[Footnote 193: The reader may see all this, and much more, dressed in its ancient orthographic garb, in a proheme to the first edition of the merry art of fishing, extracted by Herbert in his first volume, p. 131. I have said the "_merry_," and not the "_contemplative_," art of fishing--because we are informed that "Yf the angler take fyshe, surely thenne is there noo man _merier_ than he is in his spyryte!!" Yet Isaac Walton called this art, "The _Contemplative_ Man's Recreation." But a _book-fisherman_, like myself, must not presume to reconcile such great and contradictory authorities.]

"But see--the hammer is vibrating, at an angle of twenty-two and a half, over a large paper priced catalogue of Major Pearson's books!--Who is the lucky purchaser?

"QUISQUILIUS:--a victim to the Bibliomania. If one single copy of a work happen to be printed in a more particular manner than another; and if the compositor (clever rogue) happen to have transposed or inverted a whole sentence or page; if a plate or two, no matter of what kind or how executed; go along with it, which is not to be found in the remaining copies; if the paper happen to be _unique_ in point of size--whether MAXIMA or MINIMA--oh, then, thrice happy is Quisquilius! With a well-furnished purse, the strings of which are liberally loosened, he devotes no small portion of wealth to the accumulation of _Prints_; and can justly boast of a collection of which few of his contemporaries are possessed. But his walk in book-collecting is rather limited. He seldom rambles into the luxuriancy of old English black-letter literature; and cares still less for a _variorum_ Latin classic, stamped in the neat mintage of the Elzevir press. Of a Greek _Aldus_, or an Italian _Giunta_, he has never yet had the luxury to dream:--'trahit sua quemque voluptas;' and let Quisquilius enjoy his hobby-horse, even to the riding of it to death! But let him not harbour malevolence against supposed injuries inflicted: let not foolish prejudices, or unmanly suspicions, rankle in his breast: authors and book-collectors are sometimes as enlightened as himself, and have cultivated pursuits equally honourable. Their profession, too, may sometimes be equally beneficial to their fellow creatures. A few short years shall pass away, and it will be seen who has contributed the more effectively to the public stock of amusement and instruction. We wrap ourselves up in our own little vanities and weaknesses, and, fancying wealth and wisdom to be synonymous, vent our spleen against those who are resolutely striving, under the pressure of mediocrity and domestic misfortune, to obtain an honourable subsistence by their intellectual exertions."

LIS. A truce to this moralizing strain. Pass we on to a short gentleman, busily engaged yonder in looking at a number of volumes, and occasionally conversing with two or three gentlemen from five to ten inches taller than himself. What is his name?

"ROSICRUSIUS is his name; and an ardent and indefatigable book-forager he is. Although just now busily engaged in antiquarian researches relating to British typography, he fancies himself nevertheless deeply interested in the discovery of every ancient book printed abroad.

Examine his little collection of books, and you will find that

'There Caxton sleeps, with Wynkyn at his side, One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide!'[194]

--and yet, a beautiful volume printed at 'Basil or Heidelberg makes him spinne: and at seeing the word Frankford or Venice, though but on the title of a booke, he is readie to break doublet, cracke elbows, and over-flowe the room with his murmure.'[195] Bibliography is his darling delight--'una voluptas et meditatio assidua;'[196] and in defence of the same he would quote you a score of old-fashioned authors, from Gesner to Harles, whose very names would excite scepticism about their existence. He is the author of various works, chiefly bibliographical; upon which the voice of the public (if we except a little wicked quizzing at his _black-letter_ propensities in a celebrated North Briton Review) has been generally favourable.

