Chapter VII: The End (1)

_Sale of library--Letters from Shetland and Aberdeen--Winter illness--Charities--Recovery--Magazine articles again--Literary executorship of late Mr Edward Ellice--Rev. James White of Methlick--Last illness and death--Concluding remarks--Burial at Dalmeny._

Would that in biography, as in romance, the story might end at its brightest point! But the true tale must follow its subject through the valley of the shadow of death, and on to his grave.

The remainder of '79 and beginning of '80 were spent at Morton in finishing the 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne;' but the work did not go on with the ease and pleasure of former works, and on its conclusion, Dr Burton formed the resolution to sell his library. This determination was combated by his family and friends, as well as by his friendly publisher, with all the arguments in their power, but in vain. Dr Burton never would allow that parting with his treasured volumes, the collection of which had been the pride of his life, cost him a pang. He had done with his books, he said. They were no book-hunter's library, but a collection made for use, and, that use over, had better be again turned into money. Dr Burton did not contemplate undertaking any other great work; and the possession of so extensive a library forced him to live in a larger house than was convenient, and rendered leaving it very troublesome. In the proceeds of its sale Dr Burton was again disappointed. But before it could be brought to sale, while he was engaged in the laborious task of cataloguing his books for sale, he refreshed himself by a summer trip to Shetland, taking Aberdeen on his return journey, where he had the gratification of being present at the baptism of his little grandchild, the daughter of Dr and Mrs Rodger.

He wrote from Lerwick, 8th July 1880:--

"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am not in what might be called an interesting
country--low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty--but a new
country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I
saw a valuable archæological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads
were all paved, and went straight over hill and across
valley--never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where
the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have
been fully identified. But there, as well as in other places, where
it has been questioned if the Romans ever were--any road strewn or
surfaced with stones that have been laid down in the paving of the
road, is adopted as a Roman road. I have often supposed that this
conclusion was too readily adopted. And to-day I walked for some
distance on a road that has all the requisites--yet no one is wild
enough to say that the Romans were in Shetland. The weather to-day
was warmer than I have yet known it, the sun, such as he is, having
nearly the whole twenty-four hours to do his work in. The next
stage will be Kirkwall, then Wick.

"I shall intimate my motions as I find them coming up for
consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind
demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne'
pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather
too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came
immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very
severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to
grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and
idleness.--Yours, my dear love, J.H. BURTON."

The next is dated merely _Sunday_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... The weather here has been divine, with
daylight, one may say, for twenty-four hours. The people are kind
and cleanly, and all the necessaries of life are abundant. I do not
know when I have enjoyed better health. There is nothing abnormal
about me, except the extent of my appetite. Walking thirty miles
here, is less fatiguing than from Morton to Edinburgh.

"Love to all the household, and remembrances to guests, from yours
affectionately, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"DOUGLAS HOTEL, ABERDEEN,
_14th July 1880_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,-- ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of
people I detest--those who, because a man has been studious, and
has written books, count that he is public property, who may be
hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.

"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the
tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge
Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of
smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and
I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the
bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good
cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of
school and college friends.--Love to all, from your affectionate

"J.H. BURTON.

"_P.S._--On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went
a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled
some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse
Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs;
her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on
about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."

[Footnote 21: A rather amusing comment on this letter is conveyed
in the following extract from one addressed to Dr Burton's
publishers, by Mr George M'Crie, a grandson of the eminent Scotch
divine of the same name:--

