it with others, or with his peculiar fancies, and each one had its precise place in a sort of epos, as certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of the pantomime or a farce has his own position and functions. comes into its cell. Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring out all his sarcasm, After all, he was himself his own greatest which was not feeble or slight, on the odious curiosity. He had come to manhood just object, and wondering why an author could after the period of gold-laced waistcoats, have entertained against him so steady and small-clothes, and shoe-buckles, otherwise enduring a malice as to take the trouble of he would have been long a living memorial writing and printing all that rubbish with of these now antique habits. It happened no better object than disturbing the peace to be his lot to preserve down to us the earof mind of an inoffensive old man. Every liest phase of the pantaloon dynasty. So, tribute from such dona ferentes cost him while the rest of the world was booted or much uneasiness and some want of sleep-heavy shod, his silk-stockinged feet were for what could he do with it? It was im- thrust into pumps of early Oxford cut, and possible to make merchandise of it, for he was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods. the predominant garment was the surtout, blue in color, and of the original make before it came to be called a frock. Round his neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite neckerchief (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a great poultice--and so he took his walks abroad, a figure which he could himself have turned into admirable ridicule. One of the mysteries about him was, that his clothes, though unlike any These gods were a pantheon of a very ex- other person's, were always old. This chartraordinary description, for he was a hunter acteristic could not even be accounted for after other things besides books. His ac- by the supposition that he had laid in a quisitions included pictures, and the various sixty years' stock in his youth, for they alcommodities which, for want of a distinc- ways appeared to have been a good deal tive name, auctioneers call "miscellaneous worn. The very umbrella was in keepingarticles of vertu." He started on his accu- it was of green silk, an obsolete color ten mulating career with some old family relics, years ago-and the handle was of a peculiar and these, perhaps, gave the direction to his crozier-like formation in cast-horn, obvisubsequent acquisitions, for they were all, ously not obtainable in the market. His like his books, brought together after some face was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness self-willed and peculiar law of association of youth; and, bearing on his head a Bruthat pleased himself. A bad, even an in- tus wig of the light-brown hair which had ferior picture he would not have-for his long ago legitimately shaded his brow, when taste was exquisite-unless, indeed, it had he stood still-except for his linen, which some strange history about it, adapting it was snowy white-one might suppose that to his wayward fancies, and then he would he had been shot and stuffed on his return adopt the badness as a peculiar recommen- home from college, and had been sprinkled dation, and point it out with some pungent with the frouzy mouldiness which time imand appropriate remark to his friends. But parts to stuffed animals and other things, though, with these peculiar exceptions, his in which a semblance to the freshness of works of art were faultless, no dealer could living nature is vainly attempted to be preever calculate on his buying a picture, how-served. So if he were motionless; but let ever high a work of art or great a bargain. him speak, and the internal freshness was With his ever accumulating collection, in still there, an ever-blooming garden of inwhich tiny sculpture and brilliant color pre-tellectual flowers. His antiquated costume dominated, he kept a sort of fairy world was no longer grotesque it harmonized around him. But all the mob of curious with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred things he preserved had some story linking gentleness of manner, which he had ac quired from the best sources, since he had seen the first company in his day, whether for rank or genius. And conversation and manner were far from exhausting his resources. He had a wonderful pencil-it was potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the ridiculous; but it took a wayward wilful course, like every thing else about him. He had a brilliant pen, too, when he chose to wield it, but the idea that he should exercise any of these his gifts in common display before the world, for any even of the higher motives that make people desire fame and praise, would have sickened him. His faculties were his own as much as his collection, and to be used according to his caprice and pleasure. So fluttered through existence one who, had it been his fate to have his own bread to make, might have been a great man. Alas for the end! Some curious annotations are all that remain of his literary powers some drawings and etchings in private collections all of his artistic. His