleurs du Mal&rdquo; to Vanini&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Amphitheatrum,&rdquo; or the English translation of
+Bruno&rsquo;s &ldquo;Spaccia della Bestia Trionfante,&rdquo; are
+more or less rare, and more or less curious.&nbsp; Wild books,
+like William Postel&rsquo;s &ldquo;Three Marvellous Triumphs of
+Women,&rdquo; are &ldquo;curious.&rdquo;&nbsp; Freakish books,
+like macaronic poetry, written in a medley of languages, are
+curious.&nbsp; Books from private presses are singular.&nbsp; The
+old English poets and satirists turned out many a book curious to
+the last degree, and priced at a fantastic value.&nbsp; Such are
+&ldquo;Jordan&rsquo;s Jewels of Ingenuity,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Micro-cynicon, six Snarling Satyres&rdquo; (1599), and the
+&ldquo;Treatize made of a <a name="page112"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 112</span>Galaunt,&rdquo; printed by Wynkyn de
+Worde, and found pasted into the fly-leaf, on the oak-board
+binding of an imperfect volume of Pynson&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Statutes.&rdquo;&nbsp; All our early English poems and
+miscellanies are curious; and, as relics of delightful singers,
+are most charming possessions.&nbsp; Such are the &ldquo;Songes
+and Sonnettes of Surrey&rdquo; (1557), the &ldquo;Paradyce of
+daynty Deuices&rdquo; (1576), the &ldquo;Small Handful of
+Fragrant Flowers,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Handful of Dainty
+Delights, gathered out of the lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture,
+fit for any worshipful Gentlewoman to smell unto,&rdquo;
+(1584).&nbsp; &ldquo;The Teares of Ireland&rdquo; (1642), are
+said, though one would not expect it, to be &ldquo;extremely
+rare,&rdquo; and, therefore, precious.&nbsp; But there is no end
+to the list of such desirable rarities.&nbsp; If we add to them
+all books coveted as early editions, and, therefore, as relics of
+great writers, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Milton, Sterne, Walton, and
+the rest, we might easily fill a book with remarks on this topic
+alone.&nbsp; The collection of such editions is the most
+respectable, the most useful, and, alas, the most expensive of
+the amateur&rsquo;s pursuits.&nbsp; It is curious enough that the
+early editions of Swift, Scott, and Byron, are little sought for,
+if not wholly neglected; while early copies of Shelley, Tennyson,
+and Keats, have a great price set on their heads.&nbsp; The
+quartoes of Shakespeare, like first editions of <a
+name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>Racine, are
+out of the reach of any but very opulent purchasers, or unusually
+lucky, fortunate book-hunters.&nbsp; Before leaving the topic of
+books which derive their value from the taste and fantasy of
+collectors, it must be remarked that, in this matter, the fashion
+of the world changes.&nbsp; Dr. Dibdin lamented, seventy years
+ago, the waning respect paid to certain editions of the
+classics.&nbsp; He would find that things have become worse now,
+and modern German editions, on execrable paper, have supplanted
+his old favourites.&nbsp; Fifty years ago, M. Brunet expressed
+his contempt for the designs of Boucher; now they are at the top
+of the fashion.&nbsp; The study of old booksellers&rsquo;
+catalogues is full of instruction as to the changes of
+caprice.&nbsp; The collection of Dr. Rawlinson was sold in
+1756.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Vision of Pierce Plowman&rdquo; (1561),
+and the &ldquo;Creede of Pierce Plowman&rdquo; (1553), brought
+between them no more than three shillings and sixpence.&nbsp;
+Eleven shillings were paid for the &ldquo;Boke of
+Chivalrie&rdquo; by Caxton.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Boke of St.
+Albans,&rdquo; by Wynkyn de Worde, cost &pound; 1: 1s., and this
+was the highest sum paid for any one of two hundred rare pieces
+of early English literature.&nbsp; In 1764, a copy of the
+&ldquo;Hypnerotomachia&rdquo; was sold for two shillings,
+&ldquo;A Pettie Pallace of Pettie his Pleasures,&rdquo; (ah, what
+a thought for the amateur!) went for three <a
+name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>shillings,
+while &ldquo;Palmerin of England&rdquo; (1602), attained no more
+than the paltry sum of fourteen shillings.&nbsp; When Osborne
+sold the Harley collection, the scarcest old English books
+fetched but three or four shillings.&nbsp; If the wandering Jew
+had been a collector in the last century he might have turned a
+pretty profit by selling his old English books in this age of
+ours.&nbsp; In old French, too, Ahasuerus would have done a good
+stroke of business, for the prices brought by old Villons,
+Romances of the Rose, &ldquo;Les Marguerites de
+Marguerite,&rdquo; and so forth, at the M&rsquo;Carthy sale, were
+truly pitiable.&nbsp; A hundred years hence the original editions
+of Thackeray, or of Miss Greenaway&rsquo;s Christmas books, or
+&ldquo;Modern Painters,&rdquo; may be the ruling passion, and
+Aldines and Elzevirs, black letter and French vignettes may all
+be despised.&nbsp; A book which is commonplace in our century is
+curious in the next, and disregarded in that which follows.&nbsp;
+Old books of a heretical character were treasures once, rare
+unholy possessions.&nbsp; Now we have seen so many heretics that
+the world is indifferent to the audacities of Bruno, and the
+veiled impieties of Vanini.</p>
+<p>The last of our categories of books much sought by the
+collector includes all volumes valued for their ancient bindings,
+for the mark and stamp of famous amateurs.&nbsp; The French, who
+have <a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+115</span>supplied the world with so many eminent
+binders,&mdash;as Eve, Padeloup, Duseuil, Le Gascon, Derome,
+Simier, Boz&eacute;rian, Thouvenin, Trautz-Bauzonnet, and
+Lortic&mdash;are the chief patrons of books in historical
+bindings.&nbsp; In England an historical binding, a book of
+Laud&rsquo;s, or James&rsquo;s, or Garrick&rsquo;s, or even of
+Queen Elizabeth&rsquo;s, does not seem to derive much added charm
+from its associations.&nbsp; But, in France, peculiar bindings
+are now the objects most in demand among collectors.&nbsp; The
+series of books thus rendered precious begins with those of
+Maioli and of Grolier (1479&ndash;1565), remarkable for their
+mottoes and the geometrical patterns on the covers.&nbsp; Then
+comes De Thou (who had three sets of arms), with his blazon, the
+bees stamped on the morocco.&nbsp; The volumes of Marguerite of
+Angoul&ecirc;me are sprinkled with golden daisies.&nbsp; Diane de
+Poictiers had her crescents and her bow, and the initial of her
+royal lover was intertwined with her own.&nbsp; The three
+daughters of Louis XV. had each their favourite colour, and their
+books wear liveries of citron, red, and olive morocco.&nbsp; The
+Abb&eacute; Cotin, the original of Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s
+Trissotin, stamped his books with intertwined C&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Henri III. preferred religious emblems, and sepulchral
+mottoes&mdash;skulls, crossbones, tears, and the insignia of the
+Passion.&nbsp; <i>Mort m&rsquo;est vie</i> is a favourite device
+of the effeminate <a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+116</span>and voluptuous prince.&nbsp; Moli&egrave;re himself was
+a collector, <i>il n&rsquo;es pas de bouquin qui
+s&rsquo;&eacute;chappe de ses mains</i>,&mdash;&ldquo;never an
+old book escapes him,&rdquo; says the author of &ldquo;La Guerre
+Comique,&rdquo; the last of the pamphlets which flew from side to
+side in the great literary squabble about
+&ldquo;L&rsquo;&Eacute;cole des Femmes.&rdquo;&nbsp; M.
+Souli&eacute; has found a rough catalogue of
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s library, but the books, except a little
+Elzevir, have disappeared. <a name="citation7"></a><a
+href="#footnote7" class="citation">[7]</a>&nbsp; Madame de
+Maintenon was fond of bindings.&nbsp; Mr. Toovey possesses a copy
+of a devotional work in red morocco, tooled and gilt, which she
+presented to a friendly abbess.&nbsp; The books at Saint-Cyr were
+stamped with a crowned cross, besprent with
+<i>fleurs-de-lys</i>.&nbsp; The books of the later
+collectors&mdash;Longepierre, the translator of Bion and Moschus;
+D&rsquo;Hoym the diplomatist; McCarthy, and La Valli&egrave;re,
+are all valued at a rate which seems fair game for satire.</p>
+<p>Among the most interesting bibliophiles of the eighteenth
+century is Madame Du Barry.&nbsp; In 1771, this notorious beauty
+could scarcely read or write.&nbsp; She had rooms, however, in
+the Ch&acirc;teau de Versailles, thanks to the kindness of a
+monarch who admired those native qualities which education may
+polish, but which it can never confer.&nbsp; <a
+name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>At
+Versailles, Madame Du Barry heard of the literary genius of
+Madame de Pompadour.&nbsp; The Pompadour was a person of
+taste.&nbsp; Her large library of some four thousand works of the
+lightest sort of light literature was bound by Biziaux.&nbsp; Mr.
+Toovey possesses the Brant&ocirc;me of this <i>dame
+galante</i>.&nbsp; Madame herself had published etchings by her
+own fair hands; and to hear of these things excited the emulation
+of Madame Du Barry.&nbsp; She might not be <i>clever</i>, but she
+could have a library like another, if libraries were in
+fashion.&nbsp; One day Madame Du Barry astonished the Court by
+announcing that her collection of books would presently arrive at
+Versailles.&nbsp; Meantime she took counsel with a bookseller,
+who bought up examples of all the cheap &ldquo;remainders,&rdquo;
+as they are called in the trade, that he could lay his hands
+upon.&nbsp; The whole assortment, about one thousand volumes in
+all, was hastily bound in rose morocco, elegantly gilt, and
+stamped with the arms of the noble house of Du Barry.&nbsp; The
+bill which Madame Du Barry owed her enterprising agent is still
+in existence.&nbsp; The thousand volumes cost about three francs
+each; the binding (extremely cheap) came to nearly as much.&nbsp;
+The amusing thing is that the bookseller, in the catalogue which
+he sent with the improvised library, marked the books which
+Madame Du Barry possessed <i>before</i> <a
+name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>her large
+order was so punctually executed.&nbsp; There were two
+&ldquo;M&eacute;moires de Du Barry,&rdquo; an old newspaper, two
+or three plays, and &ldquo;L&rsquo;Historie Amoureuse de Pierre
+le Long.&rdquo;&nbsp; Louis XV. observed with pride that, though
+Madame Pompadour had possessed a larger library, that of Madame
+Du Barry was the better selected.&nbsp; Thanks to her new
+collection, the lady learned to read with fluency, but she never
+overcame the difficulties of spelling.</p>
+<p>A lady collector who loved books not very well perhaps, but
+certainly not wisely, was the unhappy Marie Antoinette.&nbsp; The
+controversy in France about the private character of the Queen
+has been as acrimonious as the Scotch discussion about Mary
+Stuart.&nbsp; Evidence, good and bad, letters as apocryphal as
+the letters of the famous &ldquo;casket,&rdquo; have been
+produced on both sides.&nbsp; A few years ago, under the empire,
+M. Louis Lacour found a manuscript catalogue of the books in the
+Queen&rsquo;s <i>boudoir</i>.&nbsp; They were all novels of the
+flimsiest sort,&mdash;&ldquo;L&rsquo;Amiti&eacute;
+Dangereuse,&rdquo; &ldquo;Les Suites d&rsquo;un Moment
+d&rsquo;Erreur,&rdquo; and even the stories of Louvet and of
+R&eacute;tif de la Bretonne.&nbsp; These volumes all bore the
+letters &ldquo;C. T.&rdquo; (Ch&acirc;teau de Trianon), and
+during the Revolution they were scattered among the various
+public libraries of Paris.&nbsp; The Queen&rsquo;s more important
+<a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>library
+was at the Tuileries, but at Versailles she had only three books,
+as the commissioners of the Convention found, when they made an
+inventory of the property of <i>la femme Capet</i>.&nbsp; Among
+the three was the &ldquo;Gerusalemme Liberata,&rdquo; printed,
+with eighty exquisite designs by Cochin, at the expense of
+&ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; afterwards Louis XVIII.&nbsp; Books with
+the arms of Marie Antoinette are very rare in private
+collections; in sales they are as much sought after as those of
+Madame Du Barry.</p>
+<p>With these illustrations of the kind of interest that belongs
+to books of old collectors, we may close this chapter.&nbsp; The
+reader has before him a list, with examples, of the kinds of
+books at present most in vogue among amateurs.&nbsp; He must
+judge for himself whether he will follow the fashion, by aid
+either of a long purse or of patient research, or whether he will
+find out new paths for himself.&nbsp; A scholar is rarely a rich
+man.&nbsp; He cannot compete with plutocrats who buy by
+deputy.&nbsp; But, if he pursues the works he really needs, he
+may make a valuable collection.&nbsp; He cannot go far wrong
+while he brings together the books that he finds most congenial
+to his own taste and most useful to his own studies.&nbsp; Here,
+then, in the words of the old &ldquo;sentiment,&rdquo; I bid him
+farewell, and wish &ldquo;success to his inclinations, <a
+name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>provided
+they are virtuous.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is a set of collectors,
+alas! whose inclinations are not virtuous.&nbsp; The most famous
+of them, a Frenchman, observed that his own collection of bad
+books was unique.&nbsp; That of an English rival, he admitted,
+was respectable,&mdash;&ldquo;<i>mais milord se livre &agrave;
+des autres pr&eacute;occupations</i>!&rdquo;&nbsp; He thought a
+collector&rsquo;s whole heart should be with his treasures.</p>
+
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+121</span>En bouquinant se trouve grand soulas.<br />
+Soubent m&rsquo;en vay musant, &agrave; petis pas,<br />
+Au long des quais, pour flairer maint bieux livre.<br />
+Des Elzevier la Sphere me rend yure,<br />
+Et la Sir&egrave;ne aussi m&rsquo;esmeut.&nbsp; Grand cas<br />
+Fais-je d&rsquo;Estienne, Aide, ou Dolet.&nbsp; Mais Ias!<br />
+Le vieux Caxton ne se rencontre pas,<br />
+Plus qu&rsquo; agneau d&rsquo;or parmi jetons de cuivre,<br />
+En bouquinant!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Pour tout plaisir que l&rsquo;on goute
+icy-bas<br />
+La Grace a Dieu.&nbsp; Mieux vaut, sans altercas,<br />
+Chasser bouquin: Nul mal n&rsquo;en peult s&rsquo;ensuivre.<br />
+Dr sus au livre: il est le grand appas.<br />
+Clair est le ciel.&nbsp; Amis, qui veut me suivre<br />
+En bouquinant?</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. L.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page122"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 122</span>
+<a href="images/p122b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Group of Children.  Drawn by Kate Greenaway; engraved by O.
+Lacour"
+title=
+"Group of Children.  Drawn by Kate Greenaway; engraved by O.
+Lacour"
+ src="images/p122s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+123</span>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS <a name="citation123"></a><a
+href="#footnote123" class="citation">[123]</a></h2>
+<p>
+<a href="images/p123b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Highly decorative letter M, first letter of Modern"
+title=
+"Highly decorative letter M, first letter of Modern"
+ src="images/p123s.jpg" />
+</a><span class="GutSmall">ODERN</span> English
+book-illustration&mdash;to which the present chapter is
+restricted&mdash;has no long or doubtful history, since to find
+its first beginnings, it is needless to go farther back than the
+last quarter of the eighteenth century.&nbsp; Not that
+&ldquo;illustrated&rdquo; books of a certain class were by any
+means unknown before that period.&nbsp; On the contrary, for many
+years previously, literature <a name="page124"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 124</span>had boasted its
+&ldquo;sculptures&rdquo; of be-wigged and be-laurelled
+&ldquo;worthies,&rdquo; its &ldquo;prospects&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;land-skips,&rdquo; its phenomenal monsters and its
+&ldquo;curious antiques.&rdquo;&nbsp; But, despite the couplet in
+the &ldquo;Dunciad&rdquo; respecting books where</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo; . . .&nbsp; the pictures for the page
+atone,<br />
+And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own;&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>illustrations, in which the designer attempted the actual
+delineation of scenes or occurrences in the text, were certainly
+not common when Pope wrote, nor were they for some time
+afterwards either very numerous or very noteworthy.&nbsp; There
+are Hogarth&rsquo;s engravings to &ldquo;Hudibras&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Don Quixote;&rdquo; there are the designs of his crony
+Frank Hayman to Theobald&rsquo;s &ldquo;Shakespeare,&rdquo; to
+Milton, to Pope, to Cervantes; there are Pine&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Horace&rdquo; and Sturt&rsquo;s &ldquo;Prayer-Book&rdquo;
+(in both of which text and ornament were alike engraved); there
+are the historical and topographical drawings of Sandby, Wale,
+and others; and yet&mdash;notwithstanding all these&mdash;it is
+with Bewick&rsquo;s cuts to Gay&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fables&rdquo; in
+1779, and Stothard&rsquo;s plates to Harrison&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Novelist&rsquo;s Magazine&rdquo; in 1780, that
+book-illustration by imaginative compositions really begins to
+flourish in England.&nbsp; Those little masterpieces of the
+Newcastle artist brought about a revival of wood-engraving which
+continues to this day; but engraving <a name="page125"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 125</span>upon metal, as a means of decorating
+books, practically came to an end with the &ldquo;Annuals&rdquo;
+of thirty years ago.&nbsp; It will therefore be well to speak
+first of illustrations upon copper and steel.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Stothard, Blake, and Flaxman are the names that come freshest
+to memory in this connection.&nbsp; For a period of fifty years
+Stothard stands pre-eminent in illustrated literature.&nbsp;
+Measuring time by poets, he may be said to have lent something of
+his fancy and amenity to most of the writers from Cowper to
+Rogers.&nbsp; As a draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak: his
+figures are often limp and invertebrate, and his type of beauty
+insipid.&nbsp; Still, regarded as groups, the majority of his
+designs are exquisite, and he possessed one all-pervading and
+un-English quality&mdash;the quality of grace.&nbsp; This is his
+dominant note.&nbsp; Nothing can be more seductive than the suave
+flow of his line, his feeling for costume, his gentle and
+chastened humour.&nbsp; Many of his women and children are models
+of purity and innocence.&nbsp; But he works at ease only within
+the limits of his special powers; he is happier in the pastoral
+and domestic than the heroic and supernatural, and his style is
+better fitted to the formal salutations of &ldquo;Clarissa&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Sir <a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+126</span>Charles Grandison,&rdquo; than the rough horse-play of
+&ldquo;Peregrine Pickle.&rdquo;&nbsp; Where Rowlandson would have
+revelled, Stothard would be awkward and constrained; where Blake
+would give us a new sensation, Stothard would be poor and
+mechanical.&nbsp; Nevertheless the gifts he possessed were
+thoroughly recognised in his own day, and brought him, if not
+riches, at least competence and honour.&nbsp; It is said that
+more than three thousand of his drawings have been engraved, and
+they are scattered through a hundred publications.&nbsp; Those to
+the &ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress&rdquo; and the poems of
+Rogers are commonly spoken of as his best, though he never
+excelled some of the old-fashioned plates (with their pretty
+borders in the style of Gravelot and the Frenchmen) to
+Richardson&rsquo;s novels, and such forgotten
+&ldquo;classics&rdquo; as &ldquo;Joe Thompson&rdquo;,
+&ldquo;Jessamy,&rdquo; &ldquo;Betsy Thoughtless,&rdquo; and one
+or two others in Harrison&rsquo;s very miscellaneous
+collection.</p>
+<p>Stothard was fortunate in his engravers.&nbsp; Besides James
+Heath, his best interpreter, Schiavonetti, Sharp, Finden, the
+Cookes, Bartolozzi, most of the fashionable translators into
+copper were busily employed upon his inventions.&nbsp; Among the
+rest was an artist of powers far greater than his own, although
+scarcely so happy in turning them to profitable account.&nbsp;
+The genius of William <a name="page127"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 127</span>Blake was not a marketable commodity
+in the same way as Stothard&rsquo;s talent.&nbsp; The one caught
+the trick of the time with his facile elegance; the other scorned
+to make any concessions, either in conception or execution, to
+the mere popularity of prettiness.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Give pensions to the learned pig,<br />
+Or the hare playing on a tabor;<br />
+Anglus can never see perfection<br />
+But in the journeyman&rsquo;s labour,&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>he wrote in one of those rough-hewn and bitter epigrams of
+his.&nbsp; Yet the work that was then so lukewarmly
+received&mdash;if, indeed, it can be said to have been received
+at all&mdash;is at present far more sought after than
+Stothard&rsquo;s, and the prices now given for the &ldquo;Songs
+of Innocence and Experience,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Inventions to the
+Book of Job,&rdquo; and even &ldquo;The Grave,&rdquo; would have
+brought affluence to the struggling artist, who (as Cromek
+taunted him) was frequently &ldquo;reduced so low as to be
+obliged to live on half a guinea a week.&rdquo;&nbsp; Not that
+this was entirely the fault of his contemporaries.&nbsp; Blake
+was a visionary, and an untuneable man; and, like others who work
+for the select public of all ages, he could not always escape the
+consequence that the select public of his own, however willing,
+were scarcely numerous enough <a name="page128"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 128</span>to support him.&nbsp; His most
+individual works are the &ldquo;Songs of Innocence,&rdquo; 1789,
+and the &ldquo;Songs of Experience,&rdquo; 1794.&nbsp; These,
+afterwards united in one volume, were unique in their method of
+production; indeed, they do not perhaps strictly come within the
+category of what is generally understood to be copperplate
+engraving.&nbsp; The drawings were outlined and the songs written
+upon the metal with some liquid that resisted the action of acid,
+and the remainder of the surface of the plate was eaten away with
+<i>aqua-fortis</i>, leaving the design in bold relief, like a
+rude stereotype.&nbsp; This was then printed off in the
+predominant tone&mdash;blue, brown, or yellow, as the case might
+be&mdash;and delicately tinted by the artist in a prismatic and
+ethereal fashion peculiarly his own.&nbsp; Stitched and bound in
+boards by Mrs. Blake, a certain number of these
+leaflets&mdash;twenty-seven in the case of the first
+issue&mdash;made up a tiny <i>octavo</i> of a wholly exceptional
+kind.&nbsp; Words indeed fail to exactly describe the flower-like
+beauty&mdash;the fascination of these &ldquo;fairy
+missals,&rdquo; in which, it has been finely said, &ldquo;the
+thrilling music of the verse, and the gentle bedazzlement of the
+lines and colours so intermingle, that the mind hangs in a
+pleasant uncertainty as to whether it is a picture that is
+singing, or a song which has newly budded and blossomed into
+colour and <a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+129</span>form.&rdquo;&nbsp; The accompanying woodcut, after one
+of the illustrations to the &ldquo;Songs of Innocence,&rdquo;
+gives some indication of the general composition, but it can
+convey no hint of the gorgeous purple, and crimson, and orange of
+the original.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p129b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;Infant Joy.&rdquo;  From Blake&rsquo;s &ldquo;Songs of
+Innocence,&rdquo; 1789.  Engraved by J. F. Jungling"
+title=
+"&ldquo;Infant Joy.&rdquo;  From Blake&rsquo;s &ldquo;Songs of
+Innocence,&rdquo; 1789.  Engraved by J. F. Jungling"
+ src="images/p129s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Of the &ldquo;Illustrations to the Book of Job,&rdquo; 1826,
+there are excellent reduced facsimiles by <a
+name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>the
+recently-discovered photo-intaglio process, in the new edition of
+Gilchrist&rsquo;s &ldquo;Life.&rdquo;&nbsp; The originals were
+engraved by Blake himself in his strong decisive fashion, and
+they are his best work.&nbsp; A kind of
+<i>deisidaimonia</i>&mdash;a sacred awe&mdash;falls upon one in
+turning over these wonderful productions of the artist&rsquo;s
+declining years and failing hand.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Leaving the old, both worlds at once they
+view,<br />
+That stand upon the threshold of the new,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>sings Waller; and it is almost possible to believe for a
+moment that their creator was (as he said) &ldquo;under the
+direction of messengers from Heaven.&rdquo;&nbsp; But his designs
+for Blair&rsquo;s &ldquo;Grave,&rdquo; 1808, popularised by the
+burin of Schiavonetti, attracted greater attention at the time of
+publication; and, being less rare, they are even now perhaps
+better known than the others.&nbsp; The facsimile here given is
+from the latter book.&nbsp; The worn old man, the trustful woman,
+and the guileless child are sleeping peacefully; but the king
+with his sceptre, and the warrior with his hand on his
+sword-hilt, lie open-eyed, waiting the summons of the
+trumpet.&nbsp; One cannot help fancying that the artist&rsquo;s
+long vigils among the Abbey tombs, during his apprenticeship to
+James Basire, must have been present to his mind when he selected
+this impressive monumental subject.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page131"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 131</span>
+<a href="images/p131b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child, in the
+Tomb.&rdquo;  From Blair&rsquo;s &ldquo;Grave,&rdquo; 1808.
+Designed by William Blake; facsimiled on wood from the engraving
+by Louis Schiavonetti"
+title=
+"&ldquo;Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child, in the
+Tomb.&rdquo;  From Blair&rsquo;s &ldquo;Grave,&rdquo; 1808.
