Although Dr. Morton was a thief, a pilferer of libraries and collectors, he committed a far greater crime, for which it is impossible to forgive him. Murder, assassination, arson and treason were naught to this unspeakable thing. It was worse than the Seven Deadly Sins.
Doctor Morton was unlike the celebrated Spanish bibliophile, who, not being able to obtain it in any other way, killed a fellow-collector in order to secure a unique volume of early Castilian laws. He died upon the scaffold unrepentant, maintaining that the prize was worth it. All honor to poor Don Vincente of Aragon! His name shall always be tenderly cherished by lovers of books!
Doctor Morton sold the books he stole! This, in the calendar of bookish misdemeanors, is the crime of crimes.
Now this respectable citizen of Connecticut was a man of parts. There was no gainsaying his knowledge. His home was beautifully furnished, for he was a person of excellent taste. He would point to an old Italian cabinet in his living-room, and say to himself: "I paid for that with the first edition of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and, as to the Chinese Chippendale table: that was bought from the proceeds of the Elzevir 'Cæsar.'"
Sometimes his friends would be astounded at his unintelligible speech. He would say in an unconscious moment: "Bring in the Vanity Fair in Parts!" meaning nothing else but an antique astral lamp, that he had exchanged for the first edition of Thackeray's immortal novel, or he would exclaim to his maid at tea-time: "Sarah, use to-day the uncut 'Endymion' from the Sterling Collection," pointing at the same time to a beautiful old silver tray. All the furnishings in his home represented a book "borrowed" from some famous library, and then shamelessly sold and the money expended on household gods.
Doctor Morton obtained the books of other men by many devious ways. For instance, he would write to a collector under the name of a well-known amateur, and always upon the most exquisite stationery, requesting the loan for a few days of the third quarto of Hamlet; he was writing a brochure on the early editions of Shakespeare, and it was necessary, in the holy cause of scholarship to inspect the volume.
Alas! Poor Yorick!
The collector would send the book, and that was the last he would hear of it.
Morton would borrow a wonderful old woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, in pursuit of his investigations in the early history of engraving, and return in its place in the old frame a modern facsimile, stained to look like the original, and which the owner might not discover until years after.
It is not our purpose to chronicle the activities of this New England worthy, however interesting and instructive they may be. It was Doctor Morton's well-known coup in connection with the Welford library that brings him into this story.