Chapter II: Part 2

In the summer of the year 1893 a London bookseller, who must be nameless, was offered a small library, then stored in a provincial town some thirty miles away. The owner copied the title-pages of a few of the books, and these were of such a character that the bookseller went over and eventually paid the price asked. What that amount was I am unable to state, but have good reason to suppose that it was less than L50. The majority of the volumes were, as is usually the case with old-fashioned and not particularly noticeable libraries, almost worthless. There were sermons preached in the long-ago to sleeping congregations, tracts and pamphlets on nothing in particular, an old and well-thumbed Prayer-Book or two of no importance, and the usual ponderous family Bible in tarnished gilt. On a casual survey, the whole of the books might have passed muster at a third-rate auction, and yet the bookseller was only too glad to see them safely housed in London. The reason was this: Among the refuse were _Americana_, some of extreme rarity, such as those who deal in such books are perpetually on the look-out for, and rarely find, even at their full value. As these books were publicly sold the following December, we are in a position to see what the bookseller got in return for his money, which, as I have said, was probably less than L50. The prices realized are given, so that there may be no mistake about the matter:

1. An Act for Exportation of Commodities, Incourage Manufactures, Trade, Plantations, four sheets, printed on one side only, in Black Letter, 1657, 8vo. L1 10s.

2. Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 3 vols. in 2, Black Letter, 1599-1600, folio. L6 5s.

3. Josselyn's Account of Two Voyages to New England, 1674, 12mo. L6 15s.

4. Gabriel's Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pennsilvania, and of New Jersey, 1698, 12mo. L31.

5. The Book of the General Lawes and Liberties concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts, 1658. Printed according to the order of the Court, Cambridge (Mass.), 1660, small folio. L109.

6. Heath's A Journal of Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck, on the Continent of North America, 1706, 4to. L5 15s.

7. Frampton's Joyfull Newes out of the New-found Worlde, 1596, 4to. L4 15s.

8. Brereton's Briefe and True Relation of the Discoverie of the North Part of Virginia, 1602, 4to. L179. This copy had a few leaves mended.

9. Captain John Smith's Description of New England, 1613, 4to. L5.

10. Mourt's Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1622, 4 to. L40. Title and corner of the first leaf mended.

11. A Briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England, 1622, 4to. L40.

12. Captain Thomas James's Strange and Dangerous Voyage in his intended Discovery of the North-West Passage, 1633, 4to. L17.

13. A Relation of Maryland, together with a Map of the Country. These Bookes are to be had at Master William Deasley, Esq., his house on the back side of Drury Lane, neere the Cockpit Playhouse; or, in his absense, at Master John Morgan's House in High Holborne, over against the Dolphin, London, Sept. 8, A.D. 1635. L76. This copy had the rare map.

14. Captain Luke Fox. North-West Fox, or Fox from the North-West Passage, 1635, 4to. L18.

15. Castell's A Short Discoverie of the Coast and Continent of America, 1644, 4to. L17.

16. Morton's New England's Memorial, printed at Cambridge (Mass.), 1669, 4to. L47.

17. Lederer's Discoveries in Three Several Marches from Virginia to the West of Carolina, 1672, 4to. L36.

And a few others, realizing a grand total of L658 odd for twenty-four works.

This remarkable collection of books of American interest is probably the most important that has ever been met with in such a way. It may have been formed a couple of centuries ago by someone who took a burning interest in the 'New-found Worlde,' as old Frampton calls America, and for various reasons was unable to go there. Or it may be that it was got together at a later date, as the presence of Heath's 'Journal of Travels' seems to suggest, by some bookish prophet, with an eye to the main chance. If so, it is a pity that he did not live long enough to reap the reward of his foresight and energy, though, after all, even had he done so, _cui bono_? Suppose he gave L5 for the whole collection a hundred years ago--and surely this is on the right side, for Hakluyt's 'Principal Navigations' would itself be worth as much in those days--even then he would be woefully out of pocket for his pains, for his L5 would, at compound interest, have increased to the best part of L2,500. It is this little matter of interest that upsets all calculations, and makes us all lying prophets, so far as money is concerned.

Another extremely fortunate find was made, in 1896, in Hampshire. Can such things be? Can any man be born to such a heritage of luck? It seems that Mr. M. H. Foster, who recently bought the Cams Hall estate in the county named, took it into his head to explore the mansion, and in doing so came across a number of old volumes which had been abandoned by the late proprietor. They lay, dusty and cobwebbed, in an old cupboard, and instead of consisting of forgotten ledgers and day-books, as would have been the case if any less fortunate gentleman had been concerned, proved to be of the greatest value. There was Caxton, writ large, among them--several Caxtons in fact, one being 'Justinian's Law,' such an exceedingly scarce book that a later edition once sold in London for L1,000--so at least it is said, though I have no record of the circumstance. At any rate, there is very little doubt that the volume in question would bring that amount or near it, and again let it be asked, Can any mortal living enjoy such favour from the gods? As in the case of the Thorneck Hall 'Boke of St. Albans,' so in that of the Cams Hall 'Justinian's Law '; how can such books be overlooked? Their very type betrays them sufficiently, one would think, to make it impossible for anyone, however careless, to pass them by.

