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 £1, 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 Cæsar, 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 Æschylus 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.