Chapter VII: The End (5)

But there are passages worth finding in books less promising. Those who potter in libraries, especially if they have courage to meddle with big volumes, sometimes find curious things--for all gems are not collected in caskets. In searching through the solid pages of Hatsell's Precedents in Parliament for something one doesn't find, it is some consolation to alight on such a precedent as the following, set forth as likely to throw light on the mysterious process called "naming a member." "A story used to be told of Mr Onslow, which those who ridiculed his strict observance of forms were fond of repeating, that as he often, upon a member's not attending to him, but persisting in any disorder, threatened to name him--'Sir, sir, I must name you'--on being asked what would be the consequence of putting that threat in execution and naming a member, he answered, 'The Lord in heaven knows.'"

In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader's complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person "abandoned the errors of the Church of Rome, and adopted those of the Church of England."

So also a note I have preserved of a brief passage descriptive of the happy conclusion of a duel runs thus:--

"The one party received a slight wound in the breast; the other fired in the air--and so the matter terminated."[43]

[Footnote 43: This passage has been quoted and read by many people quite unconscious of the arrant bull it contains. Indeed, an eminent London newspaper, to which the word Bull cannot be unfamiliar, tells me, in reviewing my first edition, that it is no bull at all, but a plain statement of fact, and boldly quotes it in confirmation of this opinion. There could be no better testimony to its being endowed with the subtle spirit of the genuine article. Irish bulls, as it has been said of constitutions, "are not made--they grow," and that only in their own native soil. Those manufactured for the stage and the anecdote-books betray their artificial origin in their breadth and obviousness. The real bull carries one with it at first by an imperceptible confusion and misplacement of ideas in the mind where it has arisen, and it is not until you reason back that you see it. Horace Walpole used to say that the best of all bulls, from its thorough and grotesque confusion of identity, was that of the man who complained of having been "changed at nurse;" and perhaps he is right. An Irishman, and he only, can handle this confusion of ideas so as to make it a more powerful instrument of repartee than the logic of another man: take, for instance, the beggar who, when imploring a dignified clergyman for charity, was charged not to take the sacred name in vain, and answered, "Is it in vain, then? and whose fault is that?" I have doubts whether the saying attributed to Sir Boyle Roche about being in two places at once "like a bird," is the genuine article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than Sir Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among some Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the warrior poet, in which he says about two contradictory military instructions, "It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once, like a bird." A few copies of these letters were printed for the use of the Abbotsford Club. This letter of Strowan's occurs in p. 92.]

Professional law-books and reports are not generally esteemed as light reading, yet something may be made even of them at a pinch. Menage wrote a book upon the amenities of the civil law, which does anything but fulfil its promise. There are many much better to be got in the most unlikely corners; as, where a great authority on copyright begins a narrative of a case in point by saying, "One Moore had written a book which he called Irish Melodies;" and again, in an action of trespass on the case, "The plaintiff stated in his declaration that he was the true and only proprietor of the copyright of a book of poems entitled The Seasons, by James Thomson." I cannot lay hands at this moment on the index which refers to Mr Justice Best--he was the man, as far as memory serves, but never mind. A searcher after something or other, running his eye down the index through letter B, arrived at the reference "Best--Mr Justice--his great mind." Desiring to be better acquainted with the particulars of this assertion, he turned up the page referred to, and there found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr Justice Best said he had a great mind to commit the witness for prevarication."

The following case is curiously suggestive of the state of the country round London in the days when much business was done on the road:--A bill in the Exchequer was brought by Everett against a certain Williams, setting forth that the complainant was skilled in dealing in certain commodities, "such as plate, rings, watches, &c.," and that the defendant desired to enter into partnership with him. They entered into partnership accordingly, and it was agreed that they should provide the necessary plant for the business of the firm--such as horses, saddles, bridles, &c. (pistols not mentioned)--and should participate in the expenses of the road. The declaration then proceeds, "And your orator and the said Joseph Williams proceeded jointly with good success in the said business on Hounslow Heath, where they dealt with a gentleman for a gold watch; and afterwards the said Joseph Williams told your orator that Finchley, in the county of Middlesex, was a good and convenient place to deal in, and that commodities were very plenty at Finchley aforesaid, and it would be almost all clear gain to them; that they went accordingly, and dealt with several gentlemen for divers watches, rings, swords, canes, hats, cloaks, horses, bridles, saddles, and other things; that about a month afterwards the said Joseph Williams informed your orator that there was a gentleman at Blackheath who had a good horse, saddle, bridle, watch, sword, cane, and other things to dispose of, which, he believed, might be had for little or no money; that they accordingly went, and met with the said gentleman, and, after some small discourse, they dealt for the said horse, &c. That your orator and the said Joseph Williams continued their joint dealings together in several places--viz., at Bagshot, in Surrey; Salisbury, in Wiltshire; Hampstead, in Middlesex; and elsewhere, to the amount of £2000 and upwards."[44]

[Footnote 44: This case has been often referred to in law-books, but I have never met with so full a statement of the contents of the declaration as in the Retrospective Review (vol. v. p. 81).]