Although the old maidenish particularity of Tom Hearne's genius be not much calculated to please a bibliomaniac of lively parts, yet Rosicrusius seems absolutely enamoured of that ancient wight; and to be in possession of the cream of all his pieces, if we may judge from what he has already published, and promises to publish, concerning the same. He once had the temerity to dabble in poetry;[197] but he never could raise his head above the mists which infest the swampy ground at the foot of Parnassus. Still he loves 'the divine art' enthusiastically; and affects, forsooth, to have a taste in matters of engraving and painting! Converse with him about Guercino and Albert Durer, Berghem and Woollett, and tell him that you wish to have his opinion about the erection of a large library, and he will 'give tongue' to you from rise to set of sun. Wishing him prosperity in his projected works, and all good fellows to be his friends, proceed we in our descriptive survey."

[Footnote 194: Pope's _Dunciad_, b. i. v. 149.]

[Footnote 195: _Coryat's Crudities_, vol. i., sign. (b. 5.) edit. 1776.]

[Footnote 196: Vita Jacobi Le Long., p. xx., _Biblioth.

Sacra_, edit. 1778.]

[Footnote 197: See the note p. 11, in the first edition of the _Bibliomania_.]

LIS. I am quite impatient to see ATTICUS in this glorious group; of whom fame makes such loud report--

"Yonder see he comes, Lisardo! 'Like arrow from the hunter's bow,' he darts into the hottest of the fight, and beats down all opposition. In vain BOSCARDO advances with his heavy artillery, sending forth occasionally a forty-eight pounder; in vain he shifts his mode of attack--now with dagger, and now with broadsword, now in plated, and now in quilted armour: nought avails him. In every shape and at every onset he is discomfited. Such a champion as Atticus has perhaps never before appeared within the arena of book-gladiators:

'Blest with talents, wealth, and taste;'[198]

and gifted with no common powers of general scholarship, he can easily master a knotty passage in Eschylus or Aristotle; and quote Juvenal and Horace as readily as the junior lads at Eton quote their '_As in praesenti_:' moreover, he can enter, with equal ardour, into a minute discussion about the romance literature of the middle ages, and the dry though useful philology of the German school during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the pursuit after rare, curious, and valuable books, nothing daunts or depresses him. With a mental and bodily constitution such as few possess, and with a perpetual succession of new objects rising up before him, he seems hardly ever conscious of the vicissitudes of the seasons, and equally indifferent to petty changes in politics. The cutting blasts of Siberia, or the fainting heat of a Maltese sirocco, would not make him halt, or divert his course, in the pursuit of a favourite volume, whether in the Greek, Latin, Spanish, or Italian language. But as all human efforts, however powerful, if carried on without intermission, must have a period of cessation; and as the most active body cannot be at 'Thebes and at Athens' at the same moment; so it follows that Atticus cannot be at every auction and carry away every prize. His rivals narrowly watch, and his enemies closely way-lay, him; and his victories are rarely bloodless in consequence. If, like Darwin's whale, which swallows 'millions at a gulp,' Atticus should, at one auction, purchase from two to seven hundred volumes, he must retire, like the '_Boa Constrictor_,' for digestion: and accordingly he does, for a short season, withdraw himself from 'the busy hum' of sale rooms, to collate, methodize, and class his newly acquired treasures--to repair what is defective, and to beautify what is deformed. Thus rendering them 'companions meet' for their brethren in the rural shades of H---- Hall; where, in gay succession, stands many a row, heavily laden with 'rich and rare' productions. In this rural retreat, or academic bower, Atticus spends a due portion of the autumnal season of the year; now that the busy scenes of book-auctions in the metropolis have changed their character--and dreary silence, and stagnant dirt, have succeeded to noise and flying particles of learned dust.

[Footnote 198: Dr. Ferriar's _Bibliomania_, v. 12.]

