[53] "This collection [Mr Menzies's] contains four thousand volumes, and is for the most part in the English language. Its chief specialty consists in works on American history and early American printed books. Among the latter may be mentioned a series of the earliest works issued from the press in New York. Of these, is A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman, by R.L., printed and sold by William Bradford, in New York, 1696. Richard Lyon, the author, came early to this country, and officiated as a private tutor to a young English student at Cambridge, to whom the letter of advice was written. It is undoubtedly the earliest work which issued from the press in New York, and is so extremely rare, that it is questionable whether another copy is to be found in the State. There is a collection of tracts comprised in seven volumes, written by the Rev. George Keith, and published by Bradford, at New York, 1702-4. Keith was born in Scotland, and settled in East Jersey, in the capacity of surveyor-general, in 1682. The several tracts in the collection are on religious subjects, and are controversial in their character. As early specimens of printing, and as models of the manner in which the religious controversies of the day were conducted, they are both instructive and curious. In addition to these is a work entitled The Rebuker Rebuked, by Daniel Leeds, 1703; A Sermon preached at Kingston in Jamaica, by William Corbin, 1703; The Great Mystery of Foxcraft, by Daniel Leeds, 1705; A Sermon preached at Trinity Church, in New York, by John Sharp, 1706; An Alarm Sounded to the Inhabitants of the World, by Bath Bowers, 1709; and Lex Parliamentaria, 1716. All the above works were printed by Bradford, the earliest New York publisher, and one of the earliest printers in America. They constitute, perhaps, the most complete collection in existence of the publications of this early typographer. The whole are in an excellent state of preservation, and are nearly, if not quite, unique."

[54] I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source of public information, there is any authenticated statement of the quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the fertility of the British press. It is rather curious, that for a morsel of this kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse to so scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the Præfationes et Epistolæ Editionibus Principibus Auctorum Veterum præpositæ, curante Beriah Botfield, A.M. The editor of that noble quarto obtained a return from Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the British Museum from 1814 to 1860. Counting the "pieces," as they are called—that is, every volume, pamphlet, page of music, and other publication—the total number received in 1814 was 378. It increased by steady gradation until 1851, when it reached 9871. It then got an impulse, from a determination more strictly to enforce the Act, and next year the number rose to 13,934, and in 1859 it reached 28,807. In this great mass, the number of books coming forth complete in one volume or more is roundly estimated at 5000, but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority, it appears that the total number of publications which issued from the French press in 1858 was estimated at 13,000; but this includes "sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, and engravings." In the same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included, are estimated at 10,000, all apparently actual volumes, or considerable pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts. What a contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway, where the annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes! In Holland the annual publications approach 2000. "During the year 1854, 861 works in the Russian language, and 451 in foreign languages were printed in Russia; besides 2940 scientific and literary treatises in the different periodicals." The number of works anywhere published is, however, no indication of the number of books put in circulation, since some will have to be multiplied by tens, others by hundreds, and others by thousands. We know that there is an immense currency of literature in the American States, yet, of the quantity of literature issued there, the Publishers' Circular for February 1859 gives the following meagre estimate:—"There were 912 works published in America during 1858. Of these 177 were reprints from England, 35 were new editions, and 10 were translations from the French or German. The new American works thus number only 690, and among them are included sermons, pamphlets, and letters, whereas the reprints are in most cases bonâ fide books."

[55] The most complete mass of information which we probably possess in the English language about the history of libraries, both home and foreign, is in the two octavos called Memoirs of Libraries, including a Handbook of Library Concerns, by Edward Edwards.

[56] "Indeed, although we had obtained abundance both of old and new works, through an extensive communication with all the religious orders, yet we must in justice extol the Preachers with a special commendation in this respect; for we found them, above all other religious devotees, ungrudging of their most acceptable communications, and overflowing with a certain divine liberality; we experienced them not to be selfish hoarders, but meet professors of enlightened knowledge. Besides all the opportunities already touched upon, we easily acquired the notice of the stationers and librarians, not only within the provinces of our native soil, but of those dispersed over the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy, by the prevailing power of money; no distance whatever impeded, no fury of the sea deterred them; nor was cash wanting for their expenses, when they sent or brought us the wished-for books; for they knew to a certainty that their hopes reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed, but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such coarse digests of barbarism, as with the gift of eloquence might be made sanative to the pectoral arteries. Amongst productions of this kind, we found many most worthy of renovation, which, when the foul rust was skilfully polished off, and the mask of old age removed, deserved to be once more remodelled into comely countenances, and which we, having applied a sufficiency of the needful means, resuscitated for an exemplar of future resurrection, having in some measure restored them to renewed soundness. Moreover, there was always about us in our halls no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and, generally, of all such persons as were qualified to labour advantageously in the service of books.