"In the month of July last year, I happened to be travelling
southward, in the steamer St Magnus, from Orkney. Before calling at
Wick, and while the tourists on board were gazing at John o'
Groat's House, I was spoken to by an elderly gentleman, on the
'bridge,' regarding some of the steamer's arrangements. I satisfied
his curiosity as well as I was able, and thought no more of the
matter. We had a large number of passengers, and I did not notice
him again until we were coming out together in a boat, after a
ramble on shore at Pulteneytown. A fellow-passenger, who had
previously noticed the elderly gentleman and myself in
conversation, then whispered to me, 'A celebrated literary man
that, sir, with whom you were speaking before we went ashore; no
other than the famous Judge Haliburton of America, the author of
"Sam Slick."' Some doubt, I must confess, crossed my mind at this
stage. I surely had heard of the Judge's death some years before,
but thinking, very pardonably, that I must be mistaken, I replied,
'Oh, indeed!' and viewed my late acquaintance with some curiosity.
I am imaginative, but it was difficult, in truth, to connect this
staid and sober personage with the idea of the American satirist,
however proverbially dissimilar authors may be to their own
creations. However, I am no hunter after celebrities, literary or
otherwise, and I would not, in all likelihood, have taken any steps
to further conversation with the one in question, had he not, by
chance, been seated close beside me on the quarterdeck when we
resumed our journey south. The steamer was rolling heavily, and his
seat was not a comfortable one. I gave him a camp-stool which I had
secured, and in return he kindly again entered into conversation
with me. We talked about many things, but I could not help thinking
that the American author seemed well informed, for a transatlantic
stranger, regarding the coast, the route generally, and, singularly
enough, regarding Scottish antiquities. At last an observation,
which I timidly hazarded regarding the United States, showed me, in
the reply it received, that I was hopelessly at sea regarding my
fellow-passenger's identity. Before we came to Aberdeen he had told
me that his name was John Hill Burton. The similarity of the sound
of the names had misled my too easily persuaded informant and my
own credulous self. I had taken the author of the 'Book-hunter' for
the author of the 'Clockmaker'!

"Dr Hill Burton most kindly continued to converse with me for
several hours after we had exchanged cards. My own is a name not
unconnected with Scottish ecclesiastical history, and this, to him,
was a sufficient topic. Being an Edinburgh man by birth, I ought to
have known him by sight, but I have been absent from my native city
for many years, and may be excused for not recognising one of
Edinburgh's most distinguished dwellers, now unhappily lost to us.

"G.M. M'C."]

* * * * *

"BANCHORY, _16th July 1880_.

"MY DEAR LOVE,--I am here in the scene of many recollections going
back to boyhood, and the interest of them takes a zest from knowing
that you, too, must have stored up associations with the spot,
though of a later period. I think the avenue trees at Blackhall
were cut down before your day. They are not now much missed in the
general landscape. The lapse of half a century has given such a
growth to the surrounding plantations, that where I remember bare
hills, or freshly planted and uglier than bare, there are now great
stretches deserving to be called forest land."

* * * * *

Dr Burton returned from this pleasant little trip well, and in good spirits, but the winter was one of illness.

On the 8th of November it was found necessary to call in medical advice on account of a severe exoema affecting chiefly one leg. The doctor ordered confinement to bed, besides other remedies. On the 8th of December these had proved successful, and Dr Burton was able to be up, and, at Christmas, to assist his wife in carrying gifts to all their poor neighbours--a plan substituted that year for the first time instead of a Christmas-tree for the same class of people.

Dr Burton was always much interested in the Christmas-tree, and used to contribute largely to it what he called _trash_--_i.e._, cheap fancy articles, if he happened to be in London before Christmas-time, or money if he did not. His mode of visiting poor people was peculiar. He no sooner heard of any plan of benevolence towards them than he was determined it should be immediately carried out, and utterly impatient of all preparations. He chose to carry a basket, the heavier the better, but would on no account enter a cottage, still less speak to an inmate. He preferred such expeditions in the dark, that he might successfully hide himself outside while his wife went in to distribute his bounty.

On the 8th of January 1881 a recurrence of the former symptoms again obliged him to take to bed. On the 8th of February he was able to rise and go down to the library.

On the 8th of March he again became ill, and towards the end of that month had an alarming attack of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs. Slight hope was entertained of his recovery for some days, but this illness appeared a turning-point, and by the 8th of April he was able to come down-stairs. No more 8ths were marked by disaster or recovery till again the 8th of August.

During the summer Dr Burton appeared to have recovered completely. He wrote several articles for 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and took regular walks, first with his wife, and, when his walking power improved so as to exceed hers, with his son. He also began to edit the literary remains of the late Mr Edward Ellice, to whom he was joint literary executor along with Mrs Ellice.

At the time of the General Assembly Dr Burton had the pleasure of seeing once more his valued friend, the Rev. James White, minister of Methlick. This gentleman had been his schoolfellow at the Grammar School in Aberdeen. The two old friends spent a pleasant summer evening together at Morton. On the Saturday before his own death Dr Burton learned that of Mr White. "Ah! so Jamie White's gone," he said, "and _without the catalogues_." The last part of his sentence referred to old class lists in which Joannes Burton and Jacobus White's names appear next each other. They believed themselves the last survivors of their Grammar School class.