+Designed by William Blake; facsimiled on wood from the engraving
+by Louis Schiavonetti"
+ src="images/p131s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>To
+one of Blake&rsquo;s few friends&mdash;to the &ldquo;dear
+Sculptor of Eternity,&rdquo; as he wrote to Flaxman from
+Felpham&mdash;the world is indebted for some notable book
+illustrations.&nbsp; Whether the greatest writers&mdash;the
+Homers, the Shakespeares, the Dantes&mdash;can ever be
+&ldquo;illustrated&rdquo; without loss may fairly be
+questioned.&nbsp; At all events, the showy dexterities of the
+Dor&eacute;s and Gilberts prove nothing to the contrary.&nbsp;
+But now and then there comes to the graphic interpretation of a
+great author an artist either so reverential, or so strongly
+sympathetic at some given point, that, in default of any relation
+more narrowly intimate, we at once accept his conceptions as the
+best attainable.&nbsp; In this class are Flaxman&rsquo;s outlines
+to Homer and &AElig;schylus.&nbsp; Flaxman was not a Hellenist as
+men are Hellenists to-day.&nbsp; Nevertheless, his Roman studies
+had saturated him with the spirit of antique beauty, and by his
+grand knowledge of the nude, his calm, his restraint, he is such
+an illustrator of Homer as is not likely to arise again.&nbsp;
+For who&mdash;with all our added knowledge of classical
+antiquity&mdash;who, of our modern artists, could hope to rival
+such thoroughly Greek compositions as the ball-play of Nausicaa
+in the &ldquo;Odyssey,&rdquo; or that lovely group from
+&AElig;schylus of the tender-hearted, womanly Oceanides, cowering
+like flowers beaten by the storm under the <a
+name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>terrible
+anger of Zeus?&nbsp; In our day Flaxman&rsquo;s drawings would
+have been reproduced by some of the modern facsimile processes,
+and the gain would have been great.&nbsp; As it is, something is
+lost by their transference to copper, even though the translators
+be Piroli and Blake.&nbsp; Blake, in fact, did more than he is
+usually credited with, for (beside the acknowledged and later
+&ldquo;Hesiod,&rdquo; 1817) he really engraved the whole of the
+&ldquo;Odyssey,&rdquo; Piroli&rsquo;s plates having been lost on
+the voyage to England.&nbsp; The name of the Roman artist,
+nevertheless, appears on the title-page (1793).&nbsp; But Blake
+was too original to be a successful copyist of other men&rsquo;s
+work, and to appreciate the full value of Flaxman&rsquo;s
+drawings, they should be studied in the collections at University
+College, the Royal Academy, and elsewhere. <a
+name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9"
+class="citation">[9]</a></p>
+<p>Flaxman and Blake had few imitators.&nbsp; But a host of
+clever designers, such as Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Westall,
+Uwins, Smirke, Burney, Corbould, Dodd, and others, vied with the
+popular Stothard in &ldquo;embellishing&rdquo; the endless
+&ldquo;Poets,&rdquo; &ldquo;novelists,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;essayists&rdquo; of our forefathers.&nbsp; Some of these,
+and most of the recognised artists of the period, lent their aid
+to that <a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+134</span>boldly-planned but unhappily-executed
+&ldquo;Shakespeare&rdquo; of Boydell,&mdash;&ldquo;black and
+ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, straddling
+Fuselis,&rdquo; as Thackeray calls it.&nbsp; They are certainly
+not enlivening&mdash;those cumbrous &ldquo;atlas&rdquo;
+<i>folios</i> of 1803&ndash;5, and they helped to ruin the worthy
+alderman.&nbsp; Even courtly Sir Joshua is clearly ill at ease
+among the pushing Hamiltons and Mortimers; and, were it not for
+the whimsical discovery that Westall&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ghost of
+C&aelig;sar&rdquo; strangely resembles Mr. Gladstone, there would
+be no resting-place for the modern student of these dismal
+masterpieces.&nbsp; The truth is, Reynolds excepted, there were
+no contemporary painters strong enough for the task, and the
+honours of the enterprise belong almost exclusively to
+Smirke&rsquo;s &ldquo;Seven Ages&rdquo; and one or two plates
+from the lighter comedies.&nbsp; The great &ldquo;Bible&rdquo; of
+Macklin, a rival and even more incongruous publication, upon
+which some of the same designers were employed, has fallen into
+completer oblivion.&nbsp; A rather better fate attended another
+book of this class, which, although belonging to a later period,
+may be briefly referred to here.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Milton&rdquo;
+of John Martin has distinct individuality, and some of the
+needful qualities of imagination.&nbsp; Nevertheless, posterity
+has practically decided that scenic grandeur and sombre effects
+alone are not a sufficient pictorial equipment for the varied
+story of &ldquo;Paradise Lost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>It is
+to Boydell of the Shakespeare gallery that we owe the
+&ldquo;Liber Veritatis&rdquo; of Claude, engraved by Richard
+Earlom; and indirectly, since rivalry of Claude prompted the
+attempt, the famous &ldquo;Liber Studiorum&rdquo; of
+Turner.&nbsp; Neither of these, however&mdash;which, like the
+&ldquo;Rivers of France&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Picturesque Views
+in England and Wales&rdquo; of the latter artist, are collections
+of engravings rather than illustrated books&mdash;belongs to the
+present purpose.&nbsp; But Turner&rsquo;s name may fitly serve to
+introduce those once familiar &ldquo;Annuals&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Keepsakes,&rdquo; that, beginning in 1823 with
+Ackermann&rsquo;s &ldquo;Forget-me-Not,&rdquo; enjoyed a
+popularity of more than thirty years.&nbsp; Their general
+characteristics have been pleasantly satirised in
+Thackeray&rsquo;s account of the elegant miscellany of Bacon the
+publisher, to which Mr. Arthur Pendennis contributed his pretty
+poem of &ldquo;The Church Porch.&rdquo;&nbsp; His editress, it
+will be remembered, was the Lady Violet Lebas, and his colleagues
+the Honourable Percy Popjoy, Lord Dodo, and the gifted Bedwin
+Sands, whose &ldquo;Eastern Ghazuls&rdquo; lent so special a
+distinction to the volume in watered-silk binding.&nbsp; The
+talented authors, it is true, were in most cases under the
+disadvantage of having to write to the plates of the talented
+artists, a practice which even now is not extinct, though it is
+scarcely considered favourable to <a name="page136"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 136</span>literary merit.&nbsp; And the real
+&ldquo;Annuals&rdquo; were no exception to the rule.&nbsp; As a
+matter of fact, their general literary merit was not obtrusive,
+although, of course, they sometimes contained work which
+afterwards became famous.&nbsp; They are now so completely
+forgotten and out of date, that one scarcely expects to find that
+Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macaulay, and Southey, were among the
+occasional contributors.&nbsp; Lamb&rsquo;s beautiful
+&ldquo;Album verses&rdquo; appeared in the &ldquo;Bijou,&rdquo;
+Scott&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bonnie Dundee&rdquo; in the &ldquo;Christmas
+Box,&rdquo; and Tennyson&rsquo;s &ldquo;St. Agnes&rsquo;
+Eve&rdquo; in the &ldquo;Keepsake.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the plates
+were, after all, the leading attraction.&nbsp; These, prepared
+for the most part under the superintendence of the younger Heath,
+and executed on the steel which by this time had supplanted the
+old &ldquo;coppers,&rdquo; were supplied by, or were
+&ldquo;after,&rdquo; almost every contemporary artist of
+note.&nbsp; Stothard, now growing old and past his prime, Turner,
+Etty, Stanfield, Leslie, Roberts, Danby, Maclise, Lawrence,
+Cattermole, and numbers of others, found profitable labour in
+this fashionable field until 1856, when the last of the
+&ldquo;Annuals&rdquo; disappeared, driven from the market by the
+rapid development of wood engraving.&nbsp; About a million, it is
+roughly estimated, was squandered in producing them.</p>
+<p>In connection with the &ldquo;Annuals&rdquo; must be mentioned
+two illustrated books which were in <a name="page137"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 137</span>all probability suggested by
+them&mdash;the &ldquo;Poems&rdquo; and &ldquo;Italy&rdquo; of
+Rogers.&nbsp; The designs to these are chiefly by Turner and
+Stothard, although there are a few by Prout and others.&nbsp;
+Stothard&rsquo;s have been already referred to; Turner&rsquo;s
+are almost universally held to be the most successful of his many
+vignettes.&nbsp; It has been truly said&mdash;in a recent
+excellent life of this artist <a name="citation10"></a><a
+href="#footnote10" class="citation">[10]</a>&mdash;that it would
+be difficult to find in the whole of his works two really greater
+than the &ldquo;Alps at Daybreak,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Datur
+Hora Quieti,&rdquo; in the former of these volumes.&nbsp; Almost
+equally beautiful are the &ldquo;Valombr&eacute; Falls&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Tornaro&rsquo;s misty brow.&rdquo;&nbsp; Of the
+&ldquo;Italy&rdquo; set Mr. Ruskin writes:&mdash;&ldquo;They are
+entirely exquisite; poetical in the highest and purest sense,
+exemplary and delightful beyond all praise.&rdquo;&nbsp; To such
+words it is not possible to add much.&nbsp; But it is pretty
+clear that the poetical vitality of Rogers was secured by these
+well-timed illustrations, over which he is admitted by his nephew
+Mr. Sharpe to have spent about &pound;7000, and far larger sums
+have been named by good authorities.&nbsp; The artist received
+from fifteen to twenty guineas for each of the drawings; the
+engravers (Goodall, Miller, Wallis, Smith, and others), sixty
+guineas a plate.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Poems&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;Italy,&rdquo; in the original issues of 1830 and <a
+name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>1834, are
+still precious to collectors, and are likely to remain so.&nbsp;
+Turner also illustrated Scott, Milton, Campbell, and Byron; but
+this series of designs has not received equal commendation from
+his greatest eulogist, who declares them to be &ldquo;much more
+laboured, and more or less artificial and unequal.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Among the numerous imitations directly induced by the Rogers
+books was the &ldquo;Lyrics of the Heart,&rdquo; by Alaric Attila
+Watts, a forgotten versifier and sometime editor of
+&ldquo;Annuals,&rdquo; but it did not meet with similar
+success.</p>
+<p>Many illustrated works, originating in the perfection and
+opportunities of engraving on metal, are necessarily unnoticed in
+this rapid summary.&nbsp; As far, however, as book-illustration
+is concerned, copper and steel plate engraving may be held to
+have gone out of fashion with the &ldquo;Annuals.&rdquo;&nbsp; It
+is still, indeed, to be found lingering in that mine of modern
+art-books&mdash;the &ldquo;Art Journal;&rdquo; and, not so very
+long ago, it made a sumptuous and fugitive reappearance in
+Dor&eacute;&rsquo;s &ldquo;Idylls of the King,&rdquo; Birket
+Foster&rsquo;s &ldquo;Hood,&rdquo; and one or two other imposing
+volumes.&nbsp; But it was badly injured by modern wood-engraving;
+it has since been crippled for life by photography; and it is
+more than probable that the present rapid rise of modern etching
+will give it the <i>coup de grace</i>. <a
+name="citation11"></a><a href="#footnote11"
+class="citation">[11]</a></p>
+<p><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>By
+the end of the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood
+had fallen into disuse.&nbsp; Writing <i>circa</i> 1770, Horace
+Walpole goes so far as to say that it &ldquo;never was executed
+in any perfection in England;&rdquo; and, speaking afterwards of
+Papillon&rsquo;s &ldquo;Trait&eacute; de la Gravure,&rdquo; 1766,
+he takes occasion to doubt if that author would ever
+&ldquo;persuade the world to return to wooden cuts.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, with Bewick, a few years later, wood-engraving took
+a fresh departure so conspicuous that it amounts to a
+revival.&nbsp; In what this consisted it is clearly impossible to
+show here with any sufficiency of detail; but between the method
+of the old wood-cutters who reproduced the drawings of
+D&uuml;rer, and the method of the Newcastle artist, there are two
+marked and well-defined differences.&nbsp; One of these is a
+difference in the preparation of the wood and the tool
+employed.&nbsp; The old wood-cutters carved their designs with
+knives and chisels on strips of wood sawn lengthwise&mdash;that
+is to say, upon the <i>plank</i>; Bewick used a graver, and
+worked upon slices of box or pear cut across the
+grain,&mdash;that is to say upon the <i>end</i> of the
+wood.&nbsp; The other difference, of which Bewick is said to have
+been the inventor, <a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+140</span>is less easy to describe.&nbsp; It consisted in the
+employment of what is technically known as &ldquo;white
+line.&rdquo;&nbsp; In all antecedent wood-cutting the cutter had
+simply cleared away those portions of the block left bare by the
+design, so that the design remained in relief to be printed from
+like type.&nbsp; Using the smooth box block as a uniform surface
+from which, if covered with printing ink, a uniformly black
+impression might be obtained, Bewick, by cutting white lines
+across it at greater or lesser intervals, produced gradations of
+shade, from the absolute black of the block to the lightest
+tints.&nbsp; The general result of this method was to give a
+greater depth of colouring and variety to the engraving, but its
+advantages may perhaps be best understood by a glance at the
+background of the &ldquo;Woodcock&rdquo; on the following
+page.</p>
+<p>Bewick&rsquo;s first work of any importance was the
+Gay&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fables&rdquo; of 1779.&nbsp; In 1784 he did
+another series of &ldquo;Select Fables.&rdquo;&nbsp; Neither of
+these books, however, can be compared with the &ldquo;General
+History of Quadrupeds,&rdquo; 1790, and the &ldquo;British Land
+and Water Birds,&rdquo; 1797 and 1804.&nbsp; The illustrations to
+the &ldquo;Quadrupeds&rdquo; are in many instances excellent, and
+large additions were made to them in subsequent issues.&nbsp; But
+in this collection Bewick laboured to a great extent under the
+disadvantage of representing <a name="page141"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 141</span>animals with which he was familiar
+only through the medium of stuffed specimens or incorrect
+drawings.&nbsp; In the &ldquo;British Birds,&rdquo; on the
+contrary, his facilities for study from the life were greater,
+and his success was consequently more complete.&nbsp; Indeed, it
+may be safely affirmed that of all the engravers of the present
+century, none have excelled Bewick for beauty of black and white,
+for skilful rendering of plumage and foliage, and for fidelity of
+detail and accessory.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Woodcock&rdquo; (here
+given), the &ldquo;Partridge,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Owl,&rdquo; the
+&ldquo;Yellow-Hammer,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Yellow-Bunting,&rdquo;
+the &ldquo;Willow-Wren,&rdquo; are popular examples <a
+name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>of these
+qualities.&nbsp; But there are a hundred others nearly as
+good.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p141b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;The Woodcock.&rdquo;  From Jackson &amp; Chatto&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;History of Wood-Engraving,&rdquo; 1839.  Engraved, after
+T. Bewick, by John Jackson"
+title=
+"&ldquo;The Woodcock.&rdquo;  From Jackson &amp; Chatto&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;History of Wood-Engraving,&rdquo; 1839.  Engraved, after
+T. Bewick, by John Jackson"
+ src="images/p141s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Among sundry conventional decorations after the old German
+fashion in the first edition of the &ldquo;Quadrupeds,&rdquo;
+there are a fair number of those famous tail-pieces which, to a
+good many people, constitute Bewick&rsquo;s chief claim to
+immortality.&nbsp; That it is not easy to imitate them is plain
+from the failure of Branston&rsquo;s attempts, and from the
+inferior character of those by John Thompson in Yarrell&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Fishes.&rdquo;&nbsp; The genius of Bewick was, in fact,
+entirely individual and particular.&nbsp; He had the humour of a
+Hogarth in little, as well as some of his special
+characteristics,&mdash;notably his faculty of telling a story by
+suggestive detail.&nbsp; An instance may be taken at random from
+vol. I. of the &ldquo;Birds.&rdquo;&nbsp; A man, whose wig and
+hat have fallen off, lies asleep with open mouth under some
+bushes.&nbsp; He is manifestly drunk, and the date &ldquo;4
+June,&rdquo; on a neighbouring stone, gives us the reason and
+occasion of his catastrophe.&nbsp; He has been too loyally
+celebrating the birthday of his majesty King George III.&nbsp;
+Another of Bewick&rsquo;s gifts is his wonderful skill in
+foreshadowing a tragedy.&nbsp; Take as an example, this truly
+appalling incident from the &ldquo;Quadrupeds.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+tottering child, whose nurse is seen in the background, has
+strayed into the meadow, and is pulling at the <a
+name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>tail of a
+vicious-looking colt, with back-turned eye and lifted heel.&nbsp;
+Down the garden-steps the mother hurries headlong; but she can
+hardly be in time.&nbsp; And of all this&mdash;sufficient, one
+would say, for a fairly-sized canvas&mdash;the artist has managed
+to give a vivid impression in a block of three inches by
+two!&nbsp; Then, again, like Hogarth once more, he rejoices in
+multiplications of dilemma.&nbsp; What, for instance, can be more
+comically pathetic than the head-piece to the
+&ldquo;Contents&rdquo; in vol. I. of the
+&ldquo;Birds&rdquo;?&nbsp; The old horse has been seized with an
+invincible fit of stubbornness.&nbsp; The day is both windy and
+rainy.&nbsp; The rider has broken his stick and lost his hat; but
+he is too much encumbered with his cackling and excited stock to
+dare to dismount.&nbsp; Nothing can help him but a <i>Deus ex
+machin&acirc;</i>,&mdash;of whom there is no sign.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p143b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Tailpiece.  From the same.  Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John
+Jackson"
+title=
+"Tailpiece.  From the same.  Engraved, after T. Bewick, by John
+Jackson"
+ src="images/p143s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+144</span>Besides his humour, Bewick has a delightfully rustic
+side, of which Hogarth gives but little indication.&nbsp; From
+the starved ewe in the snow nibbling forlornly at a worn-out
+broom, to the cow which has broken through the rail to reach the
+running water, there are numberless designs which reveal that
+faithful lover of the field and hillside, who, as he said,
+&ldquo;would rather be herding sheep on Mickle bank top&rdquo;
+than remain in London to be made premier of England.&nbsp; He
+loved the country and the country-life; and he drew them as one
+who loved them.&nbsp; It is this rural quality which helps to
+give such a lasting freshness to his quaint and picturesque
+fancies; and it is this which will continue to preserve their
+popularity, even if they should cease to be valued for their
+wealth of whimsical invention.</p>
+<p>In referring to these masterpieces of Bewick&rsquo;s, it must
+not be forgotten that he had the aid of some clever
+assistants.&nbsp; His younger brother John was not without
+talent, as is clear from his work for Somervile&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Chace,&rdquo; 1796, and that highly edifying book, the
+&ldquo;Blossoms of Morality.&rdquo;&nbsp; Many of the tail-pieces
+to the &ldquo;Water Birds&rdquo; were designed by Robert Johnson,
+who also did most of the illustrations to Bewick&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Fables&rdquo; of 1818, which were engraved by Temple and
+Harvey, two other pupils.&nbsp; Another <a
+name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>pupil was
+Charlton Nesbit, an excellent engraver, who was employed upon the
+&ldquo;Birds,&rdquo; and did good work in Ackermann&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Religious Emblems&rdquo; of 1808, and the second series of
+Northcote&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fables.&rdquo;&nbsp; But by far the
+largest portion of the tail-pieces in the second volume of the
+&ldquo;Birds&rdquo; was engraved by Luke Clennell, a very skilful
+but unfortunate artist, who ultimately became insane.&nbsp; To
+him we owe the woodcuts, after Stothard&rsquo;s charming
+sketches, to the Rogers volume of 1810, an edition preceding
+those already mentioned as illustrated with steel-plates, and
+containing some of the artist&rsquo;s happiest pictures of
+children and <i>amorini</i>.&nbsp; Many of these little groups
+would make admirable designs for gems, if indeed they are not
+already derived from them, since one at least is an obvious copy
+of a well-known sardonyx&mdash;(&ldquo;The Marriage of Cupid and
+Psyche.&rdquo;)&nbsp; This volume, generally known by the name of
+the &ldquo;Firebrand&rdquo; edition, is highly prized by
+collectors; and, as intelligent renderings of pen and ink, there
+is little better than these <a name="page146"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 146</span>engravings of Clennell&rsquo;s. <a
+name="citation12"></a><a href="#footnote12"
+class="citation">[12]</a>&nbsp; Finally, among others of
+Bewick&rsquo;s pupils, must be mentioned William Harvey, who
+survived to 1866.&nbsp; It has been already stated that he
+engraved part of the illustrations to Bewick&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Fables,&rdquo; but his best known block is the large one
+of Haydon&rsquo;s &ldquo;Death of Dentatus.&rdquo;&nbsp; Soon
+after this he relinquished wood-engraving in favour of design,
+and for a long period was one of the most fertile and popular of
+book-illustrators.&nbsp; His style, however, is unpleasantly
+mannered; and it is sufficient to make mention of his
+masterpiece, the &ldquo;Arabian Nights&rdquo; of Lane, the
+illustrations to which, produced under the supervision of the
+translator, are said to be so accurate as to give the appropriate
+turbans for every hour of the day.&nbsp; They show considerable
+freedom of invention and a large fund of Orientalism.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p145b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Headpiece.  From Rogers&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pleasures of Memory, with
+other Poems,&rdquo; 1810.  Drawn by T. Stothard; engraved, after
+Luke Clennell, by O. Lacour"
+title=
+"Headpiece.  From Rogers&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pleasures of Memory, with
+other Poems,&rdquo; 1810.  Drawn by T. Stothard; engraved, after
+Luke Clennell, by O. Lacour"
+ src="images/p145s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Harvey came to London in 1817; Clennell had preceded him by
+some years; and Nesbit lived there for a considerable time.&nbsp;
+What distinguishes these pupils of Bewick especially is, that
+they were artists as well as engravers, capable of producing the
+designs they engraved.&nbsp; The &ldquo;London School&rdquo; of
+engravers, on the contrary, were mostly engravers, who depended
+<a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>upon
+others for their designs.&nbsp; The foremost of these was Robert
+Branston, a skilful renderer of human figures and indoor
+scenes.&nbsp; He worked in rivalry with Bewick and Nesbit; but he
+excelled neither, while he fell far behind the former.&nbsp; John
+Thompson, one of the very best of modern English engravers on
+wood, was Branston&rsquo;s pupil.&nbsp; His range was of the
+widest, and he succeeded as well in engraving fishes and birds
+for Yarrell and Walton&rsquo;s &ldquo;Angler,&rdquo; as in
+illustrations to Moli&egrave;re and &ldquo;Hudibras.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He was, besides, a clever draughtsman, though he worked chiefly
+from the designs of Thurston and others.&nbsp; One of the most
+successful of his illustrated books is the &ldquo;Vicar of
+Wakefield,&rdquo; after Mulready, whose simplicity and homely
+feeling were well suited to Goldsmith&rsquo;s style.&nbsp;
+Another excellent engraver of this date is Samuel Williams.&nbsp;
+There is an edition of Thomson&rsquo;s &ldquo;Seasons,&rdquo;
+with cuts both drawn and engraved by him, which is well worthy of
+attention, and (like Thompson and Branston) he was very skilful
+in reproducing the designs of Cruikshank.&nbsp; Some of his best
+work in this way is to be found in Clarke&rsquo;s &ldquo;Three
+Courses and a Dessert,&rdquo; published by Vizetelly in 1830.</p>
+<p>From this time forth, however, one hears less of the engraver
+and more of the artist.&nbsp; The establishment of the
+&ldquo;Penny Magazine&rdquo; in 1832, <a name="page148"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 148</span>and the multifarious publications of
+Charles Knight, gave an extraordinary impetus to
+wood-engraving.&nbsp; Ten years later came &ldquo;Punch,&rdquo;
+and the &ldquo;Illustrated London News,&rdquo; which further
+increased its popularity.&nbsp; Artists of eminence began to draw
+on or for the block, as they had drawn, and were still drawing,
+for the &ldquo;Annuals.&rdquo;&nbsp; In 1842&ndash;6 was issued
+the great &ldquo;Abbotsford&rdquo; edition of the &ldquo;Waverley
+Novels,&rdquo; which, besides 120 plates, contained nearly 2000
+wood-engravings; and with the &ldquo;Book of British
+Ballads,&rdquo; 1843, edited by Mr. S. C. Hall, arose that long
+series of illustrated Christmas books, which gradually supplanted
+the &ldquo;Annuals,&rdquo; and made familiar the names of
+Gilbert, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, John Absolon, and a crowd
+of others.&nbsp; The poems of Longfellow, Montgomery, Burns,
+&ldquo;Barry Cornwall,&rdquo; Poe, Miss Ingelow, were all
+successively &ldquo;illustrated.&rdquo;&nbsp; Besides these,
+there were numerous selections, such as Willmott&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Poets of the Nineteenth Century,&rdquo; Wills&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Poets&rsquo; Wit and Humour,&rdquo; and so forth.&nbsp;
+But the field here grows too wide to be dealt with in detail, and
+it is impossible to do more than mention a few of the books most
+prominent for merit or originality.&nbsp; Amongst these there is
+the &ldquo;Shakespeare&rdquo; of Sir John Gilbert.&nbsp; Regarded
+as an interpretative edition of the great dramatist, this is
+little more than a <a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+149</span>brilliant <i>tour de force</i>; but it is nevertheless
+infinitely superior to the earlier efforts of Kenny Meadows in
+1843, and also to the fancy designs of Harvey in Knight&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Pictorial Shakespeare.&rdquo;&nbsp; The &ldquo;Illustrated
+Tennyson&rdquo; of 1858 is also a remarkable production.&nbsp;
+The Laureate, almost more than any other, requires a variety of
+illustrators; and here, for his idylls, he had Mulready and
+Millais, and for his romances Rossetti and Holman Hunt.&nbsp; His
+&ldquo;Princess&rdquo; was afterwards illustrated by Maclise, and
+his &ldquo;Enoch Arden&rdquo; by Arthur Hughes; but neither of
+these can be said to be wholly adequate.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Lalla
+Rookh&rdquo; of John Tenniel, 1860, albeit somewhat stiff and <a
+name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 150</span>cold, after
+this artist&rsquo;s fashion, is a superb collection of carefully
+studied oriental designs.&nbsp; With these may be classed the
+illustrations to Aytoun&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lays of the Scottish
+Cavaliers,&rdquo; by Sir Noel Paton, which have the same finished
+qualities of composition and the same academic hardness.&nbsp;
+Several good editions of the &ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s
+Progress&rdquo; have appeared,&mdash;notably those of C. H.
+Bennett, J. D. Watson, and G. H. Thomas.&nbsp; Other books are
+Millais&rsquo;s &ldquo;Parables of our Lord,&rdquo;
+Leighton&rsquo;s &ldquo;Romola,&rdquo; Walker&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Philip&rdquo; and &ldquo;Denis Duval,&rdquo; the
+&ldquo;Don Quixote,&rdquo; &ldquo;Dante,&rdquo; &ldquo;La
+Fontaine&rdquo; and other works of Dor&eacute;, Dalziel&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Arabian Nights,&rdquo; Leighton&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lyra
+Germanica&rdquo; and &ldquo;Moral Emblems,&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;Spiritual Conceits&rdquo; of W. Harry Rogers.&nbsp; These
+are some only of the number, which does not include books like
+Mrs. Hugh Blackburn&rsquo;s &ldquo;British Birds,&rdquo;
+Wolf&rsquo;s &ldquo;Wild Animals,&rdquo; Wise&rsquo;s &ldquo;New
+Forest,&rdquo; Linton&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lake Country,&rdquo;
+Wood&rsquo;s &ldquo;Natural History,&rdquo; and many more.&nbsp;
+Nor does it take in the various illustrated periodicals which
+have multiplied so freely since, in 1859, &ldquo;Once a
+Week&rdquo; first began to attract and train such younger
+draughtsmen as Sandys, Lawless, Pinwell, Houghton, Morten, and
+Paul Grey, some of whose best work in this way has been revived
+in the edition of Thornbury&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ballads and
+Songs,&rdquo; recently published by <a name="page151"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 151</span>Chatto and Windus.&nbsp; Ten years
+later came the &ldquo;Graphic,&rdquo; offering still wider
+opportunities to wood-cut art, and bringing with it a fresh
+school of artists.&nbsp; Herkomer, Fildes, Small, Green, Barnard,
+Barnes, Crane, Caldecott, Hopkins, and others,&mdash;<i>quos nunc
+perscribere longum est</i>&mdash;have contributed good work to
+this popular rival of the older, but still vigorous,
+&ldquo;Illustrated.&rdquo;&nbsp; And now again, another promising
+serial, the &ldquo;Magazine of Art,&rdquo; affords a
+supplementary field to modern refinements and younger
+energies.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p149b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;Golden head by golden head.&rdquo;  From Christina
+Rossetti&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goblin Market and other Poems,&rdquo;
+1862.  Drawn by D. G. Rossetti; engraved by W. J. Linton"
+title=
+"&ldquo;Golden head by golden head.&rdquo;  From Christina
+Rossetti&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goblin Market and other Poems,&rdquo;
+1862.  Drawn by D. G. Rossetti; engraved by W. J. Linton"
+ src="images/p149s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Not a few of the artists named in the preceding paragraph have
+also earned distinction in separate branches of the pictorial
+art, and specially in that of humorous design,&mdash;a department
+which has always been so richly recruited in this country that it
+deserves more than a passing mention.&nbsp; From the days of
+Hogarth onwards there has been an almost unbroken series of
+humorous draughtsmen, who, both on wood and metal, play a
+distinguished part in our illustrated literature.&nbsp;
+Rowlandson, one of the earliest, was a caricaturist of
+inexhaustible facility, and an artist who scarcely did justice to
+his own powers.&nbsp; He illustrated several books, but he is
+chiefly remembered in this way by his plates to Combe&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Three Tours of Dr. Syntax.&rdquo;&nbsp; Gillray, his
+contemporary, whose bias was political rather than social, is
+said to <a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+152</span>have illustrated &ldquo;The Deserted Village&rdquo; in
+his youth; but he is not famous as a book-illustrator.&nbsp;
+Another of the early men was Bunbury, whom
+&ldquo;quality&rdquo;-loving Mr. Walpole calls &ldquo;the second
+Hogarth, and first imitator who ever fully equalled his original
+(!);&rdquo; but whose prints to &ldquo;Tristram Shandy,&rdquo;
+are nevertheless completely forgotten, while, if he be remembered
+at all, it is by the plate of &ldquo;The Long Minuet,&rdquo; and
+the vulgar &ldquo;Directions to Bad Horsemen.&rdquo;&nbsp; With
+the first years of the century, however, appears the great master
+of modern humorists, whose long life ended only a few years
+since, &ldquo;the veteran George Cruikshank&rdquo;&mdash;as his
+admirers were wont to style him.&nbsp; He indeed may justly be
+compared to Hogarth, since, in tragic power and intensity he
+occasionally comes nearer to him than any artist of our
+time.&nbsp; It is manifestly impossible to mention here all the
+more important efforts of this indefatigable worker, from those
+far-away days when he caricatured &ldquo;Boney&rdquo; and
+championed Queen Caroline, to that final frontispiece for
+&ldquo;The Rose and the Lily&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;designed and
+etched (according to the inscription) by George Cruikshank, age
+83;&rdquo; but the plates to the &ldquo;Points of Humour,&rdquo;
+to Grimm&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goblins,&rdquo; to &ldquo;Oliver
+Twist,&rdquo; &ldquo;Jack Sheppard,&rdquo; Maxwell&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Irish Rebellion,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Table Book,&rdquo;
+are sufficiently favourable and varied specimens of <a
+name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>his skill
+with the needle, while the woodcuts to &ldquo;Three Courses and a
+Dessert,&rdquo; one of which is here given, are equally good
+examples of his work on the block.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Triumph of
+Cupid,&rdquo; which begins the &ldquo;Table Book,&rdquo; is an
+excellent instance of his lavish wealth of fancy, and it contains
+beside, one&mdash;nay more than one&mdash;of the many portraits
+of the artist.&nbsp; He is shown <i>en robe de chambre</i>,
+smoking (this was before his regenerate days!) in front of a
+blazing fire, with a pet spaniel on his knee.&nbsp; In the cloud
+which curls from his lips is a motley procession of sailors,
+sweeps, jockeys, Greenwich pensioners, Jew clothesmen, flunkies,
+and others more illustrious, chained to the chariot wheels of
+Cupid, who, preceded by cherubic acolytes and banner-bearers,
+winds round the top of the picture towards an altar of Hymen on
+the table.&nbsp; When, by the aid of a pocket-glass, one has
+mastered these swarming figures, as well as those in the
+foreground, it gradually dawns upon one that all the furniture is
+strangely vitalised.&nbsp; Masks laugh round the border of the
+tablecloth, the markings of the mantelpiece resolve themselves
+into rows of madly-racing figures, the tongs leers in a
+<i>degag&eacute;</i> and cavalier way at the artist, the shovel
+and poker grin in sympathy; there are faces in the smoke, in the
+fire, in the fireplace,&mdash;the very <a
+name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>fender
+itself is a ring of fantastic creatures who jubilantly hem in the
+ashes.&nbsp; And it is not only in the grotesque and fanciful
+that Cruikshank excels; he is master of the strange, the
+supernatural, and the terrible.&nbsp; In range of character (the
+comparison is probably a hackneyed one), both by his gifts and
+his limitations, he resembles Dickens; and had he illustrated
+more of that writer&rsquo;s works the resemblance would probably
+have been more evident.&nbsp; In &ldquo;Oliver Twist,&rdquo; for
+example, where Dickens is strong, Cruikshank is strong; where
+Dickens is weak, he is weak too.&nbsp; His Fagin, his Bill Sikes,
+his Bumble, and their following, are on a level with
+Dickens&rsquo;s conceptions; his Monk and Rose Maylie are as poor
+as the originals.&nbsp; But as the defects of Dickens are
+overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank&rsquo;s strength is far
+in excess of his weakness.&nbsp; It is not to his melodramatic
+heroes or wasp-waisted heroines that we must look for his
+triumphs; it is to his delineations, from the moralist&rsquo;s
+point of view, of vulgarity and vice,&mdash;of the &ldquo;rank
+life of towns,&rdquo; with all its squalid tragedy and
+comedy.&nbsp; Here he finds his strongest ground, and possibly,
+notwithstanding his powers as a comic artist and caricaturist,
+his loftiest claim to recollection.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image153" href="images/p153b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;The Deaf Post-Boy.&rdquo;  From Clarke&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Three Courses and a Dessert,&rdquo; 1830.  Drawn by G.
+Cruikshank; engraved by S. Williams [?]"
+title=
+"&ldquo;The Deaf Post-Boy.&rdquo;  From Clarke&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Three Courses and a Dessert,&rdquo; 1830.  Drawn by G.
+Cruikshank; engraved by S. Williams [?]"
+ src="images/p153s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Cruikshank was employed on two only of Dickens&rsquo;s
+books&mdash;&ldquo;Oliver Twist&rdquo; and the <a
+name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+156</span>&ldquo;Sketches by Boz.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation13"></a><a href="#footnote13"
+class="citation">[13]</a>&nbsp; The great majority of them were
+illustrated by Hablot K. Browne, an artist who followed the
+ill-fated Seymour on the &ldquo;Pickwick Papers.&rdquo;&nbsp; To
+&ldquo;Phiz,&rdquo; as he is popularly called, we are indebted
+for our pictorial ideas of Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle,
+and most of the author&rsquo;s characters, down to the
+&ldquo;Tale of Two Cities.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Phiz&rdquo; also
+illustrated a great many of Lever&rsquo;s novels, for which his
+skill in hunting and other Lever-like scenes especially qualified
+him.</p>
+<p>With the name of Richard Doyle we come to the first of a group
+of artists whose main work was, or is still, done for the
+time-honoured miscellany of Mr. Punch.&nbsp; So familiar an
+object is &ldquo;Punch&rdquo; upon our tables, that one is
+sometimes apt to forget how unfailing, and how good on the whole,
+is the work we take so complacently as a matter of course.&nbsp;
+And of this good work, in the earlier days, a large proportion
+was done by Mr. Doyle.&nbsp; He is still living, although he has
+long ceased to gladden those sprightly pages.&nbsp; But it was to
+&ldquo;Punch&rdquo; that he contributed his masterpiece, the
+&ldquo;Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe,&rdquo; a series of
+outlines illustrating social life in 1849, and cleverly commented
+by a shadowy &ldquo;Mr. <a name="page157"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 157</span>Pips,&rdquo; a sort of fetch or
+double of the bustling and garrulous old Caroline diarist.&nbsp;
+In these captivating pictures the life of thirty years ago is
+indeed, as the title-page has it, &ldquo;drawn from ye
+quick.&rdquo;&nbsp; We see the Molesworths and Cantilupes of the
+day parading the Park; we watch Brougham fretting at a hearing in
+the Lords, or Peel holding forth to the Commons (where the Irish
+members are already obstructive); we squeeze in at the Haymarket
+to listen to Jenny Lind, or we run down the river to Greenwich
+Fair, and visit &ldquo;Mr. Richardson, his show.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Many years after, in the &ldquo;Bird&rsquo;s Eye Views of
+Society,&rdquo; which appeared in the early numbers of the
+&ldquo;Cornhill Magazine,&rdquo; Mr. Doyle returned to this
+attractive theme.&nbsp; But the later designs were more
+elaborate, and not equally fortunate.&nbsp; They bear the same
+relationship to Mr. Pips&rsquo;s pictorial chronicle, as the
+laboured &ldquo;Temperance Fairy Tales&rdquo; of
+Cruikshank&rsquo;s old age bear to the little-worked
+Grimm&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goblins&rdquo; of his youth.&nbsp; So
+hazardous is the attempt to repeat an old success!&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, many of the initial letters to the
+&ldquo;Bird&rsquo;s Eye Views&rdquo; are in the artist&rsquo;s
+best and most frolicsome manner.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Foreign Tour of
+Brown, Jones, and Robinson&rdquo; is another of his happy
+thoughts for &ldquo;Punch;&rdquo; and some of his most popular
+designs are to be found in Thackeray&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Newcomes,&rdquo; <a name="page158"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 158</span>where his satire and fancy seem
+thoroughly suited to his text.&nbsp; He has also illustrated
+Locker&rsquo;s well-known &ldquo;London Lyrics,&rdquo;
+Ruskin&rsquo;s &ldquo;King of the Golden River,&rdquo; and
+Hughes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Scouring of the White Horse,&rdquo; from
+which last the initial at the beginning of this chapter has been
+borrowed.&nbsp; His latest important effort was the series of
+drawings called &ldquo;In Fairy Land,&rdquo; to which Mr. William
+Allingham contributed the verses.</p>
+<p>In speaking of the &ldquo;Newcomes,&rdquo; one is reminded
+that its illustrious author was himself a &ldquo;Punch&rdquo;
+artist, and would probably have been a designer alone, had it not
+been decreed &ldquo;that he should paint in colours which will
+never crack and never need restoration.&rdquo;&nbsp; Everyone
+knows the story of the rejected illustrator of
+&ldquo;Pickwick,&rdquo; whom that and other rebuffs drove
+permanently to letters.&nbsp; To his death, however, he clung
+fondly to his pencil.&nbsp; In <i>technique</i> he never attained
+to certainty or strength, and his genius was too quick and
+creative&mdash;perhaps also too desultory&mdash;for finished
+work, while he was always indifferent to costume and
+accessory.&nbsp; But many of his sketches for &ldquo;Vanity
+Fair,&rdquo; for &ldquo;Pendennis,&rdquo; for &ldquo;The
+Virginians,&rdquo; for &ldquo;The Rose and the Ring,&rdquo; the
+Christmas books, and the posthumously published &ldquo;Orphan of
+Pimlico,&rdquo; <a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+159</span>have a vigour of impromptu, and a happy suggestiveness
+which is better than correct drawing.&nbsp; Often the realisation
+is almost photographic.&nbsp; Look, for example, at the portrait
+in &ldquo;Pendennis&rdquo; of the dilapidated Major as he crawls
+downstairs in the dawn after the ball at Gaunt House, and then
+listen to the inimitable context: &ldquo;That admirable and
+devoted Major above all,&mdash;who had been for hours by Lady
+Clavering&rsquo;s side ministering to her and feeding her body
+with everything that was nice, and her ear with everything that
+was sweet and flattering&mdash;oh! what an object he was!&nbsp;
+The rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs
+themselves were like the plovers&rsquo; eggs whereof Lady
+Clavering and Blanche had each tasted; the wrinkles in his old
+face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a silver stubble, <i>like
+an elderly morning dew</i>, was glittering on his chin, and
+alongside the dyed whiskers, now limp and out of
+curl.&rdquo;&nbsp; A good deal of this&mdash;that fine touch in
+italics especially&mdash;could not possibly be rendered in black
+and white, and yet how much is indicated, and how thoroughly the
+whole is felt!&nbsp; One turns to the woodcut from the words, and
+back again to the words from the woodcut with ever-increasing
+gratification.&nbsp; Then again, Thackeray&rsquo;s little initial
+letters are charmingly arch and playful.&nbsp; <a
+name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>They seem
+to throw a shy side-light upon the text, giving, as it were, an
+additional and confidential hint of the working of the
+author&rsquo;s mind.&nbsp; To those who, with the present writer,
+love every tiny scratch and quirk and flourish of the
+Master&rsquo;s hand, these small but priceless memorials are far
+beyond the frigid appraising of academics and schools of art.</p>
+<p>After Doyle and Thackeray come a couple of well-known
+artists&mdash;John Leech and John Tenniel.&nbsp; The latter still
+lives (may he long live!) to delight and instruct us.&nbsp; Of
+the former, whose genial and manly &ldquo;Pictures of Life and
+Character&rdquo; are in every home where good-humoured raillery
+is prized and appreciated, it is scarcely necessary to
+speak.&nbsp; Who does not remember the splendid languid swells,
+the bright-eyed rosy girls (&ldquo;with no nonsense about
+them!&rdquo;) in pork pie hats and crinolines, the superlative
+&ldquo;Jeames&rsquo;s,&rdquo; the hairy &ldquo;Mossoos,&rdquo;
+the music-grinding Italian desperadoes whom their kind creator
+hated so?&nbsp; And then the intrepidity of &ldquo;Mr.
+Briggs,&rdquo; the Roman rule of &ldquo;Paterfamilias,&rdquo; the
+vagaries of the &ldquo;Rising Generation!&rdquo;&nbsp; There are
+things in this gallery over which the severest misanthrope must
+chuckle&mdash;they are simply irresistible.&nbsp; Let any one
+take, say that smallest sketch of the hapless mortal who has
+turned on the hot water in the bath and <a
+name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>cannot turn
+it off again, and see if he is able to restrain his
+laughter.&nbsp; In this one gift of producing instant mirth Leech
+is almost alone.&nbsp; It would be easy to assail his manner and
+his skill, but for sheer fun, for the invention of downright
+humorous situation, he is unapproached, except by
+Cruikshank.&nbsp; He did a few illustrations to Dickens&rsquo;s
+Christmas books; but his best-known book-illustrations properly
+so called are to &ldquo;Uncle Tom&rsquo;s Cabin,&rdquo; the
+&ldquo;Comic Histories&rdquo; of A&rsquo;Beckett, the
+&ldquo;Little Tour in Ireland,&rdquo; and certain sporting novels
+by the late Mr. Surtees.&nbsp; Tenniel now confines himself
+almost exclusively to the weekly cartoons with which his name is
+popularly associated.&nbsp; But years ago he used to invent the
+most daintily fanciful initial letters; and many of his admirers
+prefer the serio-grotesque designs of &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s
+Pocket-Book,&rdquo; &ldquo;Alice in Wonderland,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Through the Looking-Glass,&rdquo; to the always
+correctly-drawn but sometimes stiffly-conceived cartoons.&nbsp;
+What, for example, could be more delightful than the picture, in
+&ldquo;Alice in Wonderland,&rdquo; of the &ldquo;Mad Tea
+Party?&rdquo;&nbsp; Observe the hopelessly distraught expression
+of the March hare, and the eager incoherence of the hatter!&nbsp;
+A little further on the pair are trying to squeeze the dormouse
+into the teapot; and a few pages back the blue caterpillar is
+discovered smoking <a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+163</span>his hookah on the top of a mushroom.&nbsp; He was
+exactly three inches long, says the veracious chronicle, but what
+a dignity!&mdash;what an oriental flexibility of gesture!&nbsp;
+Speaking of animals, it must not be forgotten that Tenniel is a
+master in this line.&nbsp; His &ldquo;British Lion,&rdquo; in
+particular, is a most imposing quadruped, and so often in request
+that it is not necessary to go back to the famous cartoons on the
+Indian mutiny to seek for examples of that magnificent
+presence.&nbsp; As a specimen of the artist&rsquo;s treatment of
+the lesser <i>felid&aelig;</i>, the reader&rsquo;s attention is
+invited to this charming little kitten from &ldquo;Through the
+Looking-Glass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image162" href="images/p162b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;The Mad Tea-Party.&rdquo;  From &ldquo;Alice&rsquo;s
+Adventures in Wonderland,&rdquo; 1865.  Drawn by John Tenniel;
+engraved by Dalziel Brothers"
+title=
+"&ldquo;The Mad Tea-Party.&rdquo;  From &ldquo;Alice&rsquo;s
+Adventures in Wonderland,&rdquo; 1865.  Drawn by John Tenniel;
+engraved by Dalziel Brothers"
+ src="images/p162s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>
+<a href="images/p163b.jpg">
+<img class='floatright' alt=
+"Black Kitten.  From &ldquo;Through the Looking-Glass,&rdquo;
+1871.  Drawn by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers"
+title=
+"Black Kitten.  From &ldquo;Through the Looking-Glass,&rdquo;
+1871.  Drawn by John Tenniel; engraved by Dalziel Brothers"
+ src="images/p163s.jpg" />
+</a>Mr. Tenniel is a link between Leech and the younger school of
+&ldquo;Punch&rdquo; artists, of whom Mr. George du Maurier, Mr.