Here follows a brief extract from a law-paper, for the full understanding of which it has to be kept in view that the pleader, being an officer of the law who has been prevented from executing his warrant by threats, requires, as a matter of form, to swear that he was really afraid that the threats would be carried into execution.

"Farther depones, that the said A.B. said that if deponent did not immediately take himself off he would pitch him (the deponent) down stairs--which the deponent verily believes he would have done.

"Farther depones, that, time and place aforesaid, the said A.B. said to deponent, 'If you come another step nearer I'll kick you to hell'--which the deponent verily believes he would have done."[45]

[Footnote 45: It is curious to observe how bitter a prejudice Themis has against her own humbler ministers. Most of the bitterest legal jokes are at the expense of the class who have to carry the law into effect. Take, for instance, the case of the bailiff who had been compelled to swallow a writ, and, rushing into Lord Norbury's court to proclaim the indignity done to justice in his person, was met by the expression of a hope that the writ was "_not returnable_ in this court."]

I know not whether "lay gents," as the English bar used to term that portion of mankind who had not been called to itself, can feel any pleasure in wandering over the case-books, and picking up the funny technicalities scattered over them; but I can attest from experience that, to a person trained in one set of technicalities, the pottering about among those of a different parish is exceedingly exhilarating. When one has been at work among interlocutors, suspensions, tacks, wadsets, multiplepoindings, adjudications in implement, assignations, infeftments, homologations, charges of horning, quadriennium utiles, vicious intromissions, decrees of putting to silence, conjoint actions of declarator and reduction-improbation,--the brain, being saturated with these and their kindred, becomes refreshed by crossing the border of legal nomenclature, and getting among common recoveries, demurrers, Quare impedits, tails-male, tails-female, docked tails, latitats, avowrys, nihil dicits, cestui que trusts, estopels, essoigns, darrein presentments, emparlances, mandamuses, qui tams, capias ad faciendums or ad withernam, and so forth. After vexatious interlocutors in which the Lord Ordinary has refused interim interdict, but passed the bill to try the question, reserving expenses; or has repelled the dilatory defences, and ordered the case to the roll for debate on the peremptory defences; or has taken to avizandum; or has ordered re-revised condescendence and answers on the conjoint probation; or has sisted diligence till caution be found judicio sisti; or has done nearly all these things together in one breath,--it is like the consolation derived from meeting a companion in adversity, to find that at Westminster Hall, "In fermedon the tenant having demanded a view after a general imparlance, the demandant issued a writ of petit cape--held irregular."

Also, "If, after nulla bona returned, a testatum be entered upon the roll, quod devastavit, a writ of inquiry shall be directed to the sheriff, and if by inquisition the devastavit be found and returned, there shall be a scire facias quare executio non de propriis bonis, and if upon that the sheriff returns scire feci, the executor or administrator may appear and traverse the inquisition."

Again, "If the record of Nisi prius be a die Sancti Trinitatis in tres Septimanas nisi a 27 June, prius venerit, which is the day after the day in Bank, which was mistaken for a die Sancti Michaelis, it shall not be amended."

It is interesting to observe that at one end of the island a panel means twelve perplexed agriculturists, who, after having taken an oath to act according to their consciences, are starved till they are of one mind on some complicated question; while, at the other end, the same term applies to the criminal on whose conduct they are going to give their verdict. It would be difficult to decide which is the more happy application; but it must be admitted that we are a great way behind the South in our power of selecting a nomenclature immeasurably distant in meaning from the thing signified. We speak of a bond instead of a mortgage, and we adjudge where we ought to foreclose. We have no such thing as chattels, either personal or real.[46] If you want to know the English law of book-debts, you will have to look for it under the head of Assumpsit in a treatise on Nisi Prius, while a lawyer of Scotland would unblushingly use the word itself, and put it in his index. So, too, our bailments are merely spoken of as bills, notes, or whatever a merchant might call them. Our garneshee is merely a common debtor. Baron and feme we call husband and wife, and coverture we term marriage.

[Footnote 46: A late venerable practitioner in a humble department of the law, who wanted to write a book, and was recommended to try his hand at a translation of Latin law-maxims as a thing much wanted, was considerably puzzled by the maxim, "Catella realis non potest legari;" nor was he quite relieved when he turned up his Ainsworth and found that catella means a "little puppy." There was nothing for it, however, but obedience, so that he had to give currency to the remarkable principle of law, that "a genuine little whelp cannot be left in legacy." He also translated "messis sequitur sementem," with a fine simplicity, into "the harvest follows the seed-time;" and "actor sequitur forum rei," he made "the agent must be in court when the case is going on." Copies of the book containing these gems are exceedingly rare, some malicious person having put the author up to their absurdity.]