Wholesale and very valuable discoveries like these are naturally of such infrequent occurrence that when one is made the news of it is disseminated far and wide, and commented upon in all the newspapers, which are nothing now if not literary, at least to some extent. Isolated finds, the picking up of some single object of interest or value, is the most the book-man reasonably hopes for in these days, and so long as he confines his desires within such narrow bounds it is hard indeed if he never reap an occasional success, such as that reported of a Melbourne gentleman, who only a few months ago picked out of a box labelled 'Fourpence each' a first edition of 'Sordello,' with an inscription in the handwriting of the author himself. Browning had written on the flyleaf, 'To my dear friend, R. H. Horne, from R. B.,' which, though certainly autographically less important than if he had signed his name in full, is yet a very pretty and cheap souvenir of an eminent poet. This R. H. Horne, who was himself a versifier, and once celebrated as the author of 'Orion,' emigrated to Australia in 1852, and became a Goldfields Commissioner at Ballarat. When he left there and came to England again, the book must have been left to the mercies of the Melbourne streets, in which presumably it existed till rescued from the low depth of misery which the miscellaneous box is supposed to imply.

Amongst a lot of old paper recently received at a mill in Andover, Connecticut, was a Bible which some Goth had sold by weight. In it was an inscription, 'This Bible was used in the pulpit by Rev. Stephen West, pastor in Stockbridge, Mass., from 1759 to 1818.' This book was perhaps not so important from a worldly point of view as 'The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy; By a Lady,' which the late Mr. Sala rescued from oblivion in the Lambeth Marshes, as will shortly be related; but the Rev. Stephen West was a very noted personage in his day, and there are hundreds of people, more particularly in America, who would be very glad to possess a memorial of him. He was the author of the well-known 'Essay on Moral Agency,' 1794, the 'Sketches of the Life of the Rev. S. Hopkins,' 1805, and other books which in their day enjoyed a very extensive circulation.

Mr. Sala's discovery of Mrs. Glasse's cookery-book was due to his habit of prowling round the old bookstalls of the Metropolis, particularly those which line the narrow streets of Lambeth Marshes and the New Cut. On a Sunday morning these places are like a fair, and, literally, scores of peripatetic booksellers, who for the most part follow another occupation the remaining days of the week, take their stand with barrows piled high with lore. The mob pull the volumes about, and haggle over the prices, so that the stock displayed is not, on the whole, in the best possible condition. Still, sometimes you do meet with a well-preserved rarity, as Mr. Sala did when he purchased 'The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy,' 1747, thin folio, for six humble pennies. He had the book bound by a first-rate craftsman, and when it came at last to the inevitable hammer some two or three years ago, it sold for L10, and was reasonably worth considerably more. Only five or six copies of this edition are known to be in existence, but of the second edition, which also appeared in 1747, only one copy is known, according to the Rev. Richard Hooper, whose unique specimen contains an inscription worth reproducing. It runs as follows:

'Steal not this Book my honest Frend for Fear the Galowss should be your hend and when you Die the Lord will say and wares that Book you stole away.'

Cooks are proverbially greasy people, and a book passing through their hands is apt to return like 'Tom and Jerry' from those of a prize-fighter or sporting publican. Still, 201 persons subscribed to the first edition of Mrs. Glasse, and 282 to the second, and some were neither cooks nor publicans, but members of the aristocracy, who might be expected to treat their books with some show of respect. But perhaps they expressly bought them for the use of their cooks, and handed them over to the kitchen authorities, in which case their rarity is accounted for. All old cookery-books, and not merely Mrs. Glasse's famous work, are rare, because they are books of practical utility meant to be consulted in a republic of pots and pans, and grease and litter; but Mrs. Glasse's guide is more desirable than most other English books of the kind, because there is a sentiment hanging around it like a halo, by reason of words which are not to be found therein, 'First catch your hare.'

For my part, whenever I see a cookery-book flaunting it on a street barrow, I rescue it at once, for I have a belief, rightly or wrongly, that some of these days there will be a very great demand for old works of the kind. There is a present disposition to return to ancestral dishes which means the resuscitation of 'The Skilful Cook,' 'The Good Housewife's Jewel,' 'The Queen's Closet Opened,' 'The Ladies' Practice,' and many other volumes where the necessary recipes are to be found. For some time past, indeed, recipe-books of all kinds have practically disappeared from the stalls where once they were so numerous. 'They're miking a lot of 'em hup at the West Hend,' said a stall proprietor, jerking his thumb in the direction of Belgravia, from which it must be understood, not that any manufactory of forgeries is as yet established there, but merely that the upper ten think a great deal of old recipe-books, and are buying them up for their cooks to practise with.

