ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES
It is possible, with a bundle of booksellers' catalogues, to waste more time more pleasantly than in any other way. As one idly turns the pages, catching sight here and there of a strange title or a book on some impossibly queer subject, one realises, more fully than one could do in years of social intercourse with one's fellow-men, how fantastic a thing is the human mind—a stable full of prancing hobby-horses for crochety horsemen to ride about the world. We can speculate pleasantly on the character of the practical parson who wrote the Clergyman's Intelligencer; or, a Compleat Alphabetical List of all the Patrons in England and Wales, with the ... Benefices in their Gift and their Valuation Annexed (1745), for which Mr. Mayhew asks 5s. In the same catalogue is offered that curiosity in the history of science, P. H. Gosse's Creation (Omphalus); an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot, published in 1857, two years before the Origin of Species. The title, Ode to the Duke of Wellington and Other Poems, Written Between the Ages of Eleven and Thirteen Years, by Robert Charles Dallas (1819), calls up visions of some tight-trousered infant prodigy; and we wish that the book were not an example of fine binding, and that Mr. Chaundy could part with it for less than 30s. Just above the infant, alphabetically and perhaps also in order of merit, we find the name of D'Adelsward, the author of a volume of poems (of which, in our ignorance, we had never heard) entitled Les Cortèges Qui Sont Passés. The volume, which was published in 1903, is bound in pink watered silk, and costs four guineas. We have a vision of something even more prodigious than the infant of 1819.
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Mr. Chaundy has a number of first editions of Disraeli's novels for sale. The very scarce Contarini Fleming (1832) is priced at £6; The Voyage of Captain Popanilla (1828) at 35s.; Vivian Grey (1826) at 21s.; Venetia (1837) at 20s. A first edition of Borrow's Wild Wales, in three volumes (1862), is offered by Messrs. Heffer, of Cambridge, for £9 9s. It is almost worth paying that for the sake of the description, at the beginning of the book, of the negro who sat on the walls of Chester, spitting into the void. You can have George Eliot for a good deal less. Mr. James Miles, of Leeds, has a Silas Marner (first edition, 1861) for 25s. First editions of Robert Bridges are, we notice, priced a good deal higher than the later firsts of Robert Browning. Eros and Psyche costs 15s. at Messrs. Heffer's, and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangan only 5s. The four volumes of the first edition of The Ring and the Book (1868) cost one 32s. at the same bookseller's.
Similarly Conrad firsts are more precious than Bennetts, if we may judge from the fact that Hilda Lessways (1911) costs 7s. at Mr. Chaundy's shop, while Chance and Victory (novels of Mr. Conrad's corresponding period), at Messrs. Heffer's, are priced at 12s. and 9s. respectively, and the precious Almayer's Folly of 1895 costs £3 3s.
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Mr. P. J. Dobell has already done good work in the field of bibliography. The catalogue published by him last year, under the title, The Literature of the Restoration, was a useful guide for all students of the period. He has now issued a supplementary catalogue of works connected with the Popish Plot.
Most of the pamphlets which he offers for sale are unknown to us; but here and there we light on an old friend. We can remember laughing heartily over A Modest Vindication of the Earl of S[haftesbur]y, in a Letter to a Friend Concerning His Being Elected King of Poland. The ironical eulogy of Shaftesbury with which the pamphlet begins is an admirable piece of satire. The Earl is praised for "his unshaken obedience to every Government he has been concerned in or lived under; his steady adherence to every religion that had but hopes to be established." It is interesting to note that in this pamphlet, written after the production of the Spanish Friar, and before the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden is regarded as a Whig poet. For the new King of Poland appoints "Jean Drydenurtzitz to be our Poet Laureate for writing panegyrics upon Oliver Cromwell and libels against his present master, King Charles II. of England." The deputy Laureate is no less a person than "Tom Shadworiski," or Shadwell, Dryden's most bitter enemy in the later years of the Plot. Mr. Dobell's price for the pamphlet is 7s. 6d. Two pamphlets in this collection refer to the fantastic rector of All Saints', Colchester—Edmund Hickeringill, one time chaplain in the Scottish regiments of the Commonwealth, and the author of the first retort to The Medal, The Mushroom, which was written and sent to press on the day following the publication of Dryden's poem—a feat of composition which he modestly suggests was due to divine inspiration.
Great News from the Old-Bayly, Mr. Gar's Recantation; or, the True Protestant Renegade, the Courantier Turn'd Tony, sounds interesting. Henry Care had the distinction of being the first to reply to Absalom and Achitophel. His Towzer the Second was published three weeks after the appearance of the Tory Satire, for Care was a true blue Protestant in those days. "His breeding," says Anthony Wood, "was in the nature of a Petty Fogger, a little despicable wretch ... a poor snivelling fellow." He was a poor literary hack, and at James II.'s accession, "for bread and money sake, and nothing else," he went over to the side in power and turned his pen against the Protestants.
Three pamphlets deal with Roger L'Estrange, or "Towzer," as he was nicknamed by his enemies. But there is one enchanting ballad entitled "A New Ballad on an Old Dog (Towzer) that Writes Strange-lee," of which Mr. Dobell does not seem to have a copy. We could wish that we had space to quote it. But we have embarked on a subject which needs treating at length. The literary history of the Popish Plot remains to be written. A volume of extracts joined together by explanatory notes, biographical, political, and critical, would be a thing of absorbing interest.
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We notice, by the way, in Mr. Dobell's catalogue that The London Mercury, or Moderate Intelligencer, from December 24th to 27th, 1688, may be purchased for 5s. It is to be hoped that the intelligence of its namesake of to-day will prove more than moderate.
A. L. H.