"To conclude. All of either sex, of every degree, estate, or dignity, whose pursuits were in any way connected with books, could, with a knock, most easily open the door of our heart, and find a convenient reposing place in our bosom. We so admitted all who brought books, that neither the multitude of first-comers could produce a fastidiousness of the last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and a multifarious flight of the best volumes were made to us. And this is what we undertook to relate at large in the present chapter."

[57] Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586.

[58] Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609.

[59] Edwards on Libraries, vol. ii. p. 272.

[60] One of the latest inquirers who has gone over the ground concludes his evidence thus: "Omar ne vint pas à Alexandrie; et s'il y fut venu, il n'eut pas trouvé des livres à brûler. La bibliothèque n'existait plus depuis deux siècles et demi."—Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'Histoire. What shall we say to the story told by Zonaras and repeated by Pancirole, of the burning, in the reign of the Emperor Basilisc, of the library of Constantinople, containing one hundred and twenty thousand volumes, and among them a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey, written in golden letters on parchment made from the intestines of the dragon?

[61] I question if Toy Literature, as it may be called, has received the consideration it deserves, when one remembers how great an influence it must have on the formation of the infant mind. I am not prepared to argue that it should be put under regulation—perhaps it is best that it should be left to the wild luxuriance of nature—but its characteristics and influence are surely worthy of studious observation. It happened to me once to observe in the library of an eminent divine a large heap of that class of works which used to be known as "penny bookies." My reverend friend explained, in relation to them, that they were intended to counteract some pernicious influences at work—that he had made the important and painful discovery that the influence of this class of literature had been noticed and employed by the enemies of the Church. In confirmation of this view, he showed me some passages, of which I remember the following:—

D was a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think, however, that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of religion and the specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were mixed up with childish prattle, was much more decorous or appropriate than what it was intended to counteract.

[62] There is something exceedingly curious, not only in its bearing on the matter of the text, but as a record of some peculiar manners and habits of the fourteenth century, in Richard of Bury's injunctions as to the proper treatment of the manuscripts which were read in his day, and the signal contrast offered by the practice both of the clergy and laity to his decorous precepts:—

"We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their repositories. Truly, next to the vestments and vessels dedicated to the body of the Lord, holy books deserve to be most decorously handled by the clergy, upon which injury is inflicted as often as they presume to touch them with a dirty hand. Wherefore, we hold it expedient to exhort students upon various negligencies which can always be avoided, but which are wonderfully injurious to books.

"In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of their superiors, are puffed up with infinite absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presumption, judge of everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything.

"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with stinking filth, with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure, and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume. He goes out in the rain, and now flowers make their appearance upon our soil. Then the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a month, and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it will not yield to the efforts of the closer.

"But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other frivolous thing whatever that occurs to their imagination. There the Latinist, there the sophist, there every sort of unlearned scribe tries the goodness of his pen, which we have frequently seen to have been most injurious to the fairest volumes, both as to utility and price. There are also certain thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins for letter-paper (leaving only the letters or text), or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which they take away for various uses and abuses, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema.

"But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholar that washing should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from his meals to study, before his fingers, besmeared with grease, loosen a clasp or turn over the leaf of a book. Let not a crying child admire the drawings in the capital letters, lest he pollute the parchment with his wet fingers, for he instantly touches whatever he sees.

"Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look at a book turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its natural order, are altogether unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk also take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from the pots, do not touch the leaves of books unwashed; but he who enters without spot shall give his services to the precious volumes.

"The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules could not be clerical characteristics, might also be most important, as well to books as to scholars, who, as often as they perceive defects in books, should attend to them instantly, for nothing enlarges more quickly than a rent, as a fracture neglected at the time will afterwards be repaired with increased trouble."—Philobiblion, p. 101.