It is sadly to be feared that the paper-mills grind many good books exceeding small at times. This is to be conjectured by reason of the fact that every now and then a consignment is stopped and rescued just as it is about to be transformed into pulp. What happens once, is, we may be sure, repeated at intervals, though direct evidence may be wanting to convict the paper-maker. Evidence of this character is, however, occasionally forthcoming, as, for example, in the case of the sixth volume of Dr. Vallancey's 'Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,' which was published in two divisions in 1804. The previous five volumes are comparatively common, but both parts of volume six are very scarce, nearly all the copies having been accidentally sold for waste-paper, and treated as such. Charles Dickens's 'Village Coquettes' and also Swinburne's 'A Song of Italy' were once much rarer books than they are now, and commanded a great deal more money in the market. Neither book sold well when published, and a very considerable 'remainder' was stacked in quires in the publishers' cellars. One day these Augean stables were cleaned out, and the 'Village Coquettes' and 'A Song of Italy' were saved from the mill by the merest of accidents, with the result that the former book went down fifty per cent. in the market, and the latter to next to nothing. These finds were noised abroad, with the result that they were robbed of most of their importance. Imagine, if we can, a great discovery of a hundred copies of Shakespeare's first folio. And imagine also a journal of credit getting hold of the news and noising it abroad, as it would do when it had satisfied itself that there was at least a substratum of truth in the story. The result we know. Half the value of the find would vanish away on the instant, and rightly so, too, as a strict moralist would doubtless insist.

Sometimes, though not often, some of the literary auctioneers will make a mistake, and in the most unaccountable manner include a rarity in a 'parcel' of rubbish. A good copy of the first edition of Cocker's 'Decimal Arithmetic,' 1685, was picked up in this way a short time ago, though not in London, and at Leeds a dealer bought an original and very interesting letter in Shelley's autograph, which had somehow or other slipped among a number of school-books of trifling value. It is the easiest thing in the world to make a mistake where books are concerned, more particularly when they consist of pamphlets and other works which lie in a small compass. Folios can take care of themselves, but a man needs to have a first-rate all-round knowledge who would essay to catalogue a good old-fashioned miscellaneous library.

In France, sale-catalogues are prepared by experts, who are called in to assist the auctioneers; in London the auctioneers keep their own cataloguers, and in the country towns they seek the assistance of booksellers, or do the work themselves. If a sale is advertised to be held at a house where furniture is the chief attraction, the presence of a comparatively small number of books acts like a magnet, and people are attracted from far and near in the hope that something good will fall to their share. Sometimes they are rewarded, more frequently not; for what everybody is looking for is almost sure to be detected by several, if it exist at all, and then, of course, the price is run up. Still, occasionally, a whole roomful of experts will miss a bargain which stares them in the face. Unaccountable as it may seem, I myself once bought for L1 a first-rate copy of Alken's 'National Sports of Great Britain,' 1821, a scarce folio book full of coloured plates. It was wedged in among a quantity of furniture, and had escaped observation, although there were several booksellers in the room.

The highest form of genius to be met with in book-men is, however, the capacity possessed by a very few of them to detect the author of an anonymous book by reference to the style in which it is written. If we happened to meet with 'Swellfoot the Tyrant' for a trifling sum, and passed it by, we should deserve our fate, for the authorship is so generally and widely known that there is no excuse for any book-man who is unacquainted with the facts surrounding it. But were we to discover another poem by Shelley, which no one had ever heard of before, and also be able to prove conclusively that he must, _ex necessitate_, have been the author of it, that indeed would be a triumph of skill. Some few books have been rescued in this way, 'Alaric at Rome,' for instance, which was discovered and assigned to Matthew Arnold simply and solely by reference to the style. 'Alaric at Rome' made a sensation when the authorship came to be known, and book-hunters were searching high and low, and giving commissions in hot haste. A few copies were unearthed in this way, but the number was exceedingly small, not more than two or three, I believe, and the pamphlet, for it is nothing more, is at this moment an object of deep interest to the few, who are in reality very many, when we come to reflect that none but perhaps half a dozen can ever hope to possess it.

When we get into bookland, more particularly into that secluded corner of it where specialists assemble to compare notes and exhibit their treasures, confusion springs up on the instant. The specialist cannot always know his business thoroughly. If you mention a particular book which comes within his purview, he will probably tell you how many copies of it are known to exist, and where they are, how many of the total number are cropped, and to what extent, and whether the titles have been 'washed' or otherwise renovated. He knows accurately the original cost in money of each, and how much each would be likely to sell for in case it were brought to the hammer. All this is, of course, good and solid information, but it is too microscopically minute and exact to interest anyone outside a very small circle. To most of us these details are unimportant, and yet every lucky find must pass some specialist, who assigns to it its proper position in point of excellence, and makes it keep its place. For this reason I have been charged with the offence of speaking about him as though he were a common bookworm, ready to feed on anything that came in his way, which is, of course, flat treason, not by any means to be silently borne by the elite.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*THE FORGOTTEN LORE SOCIETY.*

Common-sense tells us that 'finds,' as they are popularly called, must necessarily be made by the purest of accidents. Valuables of any kind, though frequently lost or mislaid, seldom remain unappropriated for long, and to search for them with intent is to be too late in such a large preponderance of cases that it is not worth while to go to the trouble of doing so. A 'find,' as I take the word to mean in a popular sense, is the discovery of something of special interest or value, followed by its acquisition at a price which is, at market rates, very much less than it is worth. The price paid is the gist of the find in the popular eye, though there is no denying that, in the case of genuine literature, this is about the most unsatisfactory view that can be taken of the matter.