"Here, in his ancestral abode, Atticus can happily exchange the microscopic investigation of books for the charms and manly exercises of a rural life; eclipsing, in this particular, the celebrity of Caesar Antoninus; who had not universality of talent sufficient to unite the love of hawking and hunting with the passion for book-collecting.[199]

The sky is no sooner dappled o'er with the first morning sun-beams, than up starts our distinguished bibliomaniac, either to shoot or to hunt; either to realize all the fine things which Pope has written about 'lifting the tube, and levelling the eye;'[200] or to join the jolly troop while they chant the hunting song of his poetical friend.[201] Meanwhile, his house is not wanting in needful garniture to render a country residence most congenial. His cellars below vie with his library above. Besides 'the brown October'--'drawn from his dark retreat of thirty years'--and the potent comforts of every species of 'barley broth'--there are the ruddier and more sparkling juices of the grape--'fresh of colour, and of look lovely, smiling to the eyz of many'--as Master Laneham hath it in his celebrated letter.[202] I shall leave you to finish the picture, which such a sketch may suggest, by referring you to your favourite, Thomson."[203]

[Footnote 199: This anecdote is given on the authority of Kesner's [Transcriber's Note: Gesner's] _Pandects_, fol. 29: rect. '[Greek: Alloi men hippon] (says the grave Antoninus) [Greek: alloi de orneon, alloi therion ebosin: emoi de biblion kteseos ek paidoiriou deinos enteteke pothos].']

[Footnote 200: See Pope's _Windsor Forest_, ver. 110 to 134.]

[Footnote 201:

Waken lords and ladies gay; On the mountain dawns the day.

All the jolly chase is here, With hawk and horse and hunting spear: Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling; Merrily, merrily, mingle they.

"Waken lords and ladies gay."

Waken lords and ladies gay, The mist has left the mountain grey.

Springlets in the dawn are steaming, Diamonds on the lake are gleaming; And foresters have busy been, To track the buck in thicket green: Now we come to chaunt our lay, "Waken lords and ladies gay."

HUNTING SONG, by Walter Scott: the remaining stanzas will be found in the _Edinb. Annual Register_, vol. i., pt. ii., xxviii.]

[Footnote 202: "_Whearin part of the Entertainment untoo the Queenz Majesty of Killingworth Castl in Warwick Sheer, &c., 1576, is signified._" edit. 1784, p. 14.]

[Footnote 203: _Autumn_, v. 519, 701, &c.]

LIS. Your account of so extraordinary a bibliomaniac is quite amusing: but I suspect you exaggerate a little.

"Nay, Lisardo, I speak nothing but the truth. In book-reputation, Atticus unites all the activity of De Witt and Lomanie, with the retentiveness of Magliabechi and the learning of Le Long.[204] And yet--he has his peccant part."

[Footnote 204: The reader will be pleased to turn for one minute to pages 49, 85, 86, ante.]

LIS. Speak, I am anxious to know.

"Yes, Lisardo; although what Leichius hath said of the library attached to the senate-house of Leipsic be justly applicable to his own extraordinary collection[205]--yet ATTICUS doth sometimes sadly err. He has now and then an ungovernable passion to possess more copies of a book than there were ever parties to a deed, or stamina to a plant: and therefore I cannot call him a duplicate or triplicate collector. His best friends scold--his most respectable rivals censure--and a whole 'mob of gentlemen' who think to collect 'with ease,' threaten vengeance against--him, for this despotic spirit which he evinces; and which I fear nothing can stay or modify but an act of parliament that no gentleman shall purchase more than two copies of a work; one for his town, the other for his country, residence."

[Footnote 205: Singularis eius ac propensi, in iuvandam eruditionem studii insigne imprimis monumentum exstat, Bibliotheca instructissima, sacrarium bonae menti dicatum, in quo omne, quod transmitti ad posteritatem meretur, copiose reconditum est. _e [Transcriber's Note: De] Orig. et Increment. Typog. Lipsiens. Lips. An. Typog._ sec. iii., sign. 3.]

PHIL. But does he atone for his sad error by being liberal in the loan of his volumes?

"Most completely so, Philemon. This is the 'pars melior' of every book collector, and it is indeed the better part with Atticus. The learned and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his library--

His volumes, open as his heart, Delight, amusement, science, art, To every ear and eye impart.