+Linley Sambourne, and Mr. Charles Keene are the most
+illustrious.&nbsp; The first is nearly as popular as Leech, and
+is certainly a greater favourite with cultivated audiences.&nbsp;
+He is not so much a humorist as a satirist of the Thackeray
+type,&mdash;unsparing in his denunciation of shams, affectations,
+and flimsy pretences of all kinds.&nbsp; A master of composition
+and accomplished draughtsman, he excels in the delineation of
+&ldquo;society&rdquo;&mdash;its bishops, its &ldquo;professional
+beauties&rdquo; and &ldquo;&aelig;sthetes,&rdquo; its <i>nouveaux
+riches</i>, its distinguished foreigners,&mdash;while now and
+then (but not too often) he lets us know that if he chose he
+could be equally happy in depicting the lowest classes.&nbsp;
+There was a bar-room scene not long ago in &ldquo;Punch&rdquo;
+which gave the clearest evidence of this.&nbsp; Some of those for
+whom no good thing is good enough complain, it is said, that he
+lacks variety&mdash;that he is too constant to one type of
+feminine beauty.&nbsp; But any one who will be at the pains to
+study a group of conventional &ldquo;society&rdquo; faces from
+any of his &ldquo;At Homes&rdquo; or &ldquo;Musical
+Parties&rdquo; will speedily discover that they are really very
+subtly diversified and contrasted.&nbsp; For a case in point,
+take the decorously sympathetic group round the sensitive German
+musician, who is <a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+166</span>&ldquo;veeping&rdquo; over one of his own
+compositions.&nbsp; Or follow the titter running round that
+amused assembly to whom the tenor warbler is singing
+&ldquo;Me-e-e-et me once again,&rdquo; with such passionate
+emphasis that the domestic cat mistakes it for a well-known area
+cry.&nbsp; As for his ladies, it may perhaps be conceded that his
+type is a little persistent.&nbsp; Still it is a type so refined,
+so graceful, so attractive altogether, that in the jarring of
+less well-favoured realities it is an advantage to have it always
+before our eyes as a standard to which we can appeal.&nbsp; Mr.
+du Maurier is a fertile book-illustrator, whose hand is
+frequently seen in the &ldquo;Cornhill,&rdquo; and
+elsewhere.&nbsp; Some of his best work of this kind is in Douglas
+Jerrold&rsquo;s &ldquo;Story of a Feather,&rdquo; in
+Thackeray&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ballads,&rdquo; and the large edition of
+the &ldquo;Ingoldsby Legends,&rdquo; to which Leech, Tenniel, and
+Cruikshank also contributed.&nbsp; One of his prettiest
+compositions is the group here reproduced from
+&ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s Almanack&rdquo; for 1877.&nbsp; The talent
+of his colleague, Mr. Linley Sambourne, may fairly be styled
+unique.&nbsp; It is difficult to compare it with anything in its
+way, except some of the happier efforts of the late Mr. Charles
+Bennett, to which, nevertheless, it is greatly superior in
+execution.&nbsp; To this clever artist&rsquo;s invention
+everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic
+accessory so whimsically inexhaustible <a
+name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>that it
+almost overpowers one with its prodigality.&nbsp; Each fresh
+examination of his designs discloses something overlooked or
+unexpected.&nbsp; Let the reader study for a moment the famous
+&ldquo;Birds of a Feather&rdquo; of 1875, or that ingenious skit
+of 1877 upon the rival Grosvenor Gallery and Academy, in which
+the late President of the latter is shown as the proudest of
+peacocks, the eyes of whose tail are portraits of Royal
+Academicians, and whose body-feathers are paint brushes and
+shillings of admission.&nbsp; Mr. Sambourne is excellent, too, at
+adaptations of popular pictures,&mdash;witness the more than
+happy parodies of Herrman&rsquo;s &ldquo;&Agrave; Bout
+d&rsquo;Arguments,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Une Bonne
+Histoire.&rdquo;&nbsp; His book-illustrations have been
+comparatively few, those to Burnand&rsquo;s laughable burlesque
+of &ldquo;Sandford and Merton&rdquo; being among the best.&nbsp;
+Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged upon
+Kingsley&rsquo;s &ldquo;Water Babies,&rdquo; a subject which
+might almost be supposed to have been created for his
+pencil.&nbsp; There are indications, it may be added, that Mr.
+Sambourne&rsquo;s talents are by no means limited to the domain
+in which for the present he chooses to exercise them, and it is
+not impossible that he may hereafter take high rank as a
+cartoonist.&nbsp; Mr. Charles Keene, a selection from whose
+sketches has recently been issued under the title of &ldquo;Our
+People,&rdquo; is <a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+169</span>unrivalled in certain <i>bourgeois</i>, military, and
+provincial types.&nbsp; No one can draw a volunteer, a monthly
+nurse, a Scotchman, an &ldquo;ancient mariner&rdquo; of the
+watering-place species, with such absolutely humorous
+verisimilitude.&nbsp; Personages, too, in whose eyes&mdash;to use
+Mr. Swiveller&rsquo;s euphemism&mdash;&ldquo;the sun has shone
+too strongly,&rdquo; find in Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of
+their &ldquo;pleasant vices.&rdquo;&nbsp; Like Leech, he has also
+a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the
+fewest possible touches.&nbsp; His book-illustrations have been
+mainly confined to magazines and novels.&nbsp; Those in
+&ldquo;Once a Week&rdquo; to a &ldquo;Good Fight,&rdquo; the tale
+subsequently elaborated by Charles Reade into the &ldquo;Cloister
+and the Hearth,&rdquo; present some good specimens of his earlier
+work.&nbsp; One of these, in which the dwarf of the story is seen
+climbing up a wall with a lantern at his back, will probably be
+remembered by many.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image165" href="images/p165b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;The Music of the Past.&rdquo;  From &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s
+Almanack,&rdquo; 1877.  Drawn by George du Maurier; engraved by
+Swain"
+title=
+"&ldquo;The Music of the Past.&rdquo;  From &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s
+Almanack,&rdquo; 1877.  Drawn by George du Maurier; engraved by
+Swain"
+ src="images/p165s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image167" href="images/p167b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Lion and Tub.  From &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s Pocket-Book,&rdquo;
+1879.  Drawn by Linley Sambourne; engraved by Swain"
+title=
+"Lion and Tub.  From &ldquo;Punch&rsquo;s Pocket-Book,&rdquo;
+1879.  Drawn by Linley Sambourne; engraved by Swain"
+ src="images/p167s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>After the &ldquo;Punch&rdquo; school there are other lesser
+luminaries.&nbsp; Mr. W. S. Gilbert&rsquo;s drawings to his own
+inimitable &ldquo;Bab Ballads&rdquo; have a perverse drollery
+which is quite in keeping with that erratic text.&nbsp; Mr. F.
+Barnard, whose exceptional talents have not been sufficiently
+recognised, is a master of certain phases of strongly marked
+character, and, like Mr. Charles Green, has contributed some
+excellent sketches to the &ldquo;Household <a
+name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+170</span>Edition&rdquo; of Dickens.&nbsp; Mr. Sullivan of
+&ldquo;Fun,&rdquo; whose grotesque studies of the &ldquo;British
+Tradesman&rdquo; and &ldquo;Workman&rdquo; have recently been
+republished, has abounding <i>vis comica</i>, but he has hitherto
+done little in the way of illustrating books.&nbsp; For minute
+pictorial stocktaking and photographic retention of detail, Mr.
+Sullivan&rsquo;s artistic memory may almost be compared to the
+wonderful literary memory of Mr. Sala.&nbsp; Mr. John Proctor,
+who some years ago (in &ldquo;Will o&rsquo; the Wisp&rdquo;)
+seemed likely to rival Tenniel as a cartoonist, has not been very
+active in this way; while Mr. Matthew Morgan, the clever artist
+of the &ldquo;Tomahawk,&rdquo; has transferred his services to
+the United States.&nbsp; Of Mr. Bowcher of &ldquo;Judy,&rdquo;
+and various other professedly humorous designers, space permits
+no further mention.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>There remains, however, one popular branch of
+book-illustration, which has attracted the talents of some of the
+most skilful and original of modern draughtsmen, i.e. the
+embellishment of children&rsquo;s books.&nbsp; From the days when
+Mulready drew the old &ldquo;Butterfly&rsquo;s Ball&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Peacock at Home&rdquo; of our youth, to those of the
+delightfully Blake-like fancies of E. V. B., whose
+&ldquo;Child&rsquo;s Play&rdquo; has recently been re-published
+for the delectation of a new generation of admirers, this has
+always been a <a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+171</span>popular and profitable employment; but of late years it
+has been raised to the level of a fine art.&nbsp; Mr. H. S.
+Marks, Mr. J. D. Watson, Mr. Walter Crane, have produced
+specimens of nursery literature which, for refinement of
+colouring and beauty of ornament, cannot easily be
+surpassed.&nbsp; The equipments of the last named, especially,
+are of a very high order.&nbsp; He began as a landscapist on
+wood; he now chiefly devotes himself to the figure; and he seems
+to have the decorative art at his fingers&rsquo; ends as a
+natural gift.&nbsp; Such work as &ldquo;King Luckieboy&rsquo;s
+Party&rdquo; was a <a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+172</span>revelation in the way of toy books, while the
+&ldquo;Baby&rsquo;s Opera&rdquo; and &ldquo;Baby&rsquo;s
+Bouquet&rdquo; are <i>petits chefs d&rsquo;oeuvre</i>, of which
+the sagacious collector will do well to secure copies, not for
+his nursery, but his library.&nbsp; Nor can his &ldquo;Mrs. Mundi
+at Home&rdquo; be neglected by the curious in quaint and graceful
+invention. <a name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14"
+class="citation">[14]</a>&nbsp; Another book&mdash;the
+&ldquo;Under the Window&rdquo; of Miss Kate Greenaway&mdash;comes
+within the same category.&nbsp; Since Stothard, no one has given
+us such a clear-eyed, soft-faced, happy-hearted childhood; or so
+poetically &ldquo;apprehended&rdquo; the coy reticences, the
+simplicities, and the small solemnities of little people.&nbsp;
+Added to this, the old-world costume in which she usually elects
+to clothe her characters, lends an arch piquancy of contrast to
+their innocent rites and ceremonies.&nbsp; Her taste in tinting,
+too, is very sweet and spring-like; and there is a fresh, pure
+fragrance about all her pictures as of new-gathered nosegays; or,
+perhaps, looking to the fashions that she favours, it would be
+better to say &ldquo;bow-pots.&rdquo;&nbsp; But the latest
+&ldquo;good genius&rdquo; of this branch of book-illustrating is
+Mr. Randolph Caldecott, a designer assuredly of the very first
+order.&nbsp; There is a spontaneity of fun, an unforced invention
+about everything he does, that is infinitely entertaining.&nbsp;
+Other <a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+174</span>artists draw to amuse us; Mr. Caldecott seems to draw
+to amuse himself,&mdash;and this is his charm.&nbsp; One feels
+that he must have chuckled inwardly as he puffed the cheeks of
+his &ldquo;Jovial Huntsmen;&rdquo; or sketched that inimitably
+complacent dog in the &ldquo;House that Jack Built;&rdquo; or
+exhibited the exploits of the immortal &ldquo;train-band
+captain&rdquo; of &ldquo;famous London town.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+last is his masterpiece.&nbsp; Cowper himself must have rejoiced
+at it,&mdash;and Lady Austen.&nbsp; There are two sketches in
+this book&mdash;they occupy the concluding pages&mdash;which are
+especially fascinating.&nbsp; On one, John Gilpin, in a forlorn
+and flaccid condition, is helped into the house by the
+sympathising (and very attractive) Betty; on the other he has
+donned his slippers, refreshed his inner man with a cordial, and
+over the heaving shoulder of his &ldquo;spouse,&rdquo; who lies
+dissolved upon his martial bosom, he is taking the spectators
+into his confidence with a wink worthy of the late Mr.
+Buckstone.&nbsp; Nothing more genuine, more heartily laughable,
+than this set of designs has appeared in our day.&nbsp; And Mr.
+Caldecott has few limitations.&nbsp; Not only does he draw human
+nature admirably, but he draws animals and landscapes equally
+well, so one may praise him without reserve.&nbsp; Though not
+children&rsquo;s books, mention should here be made of his
+&ldquo;Bracebridge Hall,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Old Christmas,&rdquo;
+the <a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+175</span>illustrations to which are the nearest approach to that
+<i>beau-ideal</i>, perfect sympathy between the artist and the
+author, with which the writer is acquainted.&nbsp; The cut on
+page 173 is from the former of these works.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p171b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Boy and Hippocampus.  From Miss E. Keary&rsquo;s &ldquo;Magic
+Valley,&rdquo; 1877.  Drawn by &ldquo;E. V. B.&rdquo; (Hon. Mrs.
+Boyle); engraved by T. Quartley"
+title=
+"Boy and Hippocampus.  From Miss E. Keary&rsquo;s &ldquo;Magic
+Valley,&rdquo; 1877.  Drawn by &ldquo;E. V. B.&rdquo; (Hon. Mrs.
+Boyle); engraved by T. Quartley"
+ src="images/p171s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a name="image173" href="images/p173b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;Love Charms.&rdquo;  From Irving&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Bracebridge Hall,&rdquo; 1876.  Drawn by Randolph
+Caldecott; engraved by J. D. Cooper"
+title=
+"&ldquo;Love Charms.&rdquo;  From Irving&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Bracebridge Hall,&rdquo; 1876.  Drawn by Randolph
+Caldecott; engraved by J. D. Cooper"
+ src="images/p173s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Many of the books above mentioned are printed in colours by
+various processes, and they are not always engraved on
+wood.&nbsp; But&mdash;to close the account of modern
+wood-engraving&mdash;some brief reference must be made to what is
+styled the &ldquo;new American School,&rdquo; as exhibited for
+the most part in &ldquo;Scribner&rsquo;s&rdquo; and other
+Transatlantic magazines.&nbsp; Authorities, it is reported, shake
+their heads over these performances. &ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est
+magnifique</i>, <i>mais ce nest pas la gravure</i>,&rdquo; they
+whisper.&nbsp; Into the matter in dispute, it is perhaps
+presumptuous for an &ldquo;atechnic&rdquo; to adventure
+himself.&nbsp; But to the outsider it would certainly seem as if
+the chief ground of complaint is that the new comers do not play
+the game according to the old rules, and that this (alleged)
+irregular mode of procedure tends to lessen the status of the
+engraver as an artist.&nbsp; False or true, this, it may fairly
+be advanced, has nothing whatever to do with the matter, as far,
+at least, as the public are concerned.&nbsp; For them the
+question is, simply and solely&mdash;What is the result <a
+name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+176</span>obtained?&nbsp; The new school, availing themselves
+largely of the assistance of photography, are able to dispense,
+in a great measure, with the old tedious method of drawing on the
+block, and to leave the artist to choose what medium he prefers
+for his design&mdash;be it oil, water-colour, or black and
+white&mdash;concerning themselves only to reproduce its
+characteristics on the wood.&nbsp; This is, of course, a
+deviation from the method of Bewick.&nbsp; But would Bewick have
+adhered to his method in these days?&nbsp; Even in his last hours
+he was seeking for new processes.&nbsp; What we want is to get
+nearest to the artist himself with the least amount of
+interpretation or intermediation on the part of the
+engraver.&nbsp; Is engraving on copper to be reproduced, we want
+a facsimile if possible, and not a rendering into something which
+is supposed to be the orthodox utterance of wood-engraving.&nbsp;
+Take, for example, the copy of Schiavonetti&rsquo;s engraving of
+Blake&rsquo;s <i>Death&rsquo;s Door</i> in
+&ldquo;Scribner&rsquo;s Magazine&rdquo; for June 1880, or the cut
+from the same source at page 131 of this book.&nbsp; These are
+faithful line for line transcriptions, as far as wood can give
+them, of the original copper-plates; and, this being the case, it
+is not to be wondered at that the public, who, for a few pence
+can have practical facsimiles of Blake, of Cruikshank, or of
+Whistler, are loud in their appreciation of the <a
+name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>&ldquo;new
+American School.&rdquo;&nbsp; Nor are its successes confined to
+reproduction in facsimile.&nbsp; Those who look at the exquisite
+illustrations, in the same periodical, to the &ldquo;Tile Club at
+Play,&rdquo; to Roe&rsquo;s &ldquo;Success with Small
+Fruits,&rdquo; and Harris&rsquo;s &ldquo;Insects Injurious to
+Vegetation,&rdquo;&mdash;to say nothing of the selected specimens
+in the recently issued &ldquo;Portfolios&rdquo;&mdash;will see
+that the latest comers can hold their own on all fields with any
+school that has gone before. <a name="citation15"></a><a
+href="#footnote15" class="citation">[15]</a></p>
+<p>Besides copperplate and wood, there are many processes which
+have been and are still employed for book-illustrations, although
+the brief limits of this chapter make any account of them
+impossible.&nbsp; Lithography was at one time very popular, and,
+in books like Roberts&rsquo;s &ldquo;Holy Land,&rdquo;
+exceedingly effective.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Etching Club&rdquo;
+issued a number of books <i>circa</i> 1841&ndash;52; and most of
+the work of &ldquo;Phiz&rdquo; and Cruikshank was done with the
+needle.&nbsp; It is probable that, as we have already seen, the
+impetus given to modern etching by Messrs. Hamerton, Seymour
+Haden, and Whistler, will lead to a specific revival of etching
+as a means of book-illustration.&nbsp; Already beautiful etchings
+have for some time appeared in &ldquo;L&rsquo;Art,&rdquo; <a
+name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>the
+&ldquo;Portfolio,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Etcher;&rdquo; and at
+least one book of poems has been entirely illustrated in this
+way,&mdash;the poems of Mr. W. Bell Scott.&nbsp; For reproducing
+old engravings, maps, drawings, and the like, it is not too much
+to say that we shall never get anything much closer than the
+facsimiles of M. Amand-Durand and the Typographic Etching and
+Autotype Companies.&nbsp; But further improvements will probably
+have to be made before these can compete commercially with
+wood-engraving as practised by the &ldquo;new American
+School.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+179</span>&ldquo;Of making many books,&rdquo; &rsquo;twais
+said,<br />
+&ldquo;There is no end;&rdquo; and who thereon<br />
+The ever-running ink doth shed<br />
+But probes the words of Solomon:<br />
+Wherefore we now, for colophon,<br />
+From London&rsquo;s city drear and dark,<br />
+In the year Eighteen Eight-One,<br />
+Reprint them at the press of Clark.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. D.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1"
+class="footnote">[1]</a>&nbsp; This is the technical name for
+people who &ldquo;illustrate&rdquo; books with engravings from
+other works.&nbsp; The practice became popular when Granger
+published his &ldquo;Biographical History of England.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2"
+class="footnote">[2]</a>&nbsp; Mr. William Blades, in his
+&ldquo;Enemies of Books&rdquo; (Tr&uuml;bner, 1880), decries
+glass-doors,&mdash;&ldquo;the absence of ventilation will assist
+the formation of mould.&rdquo;&nbsp; But M. Rouveyre bids us open
+the doors on sunny days, that the air may be renewed, and, close
+them in the evening hours, lest moths should enter and lay their
+eggs among the treasures.&nbsp; And, with all deference to Mr.
+Blades, glass-doors do seem to be useful in excluding dust.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3"
+class="footnote">[3]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Send him back carefully,
+for you can if you like, that all unharmed he may return to his
+own place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4"
+class="footnote">[4]</a>&nbsp; No wonder the books are scarce, if
+they are being hacked to pieces by Grangerites.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5"
+class="footnote">[5]</a>&nbsp; These lines appeared in
+&ldquo;Notes and Queries,&rdquo; Jan. 8, 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6"
+class="footnote">[6]</a>&nbsp; In the Golden Ass of Apuleius,
+which Polia should not have read.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7"
+class="footnote">[7]</a>&nbsp; M. Ars&egrave;ne Houssaye seems to
+think he has found them; marked on the fly-leaves with an
+impression, in wax, of a seal engraved with the head of
+Epicurus.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote123"></a><a href="#citation123"
+class="footnote">[123]</a>&nbsp; This chapter was written by
+Austin Dobson.&mdash;DP</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9"
+class="footnote">[9]</a>&nbsp; The recent Winter Exhibition of
+the Old Masters (1881) contained a fine display of
+Flaxman&rsquo;s drawings, a large number of which belonged to Mr.
+F. T. Palgrave.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10"
+class="footnote">[10]</a>&nbsp; By Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11"
+class="footnote">[11]</a>&nbsp; These words were written before
+the &ldquo;Art Journal&rdquo; had published its programme for
+1881.&nbsp; From this it appears that the present editor fully
+recognises the necessity for calling in the assistance of the
+needle.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12"
+class="footnote">[12]</a>&nbsp; The example, here copied on the
+wood by M. Lacour, is a very successful reproduction of
+Clennell&rsquo;s style.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13"
+class="footnote">[13]</a>&nbsp; He also illustrated the
+&ldquo;Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.&rdquo;&nbsp; But this was
+simply &ldquo;edited&rdquo; by &ldquo;Boz.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14"
+class="footnote">[14]</a>&nbsp; The reader will observe that this
+volume is indebted to Mr. Crane for its beautiful
+frontispiece.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15"
+class="footnote">[15]</a>&nbsp; Since this paragraph was first
+written an interesting paper on the illustrations in
+&ldquo;Scribner,&rdquo; from the pen of Mr. J. Comyns Carr, has
+appeared in &ldquo;L&rsquo;Art.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY***</p>
+<pre>
+
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Library, by Andrew Lang***
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1881 Macmillan and Co. edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIBRARY
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER
+THE LIBRARY
+THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
+
+
+
+Books, books again, and books once more!
+These are our theme, which some miscall
+Mere madness, setting little store
+By copies either short or tall.
+But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
+We rather write for you that hold
+Patched folios dear, and prize "the small,
+Rare volume, black with tarnished gold."
+A. D.
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+
+The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the
+exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de
+Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has
+also written on early printed books (pp. 94-95).  The pages on the
+Biblioklept (pp. 46-56) are reprinted, with the Editor's kind
+permission, from the Saturday Review; and a few remarks on the moral
+lessons of bookstalls are taken from an essay in the same journal.
+
+Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub-
+Librarian of the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs
+of chapters I., II., and III., and suggested some alterations.
+
+Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls
+College, for two plates from his "Book-bindings in All Souls
+Library" (printed for private circulation), which he has been good
+enough to lend me.  The plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by
+Dr. J. J. Wild.  Messrs. George Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury,
+Agnew, & Co., and Messrs. Chatto & Windus, must be thanked for the
+use of some of the woodcuts which illustrate the concluding chapter.
+A. L.
+
+
+
+AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER
+
+
+
+"All men," says Dr. Dibdin, "like to be their own librarians."  A
+writer on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the
+books that even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to
+collect.  There are books which no lover of literature can afford to
+be without; classics, ancient and modern, on which the world has
+pronounced its verdict.  These works, in whatever shape we may be
+able to possess them, are the necessary foundations of even the
+smallest collections.  Homer, Dante and Milton Shakespeare and
+Sophocles, Aristophanes and Moliere, Thucydides, Tacitus, and
+Gibbon, Swift and Scott,--these every lover of letters will desire
+to possess in the original languages or in translations.  The list
+of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the
+tastes of men begin to differ very widely.  An assortment of
+broadsheet ballads and scrap-books, bought in boyhood, was the
+nucleus of Scott's library, rich in the works of poets and
+magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists.  A childish liking for
+coloured prints of stage characters, may be the germ of a theatrical
+collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin.  People who
+are studying any past period of human history, or any old phase or
+expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little contemporary
+volumes which seem trash to other amateurs.  For example, to a
+student of Moliere, it is a happy chance to come across "La Carte du
+Royaume des Pretieuses"--(The map of the kingdom of the
+"Precieuses")--written the year before the comedian brought out his
+famous play "Les Precieuses Ridicules."  This geographical tract
+appeared in the very "Recueil des Pieces Choisies," whose authors
+Magdelon, in the play, was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille
+made his appearance.  There is a faculty which Horace Walpole named
+"serendipity,"--the luck of falling on just the literary document
+which one wants at the moment.  All collectors of out of the way
+books know the pleasure of the exercise of serendipity, but they
+enjoy it in different ways.  One man will go home hugging a volume
+of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which
+would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made
+for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a
+book-hunting.  Others are captivated by black letter, others by the
+plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne.  But however
+various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on
+one point,--the love of printed paper.  Even an Elzevir man can
+sympathise with Charles Lamb's attachment to "that folio Beaumont
+and Fletcher which he dragged home late at night from Barker's in
+Covent Garden."  But it is another thing when Lamb says, "I do not
+care for a first folio of Shakespeare."  A bibliophile who could say
+this could say anything.
+
+No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from
+their literary value, all collectors admit to possess, if not for
+themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar
+preciousness.  These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of
+type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they
+may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity.  It is
+about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the
+places in which to hunt for them, that the following pages are to
+treat.  It is a subject more closely connected with the taste for
+curiosities than with art, strictly so called.  We are to be
+occupied, not so much with literature as with books, not so much
+with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint duenna of
+literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its humours.
+And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions and
+anecdotes derived from French writers.  These are as unavoidable,
+almost, as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in
+fencing.  In bibliography, in the care for books AS books, the
+French are still the teachers of Europe, as they were in tennis and
+are in fencing.  Thus, Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III.,
+writes in his "Philobiblon:" "Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a rushing
+river of joy gladdens my heart as often as I have a chance of going
+to Paris!  There the days seem always short; there are the goodly
+collections on the delicate fragrant book-shelves."  Since Dante
+wrote of -
+
+
+"L'onor di quell' arte
+Ch' allumare e chiamata in Parisi,"
+
+
+"the art that is called illuminating in Paris," and all the other
+arts of writing, printing, binding books, have been most skilfully
+practised by France.  She improved on the lessons given by Germany
+and Italy in these crafts.  Twenty books about books are written in
+Paris for one that is published in England.  In our country Dibdin
+is out of date (the second edition of his "Bibliomania" was
+published in 1811), and Mr. Hill Burton's humorous "Book-hunter" is
+out of print.  Meanwhile, in France, writers grave and gay, from the
+gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier's quaint fancy, and Janin's
+wit, and the always entertaining bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix),
+have written, or are writing, on books, manuscripts, engravings,
+editions, and bindings.  In England, therefore, rare French books
+are eagerly sought, and may be found in all the booksellers'
+catalogues.  On the continent there is no such care for our curious
+or beautiful editions, old or new.  Here a hint may be given to the
+collector.  If he "picks up" a rare French book, at a low price, he
+would act prudently in having it bound in France by a good
+craftsman.  Its value, when "the wicked day of destiny" comes, and
+the collection is broken up, will thus be made secure.  For the
+French do not suffer our English bindings gladly; while we have no
+narrow prejudice against the works of Lortic and Cape, but the
+reverse.  For these reasons then, and also because every writer is
+obliged to make the closest acquaintance with books in the direction
+where his own studies lie, the writings of French authorities are
+frequently cited in the following pages.
+
+This apology must be followed by a brief defence of the taste and
+passion of book-collecting, and of the class of men known
+invidiously as book-worms and book-hunters.  They and their simple
+pleasures are the butts of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who
+cannot endure in others a taste which is absent in themselves.
+Important new books have actually been condemned of late years
+because they were printed on good paper, and a valuable historical
+treatise was attacked by reviewers quite angrily because its outward
+array was not mean and forbidding.  Of course, critics who take this
+view of new books have no patience with persons who care for
+"margins," and "condition," and early copies of old books.  We
+cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not necessary to be
+disturbed by his clamour.  People are happier for the possession of
+a taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons
+of Scripture, possess them.  The wise collector gets instruction and
+pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long run,
+he and his family do not lose money.  The amusement may chance to
+prove a very fair investment.
+
+As to this question of making money by collecting, Mr. Hill Burton
+speaks very distinctly in "The Book-hunter:" "Where money is the
+object let a man speculate or become a miser. . . Let not the
+collector ever, unless in some urgent and necessary circumstances,
+part with any of his treasures.  Let him not even have recourse to
+that practice called barter, which political philosophers tell us is
+the universal resource of mankind preparatory to the invention of
+money.  Let him confine all his transactions in the market to
+purchasing only.  No good comes of gentlemen-amateurs buying and
+selling."  There is room for difference of opinion here, but there
+seems to be most reason on the side of Mr. Hill Burton.  It is one
+thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the money he
+expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find
+themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste.  It is
+quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares,
+meaning to sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers.  It is
+necessary also to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant
+hopes.  He must buy experience with his books, and many of his first
+purchases are likely to disappoint him.  He will pay dearly for the
+wrong "Caesar" of 1635, the one WITHOUT errors in pagination; and
+this is only a common example of the beginner's blunders.
+Collecting is like other forms of sport; the aim is not certain at
+first, the amateur is nervous, and, as in angling, is apt to
+"strike" (a bargain) too hurriedly.
+
+I often think that the pleasure of collecting is like that of sport.
+People talk of "book-hunting," and the old Latin motto says that
+"one never wearies of the chase in this forest."  But the analogy to
+angling seems even stronger.  A collector walks in the London or
+Paris streets, as he does by Tweed or Spey.  Many a lordly mart of
+books he passes, like Mr. Quaritch's, Mr. Toovey's, or M.
+Fontaine's, or the shining store of M.M. Morgand et Fatout, in the
+Passage des Panoramas.  Here I always feel like Brassicanus in the
+king of Hungary's collection, "non in Bibliotheca, sed in gremio
+Jovis;" "not in a library, but in paradise."  It is not given to
+every one to cast angle in these preserves.  They are kept for dukes
+and millionaires.  Surely the old Duke of Roxburghe was the happiest
+of mortals, for to him both the chief bookshops and auction rooms,
+and the famous salmon streams of Floors, were equally open, and he
+revelled in the prime of book-collecting and of angling.  But there
+are little tributary streets, with humbler stalls, shy pools, as it
+were, where the humbler fisher of books may hope to raise an
+Elzevir, or an old French play, a first edition of Shelley, or a
+Restoration comedy.  It is usually a case of hope unfulfilled; but
+the merest nibble of a rare book, say Marston's poems in the
+original edition, or Beddoes's "Love's Arrow Poisoned," or Bankes's
+"Bay Horse in a Trance," or the "Mel Heliconicum" of Alexander Ross,
+or "Les Oeuvres de Clement Marot, de Cahors, Vallet de Chambre du
+Roy, A Paris, Ches Pierre Gaultier, 1551;" even a chance at
+something of this sort will kindle the waning excitement, and add a
+pleasure to a man's walk in muddy London.  Then, suppose you
+purchase for a couple of shillings the "Histoire des Amours de Henry
+IV, et autres pieces curieuses, A Leyde, Chez Jean Sambyx (Elzevir),
+1664," it is certainly not unpleasant, on consulting M. Fontaine's
+catalogue, to find that he offers the same work at the ransom of 10
+pounds.  The beginner thinks himself in singular luck, even though
+he has no idea of vending his collection, and he never reflects that
+CONDITION--spotless white leaves and broad margins, make the market
+value of a book.
+
+Setting aside such bare considerations of profit, the sport given by
+bookstalls is full of variety and charm.  In London it may be
+pursued in most of the cross streets that stretch a dirty net
+between the British Museum and the Strand.  There are other more shy
+and less frequently poached resorts which the amateur may be allowed
+to find out for himself.  In Paris there is the long sweep of the
+Quais, where some eighty bouquinistes set their boxes on the walls
+of the embankment of the Seine.  There are few country towns so
+small but that books, occasionally rare and valuable, may be found
+lurking in second-hand furniture warehouses.  This is one of the
+advantages of living in an old country.  The Colonies are not the
+home for a collector.  I have seen an Australian bibliophile
+enraptured by the rare chance of buying, in Melbourne, an early work
+on--the history of Port Jackson!  This seems but poor game.  But in
+Europe an amateur has always occupation for his odd moments in town,
+and is for ever lured on by the radiant apparition of Hope.  All
+collectors tell their anecdotes of wonderful luck, and magnificent
+discoveries.  There is a volume "Voyages Litteraires sur les Quais
+de Paris" (Paris, Durand, 1857), by M. de Fontaine de Resbecq, which
+might convert the dullest soul to book-hunting.  M. de Resbecq and
+his friends had the most amazing good fortune.  A M. N- found six
+original plays of Moliere (worth perhaps as many hundreds of
+pounds), bound up with Garth's "Dispensary," an English poem which
+has long lost its vogue.  It is worth while, indeed, to examine all
+volumes marked "Miscellanea," "Essays," and the like, and treasures
+may possibly lurk, as Snuffy Davy knew, within the battered
+sheepskin of school books.  Books lie in out of the way places.
+Poggio rescued "Quintilian" from the counter of a wood merchant.
+The best time for book-hunting in Paris is the early morning.  "The
+take," as anglers say, is "on" from half-past seven to half-past
+nine a.m.  At these hours the vendors exhibit their fresh wares, and
+the agents of the more wealthy booksellers come and pick up
+everything worth having.  These agents quite spoil the sport of the
+amateur.  They keep a strict watch on every country dealer's
+catalogue, snap up all he has worth selling, and sell it over again,
+charging pounds in place of shillings.  But M. de Resbecq vows that
+he once picked up a copy of the first edition of La Rochefoucauld's
+"Maxims" out of a box which two booksellers had just searched.  The
+same collector got together very promptly all the original editions
+of La Bruyere, and he even found a copy of the Elzevir "Pastissier
+Francais," at the humble price of six sous.  Now the " Pastissier
+Francais," an ill-printed little cookery-book of the Elzevirs, has
+lately fetched 600 pounds at a sale.  The Antiquary's story of
+Snuffy Davy and the "Game of Chess," is dwarfed by the luck of M. de
+Resbecq.  Not one amateur in a thousand can expect such good
+fortune.  There is, however, a recent instance of a Rugby boy, who
+picked up, on a stall, a few fluttering leaves hanging together on a
+flimsy thread.  The old woman who kept the stall could hardly be
+induced to accept the large sum of a shilling for an original quarto
+of Shakespeare's "King John."  These stories are told that none may
+despair.  That none may be over confident, an author may recount his
+own experience.  The only odd trouvaille that ever fell to me was a
+clean copy of "La Journee Chretienne," with the name of Leon
+Gambetta, 1844, on its catholic fly-leaf.  Rare books grow rarer
+every day, and often 'tis only Hope that remains at the bottom of
+the fourpenny boxes.  Yet the Paris book-hunters cleave to the game.