If an extremely scarce or interesting book, for which one has, perhaps, been searching for years, is at last acquired at any price whatever, the 'find' is none the less real, merely because the cost is great, though we should have hard work to convince the ordinary book-buyer that this is so. He is of opinion that money can buy anything, books not excepted, and in that he is assuredly wrong, for there are many books which are not to be procured at any price, simply because they have disappeared as though they had never been. We know they once lived, because they are referred to by name in contemporary reviews, or have perhaps been reprinted; but now they are as dead as the 'Original Poetry' of Victor and Cazire, which can be traced to the pages of the _Morning Chronicle_ of September 18, 1810, and to a couple of reviews of the day, but of which no copy is now known.

It was this 'Original Poetry' that first suggested the idea of a society to promote the systematic search for 'rare and curious volumes of forgotten lore,' as Edgar Poe felicitously has it. These poems were the production of Shelley and a friend--probably his cousin, Harriet Grove--but had hardly been published a week when Stockdale, the publisher, inspecting the book with more attention than he previously had leisure to bestow, recognised one of the pieces as having been taken bodily from 'The Monk.' Shelley then suppressed the entire edition in disgust, but not before nearly a hundred copies had been put into circulation. The question is, Where are these derelicts now? It is incomprehensible that all can have been consigned to the flames or torn to pulp. Most probably one at least has survived the wrack of time and neglect, and may be lying perdu in the garret or rubbish-heap of some old farmhouse, in which Shelley is but little known, and 'Victor' and 'Cazire' absolute strangers both. And if this particular book, why not many others, which, though not absolutely lost, are yet so very rarely met with that it is the ambition of every book-hunter, great or small, to track them down?

As the world is not inhabited entirely by specialists, the inference is that books of all kinds, good as well as indifferent, lie hidden away in obscure places, waiting the coming of some appreciative explorer who will rescue them from the neglect of many years, and restore them to the world from whence they came. It is no use advertising in these cases. Every week, year in and year out, stereotyped advertisements appear in all sorts of likely and unlikely journals, and nothing ever seems to come of them. They are read, doubtless, by the very people whose goods and chattels stand in need of a thorough overhauling; but they do not know the real extent of their possessions, and usually have a fine contempt for articles of small bulk--a by no means unusual circumstance, be it said, even in educated circles, for it is on record that, when Sion College was burned down, many priceless volumes in the library were destroyed simply because the attendants, at the risk of their lives, devoted all the time available to the rescue of folios.

Thus it came to pass that Prynne's miscellaneous writings were for the most part saved, while other treatises, of far more importance, but smaller in size, were licked up by the flames, and so perished. The natural instinct of human beings is to place confidence in weight, and to ascribe wisdom to bulk. For centuries this idea prevailed throughout Europe, and doubtless prompted Nicolai de Lyra to write those hundreds of folios of commentary on the New Testament which at one time were the mournful heritage of thousands. So also the great Baxter reaped much renown by reason of his seventy folios or quartos, causing Bayle to remark, 'Perhaps no copying clerk who ever lived to grow old amidst the dust of an office ever transcribed so much as this author has written.'

The real book-hunter of to-day is, however, fortunately free of the ancient superstition, and knows very well that as a general rule the scarcest printed books are those which are small in size. To the people at large this is not so, and thus it is that pamphlets of extreme rarity, small volumes which you can hold in your hand with ease, or carry in an inner pocket with comfort, are neglected and eventually forgotten, and doubtless destroyed in sheer ignorance, more often than we care to think of. It was with the object of rescuing some of these that the Forgotten Lore Society first saw the light seven years ago. This, indeed, was not its real name, but the title is a good one, and as descriptive of the objects sought to be attained as any other that could be invented. The idea was to search the country for neglected books in the hope that something at least might be discovered among the heaps of ancestral rubbish that time and the elements are fast bringing to decay.

Now, I venture to state that the more anyone of impartial judgment considers facts and probabilities, the more he must be satisfied that this was no Quixotic scheme. In some instances it is plain that even the most protracted and thorough search would be mere waste of time, as, for instance, in the case of Byron's 'Fugitive Pieces,' 1806, which is known to have been entirely destroyed, with the exception of three copies, all of which can be accounted for. But, then, the operations of the society were not confined to odd volumes, but to rarities of any kind and in any number that Providence might see fit to throw in its way. If not Byron, then Shelley, or Burns, or those older authors whose very names are synonyms for extreme scarcity, such, for example, as Brereton, Whitbourne, W. Hamond, Bullinger, and the scores who have written seventeenth-century poems and composed old music to sing them to. Have all practically vanished, or are they merely under the lock of a combination of indifference and ignorance for a time? That was the question.