On Tuesday, 2d August, he walked into Edinburgh and out again as usual, though his family drove in at the same time that he walked, and drove out again also at the same time, in the hope that he would avail himself of a seat in the pony-carriage, at least for part of the way. His aversion to driving clung to him. He did not appear fatigued, declared himself the better for the walk, and even next day still boasted of the advantage which he thought he always gained from a long walk. On Thursday, 4th August, he became very hoarse, and complained of sore throat. On Friday these complaints were better. On Saturday, 6th, he slept almost the whole day, rousing himself to take food when required, and always intending to rise, but as the shades of evening fell announcing his intention of "making a day of it," and being very active and down in good time next day.

On Sunday, 7th, he did come down as early as usual, and did not complain, but appeared languid, lying on the sofa the greater part of the day,--a thing he had never done before. He read and talked as usual. He sat at table with his family at dinner for the last time. It was observed that he looked ill, so ill that his wife resolved to send for the doctor as soon as possible next day, which was Monday, again the 8th, of August. The night had passed quietly, but on the doctor's arrival he pronounced the case very grave. The lungs were much congested, and the heart's action weak. The day brought no aggravation of the symptoms; again the night was quiet.

On Tuesday, 9th August, there was a slight improvement, which continued throughout the night.

On Wednesday, 10th, the improvement seemed more marked till about ten A.M. About that time a change in the countenance was observed. On the doctor's visit about twelve he pronounced the case all but hopeless, and five hours later life was extinct. Consciousness remained till almost the last moment. The illness was attended by no bodily pain, little even of uneasiness, and the mind was calm and placid throughout.

Since the beginning of illness, nine months before, the natural irritability, or impatience of temper, had been diminishing. Dr Burton was by no means, as all his friends seemed to suppose, a fretful or unreasonable invalid. With but few exceptions he was gentle and grateful to his attendants, especially to his wife. He was perfectly aware of his own condition, though never directly told it. His friend Mr Belcombe, the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Morningside, called for him on Tuesday, 9th August, was received by him with pleasure, and spent some time with him. Dr Burton had been brought up an Episcopalian, and continued attached to the Moderate party in that Church through life.

It can hardly be expected that the writer should offer a critical estimate of one so lately dead, and so nearly related to her. In the preceding sketch she has endeavoured to inform the public on all particulars in which they might be supposed interested in the life of a man who served them during life with considerable acceptance. His voluminous works may speak for themselves, or find a more competent exponent than the present writer. She has endeavoured to give a picture of himself.

John Hill Burton can never have been handsome, and he so determinedly neglected his person as to increase its natural defects. His greatest mental defect was an almost entire want of imagination. From this cause the characters of those nearest and dearest to him remained to his life's end a sealed book.

He was fond of talking, and still fonder of writing, about character; but even his liveliest pictures, such as that of De Quincey the opium-eater, are but a collection of external habits or peculiarities, not necessarily bearing at all on the real nature--the inner man. His was the sort of mind which more naturally classifies than individualises, in this agreeing with the late Mr Buckle, who appreciated Dr Burton's historical labours, and was in his turn appreciated by him. To both, individual character seemed a small subject not worth study.

The characters of women, especially, were by Dr Burton all placed in the same category. He conceived of them all as baby-worshippers, flower-lovers, &c.--all alike.

Dr Burton was excessively kind-hearted within the limits placed by this great want. To any sorrow or suffering which he could understand he craved with characteristic impatience to carry immediate relief; and the greatest enjoyment of his life, especially of its later years, was to give pleasure to children, poor people, or the lower animals. Many humble folks will remember the bunches of flowers he thrust silently into their hands, and the refreshment he never failed to press on their acceptance in his own peculiar manner.