collection, with all its train of legends and associations, came to what he himself must have counted as dispersal. He left it to his housekeeper, who, like a wise woman, converted it into cash while its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a great auction-room, its several catalogued items lay in humiliating contrast with the decorous order in which they were wont to be arranged. Sic transit gloria mundi. Let us now call up a different, and a more commonplace type of the book-hunter -it shall be Inchrule Brewer. He is guiltless of all intermeddling with the contents of books, but in their external attributes his learning is marvellous. He derived his nickname from the practice of keeping, as his inseparable pocket-companion, one of those graduated folding measures of length which may often be seen protruding from the moleskin pocket of the joiner. He used it at auctions, and on other appropriate occasions, to measure the different elements of a book-the letterpress-the unprinted margi-the external expanse of the binding; for to the perfectly scientific collector all these things are very significant. They are, in fact, on record among the craft, like the pedigrees and physical characteristics recorded in stud-books and short-horned books. One so accomplished in this kind of analysis could tell at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under the hammer was the same that had been knocked down before at the Roxburghe sale-the Gordonstown or the Heber, perhaps—or was veritably an impostor-or was in reality a new and previously unknown prize well worth contending for. The minuteness and precision of his knowledge excited wonder, and being anomalous among the male sex even among collectors, it was rumored that its possessor must veritably be an aged maiden in disguise. Among the elements which constitute the value of a book-rarity of course being equal-we should say he counted the binding highest. He was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical department of book-making by the adepts. About a third part of Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron is, if we recollect rightly, devoted to bindings. There are binders who have immortalized themselves-as Staggernier, Waltier, Payne, Padaloup, Hennings, De Rome, Fowkener, Lewis, Hayday, and Thomson. Their names may sometimes be found on their work, not with any particularities, as if they required to make themselves known, but with the simple brevity of illustrious men. Thus we take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence, on the title-page of which the author sets forth his full name and profession, with the distinctive initials of certain learned societies to which it is his pride to belong, but the simple and dignified enunciation deeply stamped in his own golden letters, "Bound by Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist deigns to tell. And let us, after all, acknowledge that there are few men who are entirely above the influence of binding. No one likes sheep's clothing for his literature, even if he should not aspire to russia or morocco. Adam Smith, one of the least showy of men, confessed himself to be a beau in his books. Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so to some extent, though poets are apt to be ragamuffins. It was Thomson, we believe who used to cut the leaves with the snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured him of the proprieties. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated James' indolent, dreamy, feckless character with they are destitute of all sympathy with the impatient disgust. When the first of The malady which they feed. The caterer genSeasons-"Winter" it was, we believehad been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked what the book was about, but, turning it round and round with his fingers in gratified admiration, exclaimed, "Come, is that really our Jamie's doin' now? weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the like!" erally gets infected in a superficial cutaneous sort of way. He has often a collection himself, which he eyes complacently of an evening as he smokes his pipe over his brandy and water, but to which he is not so distractedly devoted but that a pecuniary consideration will tempt him to dismember it. It generally consists, indeed, of blunders or false speculation-books which have been obtained in a mistaken reliance on their suiting the craving of some wealthy collector. Caterers unable to comprehend the subtle influences at work in the mind of the bookhunter, often make miscalculations this way. Fitzpatrick Smart punished them so terribly that they at last abandoned him in despair to his own devices. The feeling by which this worthy man was influenced was a mere sensible practical respect for good workmanship. The aspirations of the collectors, however, in this matter, go out of the region of the sphere of the utilitarian into that of the aesthetic. Several men of this class were under the Their priests and prophets, by the way, do authority of the Inchrule, and their communnot seem to be aware how far back this ven- ings were instructive. "Thorpe's catalogue eration for the coverings of books may be