+August is their favourite season; for in August there is least
+competition.  Very few people are, as a rule, in Paris, and these
+are not tempted to loiter.  The bookseller is drowsy, and glad not
+to have the trouble of chaffering.  The English go past, and do not
+tarry beside a row of dusty boxes of books.  The heat threatens the
+amateur with sunstroke.  Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a prose
+ballade of book-hunters--then, calm, glad, heroic, the bouquineurs
+prowl forth, refreshed with hope.  The brown old calf-skin wrinkles
+in the sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover
+of a quarto.  The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees
+seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is
+walking the streets.  Under his vast umbrella the book-hunter is
+secure and content; he enjoys the pleasures of the sport unvexed by
+poachers, and thinks less of the heat than does the deer-stalker on
+the bare hill-side.
+
+There is plenty of morality, if there are few rare books in the
+stalls.  The decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the
+decline of ambition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny
+collections.  The presentation volumes are here which the author
+gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who was his "Master," to
+the critic whom he feared, to the friend with whom he was on terms
+of mutual admiration.  The critic has not even cut the leaves, the
+poet has brusquely torn three or four apart with his finger and
+thumb, the friend has grown cold, and has let the poems slip into
+some corner of his library, whence they were removed on some day of
+doom and of general clearing out.  The sale of the library of a late
+learned prelate who had Boileau's hatred of a dull book was a scene
+to be avoided by his literary friends.  The Bishop always gave the
+works which were offered to him a fair chance.  He read till he
+could read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his
+progress could be traced like that of a backwoodsman who "blazes"
+his way through a primeval forest.  The paper-knife generally ceased
+to do duty before the thirtieth page.  The melancholy of the book-
+hunter is aroused by two questions, "Whence?" and "Whither?"  The
+bibliophile asks about his books the question which the
+metaphysician asks about his soul.  Whence came they?  Their value
+depends a good deal on the answer.  If they are stamped with arms,
+then there is a book ("Armorial du Bibliophile," by M. Guigard)
+which tells you who was their original owner.  Any one of twenty
+coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of
+the volume which it covers.  If there is no such mark, the fancy is
+left to devise a romance about the first owner, and all the hands
+through which the book has passed.  That Vanini came from a Jesuit
+college, where it was kept under lock and key.  That copy of Agrippa
+"De Vanitate Scientiarum" is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded
+ink, with cynical Latin notes.  What pessimist two hundred years ago
+made his grumbling so permanent?  One can only guess, but part of
+the imaginative joys of the book-hunter lies ' in the fruitless
+conjecture.  That other question "Whither?" is graver.  Whither are
+our treasures to be scattered?  Will they find kind masters? or,
+worst fate of books, fall into the hands of women who will sell them
+to the trunk-maker?  Are the leaves to line a box or to curl a
+maiden's locks?  Are the rarities to become more and more rare, and
+at last fetch prodigious prices?  Some unlucky men are able partly
+to solve these problems in their own lifetime.  They are constrained
+to sell their libraries--an experience full of bitterness, wrath,
+and disappointment.
+
+Selling books is nearly as bad as losing friends, than which life
+has no worse sorrow.  A book is a friend whose face is constantly
+changing.  If you read it when you are recovering from an illness,
+and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change
+in yourself.  As a man's tastes and opinions are developed his books
+put on a different aspect.  He hardly knows the "Poems and Ballads"
+he used to declaim, and cannot recover the enigmatic charm of
+"Sordello."  Books change like friends, like ourselves, like
+everything; but they are most piquant in the contrasts they provoke,
+when the friend who gave them and wrote them is a success, though we
+laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in him; altered in any
+case, and estranged from his old self and old days.  The vanished
+past returns when we look at the pages.  The vicissitudes of years
+are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts of
+desire and hope return to their forbidden home in the heart and
+fancy.  It is as well to have the power of recalling them always at
+hand, and to be able to take a comprehensive glance at the emotions
+which were so powerful and full of life, and now are more faded and
+of less account than the memory of the dreams of childhood.  It is
+because our books are friends that do change, and remind us of
+change, that we should keep them with us, even at a little
+inconvenience, and not turn them adrift in the world to find a dusty
+asylum in cheap bookstalls.  We are a part of all that we have read,
+to parody the saying of Mr. Tennyson's Ulysses, and we owe some
+respect, and house-room at least, to the early acquaintances who
+have begun to bore us, and remind us of the vanity of ambition and
+the weakness of human purpose.  Old school and college books even
+have a reproachful and salutary power of whispering how much a man
+knew, and at the cost of how much trouble, that he has absolutely
+forgotten, and is neither the better nor the worse for it.  It will
+be the same in the case of the books he is eager about now; though,
+to be sure, he will read with less care, and forget with an ease and
+readiness only to be acquired by practice.
+
+But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches
+moral lessons, as "dauncyng" also does, according to Sir Thomas
+Elyot, in the "Boke called the Gouvernour," but because it affords a
+kind of sportive excitement.  Bookstalls are not the only field of
+the chase.  Book catalogues, which reach the collector through the
+post, give him all the pleasures of the sport at home.  He reads the
+booksellers' catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with
+pencil, he writes by return of post, or he telegraphs to the vendor.
+Unfortunately he almost always finds that he has been forestalled,
+probably by some bookseller's agent.  When the catalogue is a French
+one, it is obvious that Parisians have the pick of the market before
+our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M. Labitte.  Still the
+catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in bibliography.  You see
+from them how prices are ruling, and you can gloat, in fancy, over
+De Luyne's edition of Moliere, 1673, two volumes in red morocco,
+double ("Trautz Bauzonnet"), or some other vanity hopelessly out of
+reach.  In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and Fatout print a
+facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition.  The bust
+of Moliere occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as
+Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the "Precieuses Ridicules"), stand on
+either side.  In the second volume are Moliere, and his wife
+Armande, crowned by the muse Thalia.  A catalogue which contains
+such exact reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself
+a work of art, and serviceable to the student.  When the shop of a
+bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over night, is
+not too far distant, bibliophiles have been known to rush to the
+spot in the grey morning, before the doors open.  There are
+amateurs, however, who prefer to stay comfortably at home, and pity
+these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain outside a door in Oxford
+Street or Booksellers' Row.  There is a length to which enthusiasm
+cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at rising early in the
+morning.  But, when we think of the sport of book-hunting, it is to
+sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally turns.  Here the
+rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was in an
+auction-room that Guibert de Pixerecourt, being outbid, said, in
+tones of mortal hatred, "I will have the book when your collection
+is sold after your death."  And he kept his word.  The fever of
+gambling is not absent from the auction-room, and people "bid
+jealous" as they sometimes "ride jealous" in the hunting-field.
+Yet, the neophyte, if he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be
+surprised at the spectacle.  The chamber has the look of a rather
+seedy "hell."  The crowd round the auctioneer's box contains many
+persons so dingy and Semitic, that at Monte Carlo they would be
+refused admittance; while, in Germany, they would be persecuted by
+Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour.  Bidding is languid, and
+valuable books are knocked down for trifling sums.  Let the neophyte
+try his luck, however, and prices will rise wonderfully.  The fact
+is that the sale is a "knock out."  The bidders are professionals,
+in a league to let the volumes go cheap, and to distribute them
+afterwards among themselves.  Thus an amateur can have a good deal
+of sport by bidding for a book till it reaches its proper value, and
+by then leaving in the lurch the professionals who combine to "run
+him up."  The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of
+gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to
+the owner of the books.  A bidder must be able to command his
+temper, both that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted
+to bid recklessly, and that he may disregard the not very carefully
+concealed sneers of the professionals.
+
+In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of
+the collector.  One man is for bibles, another for ballads.  Some
+pursue plays, others look for play bills.  "He was not," says Mr.
+Hill Burton, speaking of Kirkpatrick Sharpe, "he was not a black-
+letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man,
+or an early-English dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or
+a pasquinader, or an old brown calf man, or a Grangerite, {1} or a
+tawny moroccoite, or a gilt topper, or a marbled insider, or an
+editio princeps man."  These nicknames briefly dispose into
+categories a good many species of collectors.  But there are plenty
+of others.  You may be a historical-bindings man, and hunt for books
+that were bound by the great artists of the past and belonged to
+illustrious collectors.  Or you may be a Jametist, and try to gather
+up the volumes on which Jamet, the friend of Louis Racine, scribbled
+his cynical "Marginalia."  Or you may covet the earliest editions of
+modern poets--Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson, or even Ebenezer Jones.
+Or the object of your desires may be the books of the French
+romanticists, who flourished so freely in 1830.  Or, being a person
+of large fortune and landed estate, you may collect country
+histories.  Again, your heart may be set on the books illustrated by
+Eisen, Cochin, and Gravelot, or Stothard and Blake, in the last
+century.  Or you may be so old-fashioned as to care for Aldine
+classics, and for the books of the Giunta press.  In fact, as many
+as are the species of rare and beautiful books, so many are the
+species of collectors.  There is one sort of men, modest but not
+unwise in their generations, who buy up the pretty books published
+in very limited editions by French booksellers, like MM. Lemerre and
+Jouaust.  Already their reprints of Rochefoucauld's first edition,
+of Beaumarchais, of La Fontaine, of the lyrics attributed to
+Moliere, and other volumes, are exhausted, and fetch high prices in
+the market.  By a singular caprice, the little volumes of Mr.
+Thackeray's miscellaneous writings, in yellow paper wrappers (when
+they are first editions), have become objects of desire, and their
+old modest price is increased twenty fold.  It is not always easy to
+account for these freaks of fashion; but even in book-collecting
+there are certain definite laws.  "Why do you pay a large price for
+a dingy, old book," outsiders ask, "when a clean modern reprint can
+be procured for two or three shillings?"  To this question the
+collector has several replies, which he, at least, finds
+satisfactory.  In the first place, early editions, published during
+a great author's lifetime, and under his supervision, have authentic
+texts.  The changes in them are the changes that Prior or La Bruyere
+themselves made and approved.  You can study, in these old editions,
+the alterations in their taste, the history of their minds.  The
+case is the same even with contemporary authors.  One likes to have
+Mr. Tennyson's "Poems, chiefly Lyrical" (London:  Effingham Wilson,
+Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830).  It is fifty years old, this little
+book of one hundred and fifty-four pages, this first fruit of a
+stately tree.  In half a century the poet has altered much, and
+withdrawn much, but already, in 1830, he had found his distinctive
+note, and his "Mariana" is a masterpiece.  "Mariana" is in all the
+collections, but pieces of which the execution is less certain must
+be sought only in the old volume of 1830.  In the same way "The
+Strayed Reveller, and other poems, by A."  (London:  B. Fellowes,
+Ludgate Street, 1849) contains much that Mr. Matthew Arnold has
+altered, and this volume, like the suppressed "Empedocles on Etna,
+and other Poems, by A." (1852), appeals more to the collector than
+do the new editions which all the world may possess.  There are
+verses, curious in their way, in Mr. Clough's "Ambarvalia" (1849),
+which you will not find in his posthumous edition, but which "repay
+perusal."  These minutiae of literary history become infinitely more
+important in the early editions of the great classical writers, and
+the book-collector may regard his taste as a kind of handmaid of
+critical science.  The preservation of rare books, and the
+collection of materials for criticism, are the useful functions,
+then, of book-collecting.  But it is not to be denied that the
+sentimental side of the pursuit gives it most of its charm.  Old
+books are often literary relics, and as dear and sacred to the lover
+of literature as are relics of another sort to the religious
+devotee.  The amateur likes to see the book in its form as the
+author knew it.  He takes a pious pleasure in the first edition of
+"Les Precieuses Ridicules," (M.DC.LX.) just as Moliere saw it, when
+he was fresh in the business of authorship, and wrote "Mon Dieu,
+qu'un Autheur est neuf, la premiere fois qu'on l'imprime."  All
+editions published during a great man's life have this attraction,
+and seem to bring us closer to his spirit.  Other volumes are
+relics, as we shall see later, of some famed collector, and there is
+a certain piety in the care we give to books once dear to
+Longepierre, or Harley, or d'Hoym, or Buckle, to Madame de
+Maintenon, or Walpole, to Grolier, or Askew, or De Thou, or Heber.
+Such copies should be handed down from worthy owners to owners not
+unworthy; such servants of literature should never have careless
+masters.  A man may prefer to read for pleasure in a good clear
+reprint.  M. Charpentier's "Montaigne" serves the turn, but it is
+natural to treasure more "Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de
+Montaigne," that were printed by Francoise le Febre, of Lyon, in
+1595.  It is not a beautiful book; the type is small, and rather
+blunt, but William Drummond of Hawthornden has written on the title-
+page his name and his device, Cipresso e Palma.  There are a dozen
+modern editions of Moliere more easily read than the four little
+volumes of Wetstein (Amsterdam, 1698), but these contain reduced
+copies of the original illustrations, and here you see Arnolphe and
+Agnes in their habits as they lived, Moliere and Mdlle. de Brie as
+the public of Paris beheld them more than two hundred years ago.
+Suckling's "Fragmenta Aurea" contain a good deal of dross, and most
+of the gold has been gathered into Miscellanies, but the original
+edition of 1646, "after his own copies," with the portrait of the
+jolly cavalier who died aetatis suae 28, has its own allurement.
+Theocritus is more easily read, perhaps, in Wordsworth's edition, or
+Ziegler's; but that which Zacharias Calliergi printed in Rome
+(1516), with an excommunication from Leo X. against infringement of
+copyright, will always be a beautiful and desirable book, especially
+when bound by Derome.  The gist of the pious Prince Conti's
+strictures on the wickedness of comedy may be read in various
+literary histories, but it is natural to like his "Traite de la
+Comedie selon la tradition de l'Eglise, Tiree des Conciles et des
+saints Peres," published by Lovys Billaine in 1660, especially when
+the tract is a clean copy, arrayed in a decorous black morocco.
+
+These are but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little
+library, a "twopenny treasure-house," but they illustrate, on a
+minute scale, the nature of the collector's passion,--the character
+of his innocent pleasures.  He occasionally lights on other literary
+relics of a more personal character than mere first editions.  A
+lucky collector lately bought Shelley's copy of Ossian, with the
+poet's signature on the title-page, in Booksellers' Row.  Another
+possesses a copy of Foppens's rare edition of Petrarch's "Le Sage
+Resolu contre l'une et l'autre Fortune," which once belonged to Sir
+Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of Napoleon, and may have fortified, by its
+stoical maxims, the soul of one who knew the extremes of either
+fortune, the captive of St. Helena.  But the best example of a book,
+which is also a relic, is the "Imitatio Christi," which belonged to
+J. J. Rousseau.  Let M. Tenant de Latour, lately the happy owner of
+this possession, tell his own story of his treasure:  It was in 1827
+that M. de Latour was walking on the quai of the Louvre.  Among the
+volumes in a shop, he noticed a shabby little copy of the "Imitatio
+Christi."  M. de Latour, like other bibliophiles, was not in the
+habit of examining stray copies of this work, except when they were
+of the Elzevir size, for the Elzevirs published a famous undated
+copy of the "Imitatio," a book which brings considerable prices.
+However, by some lucky chance, some Socratic daemon whispering, may
+be, in his ear, he picked up the little dingy volume of the last
+century.  It was of a Paris edition, 1751, but what was the name on
+the fly-leaf.  M. de Latour read a J. J. Rousseau.  There was no
+mistake about it, the good bibliophile knew Rousseau's handwriting
+perfectly well; to make still more sure he paid his seventy-five
+centimes for the book, and walked across the Pont des Arts, to his
+bookbinder's, where he had a copy of Rousseau's works, with a
+facsimile of his handwriting.  As he walked, M. de Latour read in
+his book, and found notes of Rousseau's on the margin.  The
+facsimile proved that the inscription was genuine.  The happy de
+Latour now made for the public office in which he was a functionary,
+and rushed into the bureau of his friend the Marquis de V.  The
+Marquis, a man of great strength of character, recognised the
+signature of Rousseau with but little display of emotion.  M. de
+Latour now noticed some withered flowers among the sacred pages; but
+it was reserved for a friend to discover in the faded petals
+Rousseau's favourite flower, the periwinkle.  Like a true Frenchman,
+like Rousseau himself in his younger days, M. de Latour had not
+recognised the periwinkle when he saw it.  That night, so excited
+was M. de Latour, he never closed an eye!  What puzzled him was that
+he could not remember, in all Rousseau's works, a single allusion to
+the "Imitatio Christi."  Time went on, the old book was not rebound,
+but kept piously in a case of Russia leather.  M. de Latour did not
+suppose that "dans ce bas monde it fut permis aux joies du
+bibliophile d'aller encore plus loin."  He imagined that the
+delights of the amateur could only go further, in heaven.  It
+chanced, however, one day that he was turning over the "Oeuvres
+Inedites" of Rousseau, when he found a letter, in which Jean
+Jacques, writing in 1763, asked Motiers-Travers to send him the
+"Imitatio Christi."  Now the date 1764 is memorable, in Rousseau's
+"Confessions," for a burst of sentiment over a periwinkle, the first
+he had noticed particularly since his residence at Les Charmettes,
+where the flower had been remarked by Madame de Warens.  Thus M.
+Tenant de Latour had recovered the very identical periwinkle, which
+caused the tear of sensibility to moisten the fine eyes of Jean
+Jacques Rousseau.
+
+We cannot all be adorers of Rousseau.  But M. de Latour was an
+enthusiast, and this little anecdote of his explains the sentimental
+side of the bibliophile's pursuit.  Yes, it is SENTIMENT that makes
+us feel a lively affection for the books that seem to connect us
+with great poets and students long ago dead.  Their hands grasp ours
+across the ages.  I never see the first edition of Homer, that
+monument of typography and of enthusiasm for letters, printed at
+Florence (1488) at the expense of young Bernardo and Nerio Nerli,
+and of their friend Giovanni Acciajuoli, but I feel moved to cry
+with Heyne, "salvete juvenes, nobiles et generosi; [Greek text]."
+
+Such is our apology for book-collecting.  But the best defence of
+the taste would be a list of the names of great collectors, a
+"vision of mighty book-hunters."  Let us say nothing of Seth and
+Noah, for their reputation as amateurs is only based on the
+authority of the tract De Bibliothecis Antediluvianis.  The library
+of Assurbanipal I pass over, for its volumes were made, as Pliny
+says, of coctiles laterculi, of baked tiles, which have been
+deciphered by the late Mr. George Smith.  Philosophers as well as
+immemorial kings, Pharaohs and Ptolemys, are on our side.  It was
+objected to Plato, by persons answering to the cheap scribblers of
+to-day, that he, though a sage, gave a hundred minae (360 pounds)
+for three treatises of Philolaus, while Aristotle paid nearly thrice
+the sum for a few books that had been in the library of Speusippus.
+Did not a Latin philosopher go great lengths in a laudable anxiety
+to purchase an Odyssey "as old as Homer," and what would not Cicero,
+that great collector, have given for the Ascraean editio princeps of
+Hesiod, scratched on mouldy old plates of lead?  Perhaps Dr.
+Schliemann may find an original edition of the "Iliad" at
+Orchomenos; but of all early copies none seems so attractive as that
+engraved on the leaden plates which Pausanias saw at Ascra.  Then,
+in modern times, what "great allies" has the collector, what
+brethren in book-hunting?  The names are like the catalogue with
+which Villon fills his "Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps Jadis."  A
+collector was "le preux Charlemaigne" and our English Alfred.  The
+Kings of Hungary, as Mathias Corvinus; the Kings of France, and
+their queens, and their mistresses, and their lords, were all
+amateurs.  So was our Henry VIII., and James I., who "wished he
+could be chained to a shelf in the Bodleian."  The middle age gives
+us Richard de Bury, among ecclesiastics, and the Renaissance boasts
+Sir Thomas More, with that "pretty fardle of books, in the small
+type of Aldus," which he carried for a freight to the people of
+Utopia.  Men of the world, like Bussy Rabutin, queens like our
+Elizabeth; popes like Innocent X.; financiers like Colbert (who made
+the Grand Turk send him Levant morocco for bindings); men of letters
+like Scott and Southey, Janin and Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; warriors
+like Junot and Prince Eugene; these are only leaders of companies in
+the great army of lovers of books, in which it is honourable enough
+to be a private soldier.
+
+
+
+THE LIBRARY
+
+
+
+The Library which is to be spoken of in these pages, is all unlike
+the halls which a Spencer or a Huth fills with treasure beyond
+price.  The age of great libraries has gone by, and where a
+collector of the old school survives, he is usually a man of
+enormous wealth, who might, if he pleased, be distinguished in
+parliament, in society, on the turf itself, or in any of the
+pursuits where unlimited supplies of money are strictly necessary.
+The old amateurs, whom La Bruyere was wont to sneer at, were not
+satisfied unless they possessed many thousands of books.  For a
+collector like Cardinal Mazarin, Naude bought up the whole stock of
+many a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper as
+if a tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away.  In our modern
+times, as the industrious Bibliophile Jacob, says, the fashion of
+book-collecting has changed; "from the vast hall that it was, the
+library of the amateur has shrunk to a closet, to a mere book-case.
+Nothing but a neat article of furniture is needed now, where a great
+gallery or a long suite of rooms was once required.  The book has
+become, as it were, a jewel, and is kept in a kind of jewel-case."
+It is not quantity of pages, nor lofty piles of ordinary binding,
+nor theological folios and classic quartos, that the modern amateur
+desires.  He is content with but a few books of distinction and
+elegance, masterpieces of printing and binding, or relics of famous
+old collectors, of statesmen, philosophers, beautiful dead ladies;
+or, again, he buys illustrated books, or first editions of the
+modern classics.  No one, not the Duc d'Aumale, or M. James
+Rothschild himself, with his 100 books worth 40,000 pounds, can
+possess very many copies of books which are inevitably rare.  Thus
+the adviser who would offer suggestions to the amateur, need
+scarcely write, like Naude and the old authorities, about the size
+and due position of the library.  He need hardly warn the builder to
+make the salle face the east, "because the eastern winds, being warm
+and dry of their nature, greatly temper the air, fortify the senses,
+make subtle the humours, purify the spirits, preserve a healthy
+disposition of the whole body, and, to say all in one word, are most
+wholesome and salubrious."  The east wind, like the fashion of book-
+collecting, has altered in character a good deal since the days when
+Naude was librarian to Cardinal Mazarin.  One might as well repeat
+the learned Isidorus his counsels about the panels of green marble
+(that refreshes the eye), and Boethius his censures on library walls
+of ivory and glass, as fall back on the ancient ideas of librarians
+dead and gone.
+
+The amateur, then, is the person we have in our eye, and especially
+the bibliophile who has but lately been bitten with this pleasant
+mania of collecting.  We would teach him how to arrange and keep his
+books orderly and in good case, and would tell him what to buy and
+what to avoid.  By the LIBRARY we do not understand a study where no
+one goes, and where the master of the house keeps his boots, an
+assortment of walking-sticks, the "Waverley Novels," "Pearson on the
+Creed," "Hume's Essays," and a collection of sermons.  In, alas! too
+many English homes, the Library is no more than this, and each
+generation passes without adding a book, except now and then a
+Bradshaw or a railway novel, to the collection on the shelves.  The
+success, perhaps, of circulating libraries, or, it may be, the Aryan
+tendencies of our race, "which does not read, and lives in the open
+air," have made books the rarest of possessions in many houses.
+There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are
+fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather,
+and these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and
+manuals, some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an
+English household.  But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts,
+can never be satisfied with these commonplace supplies.  He has a
+taste for books more or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in
+short, for books, in the fabrication of which ART has not been
+absent.  He loves to have his study, like Montaigne's, remote from
+the interruption of servants, wife, and children; a kind of shrine,
+where he may be at home with himself, with the illustrious dead, and
+with the genius of literature.  The room may look east, west, or
+south, provided that it be dry, warm, light, and airy.  Among the
+many enemies of books the first great foe is DAMP, and we must
+describe the necessary precautions to be taken against this peril.
+We will suppose that the amateur keeps his ordinary working books,
+modern tomes, and all that serve him as literary tools, on open
+shelves.  These may reach the roof, if he has books to fill them,
+and it is only necessary to see that the back of the bookcases are
+slightly removed from contact with the walls.  The more precious and
+beautifully bound treasures will naturally be stored in a case with
+closely-fitting glass-doors. {2}  The shelves should be lined with
+velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may
+not suffer from contact with the wood.  A leather lining, fitted to
+the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity.  Most
+writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in
+the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of
+literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so
+forth.  These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by
+insects, and it is fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic
+scents of cedar, sandal wood, and Russia leather.  There was once a
+bibliophile who said that a man could only love one book at a time,
+and the darling of the moment he used to carry about in a charming
+leather case.  Others, men of few books, preserve them in long boxes
+with glass fronts, which may be removed from place to place as
+readily as the household gods of Laban.  But the amateur who not
+only worships but reads books, needs larger receptacles; and in the
+open oak cases for modern authors, and for books with common modern
+papers and bindings, in the closed armoire for books of rarity and
+price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of arranging his
+treasures.  His shelves will decline in height from the lowest,
+where huge folios stand at case, to the top ranges, while Elzevirs
+repose on a level with the eye.  It is well that each upper shelf
+should have a leather fringe to keep the dust away.
+
+As to the shape of the bookcases, and the furniture, and ornaments
+of the library, every amateur will please himself.  Perhaps the
+satin-wood or mahogany tabernacles of rare books are best made after
+the model of what furniture-dealers indifferently call the "Queen
+Anne" or the "Chippendale" style.  There is a pleasant quaintness in
+the carved architectural ornaments of the top, and the inlaid
+flowers of marquetry go well with the pretty florid editions of the
+last century, the books that were illustrated by Stothard and
+Gravelot.  Ebony suits theological tomes very well, especially when
+they are bound in white vellum.  As to furniture, people who can
+afford it will imitate the arrangements of Lucullus, in Mr. Hill
+Burton's charming volume "The Book-hunter" (Blackwood, Edinburgh,
+1862).--"Everything is of perfect finish,--the mahogany-railed
+gallery, the tiny ladders, the broad winged lecterns, with leathern
+cushions on the edges to keep the wood from grazing the rich
+bindings, the books themselves, each shelf uniform with its facings,
+or rather backings, like well-dressed lines at a review."  The late
+Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, a famous bibliophile, invented a very
+nice library chair.  It is most comfortable to sit on; and, as the
+top of the back is broad and flat, it can be used as a ladder of two
+high steps, when one wants to reach a book on a lofty shelf.  A kind
+of square revolving bookcase, an American invention, manufactured by
+Messrs. Trubner, is useful to the working man of letters.  Made in
+oak, stained green, it is not unsightly.  As to ornaments, every man
+to his taste.  You may have a "pallid bust of Pallas" above your
+classical collection, or fill the niches in a shrine of old French
+light literature, pastoral and comedy, with delicate shepherdesses
+in Chelsea china.  On such matters a modest writer, like Mr. Jingle
+when Mr. Pickwick ordered dinner, "will not presume to dictate."
+
+Next to damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of books.  At
+short intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur
+himself.  Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of
+volumes lent to him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own
+books.  Boswell found him one day with big gloves on his hands
+beating the dust out of his library, as was his custom.  There is
+nothing so hideous as a dirty thumb-mark on a white page.  These
+marks are commonly made, not because the reader has unwashed hands,
+but because the dust which settles on the top edge of books falls
+in, and is smudged when they are opened.  Gilt-top edges should be
+smoothed with a handkerchief, and a small brush should be kept for
+brushing the tops of books with rough edges, before they are opened.
+But it were well that all books had the top edge gilt.  There is no
+better preservative against dust.  Dust not only dirties books, it
+seems to supply what Mr. Spencer would call a fitting environment
+for book-worms.  The works of book-worms speak for themselves, and
+are manifest to all.  How many a rare and valuable volume is spoiled
+by neat round holes drilled through cover and leaves!  But as to the
+nature of your worm, authorities differ greatly.  The ancients knew
+this plague, of which Lucian speaks.  Mr. Blades mentions a white
+book-worm, slain by the librarian of the Bodleian.  In Byzantium the
+black sort prevailed.  Evenus, the grammarian, wrote an epigram
+against the black book-worm ("Anthol.  Pal.," ix. 251):-
+
+
+Pest of the Muses, devourer of pages, in crannies that lurkest,
+Fruits of the Muses to taint, labour of learning to spoil;
+Wherefore, oh black-fleshed worm! wert thou born for the evil thou
+workest?
+Wherefore thine own foul form shap'st thou with envious toil?
+
+
+The learned Mentzelius says he hath heard the book-worm crow like a
+cock unto his mate, and "I knew not," says he, "whether some local
+fowl was clamouring or whether there was but a beating in mine ears.
+Even at that moment, all uncertain as I was, I perceived, in the
+paper whereon I was writing, a little insect that ceased not to
+carol like very chanticleer, until, taking a magnifying glass, I
+assiduously observed him.  He is about the bigness of a mite, and
+carries a grey crest, and the head low, bowed over the bosom; as to
+his crowing noise, it comes of his clashing his wings against each
+other with an incessant din."  Thus far Mentzelius, and more to the
+same purpose, as may be read in the "Memoirs of famous Foreign
+Academies" (Dijon, 1755-59, 13 vol. in quarto).  But, in our times,
+the learned Mr. Blades having a desire to exhibit book-worms in the
+body to the Caxtonians at the Caxton celebration, could find few men
+that had so much as seen a book-worm, much less heard him utter his
+native wood-notes wild.  Yet, in his "Enemies of Books," he
+describes some rare encounters with the worm.  Dirty books, damp
+books, dusty books, and books that the owner never opens, are most
+exposed to the enemy; and "the worm, the proud worm, is the
+conqueror still," as a didactic poet sings, in an ode on man's
+mortality.  As we have quoted Mentzelius, it may not be amiss to
+give D'Alembert's theory of book-worms:  "I believe," he says, "that
+a little beetle lays her eggs in books in August, thence is hatched
+a mite, like the cheese-mite, which devours books merely because it
+is compelled to gnaw its way out into the air."  Book-worms like the
+paste which binders employ, but D'Alembert adds that they cannot
+endure absinthe.  Mr. Blades finds too that they disdain to devour
+our adulterate modern paper.
+
+"Say, shall I sing of rats," asked Grainger, when reading to Johnson
+his epic, the "Sugar-cane."  "No," said the Doctor; and though rats
+are the foe of the bibliophile, at least as much as of the sugar-
+planter, we do not propose to sing of them.  M. Fertiault has done
+so already in "Les Sonnets d'un Bibliophile," where the reader must
+be pleased with the beautiful etchings of rats devouring an
+illuminated MS., and battening on morocco bindings stamped with the
+bees of De Thou.  It is unnecessary and it would be undignified, to
+give hints on rat-catching, but the amateur must not forget that
+these animals have a passion for bindings.
+
+The book-collector must avoid gas, which deposits a filthy coat of
+oil that catches dust.  Mr. Blades found that three jets of gas in a
+small room soon reduced the leather on his book-shelves to a powder
+of the consistency of snuff, and made the backs of books come away
+in his hand.  Shaded lamps give the best and most suitable light for
+the library.  As to the risks which books run at the hands of the
+owner himself, we surely need not repeat the advice of Richard de
+Bury.  Living in an age when tubs (if not unknown as M. Michelet
+declares) were far from being common, the old collector inveighed
+against the dirty hands of readers, and against their habit of
+marking their place in a book with filthy straws, or setting down a
+beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages open.  But
+the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who love
+not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the
+latter, and light their pipes with the former.  After seeing the
+wreck of a book which these persons have been busy with, one
+appreciates the fine Greek hyperbole.  The Greeks did not speak of
+"thumbing" but of "walking up and down" on a volume ([Greek text]).
+To such fellows it matters not that they make a book dirty and
+greasy, cutting the pages with their fingers, and holding the boards
+over the fire till they crack.  All these slatternly practices,
+though they destroy a book as surely as the flames of Caesar's
+soldiers at Alexandria, seem fine manly acts to the grobians who use
+them.  What says Jules Janin, who has written "Contre l'indifference
+des Philistins," "il faut a l'homme sage et studieux un tome
+honorable et digne de sa louange."  The amateur, and all decent men,
+will beware of lending books to such rude workers; and this
+consideration brings us to these great foes of books, the borrowers
+and robbers.  The lending of books, and of other property, has been
+defended by some great authorities; thus Panurge himself says, "it
+would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained in the
+air, and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or
+tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend."
+Pirckheimer, too, for whom Albert Durer designed a book-plate, was a
+lender, and took for his device Sibi et Amicis; and Jo. Grolierii et
+amicorum, was the motto of the renowned Grolier, whom mistaken
+writers vainly but frequently report to have been a bookbinder.  But
+as Mr. Leicester Warren says, in his "Study of Book-plates"
+(Pearson, 1880), "Christian Charles de Savigny leaves all the rest
+behind, exclaiming non mihi sed aliis."  But the majority of
+amateurs have chosen wiser, though more churlish devices, as "the
+ungodly borroweth and payeth not again," or "go to them that sell,
+and buy for yourselves."  David Garrick engraved on his book-plate,
+beside a bust of Shakspeare, these words of Menage, "La premiere
+chose qu'on doit faire, quand on a emprunte' un livre, c'est de le
+lire, afin de pouvoir le rendre plutot."  But the borrower is so
+minded that the last thing he thinks of is to read a borrowed book,
+and the penultimate subject of his reflections is its restoration.
+Menage (Menagiana, Paris, 1729, vol. i. p. 265), mentions, as if it
+were a notable misdeed, this of Angelo Politian's, "he borrowed a
+'Lucretius' from Pomponius Laetus, and kept it for four years."
+Four years! in the sight of the borrower it is but a moment.  Menage
+reports that a friend kept his "Pausanias" for three years, whereas
+four months was long enough.
+
+
+"At quarto saltem mense redire decet."
+
+
+There is no satisfaction in lending a book; for it is rarely that
+borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for new
+stores, as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr. Johnson, who
+"greased and dogs-eared such volumes as were confided to his tender
+mercies, with the same indifference wherewith he singed his own
+wigs."  But there is a race of mortals more annoying to a
+conscientious man than borrowers.  These are the spontaneous
+lenders, who insist that you shall borrow their tomes.  For my own
+part, when I am oppressed with the charity of such, I lock their
+books up in a drawer, and behold them not again till the day of
+their return.  There is no security against borrowers, unless a man
+like Guibert de Pixerecourt steadfastly refuses to lend.  The device
+of Pixerecourt was un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais.  But he
+knew that our books change when they have been borrowed, like our
+friends when they have been married; when "a lady borrows them," as
+the fairy queen says in the ballad of "Tamlane."
+
+
+"But had I kenn'd, Tamlane," she says,
+"A lady wad borrowed thee,
+I wad ta'en out thy twa gray een,
+Put in twa een o' tree!
+
+"Had I but kenn'd, Tamlane," she says,
+"Before ye came frae hame,
+I wad ta'en out your heart o' flesh,
+Put in a heart o' stane!"
+
+
+Above the lintel of his library door, Pixerecourt had this couplet
+carved -
+
+
+"Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete,
+Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate."
+
+
+M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own
+daughter.  Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little
+value.  Pixerecourt frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway,
+pointing to the motto.  "Yes," said M. Lacroix, "but I thought that
+verse applied to every one but me."  So Pixerecourt made him a
+present of the volume.
+
+We cannot all imitate this "immense" but unamiable amateur.
+Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions
+of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps
+fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear
+volumes.  Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written
+the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may
+have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas on people
+who borrow and restore not again.  The process is futile, but may
+comfort the heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks
+were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of
+Demeter.  Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the design of a
+book-plate; and for such as love and collect rare editions of
+"Homer," I venture to suggest this motto, which may move the heart
+of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic -
+
+
+[Greek text] {3}
+
+
+Mr. William Blades, in his pleasant volume, "The Enemies of Books"
+(Trubner), makes no account of the book-thief or biblioklept.  "If
+they injure the owners," says Mr. Blades, with real tolerance, "they
+do no harm to the books themselves, by merely transferring them from
+one set of book-shelves to another."  This sentence has naturally
+caused us to reflect on the ethical character of the biblioklept.
+He is not always a bad man.  In old times, when language had its
+delicacies, and moralists were not devoid of sensibility, the French
+did not say "un voleur de livres," but "un chipeur de livres;" as
+the papers call lady shoplifters "kleptomaniacs."  There are
+distinctions.  M. Jules Janin mentions a great Parisian bookseller
+who had an amiable weakness.  He was a bibliokleptomaniac.  His
+first motion when he saw a book within reach was to put it in his
+pocket.  Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was lost at a
+sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to the
+enthusiast, who regularly paid the price.  When he went to a private
+view of books about to be sold, the officials at the door would ask
+him, as he was going out, if he did not happen to have an Elzevir
+Horace or an Aldine Ovid in his pocket.  Then he would search those
+receptacles and exclaim, "Yes, yes, here it is; so much obliged to
+you; I am so absent."  M. Janin mentions an English noble, a "Sir
+Fitzgerald," who had the same tastes, but who unluckily fell into
+the hands of the police.  Yet M. Janin has a tenderness for the
+book-stealer, who, after all, is a lover of books.  The moral
+position of the malefactor is so delicate and difficult that we
+shall attempt to treat of it in the severe, though rococo, manner of
+Aristotle's "Ethics."  Here follows an extract from the lost
+Aristotelian treatise "Concerning Books":-
+
+"Among the contemplative virtues we reckon the love of books.  Now
+this virtue, like courage or liberality, has its mean, its excess,
+and its defect.  The defect is indifference, and the man who is
+defective as to the love of books has no name in common parlance.
+Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine.  This man will
+cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter-
+knife at breakfast.  Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake
+the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,' and to stick the 'fly-
+leaves' of his volumes full of fly-hooks.  He also loves dogs'-ears,
+and marks his place with his pipe when he shuts a book in a hurry;
+or he will set the leg of his chair on a page to keep it open.  He
+praises those who tear off margins for pipe-lights, and he makes
+cigarettes with the tissue-paper that covers engravings.  When his
+books are bound, he sees that the margin is cut to the quick.  He
+tells you too, that 'HE buys books to read them.' But he does not
+say why he thinks it needful to spoil them.  Also he will drag off
+bindings--or should we perhaps call this crime [Greek text], or
+brutality, rather than mere vice? for vice is essentially human, but
+to tear off bindings is bestial.  Thus they still speak of a certain
+monster who lived during the French Revolution, and who, having
+purchased volumes attired in morocco, and stamped with the devices
+of the oligarchs, would rip off the leather or vellum, and throw
+them into the fire or out of the window, saying that 'now he could
+read with unwashed hands at his ease.'  Such a person, then, is the
+man indifferent to books, and he sins by way of defect, being
+deficient in the contemplative virtue of book-loving.  As to the man
+who is exactly in the right mean, we call him the book-lover.  His
+happiness consists not in reading, which is an active virtue, but in
+the contemplation of bindings, and illustrations, and title-pages.
+Thus his felicity partakes of the nature of the bliss we attribute
+to the gods, for that also is contemplative, and we call the book-
+lover 'happy,' and even 'blessed,' but within the limits of mortal
+happiness.  But, just as in the matter of absence of fear there is a
+mean which we call courage, and a defect which we call cowardice,
+and an excess which is known as foolhardiness; so it is in the case
+of the love of books.  As to the mean, we have seen that it is the
+virtue of the true book-lover, while the defect constitutes the sin
+of the Robustious Philistine.  But the extreme is found in
+covetousness, and the covetous man who is in the extreme state of
+book-loving, is the biblioklept, or book-stealer.  Now his vice
+shows itself, not in contemplation (for of contemplation there can
+be no excess), but in action.  For books are procured, as we say, by
+purchase, or by barter, and these are voluntary exchanges, both the
+seller and the buyer being willing to deal.  But books are, again,
+procured in another way, by involuntary contract--that is, when the
+owner of the book is unwilling to part with it, but he whose own the
+book is not is determined to take it.  The book-stealer is such a
+man as this, and he possesses himself of books with which the owner
+does not intend to part, by virtue of a series of involuntary
+contracts.  Again, the question may be raised, whether is the
+Robustious Philistine who despises books, or the biblioklept who
+adores them out of measure and excessively, the worse citizen?  Now,
+if we are to look to the consequences of actions only (as the
+followers of Bentham advise), clearly the Robustious Philistine is
+the worse citizen, for he mangles, and dirties, and destroys books
+which it is the interest of the State to preserve.  But the
+biblioklept treasures and adorns the books he has acquired; and when
+he dies, or goes to prison, the State receives the benefit at his
+sale.  Thus Libri, who was the greatest of biblioklepts, rescued
+many of the books he stole from dirt and misuse, and had them bound
+royally in purple and gold.  Also, it may be argued that books
+naturally belong to him who can appreciate them; and if good books
+are in a dull or indifferent man's keeping, this is the sort of
+slavery which we call "unnatural" in our POLITICS, and which is not
+to be endured.  Shall we say, then, that the Robustious Philistine
+is the worse citizen, while the Biblioklept is the worse man?  But
+this is perhaps matter for a separate disquisition."
+
+This fragment of the lost Aristotelian treatise "Concerning Books,"
+shows what a difficulty the Stagirite had in determining the precise
+nature of the moral offence of the biblioklept.  Indeed, both as a
+collector and as an intuitive moralist, Aristotle must have found it
+rather difficult to condemn the book-thief.  He, doubtless, went on
+to draw distinctions between the man who steals books to sell them
+again for mere pecuniary profit (which he would call "chrematistic,"
+or "unnatural," book-stealing), and the man who steals them because
+he feels that he is their proper and natural possessor.  The same
+distinction is taken by Jules Janin, who was a more constant student
+of Horace than of Aristotle.  In his imaginary dialogue of
+bibliophiles, Janin introduces a character who announces the death
+of M. Libri.  The tolerant person who brings the sad news proposes
+"to cast a few flowers on the melancholy tomb.  He was a
+bibliophile, after all.  What do you say to it?  Many a good fellow
+has stolen books, and died in grace at the last."  "Yes," replies
+the president of the club, "but the good fellows did not sell the
+books they stole . . . Cest une grande honte, une grande misere."
+This Libri was an Inspector-General of French Libraries under Louis
+Philippe.  When he was tried, in 1848, it was calculated that the
+sum of his known thefts amounted to 20,000 pounds.  Many of his
+robberies escaped notice at the time.  It is not long since Lord
+Ashburnham, according to a French journal, "Le Livre," found in his
+collection some fragments of a Pentateuch.  These relics had been in
+the possession of the Lyons Library, whence Libri stole them in
+1847.  The late Lord Ashburnham bought them, without the faintest
+idea of Libri's dishonesty; and when, after eleven years, the
+present peer discovered the proper owners of his treasure, he
+immediately restored the Pentateuch to the Lyons Library.
+
+Many eminent characters have been biblioklepts.  When Innocent X.
+was still Monsignor Pamphilio, he stole a book--so says Tallemant
+des Reaux--from Du Monstier, the painter.  The amusing thing is that
+Du Monstier himself was a book-thief.  He used to tell how he had
+lifted a book, of which he had long been in search, from a stall on
+the Pont-Neuf; "but," says Tallemant (whom Janin does not seem to
+have consulted), "there are many people who don't think it thieving
+to steal a book unless you sell it afterwards."  But Du Monstier
+took a less liberal view where his own books were concerned.  The
+Cardinal Barberini came to Paris as legate, and brought in his suite
+Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards became Innocent X.  The Cardinal
+paid a visit to Du Monstier in his studio, where Monsignor Pamphilio
+spied, on a table, "L'Histoire du Concile de Trent"--the good
+edition, the London one.  "What a pity," thought the young
+ecclesiastic, "that such a man should be, by some accident, the
+possessor of so valuable a book."  With these sentiments Monsignor
+Pamphilio slipped the work under his soutane.  But little Du
+Monstier observed him, and said furiously to the Cardinal, that a
+holy man should not bring thieves and robbers in his company.  With
+these words, and with others of a violent and libellous character,
+he recovered the "History of the Council of Trent," and kicked out
+the future Pope.  Amelot de la Houssaie traces to this incident the
+hatred borne by Innocent X. to the Crown and the people of France.
+Another Pope, while only a cardinal, stole a book from Menage--so M.
+Janin reports--but we have not been able to discover Menage's own
+account of the larceny.  The anecdotist is not so truthful that
+cardinals need flush a deeper scarlet, like the roses in Bion's
+"Lament for Adonis," on account of a scandal resting on the
+authority of Menage.  Among Royal persons, Catherine de Medici,
+according to Brantome, was a biblioklept.  "The Marshal Strozzi had
+a very fine library, and after his death the Queen-Mother seized it,
+promising some day to pay the value to his son, who never got a
+farthing of the money."  The Ptolemies, too, were thieves on a large
+scale.  A department of the Alexandrian Library was called "The
+Books from the Ships," and was filled with rare volumes stolen from
+passengers in vessels that touched at the port.  True, the owners
+were given copies of their ancient MSS., but the exchange, as
+Aristotle says, was an "involuntary" one, and not distinct from
+robbery.
+
+The great pattern of biblioklepts, a man who carried his passion to
+the most regrettable excesses, was a Spanish priest, Don Vincente,
+of the convent of Pobla, in Aragon.  When the Spanish revolution
+despoiled the convent libraries, Don Vincente established himself at
+Barcelona, under the pillars of Los Encantes, where are the stalls
+of the merchants of bric-a-brac and the seats of them that sell
+books.  In a gloomy den the Don stored up treasures which he hated
+to sell.  Once he was present at an auction where he was out-bid in
+the competition for a rare, perhaps a unique, volume.  Three nights
+after that, the people of Barcelona were awakened by cries of
+"Fire!"  The house and shop of the man who had bought "Ordinacions
+per los gloriosos reys de Arago" were blazing.  When the fire was
+extinguished, the body of the owner of the house was found, with a
+pipe in his blackened hand, and some money beside him.  Every one
+said, "He must have set the house on fire with a spark from his
+pipe."  Time went on, and week by week the police found the bodies
+of slain men, now in the street, now in a ditch, now in the river.
+There were young men and old, all had been harmless and inoffensive
+in their lives, and--all had been bibliophiles.  A dagger in an
+invisible hand had reached their hearts but the assassin had spared
+their purses, money, and rings.  An organised search was made in the
+city, and the shop of Don Vincente was examined.  There, in a hidden
+recess, the police discovered the copy of "Ordinacions per los
+gloriosis reys de Arago," which ought by rights to have been burned
+with the house of its purchaser.  Don Vincente was asked how he got
+the book.  He replied in a quiet voice, demanded that his collection
+should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and then confessed a
+long array of crimes.  He had strangled his rival, stolen the
+"Ordinacions," and burned the house.  The slain men were people who
+had bought from him books which he really could not bear to part
+with.  At his trial his counsel tried to prove that his confession
+was false, and that he might have got his books by honest means.  It
+was objected that there was in the world only one book printed by
+Lambert Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen
+this, the only copy, from the library where it was treasured.  The
+defendant's counsel proved that there was another copy in the
+Louvre; that, therefore, there might be more, and that the
+defendant's might have been honestly procured.  Here Don Vincente,
+previously callous, uttered an hysterical cry.  Said the Alcalde:-
+"At last, Vincente, you begin to understand the enormity of your
+offence?"  "Ah, Senor Alcalde, my error was clumsy indeed.  If you
+only knew how miserable I am!"  "If human justice prove inflexible,
+there is another justice whose pity is inexhaustible.  Repentance is
+never too late."  "Ah, Senor Alcalde, but my copy was not unique!"
+With the story of this impenitent thief we may close the roll of
+biblioklepts, though Dibdin pretends that Garrick was of the
+company, and stole Alleyne's books at Dulwich.
+
+There is a thievish nature more hateful than even the biblioklept.
+The Book-Ghoul is he who combines the larceny of the biblioklept
+with the abominable wickedness of breaking up and mutilating the
+volumes from which he steals.  He is a collector of title-pages,
+frontispieces, illustrations, and book-plates.  He prowls furtively
+among public and private libraries, inserting wetted threads, which
+slowly eat away the illustrations he covets; and he broods, like the
+obscene demon of Arabian superstitions, over the fragments of the
+mighty dead.  His disgusting tastes vary.  He prepares books for the
+American market.  Christmas books are sold in the States stuffed
+with pictures cut out of honest volumes.  Here is a quotation from
+an American paper:-
+
+"Another style of Christmas book which deserves to be mentioned,
+though it is out of the reach of any but the very rich, is the
+historical or literary work enriched with inserted plates.  There
+has never, to our knowledge, been anything offered in America so
+supremely excellent as the $5000 book on Washington, we think--
+exhibited by Boston last year, but not a few fine specimens of books
+of this class are at present offered to purchasers.  Scribner has a
+beautiful copy of Forster's 'Life of Dickens,' enlarged from three
+volumes octavo to nine volumes quarto, by taking to pieces,
+remounting, and inlaying.  It contains some eight hundred
+engravings, portraits, views, playbills, title-pages, catalogues,
+proof illustrations from Dickens's works, a set of the Onwhyn
+plates, rare engravings by Cruikshank and 'Phiz,' and autograph
+letters.  Though this volume does not compare with Harvey's Dickens,
+offered for $1750 two years ago, it is an excellent specimen of
+books of this sort, and the veriest tyro in bibliographical affairs
+knows how scarce are becoming the early editions of Dickens's works
+and the plates illustrating them. {4}  Anything about Dickens in the
+beginning of his career is a sound investment from a business point
+of view.  Another work of the same sort, valued at $240, is Lady
+Trevelyan's edition of Macaulay, illustrated with portraits, many of
+them very rare.  Even cheaper, all things considered, is an extra-
+illustrated copy of the 'Histoire de la Gravure,' which, besides its
+seventy-three reproductions of old engravings, is enriched with two
+hundred fine specimens of the early engravers, many of the
+impressions being in first and second states.  At $155 such a book
+is really a bargain, especially for any one who is forming a
+collection of engravings.  Another delightful work is the library
+edition of Bray's 'Evelyn,' illustrated with some two hundred and
+fifty portraits and views, and valued at $175; and still another is
+Boydell's 'Milton,' with plates after Westall, and further
+illustrations in the shape of twenty-eight portraits of the painter
+and one hundred and eighty-one plates, and many of them before
+letter.  The price of this book is $325."
+
+But few book-ghouls are worse than the moral ghoul.  He defaces,
+with a pen, the passages, in some precious volume, which do not meet
+his idea of moral propriety.  I have a Pine's "Horace," with the
+engravings from gems, which has fallen into the hands of a moral
+ghoul.  Not only has he obliterated the verses which hurt his
+delicate sense, but he has actually scraped away portions of the
+classical figures, and "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake."
+The soul of Tartuffe had entered into the body of a sinner of the
+last century.  The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages and
+colophons.  The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials out of
+manuscripts.  The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic ghoul of our
+own days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books for the purpose
+of cribbing the book-plates.  An old "Complaint of a Book-plate," in
+dread of the wet sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by Mr.
+Austin Dobson:- {5}
+
+
+THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION.
+By a Gentleman of the Temple.
+
+
+While cynic CHARLES still trimm'd the vane
+'Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
+In days that shocked JOHN EVELYN,
+My First Possessor fix'd me in.
+In days of Dutchmen and of frost,
+The narrow sea with JAMES I cross'd,
+Returning when once more began
+The Age of Saturn and of ANNE.
+I am a part of all the past;
+I knew the GEORGES, first and last;
+I have been oft where else was none
+Save the great wig of ADDISON;
+And seen on shelves beneath me grope
+The little eager form of POPE.
+I lost the Third that own'd me when
+French NOAILLES fled at Dettingen;
+The year JAMES WOLFE surpris'd Quebec,
+The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
+The day that WILLIAM HOGARTH dy'd,
+The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
+This was a Scholar, one of those
+Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;
+He lov'd old Books and nappy ale,
+So liv'd at Streatham, next to THRALE.
+'Twas there this stain of grease I boast
+Was made by Dr. JOHNSON'S toast.
+(He did it, as I think, for Spite;
+My Master call'd him Jacobite!)
+And now that I so long to-day
+Have rested post discrimina,
+Safe in the brass-wir'd book-case where
+I watch'd the Vicar's whit'ning hair,
+Must I these travell'd bones inter
+In some Collector's sepulchre!
+Must I be torn from hence and thrown
+With frontispiece and colophon!
+With vagrant E's, and I's, and O's,
+The spoil of plunder'd Folios!
+With scraps and snippets that to ME
+Are naught but kitchen company!
+Nay, rather, FRIEND, this favour grant me:
+Tear me at once; but don't transplant me.
+
+CHELTENHAM, Sept. 31, 1792.
+
+
+The conceited ghoul writes his notes across our fair white margins,
+in pencil, or in more baneful ink.  Or he spills his ink bottle at
+large over the pages, as Andre Chenier's friend served his copy of
+Malherbe.  It is scarcely necessary to warn the amateur against the
+society of book-ghouls, who are generally snuffy and foul in
+appearance, and by no means so insinuating as that fair lady-ghoul,
+Amina, of the Arabian Nights.
+
+Another enemy of books must be mentioned with the delicacy that
+befits the topic.  Almost all women are the inveterate foes, not of
+novels, of course, nor peerages and popular volumes of history, but
+of books worthy of the name.  It is true that Isabelle d'Este, and
+Madame de Pompadour, and Madame de Maintenon, were collectors; and,
+doubtless, there are other brilliant exceptions to a general rule.
+But, broadly speaking, women detest the books which the collector
+desires and admires.  First, they don't understand them; second,
+they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
+money; and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money
+expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored
+with crabbed characters.  Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against
+booksellers' catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had
+to practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase
+across their own frontier.  Thus many married men are reduced to
+collecting Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you
+cannot smuggle a folio volume easily.  This inveterate dislike of
+books often produces a very deplorable result when an old collector
+dies.  His "womankind," as the Antiquary called them, sell all his
+treasures for the price of waste-paper, to the nearest country
+bookseller.  It is a melancholy duty which forces one to introduce
+such topics into a volume on "Art at Home."  But this little work
+will not have been written in vain if it persuades ladies who
+inherit books not to sell them hastily, without taking good and
+disinterested opinion as to their value.  They often dispose of
+treasures worth thousands, for a ten pound note, and take pride in
+the bargain.  Here, let history mention with due honour the paragon
+of her sex and the pattern to all wives of book-collecting men--
+Madame Fertiault.  It is thus that she addresses her lord in a
+charming triolet ("Les Amoureux du Livre," p. xxxv):-
+
+
+"Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+Moi, j'ai ton coeur, et sans partage.
+Puis-je desirer davantage?
+Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+Heureuse de te voir joyeux,
+Je t'en voudrais . . . tout un etage.
+Le livre a ton esprit . . . tant mieux!
+Moi, j'ai ton coeur, et sans partage."
+
+
+Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
+What more can I require of thee?
+Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+Contented when thy bliss I see,
+I wish a world of books thine own.
+Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
+Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.
+
+
+There is one method of preserving books, which, alas, only tempts
+the borrower, the stealer, the rat, and the book-worm; but which is
+absolutely necessary as a defence against dust and neglect.  This is
+binding.  The bookbinder's art too often destroys books when the
+artist is careless, but it is the only mode of preventing our
+volumes from falling to pieces, and from being some day disregarded
+as waste-paper.  A well-bound book, especially a book from a famous
+collection, has its price, even if its literary contents be of
+trifling value.  A leather coat fashioned by Derome, or Le Gascon,
+or Duseuil, will win respect and careful handling for one specimen
+of an edition whereof all the others have perished.  Nothing is so
+slatternly as the aspect of a book merely stitched, in the French
+fashion, when the threads begin to stretch, and the paper covers to
+curl and be torn.  Worse consequences follow, whole sheets are lost,
+the volume becomes worthless, and the owner must often be at the
+expense of purchasing another copy, if he can, for the edition may
+now be out of print.  Thus binding of some sort not only adds a
+grace to the library, presenting to the eye the cheerful gilded rows
+of our volumes, but is a positive economy.  In the case of our
+cloth-covered English works, the need of binding is not so
+immediately obvious.  But our publishers have a taste for clothing
+their editions in tender tones of colour, stamped, often, with
+landscapes printed in gold, in white, or what not.  Covers like
+this, may or may not please the eye while they are new and clean,
+but they soon become dirty and hideous.  When a book is covered in
+cloth of a good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound, but
+the primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid of the binder.
+
+Much has been written of late about book-binding.  In a later part
+of this manual we shall have something to say about historical
+examples of the art, and the performances of the great masters.  At
+present one must begin by giving the practical rule, that a book
+should be bound in harmony with its character and its value.  The
+bibliophile, if he could give the rein to his passions, would bind
+every book he cares to possess in a full coat of morocco, or (if it
+did not age so fast) of Russia leather.  But to do this is beyond
+the power of most of us.  Only works of great rarity or value should
+be full bound in morocco.  If we have the luck to light on a
+Shakespeare quarto, on some masterpiece of Aldus Manutius, by all
+means let us entrust it to the most competent binder, and instruct
+him to do justice to the volume.  Let old English books, as More's
+"Utopia," have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf.  Let the binder
+clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by Grolier,
+in leather tooled with geometrical patterns.  Let a Moliere or
+Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon,
+where the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian
+point-lace, for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself.  Let a
+binding, a la fanfare, in the style of Thouvenin, denote a novelist
+of the last century, let panelled Russia leather array a folio of
+Shakespeare, and let English works of a hundred years ago be clothed
+in the sturdy fashion of Roger Payne.  Again, the bibliophile may
+prefer to have the leather stamped with his arms and crest, like de
+Thou, Henri III., D'Hoym, Madame du Barry, and most of the
+collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Yet there
+are books of great price which one would hesitate to bind in new
+covers.  An Aldine or an Elzevir, in its old vellum or paper
+wrapper, with uncut leaves, should be left just as it came from the
+presses of the great printers.  In this condition it is a far more
+interesting relic.  But a morocco case may be made for the book, and
+lettered properly on the back, so that the volume, though really
+unbound, may take its place with the bound books on the shelves.  A
+copy of any of Shelley's poems, in the original wrappers, should I
+venture to think be treated thus, and so should the original
+editions of Keats's and of Mr. Tennyson's works.  A collector, who
+is also an author, will perhaps like to have copies of his own works
+in morocco, for their coats will give them a chance of surviving the
+storms of time.  But most other books, not of the highest rarity and
+interest, will be sufficiently clothed in half-bindings, that is,
+with leather backs and corners, while the rest of the cover is of
+cloth or paper, or whatever other substance seems most appropriate.
+An Oxford tutor used to give half-binding as an example of what
+Aristotle calls [Greek text], or "shabbiness," and when we recommend
+such coverings for books it is as a counsel of expediency, not of
+perfection.  But we cannot all be millionaires; and, let it be
+remembered, the really wise amateur will never be extravagant, nor
+let his taste lead him into "the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary
+embarrassment."  Let the example of Charles Nodier be our warning;
+nay, let us remember that while Nodier could get out of debt by
+selling his collection, OURS will probably not fetch anything like
+what we gave for it.  In half-bindings there is a good deal of room
+for the exercise of the collector's taste.  M. Octave Uzanne, in a
+tract called "Les Caprices d'un Bibliophile," gives some hints on
+this topic, which may be taken or let alone.  M. Uzanne has noticed
+the monotony, and the want of meaning and suggestion in ordinary
+half-bindings.  The paper or cloth which covers the greater part of
+the surface of half-bound books is usually inartistic and even ugly.
+He proposes to use old scraps of brocade, embroidery, Venice velvet,
+or what not; and doubtless a covering made of some dead fair lady's
+train goes well with a romance by Crebillon, and engravings by
+Marillier.  "Voici un cartonnage Pompadour de notre invention," says
+M. Uzanne, with pride; but he observes that it needs a strong will
+to make a bookbinder execute such orders.  For another class of
+books, which our honest English shelves reject with disgust, M.
+Uzanne proposes a binding of the skin of the boa constrictor;
+undoubtedly appropriate and "admonishing."  The leathers of China
+and Japan, with their strange tints and gilded devices may be used
+for books of fantasy, like "Gaspard de la Nuit," or the "Opium
+Eater," or Poe's poems, or the verses of Gerard de Nerval.  Here, in
+short, is an almost unexplored field for the taste of the
+bibliophile, who, with some expenditure of time, and not much of
+money, may make half-binding an art, and give modern books a
+peculiar and appropriate raiment.
+
+M. Ambrose Firmin Didot has left some notes on a more serious
+topic,--the colours to be chosen when books are full-bound in
+morocco.  Thus he would have the "Iliad" clothed in red, the
+"Odyssey" in blue, because the old Greek rhapsodists wore a scarlet
+cloak when they recited the Wrath of Achilles, a blue one when they
+chanted of the Return of Odysseus.  The writings of the great
+dignitaries of the Church, M. Didot would array in violet; scarlet
+goes well with the productions of cardinals; philosophers have their
+sober suit of black morocco, poets like Panard may be dressed in
+rose colour.  A collector of this sort would like, were it possible,
+to attire Goldsmith's poems in a "coat of Tyrian bloom, satin
+grain."  As an antithesis to these extravagant fancies, we may add
+that for ordinary books no binding is cheaper, neater, and more
+durable, than a coat of buckram.
+
+The conditions of a well bound book may be tersely enumerated.  The
+binding should unite solidity and elegance.  The book should open
+easily, and remain open at any page you please.  It should never be
+necessary, in reading, to squeeze back the covers; and no book,
+however expensively bound, has been properly treated, if it does not
+open with ease.  It is a mistake to send recently printed books to
+the binder, especially books which contain engravings.  The printing
+ink dries slowly, and, in the process called "beating," the text is
+often transferred to the opposite page.  M. Rouveyre recommends that
+one or two years should pass before the binding of a newly printed
+book.  The owner will, of course, implore the binder to, spare the
+margins; and, almost equally of course, the binder, durus arator,
+will cut them down with his abominable plough.  One is almost
+tempted to say that margins should always be left untouched, for if
+once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist the seductive
+joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed matter.
+Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over some
+Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back MINUS 500
+pounds worth of margin.  Margins make a book worth perhaps 400
+pounds, while their absence reduces the same volume to the box
+marked "all these at fourpence."  Intonsis capillis, with locks
+unshorn, as Motteley the old dealer used to say, an Elzevir in its
+paper wrapper may be worth more than the same tome in morocco,
+stamped with Longepierre's fleece of gold.  But these things are
+indifferent to bookbinders, new and old.  There lies on the table,
+as I write, "Les Provinciales, ou Les Lettres Ecrites par Louis de
+Montalte a un Provincial de ses amis, & aux R.R. P.P. Jesuites.  A
+Cologne, Ches PIERRE de la VALLEE, M.DC.LVIII."  It is the Elzevir
+edition, or what passes for such; but the binder has cut down the
+margin so that the words "Les Provinciales" almost touch the top of
+the page.  Often the wretch--he lived, judging by his style, in
+Derome's time, before the Revolution--has sliced into the head-
+titles of the pages.  Thus the book, with its old red morocco cover
+and gilded flowers on the back, is no proper companion for "Les
+Pensees de M. PASCAL (Wolfganck, 1672)," which some sober Dutchman
+has left with a fair allowance of margin, an inch "taller" in its
+vellum coat than its neighbour in morocco.  Here once more, is "LES
+FASCHEUX, Comedie de I. B. P. MOLIERE, Representee sur Le Theatre du
+Palais Royal.  A Paris, Chez GABRIEL QUINET, au Palais, dans la
+Galerie des Prisonniers, a l'Ange Gabriel, M.DCLXIII.  Avec
+privilege du Roy."  What a crowd of pleasant memories the
+bibliophile, and he only, finds in these dry words of the title.
+Quinet, the bookseller, lived "au Palais," in that pretty old arcade
+where Corneille cast the scene of his comedy, "La Galerie du
+Palais."  In the Geneva edition of Corneille, 1774, you can see
+Gravelot's engraving of the place; it is a print full of exquisite
+charm (engraved by Le Mure in 1762).  Here is the long arcade, in
+shape exactly like the galleries of the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
+The bookseller's booth is arched over, and is open at front and
+side.  Dorimant and Cleante are looking out; one leans on the books
+on the window-sill, the other lounges at the door, and they watch
+the pretty Hippolyte who is chaffering with the lace-seller at the
+opposite shop.  "Ce visage vaut mieux que toutes vos chansons," says
+Dorimant to the bookseller.  So they loitered, and bought books, and
+flirted in their lace ruffles, and ribbons, and flowing locks, and
+wide canons, when Moliere was young, and when this little old book
+was new, and lying on the shelves of honest Quinet in the Palace
+Gallery.  The very title-page, and pagination, not of this second
+edition, but of the first of "Les Fascheux," had their own fortunes,
+for the dedication to Fouquet was perforce withdrawn.  That
+favourite entertained La Valliere and the King with the comedy at
+his house of Vaux, and then instantly fell from power and favour,
+and, losing his place and his freedom, naturally lost the flattery
+of a dedication.  But retombons a nos coches, as Montaigne says.
+This pleasant little copy of the play, which is a kind of relic of
+Moliere and his old world, has been ruthlessly bound up with a
+treatise, "Des Pierres Precieuses," published by Didot in 1776.  Now
+the play is naturally a larger book than the treatise on precious
+stones, so the binder has cut down the margins to the size of those
+of the work on amethysts and rubies.  As the Italian tyrant chained
+the dead and the living together, as Procrustes maimed his victims
+on his cruel bed, so a hard-hearted French binder has tied up, and
+mutilated, and spoiled the old play, which otherwise would have had
+considerable value as well as interest.
+
+We have tried to teach the beginner how to keep his books neat and
+clean; what men and monsters he should avoid; how he should guard
+himself against borrowers, book-worms, damp, and dirt.  But we are
+sometimes compelled to buy books already dirty and dingy, foxed, or
+spotted with red, worn by greasy hands, stained with ink spots, or
+covered with MS. notes.  The art of man has found a remedy for these
+defects.  I have never myself tried to wash a book, and this care is
+best left to professional hands.  But the French and English writers
+give various recipes for cleaning old books, which the amateur may
+try on any old rubbish out of the fourpenny box of a bookstall, till
+he finds that he can trust his own manipulations.  There are "fat
+stains" on books, as thumb marks, traces of oil (the midnight oil),
+flakes of old pasty crust left in old Shakespeares, and candle
+drippings.  There are "thin stains," as of mud, scaling-wax, ink,
+dust, and damp.  To clean a book you first carefully unbind it, take
+off the old covers, cut the old stitching, and separate sheet from
+sheet.  Then take a page with "fat stains" of any kind of grease
+(except finger-marks), pass a hot flat iron over it, and press on it
+a clean piece of blotting paper till the paper sucks up the grease.
+Then charge a camel-hair brush with heated turpentine, and pass it
+over the places that were stained.  If the paper loses its colour
+press softly over it a delicate handkerchief, soaked in heated
+spirits of wine.  Finger-marks you will cover with clean soap, leave
+this on for some hours, and then rub with a sponge filled with hot
+water.  Afterwards dip in weak acid and water, and then soak the
+page in a bath of clean water.  Ink-stained pages you will first dip
+in a strong solution of oxalic acid and then in hydrochloric acid
+mixed in six times its quantity of water.  Then bathe in clean water
+and allow to dry slowly.
+
+Some English recipes may also be given.  "Grease or wax spots," says
+Hannett, in "Bibliopegia," "may be removed by washing the part with
+ether, chloroform, or benzine, and placing it between pieces of
+white blotting paper, then pass a hot iron over it."  "Chlorine
+water," says the same writer, removes ink stains, and bleaches the
+paper at the same time.  Of chloride of lime, "a piece the size of a
+nut" (a cocoa nut or a hazel nut?) in a pint of water, may be
+applied with a camel's hair pencil, and plenty of patience.  To
+polish old bindings, "take the yolk of an egg, beat it up with a
+fork, apply it with a sponge, having first cleaned the leather with
+a dry flannel."  The following, says a writer in "Notes and
+Queries," with perfect truth, is "an easier if not a better method;
+purchase some bookbinder's varnish," and use it as you did the
+rudimentary omelette of the former recipe.  Vellum covers may be
+cleaned with soap and water, or in bad cases by a weak solution of
+salts of lemon.
+
+Lastly, the collector should acquire such books as Lowndes's
+"Bibliography," Brunet's "Manuel," and as many priced catalogues as
+he can secure.  The catalogues of Mr. Quaritch, Mr. Bohn, M.
+Fontaine, M.M. Morgand et Fatout, are excellent guides to a
+knowledge of the market value of books.  Other special works, as
+Renouard's for Aldines, Willems's for Elzevirs, and Cohen's for
+French engravings, will be mentioned in their proper place.
+Dibdin's books are inaccurate and long-winded, but may occasionally
+be dipped into with pleasure.
+
+
+
+THE BOOKS OF THE COLLECTOR
+
+
+
+The easiest way to bring order into the chaos of desirable books,
+is, doubtless, to begin historically with manuscripts.  Almost every
+age that has left any literary remains, has bequeathed to us relics
+which are cherished by collectors.  We may leave the clay books of
+the Chaldeans out of the account.  These tomes resemble nothing so
+much as sticks of chocolate, and, however useful they may be to the
+student, the clay MSS. of Assurbanipal are not coveted by the
+collector.  He finds his earliest objects of desire in illuminated
+manuscripts.  The art of decorating manuscripts is as old as Egypt;
+but we need not linger over the beautiful papyri, which are silent
+books to all but a few Egyptologists.  Greece, out of all her tomes,
+has left us but a few ill-written papyri.  Roman and early Byzantine
+art are represented by a "Virgil," and fragments of an "Iliad"; the
+drawings in the latter have been reproduced in a splendid volume
+(Milan 1819), and shew Greek art passing into barbarism.  The
+illumination of MSS. was a favourite art in the later empire, and is
+said to have been practised by Boethius.  The iconoclasts of the
+Eastern empire destroyed the books which contained representations
+of saints and of the persons of the Trinity, and the monk Lazarus, a
+famous artist, was cruelly tortured for his skill in illuminating
+sacred works.  The art was decaying in Western Europe when
+Charlemagne sought for painters of MSS. in England and Ireland,
+where the monks, in their monasteries, had developed a style with
+original qualities.  The library of Corpus Christi at Cambridge,
+contains some of the earliest and most beautiful of extant English
+MSS.  These parchments, stained purple or violet, and inscribed with
+characters of gold; are too often beyond the reach of the amateur
+for whom we write.  The MSS. which he can hope to acquire are
+neither very early nor very sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of
+secular books are apt to be out of his reach.