Still, for the honour of our country, it is possible to find a few technicalities which would do no discredit to our neighbours. Where one of them would bring a habeas corpus--a name felicitously expressive, according to the English method, of civil liberty--an inhabitant of the North, in the same unfortunate position, would take to running his letters. We have no turbary, or any other easement; but, to compensate us, we have thirlage, outsucken multures, insucken multures, and dry multures; as also we have a soumin and roumin, as any one who has been so fortunate as to hear Mr Outram's pathetic lyric on that interesting right of pasturage will remember, in conjunction with pleasing associations. To do the duty of a duces tecum we have a diligence against havers. We have no capias ad faciendum (abbreviated cap ad fac), nor have we the fieri facias, familiarly termed fi fa, but we have perhaps as good in the in meditatione fugæ warrant, familiarly abbreviated into fugie, as poor Peter Peebles termed it, when he burst in upon the party assembled at Justice Foxley's, exclaiming, "Is't here they sell the fugie warrants?"[47]

[Footnote 47: There are two old methods of paying rent in Scotland--Kane and Carriages; the one being rent in kind from the farmyard, the other being an obligation to furnish the landlord with a certain amount of carriage, or rather cartage. In one of the vexed cases of domicile, which had found its way into the House of Lords, a Scotch lawyer argued that a landed gentleman had shown his determination to abandon his residence in Scotland by having given up his "kane and carriages." It is said that the argument went further than he expected--the English lawyers admitting that it was indeed very strong evidence of an intended change of domicile when the laird not only ceased to keep a carriage, but actually divested himself of his walking-cane.]

I am not sure but, in the very mighty heart of all legal formality and technicality--the Statutes at large--some amusing as well as instructive things might be found. Let me offer a guiding hint to the investigator ambitious of entering on this arduous field. The princely collector will, of course, put himself in possession of the magnificent edition of the Statutes issued by the Record Commission, but let not the unprofessional person who must look short of this imagine that he will find satisfaction in the prim pages of a professional lawyer's modern edition. These, indeed, are not truly the Statutes at large, but rather their pedantic and conventional descendants, who have taken out letters of administration to their wild ancestors. They omit all the repealed Statutes in which these ancestors might be found really at large sowing their wild oats, and consequently all that would give them interest and zest for those in search of such qualities.

It is not, for instance, in the decorous quartos of Roughhead, but in the hoary blackletter folios, looking older than they are--for blackletter adhered to the Statutes after it had been cast off by other literature--that one will find such specimens of ancestral legislation as the following:--

ATTORNEYS.--(33 Henry VI. c. 7.)

"Item: Whereas of time not long past, within the city of Norwich, and the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, there were no more but six or eight atturneys at the most coming to the King's Courts, in which time great tranquillity reigned in the said city and counties, little trouble or vexation was made by untrue or foreign suits, and now so it is, that in the said city and counties there be four score atturneys or more, the more part of them having no other thing to live upon, but only his gain by the practise of atturneyship: and also the more part of them not being of sufficient knowledge to be an atturney, which come to every fair, market, and other places, where is any assembly of people, exhorting, procuring, moving, and inciting the people to attempt untrue and foreign suits for small trespasses, little offences, and small sums of debt, whose actions be triable and determinable in Court Barons, whereby proceed many suits, more of evil will and malice than of truth of the thing, to the manifold vexations and no little damage of the inhabitants of the said city and counties, and all to the perpetual diminution of all the Court Barons in the said counties, unless convenient remedy be provided in this behalf. The foresaid Lord the King, considering the premises, by the advice, assent, and authority aforesaid, hath ordained and stablished that at all times, from hencefort, there shall be but six common atturneys in the said county of Norfolk, and six common atturneys in the said county of Suffolk, and two common atturneys in the said city of Norwich, to be atturneys in the Courts of Record."

FUSTIAN.--(11 Henry VII. c. 27.)

"Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtilty and undue sleights and means, have deceivably imagined and contrived instruments of iron, with the which irons, in the most highest and secret places of their houses, they strike and draw the said irons over the said fustians unshorn; by means whereof they pluck off both the nap and cotton of the same fustians, and break commonly both the ground and threeds in sunder, and after by crafty sleeking, they make the same fustians to appear to the common people fine, whole, and sound: and also they raise up the cotton of such fustians, and then take a light candle and set it in the fustian burning, which sindgeth and burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from the one end to the other down to the hard threeds, in stead of shering, and after that put them in colour, and so subtilly dress them that their false work cannot be espied without it be by workmen sherers of such fustians, or by the wearers of the same, and so by such subtilties, whereas fustians made in doublets or put to any other use, were wont and might endure the space of two years and more, will not endure now whole by the space of four months scarcely, to the great hurt of the poor commons and serving men of this realm, to the great damage, loss, and deceit of the King's true subjects, buyers and wearers of such fustians," &c.