just arrived, sir-several highly important traced, or to know how strongly their vota- announcements," says a portly person with a ries have been influenced in the direction of fat volume under his arm, hustling forward their taste by the traditions of the middle with an air of assured consequence. There ages. The binding of a book was, of old, a is now to be a deep and solemn consultation, shrine on which the finest workmanship in as when two ambassadors are going over a bullion and the costliest gems were lavished. heavy protocol from a third. We happened The psalter or the breviary of some early to see one of these myrmidons returning saint, a portion of the Scriptures, or some from a bootless errand of inspection to a reother volume held sacred, would be thus en-puted collection; he was hot and indignant. shrined. It has happened sometimes that "A collection," he sputtered forth-" that a tattered fragments of them have been pre- collection!-mere rubbish, sir-irredeemable served as effective relics within outer shells or shrines; and in some instances, long after the books themselves have disappeared, specimens of these old bindings have remained to us beautiful in their decay; but we are getting far beyond the Inchrule. Your affluent omnivorous collector, who has more of that kind of business on hand than he can perform for himself, naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as the vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to the price of their wares, and the peculiar propensities of the unfortunates who employ them. Not that trash. What do you think, sir ?—a set of the common quarto edition of the Delphini classics, copies of Newton's works and Bacon's works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth-nothing better, I declare to you: and to call that a collection!" Whereas, had it contained The Pardoner and the Freer, Sir Clyman and Clamides, A Knack to know a Knave, or the works of those eminent dramatists, Nabbles, May, Clapthorne, Peapes, or Chettle, then would the collection have been worthy of distinguished notice. On another occasion, the conversation turning on a name of some repute, the remark is ventured, that he is “said to know something about books," which brings forth the fatal answer-" He know about books!Nothing-nothing at all, I assure you; unless perhaps, about their insides." All these are, after all, mild and comparatively innocuous cases; and indeed such is the general tone of the malady, though it him? And the little pasquinade is so curihas its nocuous and even dangerous types ous, and will fill a gap in that fine collection also. It is liable to be accompanied by an so nicely! The notions of the collector affection, known also to the agricultural about such spoil are indeed the converse of world as affecting the wheat crop, and called those which Cassio professed to hold about "the smut." Fortunately this is less prev- his good name, for the scrap furtively realent among us than the French, who have moved is supposed in no way to impoverish a name for the class of books affected by the loser, while it makes the recipient rich this school of collectors in the bibliotheque indeed. Those habits of the prowler which bleue. There is a sad story connected with may gradually lead a mind not strengthened this peculiar frailty. A great and high- by strong principle into this downward caminded scholar of the seventeenth century reer, are hit with his usual vivacity and wonhad a savage trick played on him by some derful truth by Scott. The speaker is our mad wags, who collected a quantity of the delightful friend Oldenbuck of Monk barns, brutalities of which Latin literature affords the Antiquary, and it has just enough of conan endless supply, and published them in his fession in it to show a consciousness that name. He is said not long to have survived the narrator has been over dangerous ground, this practical joke; and one does not wonder and, if we did not see that the narrative is at his sinking before such a prospect, if he tinged with some exaggeration, has trodden anticipated an age and a race of book-buyers a little beyond the limits of what is gentleamong whom his great critical works are manly and just. forgotten, and his name is known solely for the spurious volume, sacred to infamy, which may be found side by side with the works of the author of Trimalcion's Feast-" par no-woman out of these, who loved them better bile fratrum." There is another failing without a leaning to virtue's side, to which some collectors have been, by reputation at least, addicted a propensity to obtain articles without value given for them-a tendency to be larcenish. It is the culmination, indeed, of a sort of lax morality apt to grow out of the habits and traditions of the class. Your true collector-not the man who follows the occupation as a mere expensive taste, and does not cater for himself-considers himself a finder or discoverer rather than a purchaser. He is an industrious prowler in unlikely regions, and is entitled to some reward for his diligence and his skill. Moreover, it is the essence of that very skill to find value in those things which, in the eye of the ordinary possessor, are really