[63] Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be found, as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the heart of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it: "Thomas Leirmant, vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica quædam, et ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est. Vixit anno 1286."

[64] It will be agreeable news to the severely disposed, to know that a wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to hide their deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work having been undertaken, as police reports say, by "a thoroughly efficient officer of indomitable activity."

[65] Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque insignium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley, Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn dicto. mdcxcix.

[66] Of course the Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each other, and bibliographical notices of Bibliographies abound. Le Brun sets aside a department for them, but the most handy reference to them that has come my way is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique, ou Nouveau Manuel du Libraire, by M. P*****—identified by his brother detectives as M. Psaume.

[67] Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 28.

[68] As of other influential documents, there have been various versions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such disputes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of completeness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr Hazlewood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its original shape as the printer can give it:—

The Order of y^e Tostes.

The Immortal Memory of
John Duke of Roxburghe.
Christopher Valdarfer, Printer of the Decameron of
1471.
Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of
the Art of Printing.
William Caxton, the Father of the British Press.
Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press.
Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious
Successors of William Caxton.
The Aldine Family, at Venice.
The Giunta Family, at Florence.
The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris.
The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
The Cause of Bibliomania all over the World.

It will be seen that this accomplished black-letterer must have been under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers substituted for it the letter y as most nearly resembling it in shape, hence the "ye" which occurs sometimes in old books, but much more frequently in modern imitations of them.

The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol of knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open his refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide in the potent vin du pays to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, and the others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge successive glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged "to fery respectaple persons," probably to the chief landed gentry of his entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not induce him to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world," being unable to foresee what influence the utterance of words so unusual and so suspiciously savouring of demonology might exercise over his future destiny.

[69] A voice from the other side of the Atlantic reveals the portentous nature of the machinery with which Mr Hazlewood conducted his editorial labours. The following is taken from the book on the Private Libraries of New York, already so freely quoted:—

"A unique book of unusual interest to the bibliophile in this department is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy, edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1815. This is Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decorated by him in the most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school in which he held so eminent a position. It is illustrated throughout with portraits, some of which are very rare; it contains all the letters which the editor received in relation to it from the eminent literary antiquarians of his day; and not only these, but all the collations and memoranda of any consequence which were made for him during its progress, frequently by men of literary distinction. To these are added all the announcements of the work, together with the impressions of twelve cancelled pages, printed four in one form and eight in another, apparently by way of experiment, with other cancelled matter; tracings of the facsimile woodcuts of the title to Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, with a proof of it on India paper, and three impressions of this title, one all in black, one with the letter in black and the device in red, and the third vice versâ; tracings for, and proofs of, other woodcuts; an impression of a leaf printed to be put into a single copy of the work, &c. &c.; for we must stop, although we have but indicated the nature rather than the quantity of the matter, all of it unique, which gives this book its peculiar value. But it should be remarked besides, that the editorial part of the work is interleaved for the purpose of receiving Mr Hazlewood's explanations and corrections, and those that he received from literary friends, which alone would give this copy a singular interest. It is bound by Clarke in maroon morocco."

[70] It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was considerable within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for himself; so, if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading through small print, he may read the following specimen of Mr Hazlewood's style. He would certainly himself not have objected to its being taken as a criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of it.

"Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune, that can converse, and each willing to give and receive information, more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered conviviality—a social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom; combining all that Anacreon was famed for, tempered with the reason of Demosthenes, and intersected with the archness of Scaliger. It is true we had not any Greek verses in praise of the grape; but we had, as a tolerable substitute, the ballad of the 'Bishop of Hereford and Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was of his own composing. It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing the absentees, the cabinet council, or any other set of men; but there was not a man present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the cloth was removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superior to any record of antiquity. It is true, no trace of wit is going to be here preserved, for the flashes were too general, and what is the critical sagacity of a Scaliger compared to our chairman? Ancients believe it! We were not dead drunk, and therefore lie quiet under the table for once, and let a few moderns be uppermost."

The following chronicle of the third dinner and second anniversary records an interesting little personal incident:—

"After Lord Spencer left the chair, it was taken, I believe, by Mr Heber, who kept it up to a late hour,—Mr Dodd very volatile and somewhat singular, at the same time quite novel, in amusing the company with Robin Hood ditties and similar productions. I give this on after report, having left the room very early from severe attack of sickness, which appeared to originate in some vile compound partook of at dinner."