His books, therefore, are not a stagnant reservoir of unprofitable water, as are those of PONTEVALLO'S; but like a thousand rills, which run down from the lake on Snowdon's summit, after a plentiful fall of rain, they serve to fertilize and adorn every thing to which they extend. In consequence, he sees himself reflected in a thousand mirrors: and has a right to be vain of the numerous dedications to him, and of the richly ornamented robes in which he is attired by his grateful friends."

LIS. Long life to Atticus, and to all such book heroes! Now pray inform me who is yonder gentleman, of majestic mien and shape?--and who strikes a stranger with as much interest as Agamemnon did Priam--when the Grecian troops passed at a distance in order of review, while the Trojan monarch and Helen were gossipping with each other on the battlements of Troy!

"That gentleman, Lisardo, is HORTENSIUS; who, you see is in close conversation with an intimate friend and fellow-bibliomaniac--that ycleped is ULPIAN. They are both honourable members of an honourable profession; and although they have formerly sworn to purchase no old book but Machlinia's first edition of Littleton's Tenures, yet they cannot resist, now and then, the delicious impulse of becoming masters of a black-letter chronicle or romance. Taste and talent of various kind they both possess; and 'tis truly pleasant to see gentlemen and scholars, engaged in a laborious profession, in which, comparatively, 'little vegetation quickens, and few salutary plants take root,'

finding 'a pleasant grove for their wits to walk in' amidst rows of beautifully bound, and intrinsically precious, volumes. They feel it delectable, 'from the loop-holes of such a retreat,' to peep at the multifarious pursuits of their brethren; and while they discover some busied in a perversion of book-taste, and others preferring the short-lived pleasures of sensual gratifications--which must 'not be named' among good bibliomaniacs--they can sit comfortably by their fire-sides; and, pointing to a well-furnished library, say to their wives--who heartily sympathize in the sentiment--

This gives us health, or adds to life a day!"[206]

[Footnote 206: Braithwaite's _Arcadian Princesse_: lib. 4, p. 15, edit. 1635. The two immediately following verses, which are worthy of Dryden, may quietly creep in here:

Or helps decayed beauty, or repairs Our chop-fall'n cheeks, or winter-molted hairs.]

LIS. When I come to town to settle, pray introduce me to these amiable and sensible bibliomaniacs. Now gratify a curiosity that I feel to know the name and character of yonder respectably-looking gentleman, in the dress of the old school, who is speaking in so gracious a manner to Bernardo?

"'Tis LEONTES: a man of taste, and an accomplished antiquary. Even yet he continues to gratify his favourite passion for book and print-collecting; although his library is at once choice and copious, and his collection of prints exquisitely fine. He yet enjoys, in the evening of life, all that unruffled temper and gentlemanly address which delighted so much in his younger days, and which will always render him, in his latter years, equally interesting and admired. Like Atticus, he is liberal in the loan of his treasures; and, as with him, so 'tis with Leontes--the spirit of book-collecting 'assumes the dignity of a virtue.'[207] Peace and comfort be the attendant spirits of Leontes, through life, and in death: the happiness of a better world await him beyond the grave! His memory will always be held in reverence by honest bibliomaniacs; and a due sense of his kindness towards myself shall constantly be impressed upon me--

Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regret artus."

[Footnote 207: _Edinburgh Review_, vol. xiii., p. 118.]

PHIL. Amen. With Leontes I suppose you close your account of the most notorious bibliomaniacs who generally attend book sales in person; for I observe no other person who mingles with those already described--unless indeed, three very active young ones, who occasionally converse with each other, and now and then have their names affixed to some very expensive purchases--

"They are the three MERCURII, oftentimes deputed by distinguished bibliomaniacs: who, fearful of the sharp-shooting powers of their adversaries, if they _themselves_ should appear in the ranks, like prudent generals, keep aloof. But their aides-de-camp are not always successful in their missions; for such is the obstinacy with which book-battles are now contested, that it requires three times the number of guns and weight of metal to accomplish a particular object to what it did when John Duke of Marlborough wore his full-bottomed periwig at the battle of Blenheim.