The Book-Lovers' Anthology

by Unknown

LITERARY GEOGRAPHY

Scotland.

The globe we inhabit is divisible into two worlds; one hardly less tangible, and far more known than the other,—the common geographical world, and the world of books; and the latter may be as geographically set forth. A man of letters, conversant with poetry and romance, might draw out a very curious map, in which this world of books should be delineated and filled up, to the delight of all genuine readers, as truly as that in Guthrie or Pinkerton. To give a specimen, and begin with Scotland,—Scotland would not be the mere territory it is, with a scale of so many miles to a degree, and such and such a population. Who (except a patriot or cosmopolite) cares for the miles or the men, or knows that they exist, in any degree of consciousness with which he cares for the never-dying population of books? How many generations of men have passed away, and will pass, in Ayrshire or Dumfries, and not all the myriads be as interesting to us as a single Burns? What have we known of them, or shall ever know, whether lairds, lords, or ladies, in comparison with the inspired ploughman? But we know of the bards and the lasses, and the places which he has recorded in song; we know the scene of 'Tam o' Shanter's' exploit; we know the pastoral landscapes ... and the scenes immortalized in Walter Scott and the old ballads; and, therefore, the book-map of Scotland would present us with the most prominent of these. We should have the Border, with its banditti, towns, and woods; Tweedside, Melrose, and Roslin, 'Edina,' otherwise called Edinburgh and Auld Reekie, or the town of Hume, Robertson, and others; Woodhouselee, and other classical and haunted places; the bower built by the fair hands of 'Bessie Bell' and 'Mary Gray'; the farm-houses of Burns's friends; the scenes of his loves and sorrows; the land of 'Old Mortality', of the 'Gentle Shepherd', and of 'Ossian'. The Highlands, and the great blue billowy domains of heather, would be distinctly marked out, in their most poetical regions; and we should have the tracks of Ben Jonson to Hawthornden, of 'Rob Roy' to his hiding-places, and of 'Jeanie Deans' towards England. Abbotsford, be sure, would not be left out; nor the house of the 'Antiquary'—almost as real a man as his author. Nor is this all: for we should have older Scotland, the Scotland of James the First, and of 'Peeblis at the Play', and Gawin Douglas, and Bruce, and Wallace; we should have older Scotland still, the Scotland of Ariosto, with his tale of 'Ginevra', and the new 'Andromeda', delivered from the sea-monster at the Isle of Ebuda (the Hebrides); and there would be the residence of the famous 'Launcelot of the Lake', at Berwick, called the Joyeuse Garde, and other ancient sites of chivalry and romance; nor should the nightingale be left out in 'Ginevra's' bower, for Ariosto has put it there, and there, accordingly, it is and has been heard, let ornithology say what it will; for what ornithologist knows so much of the nightingale as a poet? We would have an inscription put on the spot—'Here the nightingale sings, contrary to what has been affirmed by White and others.' This is the Scotland of books, and a beautiful place it is. I will venture to affirm, Sir, even to yourself, that it is a more beautiful place than the other Scotland, always excepting to an exile or a lover.

England.

Book-England, on the map, would shine as the Albion of the old Giants; as the 'Logres' of the Knights of the Round Table; as the scene of Amadis of Gaul, with its island of Windsor; as the abode of fairies, of the Druids, of the divine Countess of Coventry, of Guy, Earl of Warwick, of 'Alfred' (whose reality was a romance), of the Fair Rosamond, of the Arcades and Comus, of Chaucer and Spenser, of the poets of the Globe and the Mermaid, the wits of Twickenham and Hampton Court. Fleet Street would be Johnson's Fleet Street; the Tower would belong to Julius Caesar; and Blackfriars to Suckling, Vandyke, and the Dunciad. Chronology and the mixture of truth and fiction, that is to say, of one sort of truth and another, would come to nothing in a work of this kind; for, as it has been before observed, things are real in proportion as they are impressive. And who has not as 'gross, open, and palpable' an idea of 'Falstaff' in Eastcheap, as of 'Captain Grose' himself, beating up his quarters? A map of fictitious, literary, and historical London, would, of itself, constitute a great curiosity.

Ireland.

Swift speaks of maps, in which they

Place elephants for want of towns.

Here would be towns and elephants too, the popular and the prodigious. How much would not Swift do for Ireland, in this geography of wit and talent! What a figure would not St. Patrick's Cathedral make! The other day, mention was made of a 'Dean of St. Patrick's' now living; as if there was, or ever could be, more than one Dean of St. Patrick's! In the Irish maps we should have the Saint himself driving out all venomous creatures (what a pity that the most venomous retain a property as absentees!); and there would be the old Irish kings, and O'Donoghue with his White Horse, and the lady of the 'gold wand' who made the miraculous virgin pilgrimage, and all the other marvels of lakes and ladies, and the Round Towers still remaining to perplex the antiquary, and Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village', and Goldsmith himself, and the birthplaces of Steele and Sterne, and the brief hour of poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Carolan with his harp, and the schools of the poor Latin boys under the hedges, and Castle Rackrent, and Edgeworth's-town, and the Giant's Causeway, and Ginleas and other classical poverties, and Spenser's castle on the river Mulla, with the wood-gods whom his pipe drew round him.—J. H. Leigh Hunt. The World of Books.