"Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look at a book turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its natural order, are altogether unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk also take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from the pots, do not touch the leaves of books unwashed; but he who enters without spot shall give his services to the precious volumes.
"The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules could not be clerical characteristics, might also be most important, as well to books as to scholars, who, as often as they perceive defects in books, should attend to them instantly, for nothing enlarges more quickly than a rent, as a fracture neglected at the time will afterwards be repaired with increased trouble."—Philobiblion, p. 101.
[63] Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be found, as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the heart of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it: "Thomas Leirmant, vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica quædam, et ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est. Vixit anno 1286."
[64] It will be agreeable news to the severely disposed, to know that a wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to hide their deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work having been undertaken, as police reports say, by "a thoroughly efficient officer of indomitable activity."
[65] Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque insignium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley, Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn dicto. mdcxcix.
[66] Of course the Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each other, and bibliographical notices of Bibliographies abound. Le Brun sets aside a department for them, but the most handy reference to them that has come my way is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique, ou Nouveau Manuel du Libraire, by M. P*****—identified by his brother detectives as M. Psaume.
[67] Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 28.
[68] As of other influential documents, there have been various versions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such disputes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of completeness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr Hazlewood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its original shape as the printer can give it:—
The Order of y^e Tostes.
The Immortal Memory of
John Duke of Roxburghe.
Christopher Valdarfer, Printer of the Decameron of
1471.
Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of
the Art of Printing.
William Caxton, the Father of the British Press.
Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press.
Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious
Successors of William Caxton.
The Aldine Family, at Venice.
The Giunta Family, at Florence.
The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris.
The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
The Cause of Bibliomania all over the World.
It will be seen that this accomplished black-letterer must have been under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers substituted for it the letter y as most nearly resembling it in shape, hence the "ye" which occurs sometimes in old books, but much more frequently in modern imitations of them.