He was liberal of money to a fault. He never refused any application even from a street beggar. He quite allowed that these ought not to be encouraged, but he urged that the municipality ought to take charge of them, and prevent their appealing to the compassion of the public, who could not, as he said, be expected to perform the disagreeable task of disciplining vagrants at the wages of a penny a case. No printer's devil or other chance messenger failed to receive his sixpence or shilling, besides a comfortable meal. It was his constant custom to ask his sons if any of their wants were unsupplied, if they required money for furnishing their workshop or laboratory, or for any of their studies or amusements. It is but just to them to add that the question was almost always answered in the negative.

Many of the "motley crew" along with whom Dr Burton received his education fell into difficulties in the course of their lives. An application from one of them always met with a prompt response. To send double the amount asked on such occasions was his rule, if money was the object desired. In his earlier life he would also spare no trouble in endeavouring to help these unfortunates to help themselves. As he grew old he was less zealous, probably from being less sanguine of success, in this service.

On Saturday the 13th of August the mortal remains of John Hill Burton were laid beside those of his infant child in the lovely little churchyard of Dalmeny. It had been at first intended that he should be buried in the Dean Cemetery, where his mother and his first wife were interred, and where his valued friend William Brodie[22] had erected a beautiful monument over their graves; but after orders had been given to this effect, his wife became strongly possessed by the wish to carry out his repeatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.

[Footnote 22: Since deceased--October 30, 1881--and also buried there.]

KATHARINE BURTON. MORTON, _20th September 1881_.

THE BOOK-HUNTER.

_PART I.--HIS NATURE._

Introductory.

Of the Title under which the contents of the following pages are ranged I have no better justification to offer than that it appeared to suit their discursive tenor. If they laid any claim to a scientific character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very reverence it is held in--the strong disinclination on the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who does it--makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student once into palæozoology, and he takes your other hard names--your ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron--for granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be described as _sun_categorematic, one may take up a very absolute positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful protection, and called itself Archæology. An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems as it were to be rescued from the heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If it be large and shapeless, it may take rank as an amorphous megalith; and it is on record that the owner of some muirland acres, finding them described in a learned work as "richly megalithic," became suddenly excited by hopes which were quickly extinguished when the import of the term was fully explained to him. Should there be any remains of sculpture on such a stone, it becomes a lithoglyph or a hieroglyph; and if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of title of honour, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.

The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of Greek designations lately reached its climax, in an attempt to save thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.

It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify the class of men to whom the following sketches are devoted by an appropriate scientific title, a difficulty would start up at the very beginning. As the reader will perhaps see, from the tenor of my discourse, I would find it difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad--to speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should characterise them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and continue to stick to the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all the more assurance that it has been tolerated, and even liked, by readers of the kind I am most ambitious of pleasing.[23]

[Footnote 23: To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avisés of Jean Joseph Rive:--

"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiæ of a book."--"A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements."--"A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy."--"A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure."--"A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases."

The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive, is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a classifier of books; and bibliopée, "_l'art d'écrire ou de composer des livres_," or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author. Of the dignity with which this writer can invest the objects of his nomenclature, take the following specimen from his description of the bibliographe:--

"Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and nothing more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it.

"Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all sciences, it would appear that all subjects should come under the consideration of the bibliographe; languages, logic, criticism, philosophy, eloquence, mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are no strangers to him; the history of printing and of celebrated printers is familiar to him, as well as all the operations of the typographic art. He is continually occupied with the works of the ancients and the moderns; he makes it his business to know books useful, rare, and curious, not only by their titles and form, but by their contents; he spends his life in analysing, classifying, and describing them. He seeks out those which are recommended by talented authors; he runs through libraries and cabinets to increase the sum of his knowledge; he studies authors who have treated of the science of books, he points out their errors; he chooses from among new productions those which bear the stamp of genius, and which will live in men's memories; he ransacks periodicals to keep himself well up to the discoveries of his age, and compare them with those of ages past; he is greedy of all works which treat of libraries, particularly catalogues, when they are well constructed and well arranged, and their price adds to their value. Such is the genuine _Bibliographe_." This reminds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly defined their own science as the knowledge of things human and divine.]