With this society I was connected as an ordinary member, and allotted a certain acreage over which to roam, on the distinct understanding that any advantage was to accrue to the benefit of the members as a whole. Elaborate rules were drawn up, and every imaginable contingency fully provided for. There was no lack of money, and no want of enterprise or enthusiasm; yet the project failed for the simplest of all reasons--but one which had apparently never entered into the calculations of the promoters. Spread over England, and some parts of Scotland and Ireland, were over a hundred book-men, all of them thoroughly well versed in literature of a certain kind, but, with few exceptions, rigorous specialists, who affected particular authors or subjects, and knew little outside the restricted circle they had made their own. Let any one of these be drawn within the vortex of his favourite branch of study, and I am sure that he would have acquitted himself admirably; but what was wanted in a matter of this kind was a general and extensive acquaintance with the market, and not a knowledge, however deep or profound, of the lives of authors long since dead, and of what they wrote, and the circumstances that attended the publication of their works. This, unfortunately, was the information with which most of the members set out to search the countryside, and the mistakes they made would be sufficient to excite the laughter of even the tyro were they but published. A perfect Iliad of woes tracked the footsteps of each member of this society wherever he went, and it is not at all surprising that it eventually languished and was finally dissolved. A few of these mistakes may, however, be set down with the object of showing how easy it is to tumble into error, and at the same time to be perfectly satisfied that the mistake, if any, is on the wrong shoulders.

Every collector of Mr. Ruskin's works knows that on December 14, 1864, he delivered a lecture at the Town Hall, Manchester, and that this lecture was printed and published in that city, in pamphlet form, under the title of 'The Queens' Gardens.' He is also aware that only three copies of the pamphlet are known to exist, and if he is very well informed indeed he will know who has them, and where they got them from, and at what price. A portion of this information was in the possession of a member at Bath, who, as he said, had accidentally discovered a copy of the 'book' in a parcel of odds and ends that was to be sold by auction the following day. In his letter he requested a reply by telegram first thing in the morning saying to what price he was to go, as he had reason to believe that other persons beside himself were aware of the circumstance. There was no time for explanations, so the wire was sent, though the word 'book' came with a very suspicious ring. It was as well perhaps that the limit was intentionally put low, or there is no telling to what absurd price the parcel of miscellanea might not have been forced by his eagerness. As it was, it was bought for L2 10s., or about six or seven times as much as it was worth, for 'The Queens' Gardens' was not the coveted pamphlet at all, but the book known as 'Sesame and Lilies' (and not even the first edition of that), published by Smith, Elder and Co. in 1865, which contains the reprints of the two lectures (1) 'Of Kings' Treasuries,' (2) 'Of Queens' Gardens.' It was evident that this sort of thing had only to become general and the society would be ruined, for all payments came from the common fund. When the error was pointed out, the member cavilled and argued, but could not be convinced. He was certain that he had bought the true and original 'Queens' Gardens,' and darkly hinted at secession.

On another occasion a member bought 'Friendship's Offering,' for 1840, merely because it contains 'The Scythian Guest.' He, too, could not be persuaded that the error was his rather than that of the bookseller who sold it him. Times without number one edition was mistaken for another; over and over again were imperfect or tattered volumes bought at prices that would have been impossible but for the London treasury of this secret society. 'No good comes,' says old John Hill Burton, 'no good comes of gentlemen buying and selling'--a dictum which was manifestly applicable here. Had the confident purchaser of 'Queens' Gardens' been confronted with Nichols's 'Herald and Genealogist,' he would have been in his element, for he was an adept in the lore of armorials and pedigrees, and had a fine collection of volumes of that kind. Outside these subjects he knew but little, which for all practical purposes is infinitely worse than knowing nothing at all.

Another grievous error resulted in the purchase of Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis,' 'The Rape of Lucrece,' 'The Passionate Pilgrim,' and 'Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musick,' at a good round sum. The pieces were bound up together in dilapidated calf, and as each had a separate pagination there may have been just a shadow of excuse for the payment of L2, which was the price demanded. But this book was merely Lintott's first collected edition, a work which might have been manufactured expressly for the behoof of innocent purchasers, so antiquated and primitive does it look. Had it been Cote's collected edition of 1640, instead of Lintott's comparatively worthless, and certainly very careless, production, which he took good care not to date, all would have been well; but this was never at any time likely to be the case, for the price was dead against a supposition of the kind. Price is, indeed, often a most valuable guide to the real worth of a book; though this is not always the case, as the following anecdote of a circumstance that happened to myself abundantly proves. I took the greatest pains to trace every step in the history I am about to unfold, and know that the details are true.

It is the custom of many booksellers to send out their catalogues in alphabetical order, and had only my name been Abbot, or even Abrahams, this account of an accident which can hardly fade from my memory would probably have never been written. The Forgotten Lore Society would have reaped most of the benefit certainly, but, on the other hand, I should have been rich in the consciousness of having obtained for a mere trifle one of the finest known copies of an extremely rare piece, and one of the few of any quality that have ever come into the market at any price.