The history of statute-making is not absolutely divested of pleasantry. The best tradition connected with it at present arising in the memory is not to be brought to book, and must be given as a tradition of the time when George III. was king. Its tenor is, that a bill which proposed, as the punishment of an offence, to levy a certain pecuniary penalty, one half thereof to go to his Majesty and the other half to the informer, was altered in committee, in so far that, when it appeared in the form of an act, _the punishment_ was changed to whipping and imprisonment, _the destination_ being left unaltered.

It is wonderful that such mistakes are not of frequent occurrence when one remembers the hot hasty work often done by committees, and the complex entanglements of sentences on which they have to work.[48] Bentham was at the trouble of counting the words in one sentence of an Act of Parliament, and found that, beginning with "Whereas" and ending with the word "repealed," it was precisely the length of an ordinary three-volume novel. To offer the reader that sentence on the present occasion would be rather a heavy jest, and as little reasonable as the revenge offered to a village schoolmaster who, having complained that the whole of his little treatise on the Differential Calculus was printed bodily in one of the earlier editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica (not so profitable as the later), was told that he was welcome, in his turn, to incorporate the Encyclopædia Britannica in the next edition of his little treatise.

[Footnote 48: A polite correspondent reminds me of the Registration Act, 52 G. III. c. 156, in which the fruit of penalties is divided between the informer, who gets one half, and certain charitable purposes, to which the other is devoted, while the only penalty set forth in the Act is transportation for fourteen years.]

In the supposition, however, that there are few readers who, like Lord King, can boast of having read the Statutes at large through, I venture to give a title of an Act--a title only, remember, of one of the bundle of acts passed in one session--as an instance of the comprehensiveness of English statute law, and the lively way in which it skips from one subject to another. It is called--

"An Act to continue several laws for the better regulating of pilots, for the conducting of ships and vessels from Dover, Deal, and the Isle of Thanet, up the River Thames and Medway; and for the permitting rum or spirits of the British sugar plantations to be landed before the duties of excise are paid thereon; and to continue and amend an Act for preventing fraud in the admeasurement of coals within the city and liberties of Westminster, and several parishes near thereunto; and to continue several laws for preventing exactions of occupiers of locks and wears upon the River Thames westward; and for ascertaining the rates of water-carriage upon the said river; and for the better regulation and government of seamen in the merchant service; and also to amend so much of an Act made during the reign of King George I. as relates to the better preservation of salmon in the River Ribble; and to regulate fees in trials and assizes at nisi prius," &c.

But this gets tiresome, and we are only half way through the title after all. If the reader wants the rest of it, as also the substantial Act itself, whereof it is the title, let him turn to the 23d of Geo. II., chap. 26.

No wonder, if he anticipated this sort of thing, that Bacon should have commended "the excellent brevity of the old Scots acts." Here, for instance, is a specimen, an actual statute at large, such as they were in those pigmy days:--

"Item, it is statute that gif onie of the King's lieges passes in England, and resides and remains there against the King's will, he shall be halden as Traiter to the King."

Here is another, very comprehensive, and worth a little library of modern statute-books, if it was duly enforced:--

"Item, it is statute and ordained, that all our Sovereign lord's lieges being under his obeisance, and especially the Isles, be ruled by our Sovereign lord's own laws, and the common laws of the realm, and none other laws."

The Irish statute-book conveys more expressively than any narrative the motley contrasts of a history in the fabric of which the grotesque and the tragic are so closely interwoven. So early as the middle of the sixteenth century, English statesmen discover usquebaugh, and pass an act to extinguish it at once: "forasmuch as _aqua vitæ_, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen, and thereby much corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted," and so forth.

To get men to shave and wash themselves, and generally to conform to the standard of civilisation in their day, seems innocent if not laudable; yet is there a world of heartburning, strife, oppression, and retaliatory hatred expressed in the title of "an act, that the Irishmen dwelling in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Uriell, and Kildare, shall go apparelled like Englishmen, and wear their beards after the English manner, swear allegiance, and take English surnames." Further on we have a whole series of acts, with a conjunction of epithets in their titles which, at the present day, sounds rather startling, "for the better suppressing Tories, Robbers, and Rapparees, and for preventing robberies, burglaries, and other heinous crimes." The classes so associated having an unreasonable dislike of being killed, difficulties are thus put in the way of those beneficially employed in killing them, insomuch that they, "upon the killing of any one of their number, are thereby so alarmed and put upon their keeping, that it hath been found impracticable for such person or persons to discover and apprehend or kill any more of them, whereby they are discouraged from discovering and apprehending or killing," and so forth. There is a strange and melancholy historical interest in these grotesque enactments, since they almost verbatim repeat the legislation about the Highland clans passed a century earlier by the Lowland Parliament of Scotland.