Few wiser things have ever been said than that remark of Byron's, that "man is an unfortunate fellow, and ever will be." Perhaps the originality of the fundamental idea it expresses may be questioned, on the ground that the same warning has been enounced in far more solemn language, and from a far more august authority. But there is originality in the vulgar everyday-world way of putting the idea, and this makes it suit the present purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be dealt with, there is no intention to be either devout or philosophical about it, but to treat it in a thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in this temper to judge of its place among the defects and ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, if we human creatures sometimes did this, and discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics, according as our temperament and training are of the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest of criminals. But such has been my own unfortunate experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who has floundered a little out of the straight path, and being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms which come so readily to the lips of the censors, who at heart believe themselves spotless,--just as complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this and that, come from the fat lips of the millionaire, when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, and his forcing-frames.

No; it is hard to choose between the two. The man who has no defect or crack in his character--no tinge of even the minor immoralities--no fantastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet--no preposterous hobby--such a man, walking straight along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle, is a very dangerous character, no doubt; of such all children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel an innate loathing. And yet it is questionable if your perfectionised Sir Charles Grandison is quite so dangerous a character as your "miserable sinner," vociferously conscious that he is the frailest of the frail, and that he can do no good thing of himself. And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of these two characteristics have been known so to alternate in one disposition as to render it evident that each is but the same moral nature under a different external aspect,--the mask, cowl, varnish, crust, or whatever you like to call it, having been adapted to the external conditions of the man--that is, to the society he mixes in, the set he belongs to, the habits of the age, and the way in which he proposes to get on in life. It is when the occasion arises for the mask being thrown aside, or when the internal passions burst like a volcano through the crust, that terrible events take place, and the world throbs with the excitement of some wonderful criminal trial.[24]

[Footnote 24: It has often been observed that it is among the Society of Friends, who keep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that these make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey, in one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man of great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded by insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the system of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, which I am not prepared either to support or contradict. After describing the system of restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at once--the force of passion and of youth--not unfrequently records its own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. And, further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases--strange and elaborate affections of the nervous system--are found _exclusively_ among the young men and women of the Quaker Society; that they are known and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham; that they assume a new type and a more inveterate character in the second or third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted; and, finally, that if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community itself--the Quaker body--does not increase, but, on the contrary, is rather on the wane."

There exist many good stories which have for their point the passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in his Description of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and the pugilist. He was a colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen wild work in his day; but in his old age a change came over him, and, becoming a follower of George Fox, he retired to spend his latter days on his ancestral estate in Kincardineshire. Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot hinder thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist; for shouldst thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he may prove too strong, not only for me, but for _thee_." There was no use of attempting to answer such an argument.]

The present, however, is not an inquiry into the first principles either of ethics or of physiology. The object of this rambling preamble is to win from the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards the human frailty which I propose to examine and lay bare before him, trusting that he will treat it neither with the haughty disdain of the immaculate, nor the grim charity of the "miserable sinner:" that he may even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet kindly remember that, in comparison with many others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's side. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid fathers are permitted to exercise by the licence of the existing school of French fiction.[25] Neither will it exact such extensive toleration as that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her sister lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her own "was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, daedlin, drucken body--wi' nae ill practices aboot him ava!" But all things in their own time and place. To understand the due weight and bearing of this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to remember that its happy owner had probably spent her youth in that golden age when it was deemed churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest filled his stoup at the fountain of the flowing hogshead; and if the darker days of dear claret came upon her times, there was still to fall back upon the silver age of smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a really hospitable country-house were an anker of whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on the bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar with a spade in it,--all for the manufacture of toddy.

[Footnote 25: In the renowned Dame aux Camélias, the respectable, rigid, and rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous ayez une maîtresse, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un galant homme doit payer l'amour d'une fille entretenue, c'est on ne peut mieux; mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour elle, que vous permettiez que la bruit de votre vie scandaleuse arrive jusqu'au fond de ma province, et jette l'ombre d'une tache sur le nom honorable que je vous ai donné--voilà ce qui ne peut être, voilà ce qui ne sera pas."

So even the French novelists draw the line "somewhere," and in other departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than many good uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one very popular novel the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming-table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having committed forgery, plots with the Mephistopheles of the story to buy his own safety at the price of his wife's honour. This might seem bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper, by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason to suspect his master of having indulged, once at least, if not oftener, in brandy-and-water!]