The society had not been in working order a month, when one of those extraordinary strokes of luck which often fall to the share of the gambler at the commencement of his career, and as certainly desert him at the end of it, happened to me. It was brought late one evening by a bookseller's catalogue which I, being much occupied at the time, threw aside till a more convenient season. They say that strange psychological influences often work out the destiny of men, although they know it not, and some such influence must have been haunting me then, for contrary to all custom, and notwithstanding the fact that to catch the last post was a matter of imperative necessity, I found that the catalogue had an altogether exceptional if not unique attraction. Do what I might, I could not forget its existence, nor could I make satisfactory progress with the work which had, whether I liked it or not, to be finished and out of the house half an hour before midnight at the latest. So the catalogue was opened, curiously enough, at a place at which there was no reason it should open, for after a while I lost it and had some difficulty in finding it again. It had opened, however, at page 8, and the first entry that caught my eye was this, word for word exactly:

114. Hornem (Horace) The Waltz: an Apostrophic Hymn. By Horace Hornem, Esq.: 410., 1813, unbound. 3s. 6d.

Now, there are, of course, two early editions of 'The Waltz,' one the quarto above-named, and the other an octavo published in 1821, and it was quite likely, and indeed more than probable, that the bookseller, with his mind's eye fixed on the excessively scarce issue of 1813, might have unconsciously written it down instead of the comparatively common octavo. Another hypothesis suggested itself, namely, that the entry was designed to bring customers to his place of business, and that 'The Waltz' of 1813 had no existence there in fact. Such devices for making trade are not unknown, and this might very well be one of them. Nevertheless, I determined to test the matter, and though the laugh is greatly to my discomfort even at this distance of time, I do not mind admitting that I was, metaphorically speaking, glued to the doorstep long before the shop opened in the morning. To sit there in reality I could not for shame, so I walked about Oxford Street within bowshot, ready to besiege the door in case any other snapper-up of unconsidered trifles should show an anxiety to forestall his brethren of the chase. Even when the shop opened, I did not walk in immediately, nor when there did I brutally ask point-blank for the coveted treasure. An uneasy conscience pointed out that, if there were anything in the matter, too great an anxiety might give rise to suspicion, and 'The Waltz' would in that case be difficult to find. I bought another book, which I did not want, and not till then suggested number 114.

'Gone,' said the clerk, looking at his copy of the catalogue.

'Gone?' said I.

'Yes,' he replied, 'sold yesterday.'

I thought at the time that a trace of a smile played about the corners of his mouth as he said this, and I should not wonder if that were so, for the bookseller afterwards told me that his place had been besieged for many days by hungry bookworms, who had sauntered in one after the other in the most careless manner imaginable, and asked for this very 'Waltz.' 'They positively danced on the pavement,' he said, 'when they found it had gone,' and with this small joke he was fain to mollify himself, for it was the literal truth that in an evil moment he had sold a pearl of great price for the beggarly sum of 3s. 6d. He did not know to whom; he had never seen the man before, and 'in all probability,' he added with a sigh, 'I shall never see him again.'

The subsequent history of one of the finest, if not the finest, copies of Byron's quarto 'Waltz' in existence is as follows: The original purchaser sold it to a dabbler in books for 10s., and he in his turn disposed of it for L4 to a man who, though not a bookseller, occasionally acted as such, and was thoroughly conversant with every move of the market. He had no difficulty in selling it by telegram, and the price paid--L60--was not, under the circumstances, in the least too high, for the copy was as fresh and clean as when it left the publishing offices of Sherwood, Neely, and Jones more than eighty years ago, and had not been tampered with in any way.

The suggestion that the price demanded for a book is often a test of its real worth is both proved and avoided by this story. As I did not, as it happened, secure the 'Waltz,' I feel sorry for the bookseller, and would point out to him that it is impossible for anyone, bookseller or not, to be acquainted with every volume and pamphlet that has ever been published. He made a mistake of such grave consequences to himself that he is not at all likely to make another of the same kind. His sin merely consisted in either not knowing who 'Horace Hornem, Esq.,' really was, or more probably in momentarily and yet irrevocably confusing that pseudonym with some other which he may have had in his mind at the time. This is a very common source of error, and very probably accounts for the incident. On the other hand, the action of the intermediate holder in selling the book for L4 is inexplicable and inexcusable. Had he said 10s. 6d., and thus made 6d. on the transaction, he would have had the excuse of absolute ignorance in his favour, but L4 is such a curious and yet significant amount that there can be no question that he at any rate knew sufficiently well what he was about to make the absence of proper inquiry on his part a positive crime. Any such value as L4 placed on a pamphlet of twenty-seven pages is in itself such an indication of value that no anxious would-be purchaser of any scarce and yet insignificant-looking book dare offer anything like the amount for it. He must either pay the full price or near it, which is more honest, as well as more satisfactory in the long-run or swallow his principles and tender next to nothing with a nonchalant air.