There is one shelf of the law library laden with a store of which few will deny the attractive interest--that devoted to the literature of Criminal Trials. It will go hard indeed, if, besides the reports of mere technicalities, there be not here some glimpses of the sad romances which lie at their heart; and, at all events, when the page passes a very slight degree beyond the strictly professional, the technicalities will be found mingled with abundant narrative. The State Trials, for instance--surely a lawyer's book--contains the materials of a thousand romances: nor are these all attached to political offences; as, fortunately, the book is better than its name, and makes a virtuous effort to embrace all the remarkable trials coming within the long period covered by the collection. Some assistance may be got, at the same time, from minor luminaries, such as the Newgate Calendar--not to be commended, certainly, for its literary merits, but full of matters strange and horrible, which, like the gloomy forest of the Castle of Indolence, "sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood."

There are many other books where records of remarkable crimes are mixed up with much rubbish, as, The Terrific Register, God's Revenge against Murder, a little French book called Histoire Générale des Larrons (1623), and if the inquirer's taste turn towards maritime crimes, The History of the Bucaniers, by Esquemeling. A little work in four volumes, called the Criminal Recorder, by a student in the Inner Temple, can be commended as a sort of encyclopædia of this kind of literature. It professes--and is not far from accomplishing the profession--to give biographical sketches of notorious public characters, including "murderers, traitors, pirates, mutineers, incendiaries, defrauders, rioters, sharpers, highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, swindlers, housebreakers, coiners, receivers, extortioners, and other noted persons who have suffered the sentence of the law for criminal offences." By far the most luxurious book of this kind, however, in the English language, is Captain Johnston's Lives of Highwaymen and Pirates. It is rare to find it now complete. The old folio editions have been often mutilated by over use; the many later editions in octavo are mutilated by design of their editors; and for conveying any idea of the rough truthful descriptiveness of a book compiled in the palmy days of highway robbery, they are worthless.

All our literature of that nature must, however, yield to the French Causes Célèbres, a term rendered so significant by the value and interest of the book it names, as to have been borrowed by writers in this country to render their works attractive. It must be noted as a reason for the success of this work, and also of the German collection by Feuerbach, that the despotic Continental method of procedure by secret inquiry affords much better material for narrative than ours by open trial. We make, no doubt, a great drama of a criminal trial. Everything is brought on the stage at once, and cleared off before an audience excited so as no player ever could excite; but it loses in reading; while the Continental inquiry, with its slow secret development of the plot, makes the better novel for the fireside.

There is a method by which, among ourselves, the trial can be imbedded in a narrative which may carry down to later generations a condensed reflection of that protracted expectation and excitement which disturb society during the investigations and trials occasioned by any great crime. This is by "illustrating" the trial, through a process resembling that which has been already supposed to have been applied to one of Watts's hymns. In this instance there will be all the newspaper scraps--all the hawker's broadsides--the portraits of the criminal, of the chief witnesses, the judges, the counsel, and various other persons,--everything in literature or art that bears on the great question.

He who inherits or has been able to procure a collection of such illustrated trials, a century or so old, is deemed fortunate among collectors, for he can at any time raise up for himself the spectre as it were of the great mystery and exposure that for weeks was the absorbing topic of attraction for millions. The curtains are down--the fire burns bright--the cat purrs on the rug; Atticus, soused in his easy-chair, cannot be at the trouble of going to see Macbeth or Othello--he will sup full of horrors from his own stores. Accordingly he takes down an unseemly volume, characterised by a flabby obesity by reason of the unequal size of the papers contained in it, all being bound to the back, while the largest only reach the margin. The first thing at opening is the dingy pea-green-looking paragraph from the provincial newspaper, describing how the reapers, going to their work at dawn, saw the clay beaten with the marks of struggle, and, following the dictates of curiosity, saw a bloody rag sticking on a tree, the leaves also streaked with red, and, lastly, the instrument of violence hidden in the moss; next comes from another source the lamentations for a young woman who had left her home--then the excitement of putting that and that together--the search, and the discovery of the body. The next paragraph turns suspense into exulting wrath: the perpetrator has been found with his bloody shirt on--a scowling murderous villain as ever was seen--an eminent poacher, and fit for anything. But the next paragraph turns the tables. The ruffian had his own secrets of what he had been about that night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a bad business for him at any other time, but now he is a revealing angel, for he noted this and that in the course of his own little game, and gives justice the thread which leads to a wonderful romance, and brings home desperate crime to that quarter where, from rank, education, and profession, it was least likely to be found. Then comes the trial and the execution; and so, at a sitting, has been swallowed all that excitement which, at some time long ago, chained up the public in protracted suspense for weeks.