+
+Yet a collection of MSS. has this great advantage over a collection
+of printed books, that every item in it is absolutely unique, no two
+MSS. being ever really the same.  This circumstance alone would
+entitle a good collection of MSS. to very high consideration on the
+part of book-collectors.  But, in addition to the great expense of
+such a collection, there is another and even more serious drawback.
+It is sometimes impossible, and is often extremely difficult, to
+tell whether a MS. is perfect or not.
+
+This difficulty can only be got over by an amount of learning on the
+part of the collector to which, unfortunately, he is too often a
+stranger.  On the other hand, the advantages of collecting MSS. are
+sometimes very great.
+
+In addition to the pleasure--a pleasure at once literary and
+artistic--which the study of illuminated MSS. affords, there is the
+certainty that, as years go on, the value of such a collection
+increases in a proportion altogether marvellous.
+
+I will take two examples to prove this point.  Some years ago an
+eminent collector gave the price of 30 pounds for a small French
+book of Hours, painted in grisaille.  It was in a country town that
+he met with this treasure, for a treasure he considered the book, in
+spite of its being of the very latest school of illumination.  When
+his collection was dispersed a few years ago this one book fetched
+260 pounds.
+
+In the celebrated Perkins sale, in 1873, a magnificent early MS.,
+part of which was written in gold on a purple ground, and which was
+dated in the catalogue "ninth or tenth century," but was in reality
+of the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh, was sold for
+565 pounds to a dealer.  It found its way into Mr. Bragge's
+collection, at what price I do not know, and was resold, three years
+later, for 780 pounds.
+
+Any person desirous of making a collection of illuminated MSS.,
+should study seriously for some time at the British Museum, or some
+such place, until he is thoroughly acquainted (1) with the styles of
+writing in use in the Middle Ages, so that he can at a glance make a
+fairly accurate estimate of the age of the book submitted to him;
+and (2) with the proper means of collating the several kinds of
+service-books, which, in nine cases out of ten, were those chosen
+for illumination.
+
+A knowledge of the styles of writing can be acquired at second hand
+in a book lately published by Mr. Charles Trice Martin, F.S.A.,
+being a new edition of "Astle's Progress of Writing."  Still better,
+of course, is the actual inspection and comparison of books to which
+a date can be with some degree of certainty assigned.
+
+It is very common for the age of a book to be misstated in the
+catalogues of sales, for the simple reason that the older the
+writing, the plainer, in all probability, it is.  Let the student
+compare writing of the twelfth century with that of the sixteenth,
+and he will be able to judge at once of the truth of this assertion.
+I had once the good fortune to "pick up" a small Testament of the
+early part of the twelfth century, if not older, which was
+catalogued as belonging to the fifteenth, a date which would have
+made it of very moderate value.
+
+With regard to the second point, the collation of MSS., I fear there
+is no royal road to knowing whether a book is perfect or imperfect.
+In some cases the catchwords remain at the foot of the pages.  It is
+then of course easy to see if a page is lost, but where no such clue
+is given the student's only chance is to be fully acquainted with
+what a book OUGHT to contain.  He can only do this when he has a
+knowledge of the different kinds of service-books which were in use,
+and of their most usual contents.
+
+I am indebted to a paper, read by the late Sir William Tite at a
+meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, for the collation of "Books
+of Hours," but there are many kinds of MSS. besides these, and it is
+well to know something of them.  The Horae, or Books of Hours, were
+the latest development of the service-books used at an earlier
+period.  They cannot, in fact, be strictly called service-books,
+being intended only for private devotion.  But in the thirteenth
+century and before it, Psalters were in use for this purpose, and
+the collation of a Psalter is in truth more important than that of a
+Book of Hours.  It will be well for a student, therefore, to begin
+with Psalters, as he can then get up the Hours in their elementary
+form.  I subjoin a bibliographical account of both kinds of MSS.  In
+the famous Exhibition at the Burlington Club in 1874, a number of
+volumes was arranged to show how persistent one type of the age
+could be.  The form of the decorations, and the arrangement of the
+figures in borders, once invented, was fixed for generations.  In a
+Psalter of the thirteenth century there was, under the month of
+January in the calendar, a picture of a grotesque little figure
+warming himself at a stove.  The hearth below, the chimney-pot
+above, on which a stork was feeding her brood, with the intermediate
+chimney shaft used as a border, looked like a scientific preparation
+from the interior anatomy of a house of the period.  In one of the
+latest of the MSS. exhibited on that occasion was the self-same
+design again.  The little man was no longer a grotesque, and the
+picture had all the high finish and completeness in drawing that we
+might expect in the workmanship of a contemporary of Van Eyck.
+There was a full series of intermediate books, showing the gradual
+growth of the picture.
+
+With regard to chronology, it may be roughly asserted that the
+earliest books which occur are Psalters of the thirteenth century.
+Next to them come Bibles, of which an enormous issue took place
+before the middle of the fourteenth century.  These are followed by
+an endless series of books of Hours, which, as the sixteenth century
+is reached, appear in several vernacular languages.  Those in
+English, being both very rare and of great importance in liturgical
+history, are of a value altogether out of proportion to the beauty
+of their illuminations.  Side by side with this succession are the
+Evangelistina, which, like the example mentioned above, are of the
+highest merit, beauty, and value; followed by sermons and homilies,
+and the Breviary, which itself shows signs of growth as the years go
+on.  The real Missal, with which all illuminated books used to be
+confounded, is of rare occurrence, but I have given a collation of
+it also.  Besides these devotional or religious books, I must
+mention chronicles and romances, and the semi-religious and moral
+allegories, such as the "Pelerinage de l'Ame," which is said to have
+given Bunyan the machinery of the "Pilgrim's Progress."  Chaucer's
+and Gower's poetry exists in many MSS., as does the "Polychronicon"
+of Higden; but, as a rule, the mediaeval chronicles are of single
+origin, and were not copied.  To collate MSS. of these kinds is
+quite impossible, unless by carefully reading them, and seeing that
+the pages run on without break.
+
+I should advise the young collector who wishes to make sure of
+success not to be too catholic in his tastes at first, but to
+confine his attention to a single period and a single school.  I
+should also advise him to make from time to time a careful catalogue
+of what he buys, and to preserve it even after he has weeded out
+certain items.  He will then be able to make a clear comparative
+estimate of the importance and value of his collection, and by
+studying one species at a time, to become thoroughly conversant with
+what it can teach him.  When he has, so to speak, burnt his fingers
+once or twice, he will find himself able to distinguish at sight
+what no amount of teaching by word of mouth or by writing could ever
+possibly impart to any advantage.
+
+One thing I should like if possible to impress very strongly upon
+the reader.  That is the fact that a MS. which is not absolutely
+perfect, if it is in a genuine state, is of much more value than one
+which has been made perfect by the skill of a modern restorer.  The
+more skilful he is, that is to say the better he can forge the style
+of the original, the more worthless he renders the volume.
+
+Printing seems to have superseded the art of the illuminator more
+promptly and completely in England than on the Continent.  The dames
+galantes of Brantome's memoirs took pleasure in illuminated Books of
+Hours, suited to the nature of their devotions.  As late as the time
+of Louis XIV., Bussy Rabutin had a volume of the same kind,
+illuminated with portraits of "saints," of his own canonisation.
+The most famous of these modern examples of costly MSS. was "La
+Guirlande de Julie," a collection of madrigals by various courtly
+hands, presented to the illustrious Julie, daughter of the Marquise
+de Rambouillet, most distinguished of the Precieuses, and wife of
+the Duc de Montausier, the supposed original of Moliere's Alceste.
+The MS. was copied on vellum by Nicholas Jarry, the great calligraph
+of his time.  The flowers on the margin were painted by Robert.  Not
+long ago a French amateur was so lucky as to discover the MS. book
+of prayers of Julie's noble mother, the Marquise de Rambouillet.
+The Marquise wrote these prayers for her own devotions, and Jarry,
+the illuminator, declared that he found them most edifying, and
+delightful to study.  The manuscript is written on vellum by the
+famous Jarry, contains a portrait of the fair Julie herself, and is
+bound in morocco by Le Gascon.  The happy collector who possesses
+the volume now, heard vaguely that a manuscript of some interest was
+being exposed for sale at a trifling price in the shop of a country
+bookseller.  The description of the book, casual as it was, made
+mention of the monogram on the cover.  This was enough for the
+amateur.  He rushed to a railway station, travelled some three
+hundred miles, reached the country town, hastened to the
+bookseller's shop, and found that the book had been withdrawn by its
+owner.  Happily the possessor, unconscious of his bliss, was at
+home.  The amateur sought him out, paid the small sum demanded, and
+returned to Paris in triumph.  Thus, even in the region of
+manuscript-collecting, there are extraordinary prizes for the
+intelligent collector.
+
+
+TO KNOW IF A MANUSCRIPT IS PERFECT
+
+
+If the manuscript is of English or French writing of the twelfth,
+thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth centuries, it is probably
+either--(1) a Bible, (2) a Psalter, (3) a book of Hours, or (4), but
+rarely, a Missal.  It is not worth while to give the collation of a
+gradual, or a hymnal, or a processional, or a breviary, or any of
+the fifty different kinds of service-books which are occasionally
+met with, but which are never twice the same.
+
+To collate one of them, the reader must go carefully through the
+book, seeing that the catch-words, if there are any, answer to the
+head lines; and if there are "signatures," that is, if the foot of
+the leaves of a sheet of parchment has any mark for enabling the
+binder to "gather" them correctly, going through them, and seeing
+that each signed leaf has its corresponding "blank."
+
+1.  To collate a Bible, it will be necessary first to go through the
+catch-words, if any, and signatures, as above; then to notice the
+contents.  The first page should contain the Epistle of St. Jerome
+to the reader.  It will be observed that there is nothing of the
+nature of a title-page, but I have often seen title-pages supplied
+by some ignorant imitator in the last century, with the idea that
+the book was imperfect without one.  The books of the Bible follow
+in order--but the order not only differs from ours, but differs in
+different copies.  The Apocryphal books are always included.  The
+New Testament usually follows on the Old without any break; and the
+book concludes with an index of the Hebrew names and their
+signification in Latin, intended to help preachers to the figurative
+meaning of the biblical types and parables.  The last line of the
+Bible itself usually contains a colophon, in which sometimes the
+name of the writer is given, sometimes the length of time it has
+taken him to write, and sometimes merely the "Explicit. Laus Deo,"
+which has found its way into many modern books.  This colophon,
+which comes as a rule immediately before the index, often contains
+curious notes, hexameters giving the names of all the books,
+biographical or local memoranda, and should always be looked for by
+the collector.  One such line occurs to me.  It is in a Bible
+written in Italy in the thirteenth century -
+
+
+"Qui scripsit scribat.  Vergilius spe domini vivat."
+
+
+Vergilius was, no doubt, in this case the scribe.  The Latin and the
+writing are often equally crabbed.  In the Bodleian there is a Bible
+with this colophon -
+
+
+"Finito libro referemus gratias Christo m.cc.lxv. indict. viij.
+Ego Lafracus de Pacis de Cmoa scriptor scripsi."
+
+
+This was also written in Italy.  English colophons are often very
+quaint--"Qui scripsit hunc librum fiat collocatus in Paradisum," is
+an example.  The following gives us the name of one Master Gerard,
+who, in the fourteenth century, thus poetically described his
+ownership:-
+
+
+"Si Ge ponatur--et rar simul associatur -
+Et dus reddatur--cui pertinet ita vocatur."
+
+
+In a Bible written in England, in the British Museum, there is a
+long colophon, in which, after the name of the writer--"hunc librum
+scripsit Wills de Hales,"--there is a prayer for Ralph of Nebham,
+who had called Hales to the writing of the book, followed by a date-
+-"Fes. fuit liber anno M.cc.i. quarto ab incarnatione domini."  In
+this Bible the books of the New Testament were in the following
+order:- the Evangelists, the Acts, the Epistles of S. Peter, S.
+James, and S. John, the Epistles of S. Paul, and the Apocalypse.  In
+a Bible at Brussels I found the colophon after the index:- "Hic
+expliciunt interpretationes Hebrayorum nominum Do gris qui potens
+est p. sup. omia."  Some of these Bibles are of marvellously small
+dimensions.  The smallest I ever saw was at Ghent, but it was very
+imperfect.  I have one in which there are thirteen lines of writing
+in an inch of the column.  The order of the books of the New
+Testament in Bibles of the thirteenth century is usually according
+to one or other of the three following arrangements:-
+
+
+(1.)  The Evangelists, Romans to Hebrews, Acts, Epistles of S.
+Peter, S. James, and S. John, Apocalypse.
+
+(2.)  The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S.
+John, Epistles of S. Paul, Apocalypse.  This is the most common.
+
+(3.)  The Evangelists, Acts, Epistles of S. Peter, S. James, and S.
+John, Apocalypse, and Epistles of S. Paul.
+
+On the fly leaves of these old Bibles there are often very curious
+inscriptions.  In one I have this:- "Haec biblia emi Haquinas prior
+monasterii Hatharbiensis de dono domini regis Norwegie."  Who was
+this King of Norway who, in 1310, gave the Prior of Hatherby money
+to buy a Bible, which was probably written at Canterbury?  And who
+was Haquinas?  His name has a Norwegian sound, and reminds us of St.
+Thomas of that surname.  In another manuscript I have seen
+
+
+"Articula Fidei:-
+Nascitur, abluitur, patitur, descendit at ima
+Surgit et ascendit, veniens discernere cuncta."
+
+
+In another this:-
+
+
+"Sacramenta ecclesiae:-
+Abluo, fumo, cibo, piget, ordinat, uxor et ungit."
+
+
+I will conclude these notes on MS. Bibles with the following
+colophon from a copy written in Italy in the fifteenth century:-
+
+
+"Finito libro vivamus semper in Christo -
+Si semper in Christo carebimus ultimo leto.
+Explicit Deo gratias; Amen.  Stephanus de
+Tantaldis scripsit in pergamo."
+
+
+2.  The "Psalter" of the thirteenth century is usually to be
+considered a forerunner of the "Book of Hours."  It always contains,
+and usually commences with, a Calendar, in which are written against
+certain days the "obits" of benefactors and others, so that a well-
+filled Psalter often becomes a historical document of high value and
+importance.  The first page of the psalms is ornamented with a huge
+B, which often fills the whole page, and contains a representation
+of David and Goliath ingeniously fitted to the shape of the letter.
+At the end are usually to be found the hymns of the Three Children,
+and others from the Bible together with the Te Deum; and sometimes,
+in late examples, a litany.  In some psalters the calendar is at the
+end.  These Psalters, and the Bibles described above, are very
+frequently of English work; more frequently, that is, than the books
+of Hours and Missals.  The study of the Scriptures was evidently
+more popular in England than in the other countries of Europe during
+the Middle Ages; and the early success of the Reformers here, must
+in part, no doubt, be attributed to the wide circulation of the
+Bible even before it had been translated from the Latin.  I need
+hardly, perhaps, observe that even fragments of a Psalter, a
+Testament, or a Bible in English, are so precious as to be
+practically invaluable.
+
+3.  We are indebted to Sir W. Tite for the following collation of a
+Flemish "Book of Hours":-
+
+
+1.  The Calendar.
+
+2.  Gospels of the Nativity and the Resurrection.
+
+3.  Preliminary Prayers (inserted occasionally).
+
+4.  Horae--(Nocturns and Matins).
+
+5.  (Lauds).
+
+6.  (Prime).
+
+7.  (Tierce).
+
+8.  (Sexte).
+
+9.  (None).
+
+10.  (Vespers).
+
+11.  (Compline).
+
+12.  The seven penitential Psalms
+
+13.  The Litany.
+
+14.  Hours of the Cross.
+
+15.  Hours of the Holy Spirit.
+
+16.  Office of the Dead.
+
+17.  The Fifteen Joys of B. V. M.
+
+18.  The seven requests to our Lord.
+
+19.  Prayers and Suffrages to various Saints.
+
+20.  Several prayers, petitions, and devotions.
+
+
+This is an unusually full example, but the calendar, the hours, the
+seven psalms, and the litany, are in almost all the MSS.  The buyer
+must look carefully to see that no miniatures have been cut out; but
+it is only by counting the leaves in their gatherings that he can
+make sure.  This is often impossible without breaking the binding.
+
+The most valuable "Horae" are those written in England.  Some are of
+the English use (Sarum or York, or whatever it may happen to be),
+but were written abroad, especially in Normandy, for the English
+market.  These are also valuable, even when imperfect.  Look for the
+page before the commencement of the Hours (No. 4 in the list above),
+and at the end will be found a line in red,--"Incipit Horae secundum
+usum Sarum," or otherwise, as the case may be.
+
+4.  Missals do not often occur, and are not only very valuable but
+very difficult to collate, unless furnished with catch-words or
+signatures.  But no Missal is complete without the Canon of the
+Mass, usually in the middle of the book, and if there are any
+illuminations throughout the volume, there will be a full page
+Crucifixion, facing the Canon.  Missals of large size and
+completeness contain--(1) a Calendar; (2) "the proper of the
+Season;" (3) the ordinary and Canon of the Mass; (4) the Communal of
+Saints; (5) the proper of Saints and special occasions; (6) the
+lessons, epistles, and gospels; with (7) some hymns, "proses," and
+canticles.  This is Sir W. Tite's list; but, as he remarks, MS.
+Missals seldom contain so much.  The collector will look for the
+Canon, which is invariable.
+
+Breviaries run to an immense length, and are seldom illuminated.  It
+would be impossible to give them any kind of collation, and the same
+may be said of many other kinds of old service-books, and of the
+chronicles, poems, romances, and herbals, in which mediaeval
+literature abounded, and which the collector must judge as best he
+can.
+
+The name of "missal" is commonly and falsely given to all old
+service-books by the booksellers, but the collector will easily
+distinguish one when he sees it, from the notes I have given.  In a
+Sarum Missal, at Alnwick, there is a colophon quoted by my lamented
+friend Dr. Rock in his "Textile Fabrics."  It is appropriate both to
+the labours of the old scribes and also to those of their modern
+readers:-
+
+
+"Librum Scribendo--Jon Whas Monachus laborabat -
+Et mane Surgendo--multum corpus macerabat."
+
+
+It is one of the charms of manuscripts that they illustrate, in
+their minute way, all the art, and even the social condition, of the
+period in which they were produced.  Apostles, saints, and prophets
+wear the contemporary costume, and Jonah, when thrown to the hungry
+whale, wears doublet and trunk hose.  The ornaments illustrate the
+architectural taste of the day.  The backgrounds change from
+diapered patterns to landscapes, as the modern way of looking at
+nature penetrates the monasteries and reaches the scriptorium where
+the illuminator sits and refreshes his eyes with the sight of the
+slender trees and blue distant hills.  Printed books have not such
+resources.  They can only show varieties of type, quaint
+frontispieces, printers' devices, and fleurons at the heads of
+chapters.  These attractions, and even the engravings of a later
+day, seem meagre enough compared with the allurements of
+manuscripts.  Yet printed books must almost always make the greater
+part of a collection, and it may be well to give some rules as to
+the features that distinguish the productions of the early press.
+But no amount of "rules" is worth six months' practical experience
+in bibliography.  That experience the amateur, if he is wise, will
+obtain in a public library, like the British Museum or the Bodleian.
+Nowhere else is he likely to see much of the earliest of printed
+books, which very seldom come into the market.
+
+Those of the first German press are so rare that practically they
+never reach the hands of the ordinary collector.  Among them are the
+famous Psalters printed by Fust and Schoffer, the earliest of which
+is dated 1457; and the bible known as the Mazarine Bible.  Two
+copies of this last were in the Perkins sale.  I well remember the
+excitement on that occasion.  The first copy put up was the best,
+being printed upon vellum.  The bidding commenced at 1000 pounds,
+and very speedily rose to 2200 pounds, at which point there was a
+long pause; it then rose in hundreds with very little delay to 3400
+pounds, at which it was knocked down to a bookseller.  The second
+copy was on paper, and there were those present who said it was
+better than the other, which had a suspicion attaching to it of
+having been "restored" with a facsimile leaf.  The first bid was
+again 1000 pounds, which the buyer of the previous copy made
+guineas, and the bidding speedily went up to 2660 pounds, at which
+price the first bidder paused.  A third bidder had stepped in at
+1960 pounds, and now, amid breathless excitement, bid 10 pounds
+more.  This he had to do twice before the book was knocked down to
+him at 2690 pounds.
+
+A scene like this has really very little to do with book-collecting.
+The beginner must labour hard to distinguish different kinds of
+printing; he must be able to recognise at a glance even fragments
+from the press of Caxton.  His eye must be accustomed to all the
+tricks of the trade and others, so that he may tell a facsimile in a
+moment, or detect a forgery.
+
+But now let us return to the distinctive marks of early printed
+books.  The first is, says M. Rouveyre, -
+
+1.  The absence of a separate title-page.  It was not till 1476-1480
+that the titles of books were printed on separate pages.  The next
+mark is -
+
+
+2.  The absence of capital letters at the beginnings of divisions.
+For example, in an Aldine Iliad, the fifth book begins thus -
+
+
+[Greek text]
+
+
+It was intended that the open space, occupied by the small epsilon
+([epsilon symbol]), should be filled up with a coloured and gilded
+initial letter by the illuminator.  Copies thus decorated are not
+very common, but the Aldine "Homer" of Francis I., rescued by M.
+Didot from a rubbish heap in an English cellar, had its due
+illuminations.  In the earliest books the guide to the illuminator,
+the small printed letter, does not appear, and he often puts in the
+wrong initial.
+
+3.  Irregularity and rudeness of type is a "note" of the primitive
+printing press, which very early disappeared.  Nothing in the
+history of printing is so remarkable as the beauty of almost its
+first efforts.  Other notes are -
+
+4.  The absence of figures at the top of the pages, and of
+signatures at the foot.  The thickness and solidity of the paper,
+the absence of the printer's name, of the date, and of the name of
+the town where the press stood, and the abundance of crabbed
+abbreviations, are all marks, more or less trustworthy, of the
+antiquity of books.  It must not be supposed that all books
+published, let us say before 1500, are rare, or deserve the notice
+of the collector.  More than 18,000 works, it has been calculated,
+left the press before the end of the fifteenth century.  All of
+these cannot possibly be of interest, and many of them that are
+"rare," are rare precisely because they are uninteresting.  They
+have not been preserved because they were thought not worth
+preserving.  This is a great cause of rarity; but we must not
+hastily conclude that because a book found no favour in its own age,
+therefore it has no claim on our attention.  A London bookseller
+tells me that he bought the "remainder" of Keats's "Endymion" for
+fourpence a copy!  The first edition of "Endymion" is now rare and
+valued.  In trying to mend the binding of an old "Odyssey" lately, I
+extracted from the vellum covers parts of two copies of a very
+scarce and curious French dictionary of slang, "Le Jargon, ou
+Langage de l'Argot Reforme."  This treatise may have been valueless,
+almost, when it appeared, but now it is serviceable to the
+philologist, and to all who care to try to interpret the slang
+ballades of the poet Villon.  An old pamphlet, an old satire, may
+hold the key to some historical problem, or throw light on the past
+of manners and customs.  Still, of the earliest printed books,
+collectors prefer such rare and beautiful ones as the oldest printed
+Bibles:  German, English,--as Taverner's and the Bishop's,--or
+Hebrew and Greek, or the first editions of the ancient classics,
+which may contain the readings of MSS. now lost or destroyed.
+Talking of early Bibles, let us admire the luck and prudence of a
+certain Mr. Sandford.  He always longed for the first Hebrew Bible,
+but would offer no fancy price, being convinced that the book would
+one day fall in his way.  His foreboding was fulfilled, and he
+picked up his treasure for ten shillings in a shop in the Strand.
+The taste for incunabula, or very early printed books, slumbered in
+the latter half of the sixteenth, and all the seventeenth century.
+It revived with the third jubilee of printing in 1740, and since
+then has refined itself, and only craves books very early, very
+important, or works from the press of Caxton, the St. Albans
+Schoolmaster, or other famous old artists.  Enough has been said to
+show the beginner, always enthusiastic, that all old books are not
+precious.  For further information, the "Biography and Typography of
+William Caxton," by Mr. Blades (Trubner, London, 1877), may be
+consulted with profit.
+
+Following the categories into which M. Brunet classifies desirable
+books in his invaluable manual, we now come to books printed on
+vellum, and on peculiar papers.  At the origin of printing, examples
+of many books, probably presentation copies, were printed on vellum.
+There is a vellum copy of the celebrated Florentine first edition of
+Homer; but it is truly sad to think that the twin volumes, Iliad and
+Odyssey, have been separated, and pine in distant libraries.  Early
+printed books on vellum often have beautifully illuminated capitals.
+Dibdin mentions in "Bibliomania" (London, 1811), p. 90, that a M.
+Van Praet was compiling a catalogue of works printed on vellum, and
+had collected more than 2000 articles.  When hard things are said
+about Henry VIII., let us remember that this monarch had a few
+copies of his book against Luther printed on vellum.  The Duke of
+Marlborough's library possessed twenty-five books on vellum, all
+printed before 1496.  The chapter-house at Padua has a "Catullus" of
+1472 on vellum; let Mr. Robinson Ellis think wistfully of that
+treasure.  The notable Count M'Carthy of Toulouse had a wonderful
+library of books in membranis, including a book much coveted for its
+rarity, oddity, and the beauty of its illustrations, the
+"Hypnerotomachia" of Poliphilus (Venice, 1499).  Vellum was the
+favourite "vanity" of Junot, Napoleon's general.  For reasons
+connected with its manufacture, and best not inquired into, the
+Italian vellum enjoyed the greatest reputation for smooth and silky
+whiteness.  Dibdin calls "our modern books on vellum little short of
+downright wretched."  But the editor of this series could, I think,
+show examples that would have made Dibdin change his opinion.
+
+Many comparatively expensive papers, large in format, are used in
+choice editions of books.  Whatman papers, Dutch papers, Chinese
+papers, and even papier verge, have all their admirers.  The amateur
+will soon learn to distinguish these materials.  As to books printed
+on coloured paper--green, blue, yellow, rhubarb-coloured, and the
+like, they are an offence to the eyes and to the taste.  Yet even
+these have their admirers and collectors, and the great Aldus
+himself occasionally used azure paper.  Under the head of "large
+paper," perhaps "uncut copies" should be mentioned.  Most owners of
+books have had the edges of the volumes gilded or marbled by the
+binders.  Thus part of the margin is lost, an offence to the eye of
+the bibliomaniac, while copies untouched by the binder's shears are
+rare, and therefore prized.  The inconvenience of uncut copies is,
+that one cannot easily turn over the leaves.  But, in the present
+state of the fashion, a really rare uncut Elzevir may be worth
+hundreds of pounds, while a cropped example scarcely fetches as many
+shillings.  A set of Shakespeare's quartoes, uncut, would be worth
+more than a respectable landed estate in Connemara.  For these
+reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound
+"uncut."  It is always easy to have the leaves pared away; but not
+even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which Hera yearly renewed her
+maidenhood, could restore margins once clipped away.  So much for
+books which are chiefly precious for the quantity and quality of the
+material on which they are printed.  Even this rather foolish
+weakness of the amateur would not be useless if it made our
+publishers more careful to employ a sound clean hand-made paper,
+instead of drugged trash, for their more valuable new productions.
+Indeed, a taste for hand-made paper is coming in, and is part of the
+revolt against the passion for everything machine-made, which ruined
+art and handiwork in the years between 1840 and 1870.
+
+The third of M. Brunet's categories of books of prose, includes
+livres de luxe, and illustrated literature.  Every Christmas brings
+us livres de luxe in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt
+and magenta covers, and great staring illustrations.  These are
+regarded as drawing-room ornaments by people who never read.  It is
+scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits
+of unregulated Christmas generosity.  All ages have not produced
+quite such garish livres de luxe as ours.  But, on the whole, a book
+brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill
+"got up," and not worth reading.  Moreover, it is generally a folio,
+or quarto, so large that he who tries to read it must support it on
+a kind of scaffolding.  In the class of illustrated books two sorts
+are at present most in demand.  The ancient woodcuts and engravings,
+often the work of artists like Holbein and Durer, can never lose
+their interest.  Among old illustrated books, the most famous, and
+one of the rarest, is the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," "wherein all
+human matters are proved to be no more than a dream."  This is an
+allegorical romance, published in 1499, for Francesco Colonna, by
+Aldus Manucius.  Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna peramavit.
+"Brother Francesco Colonna dearly loved Polia," is the inscription
+and device of this romance.  Poor Francesco, of the order of
+preachers, disguised in this strange work his passion for a lady of
+uncertain name.  Here is a translation of the passage in which the
+lady describes the beginning of his affection.  "I was standing, as
+is the manner of women young and fair, at the window, or rather on
+the balcony, of my palace.  My yellow hair, the charm of maidens,
+was floating round my shining shoulders.  My locks were steeped in
+unguents that made them glitter like threads of gold, and they were
+slowly drying in the rays of the burning sun.  A handmaid, happy in
+her task, was drawing a comb through my tresses, and surely these of
+Andromeda seemed not more lovely to Perseus, nor to Lucius the locks
+of Photis. {6}  On a sudden, Poliphilus beheld me, and could not
+withdraw from me his glances of fire, and even in that moment a ray
+of the sun of love was kindled in his heart."
+
+The fragment is itself a picture from the world of the Renaissance.
+We watch the blonde, learned lady, dreaming of Perseus, and Lucius,
+Greek lovers of old time, while the sun gilds her yellow hair, and
+the young monk, passing below, sees and loves, and "falls into the
+deep waters of desire."  The lover is no less learned than the lady,
+and there is a great deal of amorous archaeology in his account of
+his voyage to Cythera.  As to the designs in wood, quaint in their
+vigorous effort to be classical, they have been attributed to
+Mantegna, to Bellini, and other artists.  Jean Cousin is said to
+have executed the imitations, in the Paris editions of 1546, 1556,
+and 1561.
+
+The "Hypnerotomachia" seems to deserve notice, because it is the
+very type of the books that are dear to collectors, as distinct from
+the books that, in any shape, are for ever valuable to the world.  A
+cheap Tauchnitz copy of the Iliad and Odyssey, or a Globe
+Shakespeare, are, from the point of view of literature, worth a
+wilderness of "Hypnerotomachiae."  But a clean copy of the
+"Hypnerotomachia," especially on VELLUM, is one of the jewels of
+bibliography.  It has all the right qualities; it is very rare, it
+is very beautiful as a work of art, it is curious and even bizarre,
+it is the record of a strange time, and a strange passion; it is a
+relic, lastly, of its printer, the great and good Aldus Manutius.
+
+Next to the old woodcuts and engravings, executed in times when
+artists were versatile and did not disdain even to draw a book-plate
+(as Durer did for Pirckheimer), the designs of the French "little
+masters," are at present in most demand.  The book illustrations of
+the seventeenth century are curious enough, and invaluable as
+authorities on manners and costume.  But the attitudes of the
+figures are too often stiff and ungainly; while the composition is
+frequently left to chance.  England could show nothing much better
+than Ogilby's translations of Homer, illustrated with big florid
+engravings in sham antique style.  The years between 1730 and 1820,
+saw the French "little masters" in their perfection.  The dress of
+the middle of the eighteenth century, of the age of Watteau, was
+precisely suited to the gay and graceful pencils of Gravelot,
+Moreau, Eisen, Boucher, Cochin, Marillier, and Choffard.  To
+understand their merits, and the limits of their art, it is enough
+to glance through a series of the designs for Voltaire, Corneille,
+or Moliere.  The drawings of society are almost invariably dainty
+and pleasing, the serious scenes of tragedy leave the spectator
+quite unmoved.  Thus it is but natural that these artists should
+have shone most in the illustration of airy trifles like Dorat's
+"Baisers," or tales like Manon Lescaut, or in designing tailpieces
+for translations of the Greek idyllic poets, such as Moschus and
+Bion.  In some of his illustrations of books, especially, perhaps,
+in the designs for "La Physiologie de Gout" (Jouaust, Paris, 1879),
+M. Lalauze has shown himself the worthy rival of Eisen and Cochin.
+Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that the beauty and value of all
+such engravings depends almost entirely on their "state."  The
+earlier proofs are much more brilliant than those drawn later, and
+etchings on fine papers are justly preferred.  For example, M.
+Lalauze's engravings on "Whatman paper," have a beauty which could
+scarcely be guessed by people who have only seen specimens on
+"papier verge."  Every collector of the old French vignettes, should
+possess himself of the "Guide de l'amateur," by M. Henry Cohen
+(Rouquette, Paris, 1880).  Among English illustrated books, various
+tastes prefer the imaginative works of William Blake, the etchings
+of Cruikshank, and the woodcuts of Bewick.  The whole of the last
+chapter of this sketch is devoted, by Mr. Austin Dobson, to the
+topic of English illustrated books.  Here it may be said, in
+passing, that an early copy of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence,"
+written, illustrated, printed, coloured, and boarded by the author's
+own hand, is one of the most charming objects that a bibliophile can
+hope to possess.  The verses of Blake, in a framework of birds, and
+flowers, and plumes, all softly and magically tinted, seem like some
+book out of King Oberon's library in fairyland, rather than the
+productions of a mortal press.  The pictures in Blake's "prophetic
+books," and even his illustrations to "Job," show an imagination
+more heavily weighted by the technical difficulties of drawing.
+
+The next class of rare books is composed of works from the famous
+presses of the Aldi and the Elzevirs.  Other presses have, perhaps,
+done work as good, but Estienne, the Giunta, and Plantin, are
+comparatively neglected, while the taste for the performances of
+Baskerville and Foulis is not very eager.  A safe judgment about
+Aldines and Elzevirs is the gift of years and of long experience.
+In this place it is only possible to say a few words on a wide
+subject.  The founder of the Aldine press, Aldus Pius Manutius, was
+born about 1450, and died at Venice in 1514.  He was a man of
+careful and profound learning, and was deeply interested in Greek
+studies, then encouraged by the arrival in Italy of many educated
+Greeks and Cretans.  Only four Greek authors had as yet been printed
+in Italy, when (1495) Aldus established his press at Venice.
+Theocritus, Homer, AEsop, and Isocrates, probably in very limited
+editions, were in the hands of students.  The purpose of Aldus was
+to put Greek and Latin works, beautifully printed in a convenient
+shape, within the reach of all the world.  His reform was the
+introduction of books at once cheap, studiously correct, and
+convenient in actual use.  It was in 1498 that he first adopted the
+small octavo size, and in his "Virgil" of 1501, he introduced the
+type called Aldine or Italic.  The letters were united as in
+writing, and the type is said to have been cut by Francesco da
+Bologna, better known as Francia, in imitation of the hand of
+Petrarch.  For full information about Aldus and his descendants and
+successors, the work of M. Firmin Didot, ("Alde Manuce et
+l'Hellenisme a Venise:  Paris 1875)," and the Aldine annals of
+Renouard, must be consulted.  These two works are necessary to the
+collector, who will otherwise be deceived by the misleading
+assertions of the booksellers.  As a rule, the volumes published in
+the lifetime of Aldus Manutius are the most esteemed, and of these
+the Aristotle, the first Homer, the Virgil, and the Ovid, are
+perhaps most in demand.  The earlier Aldines are consulted almost as
+studiously as MSS. by modern editors of the classics.