[71] Notices of the Bannatyne Club, privately printed.

[72] "See Pinkerton's Enquiry, i. 173, &c., 369. He explains the Vecturiones of Marcellinus, 'Vectveriar, or Pikish men, as,' he untruly says, 'the Icelandic writers call them in their Norwegian seats Vik-veriar,' and, either ignorantly or dishonestly to countenance this most false and absurd hypothesis, corrupts the Pihtas of the Saxons into Pihtar, a termination impossible to their language. It is true, indeed, that he has stumbled upon a passage in Rudbeck's Atlantica, i. 672, in which that very fanciful and extravagant writer speaks of the Packar, Baggar, Paikstar, Baggeboar, Pitar, and Medel Pakcar, whom he pretends 'Britanni vero Peiktar appellant, et Peictonum tam eorum qui in Galliis quam in Britannia resident genitores faciunt.' He finds these Pacti also in the Argonauticks, v. 1067; and his whole work seems the composition of a man whom 'much learning hath made mad.'"—Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, &c., i. 81.

[73] See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. By Joseph Ritson.

[74] Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 454.

[75] The editor of the Life prints the following note by Mr Raine, the coadjutor of Surtees in his investigations into the history of the North of England: "I one evening in looking through Scott's Minstrelsy wrote opposite to this dirge, Aut Robertus aut Diabolus. Surtees called shortly after, and, pouncing upon the remark, justified me by his conversation on the subject, in adding to my note, Ita, teste seipso."—P. 87.

[76] Among other volumes of interest, the Chetham has issued a very valuable and amusing collection of documents about the siege of Preston, and other incidents of the insurrection of 1715 in Lancashire.

[77] I remember hearing of an instance at a jury trial in Scotland, where counsel had an extremely subtle point of genealogy to make out, and no one but a ploughman witness, totally destitute of the genealogical faculty, to assist him to it. His plan—and probably a very judicious one in the general case—was to get the witness on a table-land of broad unmistakable principle, and then by degrees lure him farther on. Thus he got the witness readily to admit that his own mother was older than himself, but no exertion of ingenuity could get his intellect a step beyond that broad admission.

[78] "An Informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented remnant of the suffering anti-popish, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, anti-sectarian, only true church of Christ in Scotland."

[79] The applicability of this to Varro has been questioned. It is a matter in which every one is entitled to hold his own opinion. To say nothing of the other extant shreds of his writings—and I never found any one who had anything to say for them—I cannot account even the De Re Rustica as much higher in literary rank than a Farmers' and Gardeners' Calendar. No doubt it is valuable, as any such means of insight into the practical life of the Egyptians or the Ph[oe]nicians would be, even were it less methodical than what we have from Varro. But this, or other writing like it, will hardly account for his great fame among contemporaries. Look, for instance, to Cicero at the outset of the Academics: "Tu ætatem patriæ, tu descriptiones temporum, tu sacrorum jura, tu sacerdotum munera, tu domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedem regionum et locorum, tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera officia, causas aperuiste: plurimumque poetis nostris omninoque latinis, et literis luminis attulisti, et verbis: atque ipse varium et elegans omni fere numero poema fecisti: philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti—ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum." Laudation could scarcely be pitched in higher tone towards the works of the great Youatt, or Mr Huxtable's contributions to the department of literature devoted to manure and pigs. The De Re Rustica, written when its author was eighty years old, seems to have been about the last of what he calls his seven times seventy works, and it is natural to suppose that somewhere in the remaining four hundred and eighty-nine lay the merits which excited such encomiums. The story about Gregory the Great suppressing the best of Varro's works to hide St Augustine's pilferings from them, would be a valuable curiosity of literature if it could be established.

[80] Miscel. of Irish Arch. Soc., i. 120.

[81] See Mr Muir's very curious volume on "Characteristics of Old Church Architecture in the Mainland and Western Islands of Scotland."

[82] "Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Cuthberti."—Spalding Club.

[83] It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between some of the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and that of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very handsome country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the native Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House—so called, doubtless, in commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on missionaries and others coming within Wordsworth's description of

[84] See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the Early Interlaced Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. French of Bolton." Privately printed.

[85] Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can find employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at a "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruticulose, and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in the 22d volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.