The reader will see, from what I have just been saying, that I am not prepared to back Charles Lamb's Index Expurgatorius.[49] It is difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be applied. I know books that are curious, and really amusing, from their excessive badness. If you want to find precisely how a thing ought not to be said, you take one of them down, and make it perform the service of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some volumes in which, at a chance opening, you are certain to find a mere platitude delivered in the most superb and amazing climax of big words, and others in which you have a like happy facility in finding every proposition stated with its stern forward, as sailors say, or in some other grotesque mismanagement of composition. There are no better farces on or off the stage than when two or three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind, and compete with each other in taking fun out of them.

[Footnote 49: "In this catalogue of _books which are no books--biblia a biblia_--I reckon court calendars, directories, pocket-books, draught-boards bound and lettered on the back, scientific treatises, almanacs, statutes at large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes which 'no gentleman's library should be without;' the histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what 'seem its leaves,' to come bolt upon a withering population essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios, would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils."--Essays of Elia.]

There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring spirit, but in a manner which reminds one of deep calling unto deep, about the dark superstitions of a country which was once a separate European kingdom. I feel a peculiar interest in it, from the author having informed me, by way of communicating an important fact in literary history, and also as an example to be followed by literary aspirants, that, before committing the book to the press, he had written it over sixteen times. It would have been valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only that one might form some idea of the steps by which he had brought it into the condition in which it was printed. But its perusal in that condition was not entirely thrown away, since I was able to recommend it to a teacher of composition, as containing, within a moderate compass--after the manner, in fact, of a handbook--good practical specimens of every description of depravity of style of which the English language is susceptible.

In the present day, when few scholars have opportunities of enriching the world with their prison hours, perhaps the best conditions for testing how far any volume or portion of printed matter, however hopeless-looking, may yet yield edifying or amusing matter to a sufficient pressure, will occur when a bookish person finds himself imprisoned in a country inn, say for twenty-four hours. Such things are not impossible in this age of rapid movement. It is not long since a train, freighted with musical artistes, sent express to perform at a provincial concert and be back immediately in town for other engagements, were caught by a great snow-storm which obliterated the railway, and had to live for a week or two in a wayside alehouse, in one of the dreariest districts of Scotland. The possessor and user of a large library undergoing such a calamity in a modified shape will be able to form a conception of the resources at his disposal, and to calculate how long it will take him to exhaust the intellectual treasures at his command, just as a millionaire, haunted as such people sometimes are by the dread of coming on the parish, might test how long a life his invested capital would support by spending a winter in a Shetland cottage, and living on what he could procure. Having exhausted all other sources of excitement and interest, the belated traveller is supposed to call for the literature of the establishment. Perhaps the Directory of the county town is the only available volume. Who shall say what the belated traveller may make of this? He may do a turn in local statistics, or, if his ambition rises higher, he may pursue some valuable ethnological inquiries, trying whether Celtic or Saxon names prevail, and testing the justice of Mr Thierry's theory by counting the Norman patronymics, and observing whether any of them are owned by persons following plebeian and sordid occupations. If in after-life the sojourner should come in contact with people interested in the politics or business of that county town, he will surprise them by exhibiting his minute acquaintance with its affairs.

If, besides the Directory, an Almanac, old or new, is to be had, the analysis may be conducted on a greatly widened basis. The rotations of the changes of the seasons may at the same time suggest many appropriate reflections on the progress of man from the cradle to the grave, and all that he meets with between the alpha and omega; and if the prisoner is a man of genius, the announcements of eclipses and other solar phenomena will suggest trains of thought which he can carry up to any height of sublimity. A person in the circumstances supposed, after he has exhausted the Directory and the Almanac, may perhaps be led to read (if he can get) Zimmerman On Solitude, Hervey's Meditations, Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what he may be reduced to? I remember the great Irish liberator telling how, when once detained in an inn in Switzerland, he could find no book to beguile the time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. I have no doubt that the coerced perusal of them to which he had to submit did him a deal of good.

Let us imagine that nothing better is to be found than the advertising sheet of an old newspaper--never mind. Let the unfortunate man fall to and read the advertisements courageously, and make the best of them. An advertisement is itself a fact, though it may sometimes be the vehicle of a falsehood; and, as some one has remarked, he who has a fact in hand is like a turner with a piece of wood in his lathe, which he can manipulate to his liking, tooling it in any way, as a plain cylinder or a richly ornamented toy. There have been fortunate instances of people driven to read them finding good jokes and other enjoyable things in advertisements--such things as make one almost regret that so little attention has been paid to this department of literature.[50] Besides the spontaneous undesigned attractions to be found in it, there have been men of distinguished parts whose powers have found development in the advertisement line. George Robins, a hero in his day, is surely not yet quite forgotten; and though he were, doubtless his works will be restored to notice by future philosophers who will perhaps find in them the true spirit of the nineteenth century. Advertisements, more prosaic than his, however, bring us into the very heart of life and business, and contain a world of interest. Suppose that the dirty broadside you pick up in the dingy inn's soiled room contains the annual announcement of the reassembling of the school in which you spent your own years of schoolboy life--what a mingled and many-figured romance does it recall of all that has befallen to yourself and others since the day when the same advertisement made you sigh, because the hour was close at hand when you were to leave home and all its homely ways to dwell among strangers! Going onward, you remember how each one after another ceased to be a stranger, and twined himself about your heart; and then comes the reflection, Where are they all now? You remember how

"He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life."