+
+Just as the house of Aldus waned and expired, that of the great
+Dutch printers, the Elzevirs, began obscurely enough at Leyden in
+1583.  The Elzevirs were not, like Aldus, ripe scholars and men of
+devotion to learning.  Aldus laboured for the love of noble studies;
+the Elzevirs were acute, and too often "smart" men of business.  The
+founder of the family was Louis (born at Louvain, 1540, died 1617).
+But it was in the second and third generations that Bonaventura and
+Abraham Elzevir began to publish at Leyden, their editions in small
+duodecimo.  Like Aldus, these Elzevirs aimed at producing books at
+once handy, cheap, correct, and beautiful in execution.  Their
+adventure was a complete success.  The Elzevirs did not, like Aldus,
+surround themselves with the most learned scholars of their time.
+Their famous literary adviser, Heinsius, was full of literary
+jealousies, and kept students of his own calibre at a distance.  The
+classical editions of the Elzevirs, beautiful, but too small in type
+for modern eyes, are anything but exquisitely correct.  Their
+editions of the contemporary.  French authors, now classics
+themselves, are lovely examples of skill in practical enterprise.
+The Elzevirs treated the French authors much as American publishers
+treat Englishmen.  They stole right and left, but no one complained
+much in these times of slack copyright; and, at all events, the
+piratic larcenous publications of the Dutch printers were pretty,
+and so far satisfactory.  They themselves, in turn, were the victims
+of fraudulent and untradesmanlike imitations.  It is for this, among
+other reasons, that the collector of Elzevirs must make M. Willems's
+book ("Les Elzevier," Brussels and Paris, 1880) his constant study.
+Differences so minute that they escape the unpractised eye, denote
+editions of most various value.  In Elzevirs a line's breadth of
+margin is often worth a hundred pounds, and a misprint is quoted at
+no less a sum.  The fantastic caprice of bibliophiles has revelled
+in the bibliography of these Dutch editions.  They are at present
+very scarce in England, where a change in fashion some years ago had
+made them common enough.  No Elzevir is valuable unless it be clean
+and large in the margins.  When these conditions are satisfied the
+question of rarity comes in, and Remy Belleau's Macaronic poem, or
+"Le Pastissier Francais," may rise to the price of four or five
+hundred pounds.  A Rabelais, Moliere, or Corneille, of a "good"
+edition, is now more in request than the once adored "Imitatio
+Christi" (dateless), or the "Virgil"' of 1646, which is full of
+gross errors of the press, but is esteemed for red characters in the
+letter to Augustus, and another passage at page 92.  The ordinary
+marks of the Elzevirs were the sphere, the old hermit, the Athena,
+the eagle, and the burning faggot.  But all little old books marked
+with spheres are not Elzevirs, as many booksellers suppose.  Other
+printers also stole the designs for the tops of chapters, the
+Aegipan, the Siren, the head of Medusa, the crossed sceptres, and
+the rest.  In some cases the Elzevirs published their books,
+especially when they were piracies, anonymously.  When they
+published for the Jansenists, they allowed their clients to put
+fantastic pseudonyms on the title pages.  But, except in four cases,
+they had only two pseudonyms used on the titles of books published
+by and for themselves.  These disguises are "Jean Sambix" for Jean
+and Daniel Elzevir, at Leyden, and for the Elzevirs of Amsterdam,
+"Jacques le Jeune."  The last of the great representatives of the
+house, Daniel, died at Amsterdam, 1680.  Abraham, an unworthy scion,
+struggled on at Leyden till 1712.  The family still prospers, but no
+longer prints, in Holland.  It is common to add duodecimos of
+Foppens, Wolfgang, and other printers, to the collections of the
+Elzevirs.  The books of Wolfgang have the sign of the fox robbing a
+wild bee's nest, with the motto Quaerendo.
+
+Curious and singular books are the next in our classification.  The
+category is too large.  The books that be "curious" (not in the
+booksellers' sense of "prurient" and "disgusting,") are innumerable.
+All suppressed and condemned books, from "Les Fleurs du Mal" to
+Vanini's "Amphitheatrum," or the English translation of Bruno's
+"Spaccia della Bestia Trionfante," are more or less rare, and more
+or less curious.  Wild books, like William Postel's "Three
+Marvellous Triumphs of Women," are "curious."  Freakish books, like
+macaronic poetry, written in a medley of languages, are curious.
+Books from private presses are singular.  The old English poets and
+satirists turned out many a book curious to the last degree, and
+priced at a fantastic value.  Such are "Jordan's Jewels of
+Ingenuity," "Micro-cynicon, six Snarling Satyres" (1599), and the
+"Treatize made of a Galaunt," printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and found
+pasted into the fly-leaf, on the oak-board binding of an imperfect
+volume of Pynson's "Statutes."  All our early English poems and
+miscellanies are curious; and, as relics of delightful singers, are
+most charming possessions.  Such are the "Songes and Sonnettes of
+Surrey" (1557), the "Paradyce of daynty Deuices" (1576), the "Small
+Handful of Fragrant Flowers," and "The Handful of Dainty Delights,
+gathered out of the lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture, fit for any
+worshipful Gentlewoman to smell unto," (1584).  "The Teares of
+Ireland" (1642), are said, though one would not expect it, to be
+"extremely rare," and, therefore, precious.  But there is no end to
+the list of such desirable rarities.  If we add to them all books
+coveted as early editions, and, therefore, as relics of great
+writers, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Milton, Sterne, Walton, and the rest,
+we might easily fill a book with remarks on this topic alone.  The
+collection of such editions is the most respectable, the most
+useful, and, alas, the most expensive of the amateur's pursuits.  It
+is curious enough that the early editions of Swift, Scott, and
+Byron, are little sought for, if not wholly neglected; while early
+copies of Shelley, Tennyson, and Keats, have a great price set on
+their heads.  The quartoes of Shakespeare, like first editions of
+Racine, are out of the reach of any but very opulent purchasers, or
+unusually lucky, fortunate book-hunters.  Before leaving the topic
+of books which derive their value from the taste and fantasy of
+collectors, it must be remarked that, in this matter, the fashion of
+the world changes.  Dr. Dibdin lamented, seventy years ago, the
+waning respect paid to certain editions of the classics.  He would
+find that things have become worse now, and modern German editions,
+on execrable paper, have supplanted his old favourites.  Fifty years
+ago, M. Brunet expressed his contempt for the designs of Boucher;
+now they are at the top of the fashion.  The study of old
+booksellers' catalogues is full of instruction as to the changes of
+caprice.  The collection of Dr. Rawlinson was sold in 1756.  "The
+Vision of Pierce Plowman" (1561), and the "Creede of Pierce Plowman"
+(1553), brought between them no more than three shillings and
+sixpence.  Eleven shillings were paid for the "Boke of Chivalrie" by
+Caxton.  The "Boke of St. Albans," by Wynkyn de Worde, cost 1
+pounds:  1s., and this was the highest sum paid for any one of two
+hundred rare pieces of early English literature.  In 1764, a copy of
+the "Hypnerotomachia" was sold for two shillings, "A Pettie Pallace
+of Pettie his Pleasures," (ah, what a thought for the amateur!) went
+for three shillings, while "Palmerin of England" (1602), attained no
+more than the paltry sum of fourteen shillings.  When Osborne sold
+the Harley collection, the scarcest old English books fetched but
+three or four shillings.  If the wandering Jew had been a collector
+in the last century he might have turned a pretty profit by selling
+his old English books in this age of ours.  In old French, too,
+Ahasuerus would have done a good stroke of business, for the prices
+brought by old Villons, Romances of the Rose, "Les Marguerites de
+Marguerite," and so forth, at the M'Carthy sale, were truly
+pitiable.  A hundred years hence the original editions of Thackeray,
+or of Miss Greenaway's Christmas books, or "Modern Painters," may be
+the ruling passion, and Aldines and Elzevirs, black letter and
+French vignettes may all be despised.  A book which is commonplace
+in our century is curious in the next, and disregarded in that which
+follows.  Old books of a heretical character were treasures once,
+rare unholy possessions.  Now we have seen so many heretics that the
+world is indifferent to the audacities of Bruno, and the veiled
+impieties of Vanini.
+
+The last of our categories of books much sought by the collector
+includes all volumes valued for their ancient bindings, for the mark
+and stamp of famous amateurs.  The French, who have supplied the
+world with so many eminent binders,--as Eve, Padeloup, Duseuil, Le
+Gascon, Derome, Simier, Bozerian, Thouvenin, Trautz-Bauzonnet, and
+Lortic--are the chief patrons of books in historical bindings.  In
+England an historical binding, a book of Laud's, or James's, or
+Garrick's, or even of Queen Elizabeth's, does not seem to derive
+much added charm from its associations.  But, in France, peculiar
+bindings are now the objects most in demand among collectors.  The
+series of books thus rendered precious begins with those of Maioli
+and of Grolier (1479-1565), remarkable for their mottoes and the
+geometrical patterns on the covers.  Then comes De Thou (who had
+three sets of arms), with his blazon, the bees stamped on the
+morocco.  The volumes of Marguerite of Angouleme are sprinkled with
+golden daisies.  Diane de Poictiers had her crescents and her bow,
+and the initial of her royal lover was intertwined with her own.
+The three daughters of Louis XV. had each their favourite colour,
+and their books wear liveries of citron, red, and olive morocco.
+The Abbe Cotin, the original of Moliere's Trissotin, stamped his
+books with intertwined C's.  Henri III. preferred religious emblems,
+and sepulchral mottoes--skulls, crossbones, tears, and the insignia
+of the Passion.  Mort m'est vie is a favourite device of the
+effeminate and voluptuous prince.  Moliere himself was a collector,
+il n'es pas de bouquin qui s'echappe de ses mains,--"never an old
+book escapes him," says the author of "La Guerre Comique," the last
+of the pamphlets which flew from side to side in the great literary
+squabble about "L'Ecole des Femmes."  M. Soulie has found a rough
+catalogue of Moliere's library, but the books, except a little
+Elzevir, have disappeared. {7}  Madame de Maintenon was fond of
+bindings.  Mr. Toovey possesses a copy of a devotional work in red
+morocco, tooled and gilt, which she presented to a friendly abbess.
+The books at Saint-Cyr were stamped with a crowned cross, besprent
+with fleurs-de-lys.  The books of the later collectors--Longepierre,
+the translator of Bion and Moschus; D'Hoym the diplomatist;
+McCarthy, and La Valliere, are all valued at a rate which seems fair
+game for satire.
+
+Among the most interesting bibliophiles of the eighteenth century is
+Madame Du Barry.  In 1771, this notorious beauty could scarcely read
+or write.  She had rooms, however, in the Chateau de Versailles,
+thanks to the kindness of a monarch who admired those native
+qualities which education may polish, but which it can never confer.
+At Versailles, Madame Du Barry heard of the literary genius of
+Madame de Pompadour.  The Pompadour was a person of taste.  Her
+large library of some four thousand works of the lightest sort of
+light literature was bound by Biziaux.  Mr. Toovey possesses the
+Brantome of this dame galante.  Madame herself had published
+etchings by her own fair hands; and to hear of these things excited
+the emulation of Madame Du Barry.  She might not be CLEVER, but she
+could have a library like another, if libraries were in fashion.
+One day Madame Du Barry astonished the Court by announcing that her
+collection of books would presently arrive at Versailles.  Meantime
+she took counsel with a bookseller, who bought up examples of all
+the cheap "remainders," as they are called in the trade, that he
+could lay his hands upon.  The whole assortment, about one thousand
+volumes in all, was hastily bound in rose morocco, elegantly gilt,
+and stamped with the arms of the noble house of Du Barry.  The bill
+which Madame Du Barry owed her enterprising agent is still in
+existence.  The thousand volumes cost about three francs each; the
+binding (extremely cheap) came to nearly as much.  The amusing thing
+is that the bookseller, in the catalogue which he sent with the
+improvised library, marked the books which Madame Du Barry possessed
+BEFORE her large order was so punctually executed.  There were two
+"Memoires de Du Barry," an old newspaper, two or three plays, and
+"L'Historie Amoureuse de Pierre le Long."  Louis XV. observed with
+pride that, though Madame Pompadour had possessed a larger library,
+that of Madame Du Barry was the better selected.  Thanks to her new
+collection, the lady learned to read with fluency, but she never
+overcame the difficulties of spelling.
+
+A lady collector who loved books not very well perhaps, but
+certainly not wisely, was the unhappy Marie Antoinette.  The
+controversy in France about the private character of the Queen has
+been as acrimonious as the Scotch discussion about Mary Stuart.
+Evidence, good and bad, letters as apocryphal as the letters of the
+famous "casket," have been produced on both sides.  A few years ago,
+under the empire, M. Louis Lacour found a manuscript catalogue of
+the books in the Queen's boudoir.  They were all novels of the
+flimsiest sort,--"L'Amitie Dangereuse," "Les Suites d'un Moment
+d'Erreur," and even the stories of Louvet and of Retif de la
+Bretonne.  These volumes all bore the letters "C. T." (Chateau de
+Trianon), and during the Revolution they were scattered among the
+various public libraries of Paris.  The Queen's more important
+library was at the Tuileries, but at Versailles she had only three
+books, as the commissioners of the Convention found, when they made
+an inventory of the property of la femme Capet.  Among the three was
+the "Gerusalemme Liberata," printed, with eighty exquisite designs
+by Cochin, at the expense of "Monsieur," afterwards Louis XVIII.
+Books with the arms of Marie Antoinette are very rare in private
+collections; in sales they are as much sought after as those of
+Madame Du Barry.
+
+With these illustrations of the kind of interest that belongs to
+books of old collectors, we may close this chapter.  The reader has
+before him a list, with examples, of the kinds of books at present
+most in vogue among amateurs.  He must judge for himself whether he
+will follow the fashion, by aid either of a long purse or of patient
+research, or whether he will find out new paths for himself.  A
+scholar is rarely a rich man.  He cannot compete with plutocrats who
+buy by deputy.  But, if he pursues the works he really needs, he may
+make a valuable collection.  He cannot go far wrong while he brings
+together the books that he finds most congenial to his own taste and
+most useful to his own studies.  Here, then, in the words of the old
+"sentiment," I bid him farewell, and wish "success to his
+inclinations, provided they are virtuous."  There is a set of
+collectors, alas! whose inclinations are not virtuous.  The most
+famous of them, a Frenchman, observed that his own collection of bad
+books was unique.  That of an English rival, he admitted, was
+respectable,--"mais milord se livre a des autres preoccupations!"
+He thought a collector's whole heart should be with his treasures.
+
+
+En bouquinant se trouve grand soulas.
+Soubent m'en vay musant, a petis pas,
+Au long des quais, pour flairer maint bieux livre.
+Des Elzevier la Sphere me rend yure,
+Et la Sirene aussi m'esmeut.  Grand cas
+Fais-je d'Estienne, Aide, ou Dolet.  Mais Ias!
+Le vieux Caxton ne se rencontre pas,
+Plus qu' agneau d'or parmi jetons de cuivre,
+En bouquinant!
+
+Pour tout plaisir que l'on goute icy-bas
+La Grace a Dieu.  Mieux vaut, sans altercas,
+Chasser bouquin:  Nul mal n'en peult s'ensuivre.
+Dr sus au livre:  il est le grand appas.
+Clair est le ciel.  Amis, qui veut me suivre
+En bouquinant?
+
+A. L.
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BOOKS {8}
+
+
+
+Modern English book-illustration--to which the present chapter is
+restricted -has no long or doubtful history, since to find its first
+beginnings, it is needless to go farther back than the last quarter
+of the eighteenth century.  Not that "illustrated" books of a
+certain class were by any means unknown before that period.  On the
+contrary, for many years previously, literature had boasted its
+"sculptures" of be-wigged and be-laurelled "worthies," its
+"prospects" and "land-skips," its phenomenal monsters and its
+"curious antiques."  But, despite the couplet in the "Dunciad"
+respecting books where
+
+
+" . . .  the pictures for the page atone,
+And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own;" -
+
+
+illustrations, in which the designer attempted the actual
+delineation of scenes or occurrences in the text, were certainly not
+common when Pope wrote, nor were they for some time afterwards
+either very numerous or very noteworthy.  There are Hogarth's
+engravings to "Hudibras" and "Don Quixote;" there are the designs of
+his crony Frank Hayman to Theobald's "Shakespeare," to Milton, to
+Pope, to Cervantes; there are Pine's "Horace" and Sturt's "Prayer-
+Book" (in both of which text and ornament were alike engraved);
+there are the historical and topographical drawings of Sandby, Wale,
+and others; and yet--notwithstanding all these--it is with Bewick's
+cuts to Gay's "Fables" in 1779, and Stothard's plates to Harrison's
+"Novelist's Magazine" in 1780, that book-illustration by imaginative
+compositions really begins to flourish in England.  Those little
+masterpieces of the Newcastle artist brought about a revival of
+wood-engraving which continues to this day; but engraving upon
+metal, as a means of decorating books, practically came to an end
+with the "Annuals" of thirty years ago.  It will therefore be well
+to speak first of illustrations upon copper and steel.
+
+
+Stothard, Blake, and Flaxman are the names that come freshest to
+memory in this connection.  For a period of fifty years Stothard
+stands pre-eminent in illustrated literature.  Measuring time by
+poets, he may be said to have lent something of his fancy and
+amenity to most of the writers from Cowper to Rogers.  As a
+draughtsman he is undoubtedly weak:  his figures are often limp and
+invertebrate, and his type of beauty insipid.  Still, regarded as
+groups, the majority of his designs are exquisite, and he possessed
+one all-pervading and un-English quality--the quality of grace.
+This is his dominant note.  Nothing can be more seductive than the
+suave flow of his line, his feeling for costume, his gentle and
+chastened humour.  Many of his women and children are models of
+purity and innocence.  But he works at ease only within the limits
+of his special powers; he is happier in the pastoral and domestic
+than the heroic and supernatural, and his style is better fitted to
+the formal salutations of "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison,"
+than the rough horse-play of "Peregrine Pickle."  Where Rowlandson
+would have revelled, Stothard would be awkward and constrained;
+where Blake would give us a new sensation, Stothard would be poor
+and mechanical.  Nevertheless the gifts he possessed were thoroughly
+recognised in his own day, and brought him, if not riches, at least
+competence and honour.  It is said that more than three thousand of
+his drawings have been engraved, and they are scattered through a
+hundred publications.  Those to the "Pilgrim's Progress" and the
+poems of Rogers are commonly spoken of as his best, though he never
+excelled some of the old-fashioned plates (with their pretty borders
+in the style of Gravelot and the Frenchmen) to Richardson's novels,
+and such forgotten "classics" as "Joe Thompson", "Jessamy," "Betsy
+Thoughtless," and one or two others in Harrison's very miscellaneous
+collection.
+
+Stothard was fortunate in his engravers.  Besides James Heath, his
+best interpreter, Schiavonetti, Sharp, Finden, the Cookes,
+Bartolozzi, most of the fashionable translators into copper were
+busily employed upon his inventions.  Among the rest was an artist
+of powers far greater than his own, although scarcely so happy in
+turning them to profitable account.  The genius of William Blake was
+not a marketable commodity in the same way as Stothard's talent.
+The one caught the trick of the time with his facile elegance; the
+other scorned to make any concessions, either in conception or
+execution, to the mere popularity of prettiness.
+
+
+"Give pensions to the learned pig,
+Or the hare playing on a tabor;
+Anglus can never see perfection
+But in the journeyman's labour," -
+
+
+he wrote in one of those rough-hewn and bitter epigrams of his.  Yet
+the work that was then so lukewarmly received--if, indeed, it can be
+said to have been received at all--is at present far more sought
+after than Stothard's, and the prices now given for the "Songs of
+Innocence and Experience," the "Inventions to the Book of Job," and
+even "The Grave," would have brought affluence to the struggling
+artist, who (as Cromek taunted him) was frequently "reduced so low
+as to be obliged to live on half a guinea a week."  Not that this
+was entirely the fault of his contemporaries.  Blake was a
+visionary, and an untuneable man; and, like others who work for the
+select public of all ages, he could not always escape the
+consequence that the select public of his own, however willing, were
+scarcely numerous enough to support him.  His most individual works
+are the "Songs of Innocence," 1789, and the "Songs of Experience,"
+1794.  These, afterwards united in one volume, were unique in their
+method of production; indeed, they do not perhaps strictly come
+within the category of what is generally understood to be
+copperplate engraving.  The drawings were outlined and the songs
+written upon the metal with some liquid that resisted the action of
+acid, and the remainder of the surface of the plate was eaten away
+with aqua-fortis, leaving the design in bold relief, like a rude
+stereotype.  This was then printed off in the predominant tone--
+blue, brown, or yellow, as the case might be--and delicately tinted
+by the artist in a prismatic and ethereal fashion peculiarly his
+own.  Stitched and bound in boards by Mrs. Blake, a certain number
+of these leaflets--twenty-seven in the case of the first issue--made
+up a tiny octavo of a wholly exceptional kind.  Words indeed fail to
+exactly describe the flower-like beauty--the fascination of these
+"fairy missals," in which, it has been finely said, "the thrilling
+music of the verse, and the gentle bedazzlement of the lines and
+colours so intermingle, that the mind hangs in a pleasant
+uncertainty as to whether it is a picture that is singing, or a song
+which has newly budded and blossomed into colour and form."  The
+accompanying woodcut, after one of the illustrations to the "Songs
+of Innocence," gives some indication of the general composition, but
+it can convey no hint of the gorgeous purple, and crimson, and
+orange of the original.
+
+Of the "Illustrations to the Book of Job," 1826, there are excellent
+reduced facsimiles by the recently-discovered photo-intaglio
+process, in the new edition of Gilchrist's "Life."  The originals
+were engraved by Blake himself in his strong decisive fashion, and
+they are his best work.  A kind of deisidaimonia--a sacred awe--
+falls upon one in turning over these wonderful productions of the
+artist's declining years and failing hand.
+
+
+"Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
+That stand upon the threshold of the new,"
+
+
+sings Waller; and it is almost possible to believe for a moment that
+their creator was (as he said) "under the direction of messengers
+from Heaven."  But his designs for Blair's "Grave," 1808,
+popularised by the burin of Schiavonetti, attracted greater
+attention at the time of publication; and, being less rare, they are
+even now perhaps better known than the others.  The facsimile here
+given is from the latter book.  The worn old man, the trustful
+woman, and the guileless child are sleeping peacefully; but the king
+with his sceptre, and the warrior with his hand on his sword-hilt,
+lie open-eyed, waiting the summons of the trumpet.  One cannot help
+fancying that the artist's long vigils among the Abbey tombs, during
+his apprenticeship to James Basire, must have been present to his
+mind when he selected this impressive monumental subject.
+
+To one of Blake's few friends--to the "dear Sculptor of Eternity,"
+as he wrote to Flaxman from Felpham--the world is indebted for some
+notable book illustrations.  Whether the greatest writers--the
+Homers, the Shakespeares, the Dantes--can ever be "illustrated"
+without loss may fairly be questioned.  At all events, the showy
+dexterities of the Dores and Gilberts prove nothing to the contrary.
+But now and then there comes to the graphic interpretation of a
+great author an artist either so reverential, or so strongly
+sympathetic at some given point, that, in default of any relation
+more narrowly intimate, we at once accept his conceptions as the
+best attainable.  In this class are Flaxman's outlines to Homer and
+AEschylus.  Flaxman was not a Hellenist as men are Hellenists to-
+day.  Nevertheless, his Roman studies had saturated him with the
+spirit of antique beauty, and by his grand knowledge of the nude,
+his calm, his restraint, he is such an illustrator of Homer as is
+not likely to arise again.  For who--with all our added knowledge of
+classical antiquity--who, of our modern artists, could hope to rival
+such thoroughly Greek compositions as the ball-play of Nausicaa in
+the "Odyssey," or that lovely group from AEschylus of the tender-
+hearted, womanly Oceanides, cowering like flowers beaten by the
+storm under the terrible anger of Zeus?  In our day Flaxman's
+drawings would have been reproduced by some of the modern facsimile
+processes, and the gain would have been great.  As it is, something
+is lost by their transference to copper, even though the translators
+be Piroli and Blake.  Blake, in fact, did more than he is usually
+credited with, for (beside the acknowledged and later "Hesiod,"
+1817) he really engraved the whole of the "Odyssey," Piroli's plates
+having been lost on the voyage to England.  The name of the Roman
+artist, nevertheless, appears on the title-page (1793).  But Blake
+was too original to be a successful copyist of other men's work, and
+to appreciate the full value of Flaxman's drawings, they should be
+studied in the collections at University College, the Royal Academy,
+and elsewhere. {9}
+
+Flaxman and Blake had few imitators.  But a host of clever
+designers, such as Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Westall, Uwins,
+Smirke, Burney, Corbould, Dodd, and others, vied with the popular
+Stothard in "embellishing" the endless "Poets," "novelists," and
+"essayists" of our forefathers.  Some of these, and most of the
+recognised artists of the period, lent their aid to that boldly-
+planned but unhappily-executed "Shakespeare" of Boydell,--"black and
+ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, straddling
+Fuselis," as Thackeray calls it.  They are certainly not enlivening-
+-those cumbrous "atlas" folios of 1803-5, and they helped to ruin
+the worthy alderman.  Even courtly Sir Joshua is clearly ill at ease
+among the pushing Hamiltons and Mortimers; and, were it not for the
+whimsical discovery that Westall's "Ghost of Caesar" strangely
+resembles Mr. Gladstone, there would be no resting-place for the
+modern student of these dismal masterpieces.  The truth is, Reynolds
+excepted, there were no contemporary painters strong enough for the
+task, and the honours of the enterprise belong almost exclusively to
+Smirke's "Seven Ages" and one or two plates from the lighter
+comedies.  The great "Bible" of Macklin, a rival and even more
+incongruous publication, upon which some of the same designers were
+employed, has fallen into completer oblivion.  A rather better fate
+attended another book of this class, which, although belonging to a
+later period, may be briefly referred to here.  The "Milton" of John
+Martin has distinct individuality, and some of the needful qualities
+of imagination.  Nevertheless, posterity has practically decided
+that scenic grandeur and sombre effects alone are not a sufficient
+pictorial equipment for the varied story of "Paradise Lost."
+
+It is to Boydell of the Shakespeare gallery that we owe the "Liber
+Veritatis" of Claude, engraved by Richard Earlom; and indirectly,
+since rivalry of Claude prompted the attempt, the famous "Liber
+Studiorum" of Turner.  Neither of these, however--which, like the
+"Rivers of France" and the "Picturesque Views in England and Wales"
+of the latter artist, are collections of engravings rather than
+illustrated books--belongs to the present purpose.  But Turner's
+name may fitly serve to introduce those once familiar "Annuals" and
+"Keepsakes," that, beginning in 1823 with Ackermann's "Forget-me-
+Not," enjoyed a popularity of more than thirty years.  Their general
+characteristics have been pleasantly satirised in Thackeray's
+account of the elegant miscellany of Bacon the publisher, to which
+Mr. Arthur Pendennis contributed his pretty poem of "The Church
+Porch."  His editress, it will be remembered, was the Lady Violet
+Lebas, and his colleagues the Honourable Percy Popjoy, Lord Dodo,
+and the gifted Bedwin Sands, whose "Eastern Ghazuls" lent so special
+a distinction to the volume in watered-silk binding.  The talented
+authors, it is true, were in most cases under the disadvantage of
+having to write to the plates of the talented artists, a practice
+which even now is not extinct, though it is scarcely considered
+favourable to literary merit.  And the real "Annuals" were no
+exception to the rule.  As a matter of fact, their general literary
+merit was not obtrusive, although, of course, they sometimes
+contained work which afterwards became famous.  They are now so
+completely forgotten and out of date, that one scarcely expects to
+find that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macaulay, and Southey, were among
+the occasional contributors.  Lamb's beautiful "Album verses"
+appeared in the "Bijou," Scott's "Bonnie Dundee" in the "Christmas
+Box," and Tennyson's "St. Agnes' Eve" in the "Keepsake."  But the
+plates were, after all, the leading attraction.  These, prepared for
+the most part under the superintendence of the younger Heath, and
+executed on the steel which by this time had supplanted the old
+"coppers," were supplied by, or were "after," almost every
+contemporary artist of note.  Stothard, now growing old and past his
+prime, Turner, Etty, Stanfield, Leslie, Roberts, Danby, Maclise,
+Lawrence, Cattermole, and numbers of others, found profitable labour
+in this fashionable field until 1856, when the last of the "Annuals"
+disappeared, driven from the market by the rapid development of wood
+engraving.  About a million, it is roughly estimated, was squandered
+in producing them.
+
+In connection with the "Annuals" must be mentioned two illustrated
+books which were in all probability suggested by them--the "Poems"
+and "Italy" of Rogers.  The designs to these are chiefly by Turner
+and Stothard, although there are a few by Prout and others.
+Stothard's have been already referred to; Turner's are almost
+universally held to be the most successful of his many vignettes.
+It has been truly said--in a recent excellent life of this artist
+{10}--that it would be difficult to find in the whole of his works
+two really greater than the "Alps at Daybreak," and the "Datur Hora
+Quieti," in the former of these volumes.  Almost equally beautiful
+are the "Valombre Falls" and "Tornaro's misty brow."  Of the "Italy"
+set Mr. Ruskin writes:- "They are entirely exquisite; poetical in
+the highest and purest sense, exemplary and delightful beyond all
+praise."  To such words it is not possible to add much.  But it is
+pretty clear that the poetical vitality of Rogers was secured by
+these well-timed illustrations, over which he is admitted by his
+nephew Mr. Sharpe to have spent about 7000 pounds, and far larger
+sums have been named by good authorities.  The artist received from
+fifteen to twenty guineas for each of the drawings; the engravers
+(Goodall, Miller, Wallis, Smith, and others), sixty guineas a plate.
+The "Poems" and the "Italy," in the original issues of 1830 and
+1834, are still precious to collectors, and are likely to remain so.
+Turner also illustrated Scott, Milton, Campbell, and Byron; but this
+series of designs has not received equal commendation from his
+greatest eulogist, who declares them to be "much more laboured, and
+more or less artificial and unequal."  Among the numerous imitations
+directly induced by the Rogers books was the "Lyrics of the Heart,"
+by Alaric Attila Watts, a forgotten versifier and sometime editor of
+"Annuals," but it did not meet with similar success.
+
+Many illustrated works, originating in the perfection and
+opportunities of engraving on metal, are necessarily unnoticed in
+this rapid summary.  As far, however, as book-illustration is
+concerned, copper and steel plate engraving may be held to have gone
+out of fashion with the "Annuals."  It is still, indeed, to be found
+lingering in that mine of modern art-books--the "Art Journal;" and,
+not so very long ago, it made a sumptuous and fugitive reappearance
+in Dore's "Idylls of the King," Birket Foster's "Hood," and one or
+two other imposing volumes.  But it was badly injured by modern
+wood-engraving; it has since been crippled for life by photography;
+and it is more than probable that the present rapid rise of modern
+etching will give it the coup de grace. {11}
+
+By the end of the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood
+had fallen into disuse.  Writing circa 1770, Horace Walpole goes so
+far as to say that it "never was executed in any perfection in
+England;" and, speaking afterwards of Papillon's "Traite de la
+Gravure," 1766, he takes occasion to doubt if that author would ever
+"persuade the world to return to wooden cuts."  Nevertheless, with
+Bewick, a few years later, wood-engraving took a fresh departure so
+conspicuous that it amounts to a revival.  In what this consisted it
+is clearly impossible to show here with any sufficiency of detail;
+but between the method of the old wood-cutters who reproduced the
+drawings of Durer, and the method of the Newcastle artist, there are
+two marked and well-defined differences.  One of these is a
+difference in the preparation of the wood and the tool employed.
+The old wood-cutters carved their designs with knives and chisels on
+strips of wood sawn lengthwise--that is to say, upon the PLANK;
+Bewick used a graver, and worked upon slices of box or pear cut
+across the grain,--that is to say upon the END of the wood.  The
+other difference, of which Bewick is said to have been the inventor,
+is less easy to describe.  It consisted in the employment of what is
+technically known as "white line."  In all antecedent wood-cutting
+the cutter had simply cleared away those portions of the block left
+bare by the design, so that the design remained in relief to be
+printed from like type.  Using the smooth box block as a uniform
+surface from which, if covered with printing ink, a uniformly black
+impression might be obtained, Bewick, by cutting white lines across
+it at greater or lesser intervals, produced gradations of shade,
+from the absolute black of the block to the lightest tints.  The
+general result of this method was to give a greater depth of
+colouring and variety to the engraving, but its advantages may
+perhaps be best understood by a glance at the background of the
+"Woodcock" on the following page.
+
+Bewick's first work of any importance was the Gay's "Fables" of
+1779.  In 1784 he did another series of "Select Fables."  Neither of
+these books, however, can be compared with the "General History of
+Quadrupeds," 1790, and the "British Land and Water Birds," 1797 and
+1804.  The illustrations to the "Quadrupeds" are in many instances
+excellent, and large additions were made to them in subsequent
+issues.  But in this collection Bewick laboured to a great extent
+under the disadvantage of representing animals with which he was
+familiar only through the medium of stuffed specimens or incorrect
+drawings.  In the "British Birds," on the contrary, his facilities
+for study from the life were greater, and his success was
+consequently more complete.  Indeed, it may be safely affirmed that
+of all the engravers of the present century, none have excelled
+Bewick for beauty of black and white, for skilful rendering of
+plumage and foliage, and for fidelity of detail and accessory.  The
+"Woodcock" (here given), the "Partridge," the "Owl," the "Yellow-
+Hammer," the "Yellow-Bunting," the "Willow-Wren," are popular
+examples of these qualities.  But there are a hundred others nearly
+as good.
+
+Among sundry conventional decorations after the old German fashion
+in the first edition of the "Quadrupeds," there are a fair number of
+those famous tail-pieces which, to a good many people, constitute
+Bewick's chief claim to immortality.  That it is not easy to imitate
+them is plain from the failure of Branston's attempts, and from the
+inferior character of those by John Thompson in Yarrell's "Fishes."
+The genius of Bewick was, in fact, entirely individual and
+particular.  He had the humour of a Hogarth in little, as well as
+some of his special characteristics,--notably his faculty of telling
+a story by suggestive detail.  An instance may be taken at random
+from vol. I. of the "Birds."  A man, whose wig and hat have fallen
+off, lies asleep with open mouth under some bushes.  He is
+manifestly drunk, and the date "4 June," on a neighbouring stone,
+gives us the reason and occasion of his catastrophe.  He has been
+too loyally celebrating the birthday of his majesty King George III.
+Another of Bewick's gifts is his wonderful skill in foreshadowing a
+tragedy.  Take as an example, this truly appalling incident from the
+"Quadrupeds."  The tottering child, whose nurse is seen in the
+background, has strayed into the meadow, and is pulling at the tail
+of a vicious-looking colt, with back-turned eye and lifted heel.
+Down the garden-steps the mother hurries headlong; but she can
+hardly be in time.  And of all this--sufficient, one would say, for
+a fairly-sized canvas--the artist has managed to give a vivid
+impression in a block of three inches by two!  Then, again, like
+Hogarth once more, he rejoices in multiplications of dilemma.  What,
+for instance, can be more comically pathetic than the head-piece to
+the "Contents" in vol. I. of the "Birds"?  The old horse has been
+seized with an invincible fit of stubbornness.  The day is both
+windy and rainy.  The rider has broken his stick and lost his hat;
+but he is too much encumbered with his cackling and excited stock to
+dare to dismount.  Nothing can help him but a Deus ex machina,--of
+whom there is no sign.
+
+Besides his humour, Bewick has a delightfully rustic side, of which
+Hogarth gives but little indication.  From the starved ewe in the
+snow nibbling forlornly at a worn-out broom, to the cow which has
+broken through the rail to reach the running water, there are
+numberless designs which reveal that faithful lover of the field and
+hillside, who, as he said, "would rather be herding sheep on Mickle
+bank top" than remain in London to be made premier of England.  He
+loved the country and the country-life; and he drew them as one who
+loved them.  It is this rural quality which helps to give such a
+lasting freshness to his quaint and picturesque fancies; and it is
+this which will continue to preserve their popularity, even if they
+should cease to be valued for their wealth of whimsical invention.
+
+In referring to these masterpieces of Bewick's, it must not be
+forgotten that he had the aid of some clever assistants.  His
+younger brother John was not without talent, as is clear from his
+work for Somervile's "Chace," 1796, and that highly edifying book,
+the "Blossoms of Morality."  Many of the tail-pieces to the "Water
+Birds" were designed by Robert Johnson, who also did most of the
+illustrations to Bewick's "Fables" of 1818, which were engraved by
+Temple and Harvey, two other pupils.  Another pupil was Charlton
+Nesbit, an excellent engraver, who was employed upon the "Birds,"
+and did good work in Ackermann's "Religious Emblems" of 1808, and
+the second series of Northcote's "Fables."  But by far the largest
+portion of the tail-pieces in the second volume of the "Birds" was
+engraved by Luke Clennell, a very skilful but unfortunate artist,
+who ultimately became insane.  To him we owe the woodcuts, after
+Stothard's charming sketches, to the Rogers volume of 1810, an
+edition preceding those already mentioned as illustrated with steel-
+plates, and containing some of the artist's happiest pictures of
+children and amorini.  Many of these little groups would make
+admirable designs for gems, if indeed they are not already derived
+from them, since one at least is an obvious copy of a well-known
+sardonyx--("The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.")  This volume,
+generally known by the name of the "Firebrand" edition, is highly
+prized by collectors; and, as intelligent renderings of pen and ink,
+there is little better than these engravings of Clennell's. {12}
+Finally, among others of Bewick's pupils, must be mentioned William
+Harvey, who survived to 1866.  It has been already stated that he
+engraved part of the illustrations to Bewick's "Fables," but his
+best known block is the large one of Haydon's "Death of Dentatus."
+Soon after this he relinquished wood-engraving in favour of design,
+and for a long period was one of the most fertile and popular of
+book-illustrators.  His style, however, is unpleasantly mannered;
+and it is sufficient to make mention of his masterpiece, the
+"Arabian Nights" of Lane, the illustrations to which, produced under
+the supervision of the translator, are said to be so accurate as to
+give the appropriate turbans for every hour of the day.  They show
+considerable freedom of invention and a large fund of Orientalism.
+
+Harvey came to London in 1817; Clennell had preceded him by some
+years; and Nesbit lived there for a considerable time.  What
+distinguishes these pupils of Bewick especially is, that they were
+artists as well as engravers, capable of producing the designs they
+engraved.  The "London School" of engravers, on the contrary, were
+mostly engravers, who depended upon others for their designs.  The
+foremost of these was Robert Branston, a skilful renderer of human
+figures and indoor scenes.  He worked in rivalry with Bewick and
+Nesbit; but he excelled neither, while he fell far behind the
+former.  John Thompson, one of the very best of modern English
+engravers on wood, was Branston's pupil.  His range was of the
+widest, and he succeeded as well in engraving fishes and birds for
+Yarrell and Walton's "Angler," as in illustrations to Moliere and
+"Hudibras."  He was, besides, a clever draughtsman, though he worked
+chiefly from the designs of Thurston and others.  One of the most
+successful of his illustrated books is the "Vicar of Wakefield,"
+after Mulready, whose simplicity and homely feeling were well suited
+to Goldsmith's style.  Another excellent engraver of this date is
+Samuel Williams.  There is an edition of Thomson's "Seasons," with
+cuts both drawn and engraved by him, which is well worthy of
+attention, and (like Thompson and Branston) he was very skilful in
+reproducing the designs of Cruikshank.  Some of his best work in
+this way is to be found in Clarke's "Three Courses and a Dessert,"
+published by Vizetelly in 1830.
+
+From this time forth, however, one hears less of the engraver and
+more of the artist.  The establishment of the "Penny Magazine" in
+1832, and the multifarious publications of Charles Knight, gave an
+extraordinary impetus to wood-engraving.  Ten years later came
+"Punch," and the "Illustrated London News," which further increased
+its popularity.  Artists of eminence began to draw on or for the
+block, as they had drawn, and were still drawing, for the "Annuals."
+In 1842-6 was issued the great "Abbotsford" edition of the "Waverley
+Novels," which, besides 120 plates, contained nearly 2000 wood-
+engravings; and with the "Book of British Ballads," 1843, edited by
+Mr. S. C. Hall, arose that long series of illustrated Christmas
+books, which gradually supplanted the "Annuals," and made familiar
+the names of Gilbert, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, John Absolon,
+and a crowd of others.  The poems of Longfellow, Montgomery, Burns,
+"Barry Cornwall," Poe, Miss Ingelow, were all successively
+"illustrated."  Besides these, there were numerous selections, such
+as Willmott's "Poets of the Nineteenth Century," Wills's "Poets' Wit
+and Humour," and so forth.  But the field here grows too wide to be
+dealt with in detail, and it is impossible to do more than mention a
+few of the books most prominent for merit or originality.  Amongst
+these there is the "Shakespeare" of Sir John Gilbert.  Regarded as
+an interpretative edition of the great dramatist, this is little
+more than a brilliant tour de force; but it is nevertheless
+infinitely superior to the earlier efforts of Kenny Meadows in 1843,
+and also to the fancy designs of Harvey in Knight's "Pictorial
+Shakespeare."  The "Illustrated Tennyson" of 1858 is also a
+remarkable production.  The Laureate, almost more than any other,
+requires a variety of illustrators; and here, for his idylls, he had
+Mulready and Millais, and for his romances Rossetti and Holman Hunt.
+His "Princess" was afterwards illustrated by Maclise, and his "Enoch
+Arden" by Arthur Hughes; but neither of these can be said to be
+wholly adequate.  The "Lalla Rookh" of John Tenniel, 1860, albeit
+somewhat stiff and cold, after this artist's fashion, is a superb
+collection of carefully studied oriental designs.  With these may be
+classed the illustrations to Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish
+Cavaliers," by Sir Noel Paton, which have the same finished
+qualities of composition and the same academic hardness.  Several
+good editions of the "Pilgrim's Progress" have appeared,--notably
+those of C. H. Bennett, J. D. Watson, and G. H. Thomas.  Other books
+are Millais's "Parables of our Lord," Leighton's "Romola," Walker's
+"Philip" and "Denis Duval," the "Don Quixote," "Dante," "La
+Fontaine" and other works of Dore, Dalziel's "Arabian Nights,"
+Leighton's "Lyra Germanica" and "Moral Emblems," and the "Spiritual
+Conceits" of W. Harry Rogers.  These are some only of the number,
+which does not include books like Mrs. Hugh Blackburn's "British
+Birds," Wolf's "Wild Animals," Wise's "New Forest," Linton's "Lake
+Country," Wood's "Natural History," and many more.  Nor does it take
+in the various illustrated periodicals which have multiplied so
+freely since, in 1859, "Once a Week" first began to attract and
+train such younger draughtsmen as Sandys, Lawless, Pinwell,
+Houghton, Morten, and Paul Grey, some of whose best work in this way
+has been revived in the edition of Thornbury's "Ballads and Songs,"
+recently published by Chatto and Windus.  Ten years later came the
+"Graphic," offering still wider opportunities to wood-cut art, and
+bringing with it a fresh school of artists.  Herkomer, Fildes,
+Small, Green, Barnard, Barnes, Crane, Caldecott, Hopkins, and
+others,--quos nunc perscribere longum est--have contributed good
+work to this popular rival of the older, but still vigorous,
+"Illustrated."  And now again, another promising serial, the
+"Magazine of Art," affords a supplementary field to modern
+refinements and younger energies.
+
+Not a few of the artists named in the preceding paragraph have also
+earned distinction in separate branches of the pictorial art, and
+specially in that of humorous design,--a department which has always
+been so richly recruited in this country that it deserves more than
+a passing mention.  From the days of Hogarth onwards there has been
+an almost unbroken series of humorous draughtsmen, who, both on wood
+and metal, play a distinguished part in our illustrated literature.
+Rowlandson, one of the earliest, was a caricaturist of inexhaustible
+facility, and an artist who scarcely did justice to his own powers.
+He illustrated several books, but he is chiefly remembered in this
+way by his plates to Combe's "Three Tours of Dr. Syntax."  Gillray,
+his contemporary, whose bias was political rather than social, is
+said to have illustrated "The Deserted Village" in his youth; but he
+is not famous as a book-illustrator.  Another of the early men was
+Bunbury, whom "quality"-loving Mr. Walpole calls "the second
+Hogarth, and first imitator who ever fully equalled his original
+(!);" but whose prints to "Tristram Shandy," are nevertheless
+completely forgotten, while, if he be remembered at all, it is by
+the plate of "The Long Minuet," and the vulgar "Directions to Bad
+Horsemen."  With the first years of the century, however, appears
+the great master of modern humorists, whose long life ended only a
+few years since, "the veteran George Cruikshank"--as his admirers
+were wont to style him.  He indeed may justly be compared to
+Hogarth, since, in tragic power and intensity he occasionally comes
+nearer to him than any artist of our time.  It is manifestly
+impossible to mention here all the more important efforts of this
+indefatigable worker, from those far-away days when he caricatured
+"Boney" and championed Queen Caroline, to that final frontispiece
+for "The Rose and the Lily"--"designed and etched (according to the
+inscription) by George Cruikshank, age 83;" but the plates to the
+"Points of Humour," to Grimm's "Goblins," to "Oliver Twist," "Jack
+Sheppard," Maxwell's "Irish Rebellion," and the "Table Book," are
+sufficiently favourable and varied specimens of his skill with the
+needle, while the woodcuts to "Three Courses and a Dessert," one of
+which is here given, are equally good examples of his work on the
+block.  The "Triumph of Cupid," which begins the "Table Book," is an
+excellent instance of his lavish wealth of fancy, and it contains
+beside, one--nay more than one--of the many portraits of the artist.
+He is shown en robe de chambre, smoking (this was before his
+regenerate days!) in front of a blazing fire, with a pet spaniel on
+his knee.  In the cloud which curls from his lips is a motley
+procession of sailors, sweeps, jockeys, Greenwich pensioners, Jew
+clothesmen, flunkies, and others more illustrious, chained to the
+chariot wheels of Cupid, who, preceded by cherubic acolytes and
+banner-bearers, winds round the top of the picture towards an altar
+of Hymen on the table.  When, by the aid of a pocket-glass, one has
+mastered these swarming figures, as well as those in the foreground,
+it gradually dawns upon one that all the furniture is strangely
+vitalised.  Masks laugh round the border of the tablecloth, the
+markings of the mantelpiece resolve themselves into rows of madly-
+racing figures, the tongs leers in a degage and cavalier way at the
+artist, the shovel and poker grin in sympathy; there are faces in
+the smoke, in the fire, in the fireplace,--the very fender itself is
+a ring of fantastic creatures who jubilantly hem in the ashes.  And
+it is not only in the grotesque and fanciful that Cruikshank excels;
+he is master of the strange, the supernatural, and the terrible.  In
+range of character (the comparison is probably a hackneyed one),
+both by his gifts and his limitations, he resembles Dickens; and had
+he illustrated more of that writer's works the resemblance would
+probably have been more evident.  In "Oliver Twist," for example,
+where Dickens is strong, Cruikshank is strong; where Dickens is
+weak, he is weak too.  His Fagin, his Bill Sikes, his Bumble, and
+their following, are on a level with Dickens's conceptions; his Monk
+and Rose Maylie are as poor as the originals.  But as the defects of
+Dickens are overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank's strength is
+far in excess of his weakness.  It is not to his melodramatic heroes
+or wasp-waisted heroines that we must look for his triumphs; it is
+to his delineations, from the moralist's point of view, of vulgarity
+and vice,--of the "rank life of towns," with all its squalid tragedy
+and comedy.  Here he finds his strongest ground, and possibly,
+notwithstanding his powers as a comic artist and caricaturist, his
+loftiest claim to recollection.
+
+Cruikshank was employed on two only of Dickens's books--"Oliver
+Twist" and the "Sketches by Boz." {13}  The great majority of them
+were illustrated by Hablot K. Browne, an artist who followed the
+ill-fated Seymour on the "Pickwick Papers."  To "Phiz," as he is
+popularly called, we are indebted for our pictorial ideas of Sam
+Weller, Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle, and most of the author's
+characters, down to the "Tale of Two Cities."  "Phiz" also
+illustrated a great many of Lever's novels, for which his skill in
+hunting and other Lever-like scenes especially qualified him.
+
+With the name of Richard Doyle we come to the first of a group of
+artists whose main work was, or is still, done for the time-honoured
+miscellany of Mr. Punch.  So familiar an object is "Punch" upon our
+tables, that one is sometimes apt to forget how unfailing, and how
+good on the whole, is the work we take so complacently as a matter
+of course.  And of this good work, in the earlier days, a large
+proportion was done by Mr. Doyle.  He is still living, although he
+has long ceased to gladden those sprightly pages.  But it was to
+"Punch" that he contributed his masterpiece, the "Manners and
+Customs of ye Englyshe," a series of outlines illustrating social
+life in 1849, and cleverly commented by a shadowy "Mr. Pips," a sort
+of fetch or double of the bustling and garrulous old Caroline
+diarist.  In these captivating pictures the life of thirty years ago
+is indeed, as the title-page has it, "drawn from ye quick."  We see
+the Molesworths and Cantilupes of the day parading the Park; we
+watch Brougham fretting at a hearing in the Lords, or Peel holding
+forth to the Commons (where the Irish members are already
+obstructive); we squeeze in at the Haymarket to listen to Jenny
+Lind, or we run down the river to Greenwich Fair, and visit "Mr.
+Richardson, his show."  Many years after, in the "Bird's Eye Views
+of Society," which appeared in the early numbers of the "Cornhill
+Magazine," Mr. Doyle returned to this attractive theme.  But the
+later designs were more elaborate, and not equally fortunate.  They
+bear the same relationship to Mr. Pips's pictorial chronicle, as the
+laboured "Temperance Fairy Tales" of Cruikshank's old age bear to
+the little-worked Grimm's "Goblins" of his youth.  So hazardous is
+the attempt to repeat an old success!  Nevertheless, many of the
+initial letters to the "Bird's Eye Views" are in the artist's best
+and most frolicsome manner.  "The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones, and
+Robinson" is another of his happy thoughts for "Punch;" and some of
+his most popular designs are to be found in Thackeray's "Newcomes,"
+where his satire and fancy seem thoroughly suited to his text.  He
+has also illustrated Locker's well-known "London Lyrics," Ruskin's
+"King of the Golden River," and Hughes's "Scouring of the White
+Horse," from which last the initial at the beginning of this chapter
+has been borrowed.  His latest important effort was the series of
+drawings called "In Fairy Land," to which Mr. William Allingham
+contributed the verses.
+
+In speaking of the "Newcomes," one is reminded that its illustrious
+author was himself a "Punch" artist, and would probably have been a
+designer alone, had it not been decreed "that he should paint in
+colours which will never crack and never need restoration."
+Everyone knows the story of the rejected illustrator of "Pickwick,"
+whom that and other rebuffs drove permanently to letters.  To his
+death, however, he clung fondly to his pencil.  In technique he
+never attained to certainty or strength, and his genius was too
+quick and creative--perhaps also too desultory--for finished work,
+while he was always indifferent to costume and accessory.  But many
+of his sketches for "Vanity Fair," for "Pendennis," for "The
+Virginians," for "The Rose and the Ring," the Christmas books, and
+the posthumously published "Orphan of Pimlico," have a vigour of
+impromptu, and a happy suggestiveness which is better than correct
+drawing.  Often the realisation is almost photographic.  Look, for
+example, at the portrait in "Pendennis" of the dilapidated Major as
+he crawls downstairs in the dawn after the ball at Gaunt House, and
+then listen to the inimitable context:  "That admirable and devoted
+Major above all,--who had been for hours by Lady Clavering's side
+ministering to her and feeding her body with everything that was
+nice, and her ear with everything that was sweet and flattering--oh!
+what an object he was!  The rings round his eyes were of the colour
+of bistre; those orbs themselves were like the plovers' eggs whereof
+Lady Clavering and Blanche had each tasted; the wrinkles in his old
+face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a silver stubble, like an
+elderly morning dew, was glittering on his chin, and alongside the
+dyed whiskers, now limp and out of curl."  A good deal of this--that
+fine touch in italics especially--could not possibly be rendered in
+black and white, and yet how much is indicated, and how thoroughly
+the whole is felt!  One turns to the woodcut from the words, and
+back again to the words from the woodcut with ever-increasing
+gratification.  Then again, Thackeray's little initial letters are
+charmingly arch and playful.  They seem to throw a shy side-light
+upon the text, giving, as it were, an additional and confidential
+hint of the working of the author's mind.  To those who, with the
+present writer, love every tiny scratch and quirk and flourish of
+the Master's hand, these small but priceless memorials are far
+beyond the frigid appraising of academics and schools of art.
+
+After Doyle and Thackeray come a couple of well-known artists--John
+Leech and John Tenniel.  The latter still lives (may he long live!)
+to delight and instruct us.  Of the former, whose genial and manly
+"Pictures of Life and Character" are in every home where good-
+humoured raillery is prized and appreciated, it is scarcely
+necessary to speak.  Who does not remember the splendid languid
+swells, the bright-eyed rosy girls ("with no nonsense about them!")
+in pork pie hats and crinolines, the superlative "Jeames's," the
+hairy "Mossoos," the music-grinding Italian desperadoes whom their
+kind creator hated so?  And then the intrepidity of "Mr. Briggs,"
+the Roman rule of "Paterfamilias," the vagaries of the "Rising
+Generation!"  There are things in this gallery over which the
+severest misanthrope must chuckle--they are simply irresistible.
+Let any one take, say that smallest sketch of the hapless mortal who
+has turned on the hot water in the bath and cannot turn it off
+again, and see if he is able to restrain his laughter.  In this one
+gift of producing instant mirth Leech is almost alone.  It would be
+easy to assail his manner and his skill, but for sheer fun, for the
+invention of downright humorous situation, he is unapproached,
+except by Cruikshank.  He did a few illustrations to Dickens's
+Christmas books; but his best-known book-illustrations properly so
+called are to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the "Comic Histories" of
+A'Beckett, the "Little Tour in Ireland," and certain sporting novels
+by the late Mr. Surtees.  Tenniel now confines himself almost
+exclusively to the weekly cartoons with which his name is popularly
+associated.  But years ago he used to invent the most daintily
+fanciful initial letters; and many of his admirers prefer the serio-
+grotesque designs of "Punch's Pocket-Book," "Alice in Wonderland,"
+and "Through the Looking-Glass," to the always correctly-drawn but
+sometimes stiffly-conceived cartoons.  What, for example, could be
+more delightful than the picture, in "Alice in Wonderland," of the
+"Mad Tea Party?"  Observe the hopelessly distraught expression of
+the March hare, and the eager incoherence of the hatter!  A little
+further on the pair are trying to squeeze the dormouse into the
+teapot; and a few pages back the blue caterpillar is discovered
+smoking his hookah on the top of a mushroom.  He was exactly three
+inches long, says the veracious chronicle, but what a dignity!--what
+an oriental flexibility of gesture!  Speaking of animals, it must
+not be forgotten that Tenniel is a master in this line.  His
+"British Lion," in particular, is a most imposing quadruped, and so
+often in request that it is not necessary to go back to the famous
+cartoons on the Indian mutiny to seek for examples of that
+magnificent presence.  As a specimen of the artist's treatment of
+the lesser felidae, the reader's attention is invited to this
+charming little kitten from "Through the Looking-Glass."
+
+Mr. Tenniel is a link between Leech and the younger school of
+"Punch" artists, of whom Mr. George du Maurier, Mr. Linley
+Sambourne, and Mr. Charles Keene are the most illustrious.  The
+first is nearly as popular as Leech, and is certainly a greater
+favourite with cultivated audiences.  He is not so much a humorist
+as a satirist of the Thackeray type,--unsparing in his denunciation
+of shams, affectations, and flimsy pretences of all kinds.  A master
+of composition and accomplished draughtsman, he excels in the
+delineation of "society"--its bishops, its "professional beauties"
+and "aesthetes," its nouveaux riches, its distinguished foreigners,-
+-while now and then (but not too often) he lets us know that if he
+chose he could be equally happy in depicting the lowest classes.
+There was a bar-room scene not long ago in "Punch" which gave the
+clearest evidence of this.  Some of those for whom no good thing is
+good enough complain, it is said, that he lacks variety--that he is
+too constant to one type of feminine beauty.  But any one who will
+be at the pains to study a group of conventional "society" faces
+from any of his "At Homes" or "Musical Parties" will speedily
+discover that they are really very subtly diversified and
+contrasted.  For a case in point, take the decorously sympathetic
+group round the sensitive German musician, who is "veeping" over one
+of his own compositions.  Or follow the titter running round that
+amused assembly to whom the tenor warbler is singing "Me-e-e-et me
+once again," with such passionate emphasis that the domestic cat
+mistakes it for a well-known area cry.  As for his ladies, it may
+perhaps be conceded that his type is a little persistent.  Still it
+is a type so refined, so graceful, so attractive altogether, that in
+the jarring of less well-favoured realities it is an advantage to
+have it always before our eyes as a standard to which we can appeal.
+Mr. du Maurier is a fertile book-illustrator, whose hand is
+frequently seen in the "Cornhill," and elsewhere.  Some of his best
+work of this kind is in Douglas Jerrold's "Story of a Feather," in
+Thackeray's "Ballads," and the large edition of the "Ingoldsby
+Legends," to which Leech, Tenniel, and Cruikshank also contributed.
+One of his prettiest compositions is the group here reproduced from
+"Punch's Almanack" for 1877.  The talent of his colleague, Mr.
+Linley Sambourne, may fairly be styled unique.  It is difficult to
+compare it with anything in its way, except some of the happier
+efforts of the late Mr. Charles Bennett, to which, nevertheless, it
+is greatly superior in execution.  To this clever artist's invention
+everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic
+accessory so whimsically inexhaustible that it almost overpowers one
+with its prodigality.  Each fresh examination of his designs
+discloses something overlooked or unexpected.  Let the reader study
+for a moment the famous "Birds of a Feather" of 1875, or that
+ingenious skit of 1877 upon the rival Grosvenor Gallery and Academy,
+in which the late President of the latter is shown as the proudest
+of peacocks, the eyes of whose tail are portraits of Royal
+Academicians, and whose body-feathers are paint brushes and
+shillings of admission.  Mr. Sambourne is excellent, too, at
+adaptations of popular pictures,--witness the more than happy
+parodies of Herrman's "A Bout d'Arguments," and "Une Bonne
+Histoire."  His book-illustrations have been comparatively few,
+those to Burnand's laughable burlesque of "Sandford and Merton"
+being among the best.  Rumour asserts that he is at present engaged
+upon Kingsley's "Water Babies," a subject which might almost be
+supposed to have been created for his pencil.  There are
+indications, it may be added, that Mr. Sambourne's talents are by no
+means limited to the domain in which for the present he chooses to
+exercise them, and it is not impossible that he may hereafter take
+high rank as a cartoonist.  Mr. Charles Keene, a selection from
+whose sketches has recently been issued under the title of "Our
+People," is unrivalled in certain bourgeois, military, and
+provincial types.  No one can draw a volunteer, a monthly nurse, a
+Scotchman, an "ancient mariner" of the watering-place species, with
+such absolutely humorous verisimilitude.  Personages, too, in whose
+eyes--to use Mr. Swiveller's euphemism--"the sun has shone too
+strongly," find in Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of their "pleasant
+vices."  Like Leech, he has also a remarkable power of indicating a
+landscape background with the fewest possible touches.  His book-
+illustrations have been .mainly confined to magazines and novels.
+Those in "Once a Week" to a "Good Fight," the tale subsequently
+elaborated by Charles Reade into the "Cloister and the Hearth,"
+present some good specimens of his earlier work.  One of these, in
+which the dwarf of the story is seen climbing up a wall with a
+lantern at his back, will probably be remembered by many.
+
+After the "Punch" school there are other lesser luminaries.  Mr. W.
+S. Gilbert's drawings to his own inimitable "Bab Ballads" have a
+perverse drollery which is quite in keeping with that erratic text.
+Mr. F. Barnard, whose exceptional talents have not been sufficiently
+recognised, is a master of certain phases of strongly marked
+character, and, like Mr. Charles Green, has contributed some
+excellent sketches to the "Household Edition" of Dickens.  Mr.
+Sullivan of "Fun," whose grotesque studies of the "British
+Tradesman" and "Workman" have recently been republished, has
+abounding vis comica, but he has hitherto done little in the way of
+illustrating books.  For minute pictorial stocktaking and
+photographic retention of detail, Mr. Sullivan's artistic memory may
+almost be compared to the wonderful literary memory of Mr. Sala.
+Mr. John Proctor, who some years ago (in "Will o' the Wisp") seemed
+likely to rival Tenniel as a cartoonist, has not been very active in
+this way; while Mr. Matthew Morgan, the clever artist of the
+"Tomahawk," has transferred his services to the United States.  Of
+Mr. Bowcher of "Judy," and various other professedly humorous
+designers, space permits no further mention.
+
+
+There remains, however, one popular branch of book-illustration,
+which has attracted the talents of some of the most skilful and
+original of modern draughtsmen, i.e. the embellishment of children's
+books.  From the days when Mulready drew the old "Butterfly's Ball"
+and "Peacock at Home" of our youth, to those of the delightfully
+Blake-like fancies of E. V. B., whose "Child's Play" has recently
+been re-published for the delectation of a new generation of
+admirers, this has always been a popular and profitable employment;
+but of late years it has been raised to the level of a fine art.
+Mr. H. S. Marks, Mr. J. D. Watson, Mr. Walter Crane, have produced
+specimens of nursery literature which, for refinement of colouring
+and beauty of ornament, cannot easily be surpassed.  The equipments
+of the last named, especially, are of a very high order.  He began
+as a landscapist on wood; he now chiefly devotes himself to the
+figure; and he seems to have the decorative art at his fingers' ends
+as a natural gift.  Such work as "King Luckieboy's Party" was a
+revelation in the way of toy books, while the "Baby's Opera" and
+"Baby's Bouquet" are petits chefs d'oeuvre, of which the sagacious
+collector will do well to secure copies, not for his nursery, but
+his library.  Nor can his "Mrs. Mundi at Home" be neglected by the
+curious in quaint and graceful invention. {14}  Another book--the
+"Under the Window" of Miss Kate Greenaway--comes within the same
+category.  Since Stothard, no one has given us such a clear-eyed,
+soft-faced, happy-hearted childhood; or so poetically "apprehended"
+the coy reticences, the simplicities, and the small solemnities of
+little people.  Added to this, the old-world costume in which she
+usually elects to clothe her characters, lends an arch piquancy of
+contrast to their innocent rites and ceremonies.  Her taste in
+tinting, too, is very sweet and spring-like; and there is a fresh,
+pure fragrance about all her pictures as of new-gathered nosegays;
+or, perhaps, looking to the fashions that she favours, it would be
+better to say "bow-pots."  But the latest "good genius" of this
+branch of book-illustrating is Mr. Randolph Caldecott, a designer
+assuredly of the very first order.  There is a spontaneity of fun,
+an unforced invention about everything he does, that is infinitely
+entertaining.  Other artists draw to amuse us; Mr. Caldecott seems
+to draw to amuse himself,--and this is his charm.  One feels that he
+must have chuckled inwardly as he puffed the cheeks of his "Jovial
+Huntsmen;" or sketched that inimitably complacent dog in the "House
+that Jack Built;" or exhibited the exploits of the immortal "train-
+band captain" of "famous London town."  This last is his
+masterpiece.  Cowper himself must have rejoiced at it,--and Lady
+Austen.  There are two sketches in this book--they occupy the
+concluding pages--which are especially fascinating.  On one, John
+Gilpin, in a forlorn and flaccid condition, is helped into the house
+by the sympathising (and very attractive) Betty; on the other he has
+donned his slippers, refreshed his inner man with a cordial, and
+over the heaving shoulder of his "spouse," who lies dissolved upon
+his martial bosom, he is taking the spectators into his confidence
+with a wink worthy of the late Mr. Buckstone.  Nothing more genuine,
+more heartily laughable, than this set of designs has appeared in
+our day.  And Mr. Caldecott has few limitations.  Not only does he
+draw human nature admirably, but he draws animals and landscapes
+equally well, so one may praise him without reserve.  Though not
+children's books, mention should here be made of his "Bracebridge
+Hall," and "Old Christmas," the illustrations to which are the
+nearest approach to that beau-ideal, perfect sympathy between the
+artist and the author, with which the writer is acquainted.  The cut
+on page 173 is from the former of these works.
+
+
+Many of the books above mentioned are printed in colours by various
+processes, and they are not always engraved on wood.  But--to close
+the account of modern wood-engraving--some brief reference must be
+made to what is styled the "new American School," as exhibited for
+the most part in "Scribner's" and other Transatlantic magazines.
+Authorities, it is reported, shake their heads over these
+performances. "C'est magnifique, mais ce nest pas la gravure," they
+whisper.  Into the matter in dispute, it is perhaps presumptuous for
+an "atechnic" to adventure himself.  But to the outsider it would
+certainly seem as if the chief ground of complaint is that the new
+comers do not play the game according to the old rules, and that
+this (alleged) irregular mode of procedure tends to lessen the
+status of the engraver as an artist.  False or true, this, it may
+fairly be advanced, has nothing whatever to do with the matter, as
+far, at least, as the public are concerned.  For them the question
+is, simply and solely--What is the result obtained?  The new school,
+availing themselves largely of the assistance of photography, are
+able to dispense, in a great measure, with the old tedious method of
+drawing on the block, and to leave the artist to choose what medium
+he prefers for his design--be it oil, water-colour, or black and
+white--concerning themselves only to reproduce its characteristics
+on the wood.  This is, of course, a deviation from the method of
+Bewick.  But would Bewick have adhered to his method in these days?
+Even in his last hours he was seeking for new processes.  What we
+want is to get nearest to the artist himself with the least amount
+of interpretation or intermediation on the part of the engraver.  Is
+engraving on copper to be reproduced, we want a facsimile if
+possible, and not a rendering into something which is supposed to be
+the orthodox utterance of wood-engraving.  Take, for example, the
+copy of Schiavonetti's engraving of Blake's Death's Door in
+"Scribner's Magazine" for June 1880, or the cut from the same source
+at page 131 of this book.  These are faithful line for line
+transcriptions, as far as wood can give them, of the original
+copper-plates; and, this being the case, it is not to be wondered at
+that the public, who, for a few pence can have practical facsimiles
+of Blake, of Cruikshank, or of Whistler, are loud in their
+appreciation of the "new American School."  Nor are its successes
+confined to reproduction in facsimile.  Those who look at the
+exquisite illustrations, in the same periodical, to the "Tile Club
+at Play," to Roe's "Success with Small Fruits," and Harris's
+"Insects Injurious to Vegetation,"--to say nothing of the selected
+specimens in the recently issued "Portfolios"--will see that the
+latest comers can hold their own on all fields with any school that
+has gone before. {15}
+
+Besides copperplate and wood, there are many processes which have
+been and are still employed for book-illustrations, although the
+brief limits of this chapter make any account of them impossible.
+Lithography was at one time very popular, and, in books like
+Roberts's "Holy Land," exceedingly effective.  The "Etching Club"
+issued a number of books circa 1841-52; and most of the work of
+"Phiz" and Cruikshank was done with the needle.  It is probable
+that, as we have already seen, the impetus given to modern etching
+by Messrs. Hamerton, Seymour Haden, and Whistler, will lead to a
+specific revival of etching as a means of book-illustration.
+Already beautiful etchings have for some time appeared in "L'Art,"
+the "Portfolio," and the "Etcher;" and at least one book of poems
+has been entirely illustrated in this way,--the poems of Mr. W. Bell
+Scott.  For reproducing old engravings, maps, drawings, and the
+like, it is not too much to say that we shall never get anything
+much closer than the facsimiles of M. Amand-Durand and the
+Typographic Etching and Autotype Companies.  But further
+improvements will probably have to be made before these can compete
+commercially with wood-engraving as practised by the "new American
+School."
+
+
+"Of making many books," 'twais said,
+"There is no end;" and who thereon
+The ever-running ink doth shed
+But probes the words of Solomon:
+Wherefore we now, for colophon,
+From London's city drear and dark,
+In the year Eighteen Eight-One,
+Reprint them at the press of Clark.
+
+A. D.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  This is the technical name for people who "illustrate" books
+with engravings from other works.  The practice became popular when
+Granger published his "Biographical History of England."
+
+{2}  Mr. William Blades, in his "Enemies of Books" (Trubner, 1880),
+decries glass-doors,-- "the absence of ventilation will assist the
+formation of mould."  But M. Rouveyre bids us open the doors on
+sunny days, that the air may be renewed, and, close them in the
+evening hours, lest moths should enter and lay their eggs among the
+treasures.  And, with all deference to Mr. Blades, glass-doors do
+seem to be useful in excluding dust.
+
+{3}  "Send him back carefully, for you can if you like, that all
+unharmed he may return to his own place."
+
+{4}  No wonder the books are scarce, if they are being hacked to
+pieces by Grangerites.
+
+{5}  These lines appeared in "Notes and Queries," Jan. 8, 1881.
+
+{6}  In the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which Polia should not have
+read.
+
+{7}  M. Arsene Houssaye seems to think he has found them; marked on
+the fly-leaves with an impression, in wax, of a seal engraved with
+the head of Epicurus.
+
+{8}  This chapter was written by Austin Dobson.--DP
+
+{9}  The recent Winter Exhibition of the Old Masters (1881)
+contained a fine display of Flaxman's drawings, a large number of
+which belonged to Mr. F. T. Palgrave.
+
+{10}  By Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse.
+
+{11}  These words were written before the "Art Journal" had
+published its programme for 1881.  From this it appears that the
+present editor fully recognises the necessity for calling in the
+assistance of the needle.
+
+{12}  The example, here copied on the wood by M. Lacour, is a very
+successful reproduction of Clennell's style.
+
+{13}  He also illustrated the "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi."  But
+this was simply "edited" by "Boz."
+
+{14}  The reader will observe that this volume is indebted to Mr.
+Crane for its beautiful frontispiece.
+
+{15}  Since this paragraph was first written an interesting paper on
+the illustrations in "Scribner," from the pen of Mr. J. Comyns Carr,
+has appeared in "L'Art."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Library, by Andrew Lang
+
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