Personally I feel sorry that the gotten Lore Society had such a small measure of success, for it deserved well. The management was too vicarious for the times, and, moreover, its object was not the buying and selling of books, which one man, if he have sufficient capital, can do as well as twenty. To rescue mean-looking but valuable literature from certain destruction was its one and only study, and the realization of its dreams was only accomplished very partially because, as I have hinted, the members of the association were specialists moving in narrow grooves. The few successes that can be placed to its credit would, however, have been its curse had it dealt hardly and uncharitably with the ignorant people who on more than one occasion parted with small fortunes (to them) for the price of a day's subsistence. To buy a perfectly clean copy of Thackeray's 'Second Funeral of Napoleon' for 2s. was a work of art, for the old woman who sold it, in order to buy tea, as it subsequently transpired, wanted more, and yet was so thoroughly saturated with suspicion that she would probably have refused to sell at any price had more been offered. The book was acquired for that sum, as I have said, after much discussion and with many misgivings, at least on one side; but when bought, the circumstances altered, and she found herself possessed of more money than she had had the control of at one time in her life before, for it is, I think, to the credit of the Forgotten Lore Society that it voluntarily paid into the Post-Office Savings Bank a sum of L10 to the order of the seller a few days after the transaction was carried through. Such finds as these were, however, few and far between. In nearly every case such books as the ignorant are possessed of are very inferior, and, what is perhaps not surprising, assessed by their owners at ridiculous prices.

It was part of the business of the society to advertise for books in country journals, and to while away a few moments I give the gist or the actual text of some of the replies received. One correspondent wrote to say that he hadn't got no books, but would sell us a fox-terrier pup, if that would do instead, and then he proceeded to enumerate at great length what he called its 'pints,' concluding with the remark that he had sent it off that very evening by passenger, train. It turned up, sure enough, in the morning, sorrowful of countenance, a snarling, disreputable cur, which we were only too glad to feed and return to its home without delay.

This was an instance, fortunately very rare, of the wilful substitution of one article for another of a totally different kind; but nearly every letter we took the trouble to answer proved to be misleading in one way or another, and not a few contained a series of palpable untruths. There would be no advantage in reproducing many of these epistles, and, moreover, the circumstances surrounding them are not of sufficient interest to warrant more than a passing notice. Suffice it to say that they were mere vendors' glosses, not to be taken _au serieux_. The number of books with 'magnificent plates' or in 'splendid condition' that turned out on inspection to be the tramps and tatterdemalions of bookish society was very surprising. Some few, however, were very curious, and others so quaint in diction that I have no hesitation in copying them either wholly or in part. Here is one:

'Deer Sur i begs to state as ou i ave sume bukes their is Boosey anecdoates of fishin for wich five bob and a lang his hanglin skeches hopen to hoffers stackhouse new history of the Holy Bibel to pouns an a lot moar to order deer Sur if you be willin and i wil sen to luke at for 2L on the nale your respectabul----.'

A 'bob,' I may explain for the benefit of my American readers, is the slang equivalent of a shilling, or twenty-four cents.

The following reply, full of facetiousness and loaded with cunning, came from a village near Kirkby Stephen, in Westmoreland:

'SIR

'Seeing your advt in the Gazete I hasten to copie out the titles of some books which have been in my family for I dont know how long. A Bookseller come up from Lancaster last Toosday and wanted to have them sore but as I could see he wanted to cheat me I thought it better tell him so in plain English which is the way of yours truly who is a wrestling man and champion chucker out of these parts round about. Am open to good offer for the lot but will sell any at following and no discount. Ellicot Lectures on J. Christ, 10s. Durny Histoir de Romans, vol. 4, 6s. Stock Exchange year Book for 1884, 7s; Ante Baccus a choise volume bound in calf, 17s. 6d. Scrope Days and Nights of Fishing 1843, 12s. The Female Parson 4s, and plenty more too numerous till I see what you are made of. Please write at once if you want any.

'Yours truly----.'

The upshot of this was that we said we should like to see Scrope and the 'Female Parson,' but our bellicose correspondent refused to part with either till he got the money, for he did not, he said, intend to trouble himself about useless references. So the money was sent, and in due course the books arrived, carriage not paid. The 'Female Parson,' which we had never heard of before, proved to be worthless, but Scrope's 'Salmon Fishing' was really a beautiful copy of the first edition in the original cloth, and this it was that had doubtless tempted the Lancaster bookseller.

Then there was a lady in Somersetshire who kept up a correspondence for over a month. She had a splendid copy, so she said, of Sturm's 'Reflections,' which she was ready to sell for 15s. In vain was she informed that the book was not of a kind to interest us; she knew better, and persistently lowered the price, 1s. at a bid, till her letters had in sheer desperation to be put in the waste-paper basket. We found ladies, as a rule, distressing correspondents, who flatly refused to be put off with a courteous negative. With them it was simply a question of price, and had we been persuaded by their blandishments, we should soon have had a cellar full of sermons, Gospel Magazines, and all the rubbish that Time refuses to annihilate and men to buy.