You recall to your memory also those two inseparables--linked together, it would seem, because they were so unlike. The one, gentle, dreamy, and romantic, was to be the genius of the set; but alas, he "took to bad habits," and oozed into the slime of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting no creature but himself--unless it may be that to some parent or other near of kin his gentle facility may have caused keener pangs than others give by cruelty and tyranny. The other, bright-eyed, healthy, strong, and keen-tempered--the best fighter and runner and leaper in the school--the dare-devil who was the leader in every row--took to Greek much about the time when his companion took to drinking, got a presentation, wrote some wonderful things about the functions of the chorus, and is now on the fair road to a bishopric.

[Footnote 50: Take, for instance, the announcement of the wants of an affluent and pious elderly lady, desirous of having the services of a domestic like-minded with herself, who appeals to the public for a "groom to take charge of two carriage-horses of a serious turn of mind." So also the simple-hearted innkeeper, who founds on his "limited charges and civility;" or the description given by a distracted family of a runaway member, who consider that they are affording valuable means for his identification by saying, "age not precisely known--but looks older than he is."]

Next arises the vision of "the big boy," the lout--the butt of every one, even of the masters, who, when any little imp did a thing well, always made the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of the big boy, as if he were bound to be as superfluous in intellect as in flesh. He has sufficiently dinned into him to make him thoroughly modest, poor fellow, how all great men were little. Napoleon was little, so was Frederic the Great, William III., the illustrious Condé, Pope, Horace, Anacreon, Campbell, Tom Moore, and Jeffrey. His relations have so thoroughly given in to the prejudice against him, that they get him a cadetship because he is fit for nothing at home; and now, years afterwards, the newspapers resound with his fame--how, when at the quietest of all stations when the mutiny suddenly broke out in its most murderous shape, and even experienced veterans lost heart, he remained firm and collected, quietly developing, one after another, resources of which he was not himself aware, and in the end putting things right, partly by stern vigour, but more by a quiet tact and genial appreciation of the native character. But what has become of the Dux--him who, in the predictions of all, teachers and taught, was to render the institution some day illustrious by occupying the Woolsack, or the chief place at the Speaker's right hand? A curious destiny is his: at a certain point the curve of his ascent was as it were truncated, and he took to the commonest level of ordinary life. He may now be seen, staid and sedate in his walk, which brings him, with a regularity that has rendered him useful to neighbours owning erratic watches, day by day to a lofty three-legged stool, mounted on which, all his proceedings confirm the high character retained by him through several years for the neatness of his handwriting, and especially for his precision in dotting his i's and stroking his t's.

This is all along of the use which the reflective man may make of an old advertisement. If it be old, the older the better--the more likely is it to contain matter of curious interest or instruction about the ways of men. To show this, I reprint two advertisements from British newspapers.

From the Public Advertiser of 28th March 1769.

"TO BE SOLD, A BLACK GIRL, the property of J. B----, eleven years
of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and
speaks English perfectly well: is of an excellent temper, and
willing disposition.

"Inquire of Mr Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement's Church
in the Strand."

From the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 18th April 1768.

"A BLACK BOY TO SELL.

"TO BE SOLD, A BLACK BOY, with long hair, stout made, and
well-limbed--is good tempered, can dress hair, and take care of a
horse indifferently. He has been in Britain nearly three years.

"Any person that inclines to purchase him may have him for £40. He
belongs to Captain ABERCROMBIE at Broughton.

"This advertisement not to be repeated."

There was at that time probably more of this description of property in Britain than in Virginia. It had become fashionable, as one may see in Hogarth. Such advertisements--they were abundant--might furnish an apt text on which a philosophical historian could speculate on the probable results to this country, had not Mansfield gone to the root of the matter by denying all property in slaves.

So much for the chances which still remain to the devourer of books, if, after having consumed all the solid volumes within his reach, he should be reduced to shreds and patches of literature,--like a ship's crew having resort to shoe-leather and the sweepings of the locker.

Pretenders.

But now to return to the point whence we started--the disposition, and almost the necessity, which the true enthusiast in the pursuit feels to look into the soul, as it were, of his book, after he has got possession of the body. When he is not of the omnivorous kind, but one who desires to possess a particular book, and, having got it, dips into the contents before committing it to permanent obscurity on his loaded shelves, there is, as we have already seen, a certain thread of intelligent association linking the items of his library to each other. The collector knows what he wants, and why he wants it, and that _why_ does not entirely depend on exteriors, though he may have his whim as to that also.

