have referred to Mr. Lang’s antipathy to book-plate collectors, and while, as I have observed, he goes to extravagant lengths in condemning their pursuit, still it may be of interest to my readers to know just what he says about them, and so I reproduce below a ballad on the subject, with (the material for) which he kindly supplied me when I solicited his mild expression of opinion on the subject:
THE SNATCHERS.
he Romans snatched the Sabine wives;
The crime had some extenuation,
For they were leading lonely lives
And driven to reckless desperation.
Lord Elgin stripped the Grecian frieze
Of all its marbles celebrated,
So our art-students now with ease
Consult the figures overrated.
Napoleon stole the southern pictures
And hung them up to grace the Louvre;
And though he could not make them fixtures,
They answered as an art-improver.
Bold men ransack an Egyptian tomb,
And with the mummies there make free;
Such intermeddling with Time’s womb
May aid in archeology.
So Cruncher dug up graves in haste,
To sell the corpses to the doctors;
This trade was not against his taste,
Though Misses “flopped,” and vowed it shocked hers.
The modern snatcher sponges leaves
And boards of books to crib their labels;
Most petty, trivial of thieves,
Surpassing all we read in fables.
He pastes them in a big, blank book
To show them to some rival fool,
And I pronounce him, when I look,
An almost idiotic ghoul.
X.
THE BOOK-AUCTIONEER.