The habits of that age have passed away, and with them the drunken laird and the widely tolerant wife. The advancing civilisation which has nearly extinguished this class of frailties among those who have the amplest means of indulgence in them, is, no doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous ground--dangerous, I mean, to the frail but amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted. Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call attention to a special type of human frailty, since the world is full of people who will be prepared to deal with and cure it, provided only that they are to have their own way with the disease and the patient, and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of locking him up, dieting him, and taking possession of his worldly goods and interests, as one who, by his irrational habits, or his outrages on the laws of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other neology, has satisfactorily established his utter incapacity to take charge of his own affairs. No! This is not a cruel age; the rack, the wheel, the boot, the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks, have disappeared; death-punishment is dwindling away; and if convicts have not their full rations of cooked meat, or get damaged coffee or sour milk, or are inadequately supplied with flannels and clean linen, there will be an outcry and an inquiry, and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage of his influence, and learn to look better after the administration of patronage. But, at the same time, the area of punishment--or of "treatment," as it is mildly termed--becomes alarmingly widened, and people require to look sharply into themselves lest they should be tainted with any little frailty or peculiarity which may transfer them from the class of free self-regulators to that of persons under "treatment." In Owen's parallelograms there were to be no prisons: he admitted no power in one man to inflict punishment upon another for merely obeying the dictates of natural propensities which could not be resisted. But, at the same time, there were to be "hospitals" in which not only the physically diseased, but also the mentally and _morally_ diseased, were to be detained until they were cured; and when we reflect that the laws of the parallelogram were very stringent and minute, and required to be absolutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole machinery of society would come to pieces, like a watch with a broken spring,--it is clear that these hospitals would have contained a very large proportion of the unrationalised population.

There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of communism now among us, and it is therefore with some little misgiving that one sets down anything that may betray a brother's weakness, and lay bare the diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeed, the bad name that proverbially hangs the dog has already been given to the one under consideration, for bibliomania is older in the technology of this kind of nosology than dipsomania, which is now understood to be an almost established ground for seclusion, and deprivation of the management of one's own affairs. There is one ground of consolation, however,--the people who, being all right themselves, have undertaken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford time for idle reading. There is a good chance, therefore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed, and the harmless class, on whose peculiar frailties the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go at large.

So having spoken, I now propose to make the reader acquainted with some characteristic specimens of the class.

A Vision of Mighty Book-Hunters.

As the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now--tall, straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms into benignity as he inspects a pretty little clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbours is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency--or, it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief--to have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through their favourite taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon containing 372 copies of rare editions of the Bible? All were fish that came to his net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a stall--and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, and secures with frantic impetuosity, "at any price," a great fish he has been patiently watching year after year. His hunting-grounds were wide and distant, and there were mysterious rumours about the numbers of copies, all identically the same in edition and minor individualities, which he possessed of certain books. I have known him, indeed, when beaten at an auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so be it--but I daresay I have ten or twelve copies at home, if I could lay hands on them."

It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector buys his first _duplicate_. It is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon--the first pawning of the silver spoons--or any other terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and hardened; and it is observable in the career of this class of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandonment to its propensities. The Archdeacon had long passed this stage ere he crossed my path, and had become thoroughly hardened. He was not remarkable for local attachment; and in moving from place to place, his spoil, packed in innumerable great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain unreleased during the whole period of his tarrying in his new abode, so that they were removed to the next stage of his journey through life with modified inconvenience.

Cruel as it may seem, I must yet notice another and a peculiar vagary of his malady. He had resolved, at least once in his life, to part with a considerable proportion of his collection--better to suffer the anguish of such an act than endure the fretting of continued restraint. There was a wondrous sale by auction accordingly; it was something like what may have occurred on the dissolution of the monasteries at the Reformation, or when the contents of some time-honoured public library were realised at the period of the French Revolution. Before the affair was over, the Archdeacon himself made his appearance in the midst of the miscellaneous self-invited guests who were making free with his treasures,--he pretended, honest man, to be a mere casual spectator, who, having seen, in passing, the announcement of a sale by auction, stepped in like the rest of the public. By degrees he got excited, gasped once or twice as if mastering some desperate impulse, and at length fairly bade. He could not brazen out the effect of this escapade, however, and disappeared from the scene. It was remarked by the observant, that an unusual number of lots were afterwards knocked down to a military gentleman, who seemed to have left portentously large orders with the auctioneer. Some curious suspicions began to arise, which were settled by that presiding genius bending over his rostrum, and explaining in a confidential whisper that the military hero was in reality a pillar of the Church so disguised.