One of the most extraordinary letters we ever received came from a clergyman in the Midlands, whose disgust for Pierce Egan and his school was so great that he had determined to sacrifice 'Tom and Jerry' for 20s.:

'DEAR SIR,

'I much regret troubling you with a book which has, to me, been a source of grievous disappointment, and positive danger to my children. How anyone could have written such a wicked history of debauchery and human extravagance is indeed surprising, and I have thought many a time of consigning it to the flames, so that in a measure it might follow its disreputable author. I allude to "Life in London; or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his Elegant Friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis," by Pierce Egan. This work has, I regret to say, been in my family for very many years--more than I care to count--and I would willingly part with it, although there is nothing I dislike so much as severing old associations, however much to my distaste they may be. If you like, I will dispose of the book for L1, which perhaps, from a marketable point of view, it may be worth.

'I am, dear sir,
'Yours very truly----.'

There is, of course, no denying that the morality of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend would have to be searched for in case its existence were seriously disputed; but it seems passing strange that so small a sum as 20s. should be able to smooth away all remembrance of the orgies of Drury Lane and the crapulence of its dirty gin vaults, cider cellars and night-houses, which had so mortally offended the worthy clergyman.

He was indeed quite right in removing the book from the reach of his children; but what about our morality, and that of the person to whom, for anything he knew to the contrary, we might sell Pierce Egan's free and easy romance? The book came, and proved, as was half suspected, to be Hotten's reprint of 1869, with which lovers of this class of literature will have nothing whatever to do.

Such are a few of the experiences of the Forgotten Lore Society in its efforts to rescue good but unfortunate books from the apathy of neglect. The object was a good one, though the reward was practically nil. Let us reflect for a moment that even the few books of antiquity which have come down to make us richer are for the most part imperfect, and we shall see the necessity of taking extreme care of the important ones that are written now, and of doing everything in our power to prevent their destruction at the hands of unappreciative owners.

The mere fact of printed books being published in large quantities to the edition does not seem to affect the question of their existence in the long-run. All alike, good, bad, and indifferent, will go down the long road in time, and our descendants, more or less remote, will only hear of them in a casual and traditional way. Tacitus was one of the most popular Roman authors of his time, and yet he only lives to us in fragments, notwithstanding the fact that thousands upon thousands of copies of his 'History' were disseminated throughout the empire. Every public library in Rome was compelled to have at least one copy, and no fewer than ten transcriptions were made every year at the charge of the State. Plutarch wrote fourteen biographies that are missing now, and of 251 books quoted by him more than eighty are absolutely unknown. The Emperor Claudius wrote a 'History of the Etruscans,' which from the very nature of the case must have had a wide circulation; Julius Caesar, a slashing criticism of Cato's life and acts; Lucullus, a history of the Marsi. All these have vanished. Of the forty plays of Aristophanes but eleven remain. Menander is unknown except by name, and AEschylus is in rags. Porphyry's diatribe against the Christians, the most important book of its kind that any Christian could have at his command, has vanished, and in all likelihood will never be restored.

Nor need we go to ancient Greece or Rome for such instances. Several poems by Shelley have completely disappeared already, and some of Byron's have been, more than once, at their last gasp. Old English ballads and songs have been 'lost' by hundreds at a time, and nearly all the records dealing with the private life of Oliver Cromwell are missing. The story of Carlyle's 'Squire Papers' is a characteristic one, and distinctly to the point. While that author was laboriously collating the scraps of evidence relative to the great Protector that had survived the honest but mistaken zeal of triumphing Royalists, he received a letter from an unknown correspondent, who stated that he possessed a mass of Parliamentary documents, among them the diary of an ancestor, one Samuel Squire, a subaltern in the 'Stilton Troop' of Ironsides. The letter was accompanied by extracts from this diary and other papers, and went on to say that the writer, who had been brought up to regard Cromwell in the very worst possible light, and his own ancestor with shame as the aider and abettor of an atrocious crime, was undecided what to do with the originals. Several letters passed, and at last Carlyle wrote to a friend living in the neighbourhood, asking him to see his correspondent, and persuade him of his undoubted duty, which was at least to submit documents of such great importance to examination.

Unfortunately, the friend was absent, and by the time he returned the papers had been destroyed. They may, of course, have had no existence, but Carlyle himself was of a contrary opinion, for later on he received a heavy packet containing copies of thirty-five letters of Oliver Cromwell, written in a style apparently contemporary, and referring to incidents that no one who had not made a careful and exhaustive study of his life and times, and who was not thoroughly conversant with all the available material, would have been in the least able to reproduce.

The records were destroyed because, as the owner said, he felt that, one way or another, the manuscripts would be got from him and made public, and 'what could that amount to but a new Guy Fawkes cellar and infernal machine to explode the cathedral city where he lived, and all its coteries, and almost dissolve Nature for the time being?' Either this man was a learned forger or a singularly narrow-minded and obstinate type of destroyer whose ravages can be traced through the centuries, and whose example will never cease to be followed so long as paper remains unable to resist the assaults of the bigot and the outrages of the Goth.

That will be ever, and hence it is that in all things literary preservation is the greatest of the virtues. What part of a century's product to preserve and what to destroy is a problem, not for us, but for the century to come, and for many centuries after that. In fact, it is Time's problem, which Time alone can solve.

*CHAPTER V.*

*SOME HUNTING-GROUNDS OF LONDON.*