worthless. From estimating them at little value, and paying little for them, the steps are rather too short to estimating them at nothing, and paying nothing for them. What matters it a few dirty black-letter leaves picked out of that volume of miscellaneous trash-leaves which the owner never knew he had, and cannot miss-which he would not know the value of, had you told him of them? What use of putting notions into the greedy barbarian's head, as if one were to find treasures for "See this bundle of ballads, not one of them later than 1700, and some of them a hundred years older. I wheedled an old than her psalm-book. Tobacco, sir, snuff, these, my young friend-these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil and pains and sedulous attention which our profession, above all others, so peculiarly demands." There is a nice, subtle meaning in the worthy man calling his weakness his "profession," but it is in complete keeping with the mellow Teniers-like tone of the whole picture. Ere we have done we shall endeavor to show that the grubber among book-stalls has, with other grubs or grubbers, his useful place in the general dispensation of the world. But his is a pursuit exposing him to moral perils, which call for peculiar efforts of self-restraint to save him from them; and the moral Scott holds forth-for a sound moral he always has-is, if you go as far as Jonathan Oldenbuck did, and I don't advise you to go so far, but hint that you should stop earlier,—say to yourself, Thus far, and no farther books was definitively cut off from participation in their privileges. Let us, however, summon a more potent spirit of this order. He is a different being altogether from those gentle shades who have flitted past us already. He was known in the body by many hard names, such as the Vampire, the Dragon, etc. He was an Irish absentee, or, more accurately, a refugee, since he had made himself so odious on his ample estate that he could not live there. How on earth he should have set about collecting books, is one of the inscrutable mysteries which ever surround the diagnosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his using his books by reading them as out of the question, he yet was never known to indulge in that fondling and complacent examination of their exterior and general condition, which to Inchrule and others of his class, seemed to afford the highest gratification that, as sojourners through this vale of tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuriate in the collective pride-like that of David when he numbered his people—of beholding how his volumes increased in multitude, and ranged with one another, like well-sized and prop So much for a sort of clinical exposition of the larcenous propensities which accompany book-hunting. There is another peculiar, and, it may be said, vicious, propensity, exhibited occasionally in conjunction with the pursuit. It is entirely antagonistic erly dressed troops, along an ample area of in spirit to the tenth commandment, and consists in a desperate coveting of the neighbor's goods, and a satisfaction not so much in possessing for one's self, as in dispossessing him. This spirit is said to burn with still fiercer flame in the breasts of those whose pursuit would externally seem to be the most innocent in the world, and the least excitive of the bad passions; namely, among flower-fanciers. book-shelves. His collection—if it deserved the name-was piled in great heaps in garrets, cellars, and warerooms like unsorted goods. They were accumulated, in fact, not so much that the owner might have them, as that other people might not. If there were a division of the order into the positive, or those who desire to make collections, and negative, or those who desire to prevent From some mysterious them being made, his case would properly cause, it has been known to develop itself belong to the latter. Imagine the constermost flagrantly among tulip-collectors, insomuch that there are legends of Dutch devotees of this pursuit who have paid their thousands of dollars for a duplicate tuber, that they might have the satisfaction of crushing it under the heel. This line of practice is not entirely alien to the book-hunter. Dibdin warmed his convivial guests at comfortable fires, fed by the woodcuts which had been printed from in the impression of the Bibliographical Decameron. It was a quaint fancy, and deemed to be a pretty and appropriate form of hospitality, while it effectually assured the subscribers to his costly volumes that the vulgar world who buy cheap nation created in a small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting among them of a helluo librorum with such propensities, armed with illimitable means, enabling him to desolate the land like some fiery dragon! What became of the chaotic mass of literature he had brought together no one knew. It was supposed to be congenial to his nature to have made a great bonfire of it before he left the world; but a little consideration showed such a feat to be impossible, for books may be burnt in detail by, extraneous assistance, but it is a curious fact that, combustible as paper is supposed to be, books wont burn. If you doubt this, pitch that fo |