The Archdeacon lay under what, among a portion of the victims of his malady, was deemed a heavy scandal. He was suspected of reading his own books--that is to say, when he could get at them; for there are those who may still remember his rather shamefaced apparition of an evening, petitioning, somewhat in the tone with which an old schoolfellow down in the world requests your assistance to help him to go to York to get an appointment--petitioning for the loan of a volume of which he could not deny that he possessed numberless copies lurking in divers parts of his vast collection. This reputation of reading the books in his collection, which should be sacred to external inspection solely, is, with a certain school of book-collectors, a scandal, such as it would be among a hunting set to hint that a man had killed a fox. In the dialogues, not always the most entertaining, of Dibdin's Bibliomania, there is this short passage: "'I will frankly confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant _bibliomaniac_--that I love books dearly--that the very sight, touch, and mere perusal----' 'Hold, my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon; 'you have renounced your profession--you talk of _reading_ books--do _bibliomaniacs_ ever _read_ books?'"

Yes, the Archdeacon read books--he devoured them; and he did so to full prolific purpose. His was a mind enriched with varied learning, which he gave forth with full, strong, easy flow, like an inexhaustible perennial spring coming from inner reservoirs, never dry, yet too capacious to exhibit the brawling, bubbling symptoms of repletion. It was from a majestic heedlessness of the busy world and its fame that he got the character of indolence, and was set down as one who would leave no lasting memorial of his great learning. But when he died, it was not altogether without leaving a sign; for from the casual droppings of his pen has been preserved enough to signify to many generations of students in the walk he chiefly affected how richly his mind was stored, and how much fresh matter there is in those fields of inquiry where compilers have left their dreary tracks, for ardent students to cultivate into a rich harvest. In him truly the bibliomania may be counted among the many illustrations of the truth so often moralised on, that the highest natures are not exempt from human frailty in some shape or other.

Let us now summon the shade of another departed victim--Fitzpatrick Smart, Esq. He, too, through a long life, had been a vigilant and enthusiastic collector, but after a totally different fashion. He was far from omnivorous. He had a principle of selection peculiar and separate from all other's, as was his own individuality from other men's. You could not classify his library according to any of the accepted nomenclatures peculiar to the initiated. He was not a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or a rough-edge man, or an early-English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or an old-brown-calf man, or a Grangerite, or a tawny-moroccoite, or a gilt-topper, a marbled-insider, or an _editio princeps_ man; neither did he come under any of the more vulgar classifications of collectors whose thoughts run more upon the usefulness for study than upon the external conditions of their library, such as those who affect science, or the classics, or English poetic and historical literature. There was no way of defining his peculiar walk save by his own name--it was the Fitzpatrick-Smart walk. In fact, it wound itself in infinite windings through isolated spots of literary scenery, if we may so speak, in which he took a personal interest. There were historical events, bits of family history, chiefly of a tragic or a scandalous kind,--efforts of art or of literary genius on which, through some hidden intellectual law, his mind and memory loved to dwell; and it was in reference to these that he collected. If the book were the one desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable price, was to be grudged for its acquisition. If the book were an inch out of his own line, it might be trampled in the mire for aught he cared, be it as rare or costly as it could be.

It was difficult, almost impossible, for others to predicate what would please this wayward sort of taste, and he was the torment of the book-caterers, who were sure of a princely price for the right article, but might have the wrong one thrown in their teeth with contumely. It was a perilous, but, if successful, a gratifying thing to present him with a book. If it happened to hit his fancy, he felt the full force of the compliment, and overwhelmed the giver with his courtly thanks. But great observation and tact were required for such an adventure. The chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift-maker were thousands to one; and those who were acquainted with his strange nervous temperament, knew that the existence within his dwelling-place of any book not of his own special kind, would impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy horror which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes into its cell. Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring out all his sarcasm, which was not feeble or slight, on the odious object, and wondering why an author could have entertained against him so steady and enduring a malice as to take the trouble of writing and printing all that rubbish with no better object than disturbing the peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such _dona ferentes_ cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep--for what could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods.