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diff --git a/2018-0.txt b/2018-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c82c98d --- /dev/null +++ b/2018-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4067 @@ +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.” + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY*** + + +******* This file should be named 2018-0.txt or 2018-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/2018 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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