He is a totally different being from the animal who goes to all sales, and buys every book that is cheap. That is a painfully low and grovelling type of the malady; and, fortunately for the honour of literature, the bargain-hunter who suffers under it is not in general a special votary of books, but buys all bargains that come in his way--clocks, tables, forks, spoons, old uniforms, gas-meters, magic lanterns, galvanic batteries, violins (warranted real Cremonas, from their being smashed to pieces), classical busts (with the same testimony to their genuineness), patent coffee-pots, crucibles, amputating knives, wheel-barrows, retorts, cork-screws, boot-jacks, smoke-jacks, melon-frames, bath-chairs, and hurdy-gurdies. It has been said that once, a coffin, made too short for its tenant, being to be had an undoubted bargain, was bought by him, in the hope that, some day or other, it might prove of service in his family. His library, if such it may be termed, is very rich in old trade-directories, justices of peace and registers of voters, road-books, and other useful manuals; but there are very learned books in it too. That clean folio Herodotus was certainly extremely cheap at half-a-crown; and you need not inform him that the ninth book is wanting, for he will never find that out. The day when he has discovered that any book has been bought by another person, a better bargain than his own copy, is a black one in his calendar; but he has a peculiar device for getting over the calamity by bringing down the average cost of his own copy through fresh investments. Having had the misfortune to buy a copy of Goldsmith's History of England for five shillings, while a neighbour flaunts daily in his face a copy obtained for three, he has been busily occupied in a search for copies still cheaper. He has now brought down the average price of his numerous copies of this more agreeable than accurate work to three shillings and twopence, and hopes in another year to get below the three shillings.

Neither is the rich man who purchases fine and dear books by deputy to be admitted within the category of the genuine book-hunter. He must hunt himself--must actually undergo the anxiety, the fatigue, and, so far as purse is concerned, the risks of the chase. Your rich man, known to the trade as a great orderer of books, is like the owner of the great game-preserve, where the sport is heavy butchery; there is none of the real zest of the hunter of the wilderness to be had within his gates. The old Duke of Roxburghe wisely sank his rank and his wealth, and wandered industriously and zealously from shop to stall over the world, just as he wandered over the moor, stalking the deer. One element in the excitement of the poorer book-hunter he must have lacked--the feeling of committing something of extravagance--the consciousness of parting with that which will be missed. This is the sacrifice which assures the world, and satisfies the man's own heart, that he is zealous and earnest in the work he has set about. And it is decidedly this class who most read and use the books they possess. How genial a picture does Scott give of himself at the time of the Roxburghe sale--the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar Terry, he says, "The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the literary entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, however, like much to have the treatise on Dreams by the author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson, the smith, said of the minister's sermon, 'must be neat wark.' The loyal poems by N.T. are probably by poor Nahum Tate, who was associated with Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more honourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. I never saw them, however, but would give a guinea or thirty shillings for the collection."

One of the reasons why Dibdin's expatiations among rare and valuable volumes are, after all, so devoid of interest, is, that he occupied himself in a great measure in catering for men with measureless purses. Hence there is throughout too exact an estimate of everything by what it is worth in sterling cash, with a contempt for small things, which has an unpleasant odour of plush and shoulder-knot about it. Compared with dear old Monkbarns and his prowlings among the stalls, the narratives of the Boccaccio of the book-trade are like the account of a journey that might be written from the rumble of the travelling chariot, when compared with the adventurous narrative of the pedestrian or of the wanderer in the far East. Everything is too comfortable, luxurious, and easy--russia, morocco, embossing, marbling, gilding--all crowding on one another, till one feels suffocated with riches. There is a feeling, at the same time, of the utter useless pomp of the whole thing. Volumes, in the condition in which he generally describes them, are no more fitted for use and consultation than white kid gloves and silk stockings are for hard work. Books should be used decently and respectfully--reverently, if you will; but let there be no toleration for the doctrine that there are volumes too splendid for use, too fine almost to be looked at, as Brummel said of some of his Dresden china. That there should be little interest in the record of rich men buying costly books which they know nothing about and never become acquainted with, is an illustration of a wholesome truth, pervading all human endeavours after happiness. It is this, that the active, racy enjoyments of life--those enjoyments in which there is also exertion and achievement, and which depend on these for their proper relish--are not to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him the true elements of enjoyment, the book-hunter's treasures must not be his mere property, they must be his achievements--each one of them recalling the excitement of the chase and the happiness of success. Like Monkbarns with his Elzevirs and his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in common with all hunters, a touch of the competitive in his nature, and be able to take the measure of a rival,--as Monkbarns magnanimously takes that of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an _editio princeps_ under the mask of a school Corderius.'"