His experience, aided by a heaven-born genius tending in that direction, rendered him the most merciless detector of sophisticated books. Nothing, it might be supposed on first thought, can be a simpler or more easily recognised thing than a book genuine as printed. But in the old-book trade there are opportunities for the exercise of ingenuity inferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's and the horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously interesting. Sometimes entire facsimiles are made of eminent volumes. More commonly, however, the problem is to complete an imperfect copy. This will be most satisfactorily accomplished, of course, if another copy can be procured imperfect also, but not in the same parts. Great ingenuity is sometimes shown in completing a highly esteemed edition with fragments from one lightly esteemed. Sometimes a colophon or a decorated capital has to be imitated, and bold operators will reprint a page or two in facsimile; these operations, of course, involve the inlaying of paper, judiciously staining it, and other mysteries. Paris is the great centre of this kind of work, but it has been pretty extensively pursued in Britain; and the manufacture of first folio Shakespeares has been nearly as staple a trade as the getting up of genuine portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. It will establish a broad distinction to note the fact, that whereas our friend the Archdeacon would collect several imperfect copies of the same book, in the hope of finding materials for one perfect one among them, Inchrule would remorselessly spurn from him the most voluptuously got-up specimen (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it tainted by the very faintest suspicion of "restoration."
Among the elements which constitute the value of a book—rarity of course being essential—one might say he counted the binding highest. He was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical department of book-making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, devoted to bindings. There are binders who have immortalised themselves—as Staggemier, Walther, Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian, Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayday, and Thomson. Their names may sometimes be found on their work, not with any particularities, as if they required to make themselves known, but with the simple brevity of illustrious men. Thus you take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence, on the title-page of which the author sets forth his full name and profession, with the distinctive initials of certain learned societies to which it is his pride to belong; but the simple and dignified enunciation, deeply stamped in his own golden letters, "Bound by Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist deigns to tell.
And let us, after all, acknowledge that there are few men who are entirely above the influence of binding. No one likes sheep's clothing for his literature, even if he should not aspire to russia or morocco. Adam Smith, one of the least showy of men, confessed himself to be a beau in his books. Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so to some extent, though poets are apt to be ragamuffins. It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured him of the proprieties. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, "feckless" character with impatient disgust. When the first of The Seasons—Winter it was, I believe—had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked what the book was about, but, turning it round and round with his fingers in gratified admiration, exclaimed—"Come, is that really our Jamie's doin' now?—weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the like!"
The feeling by which this worthy man was influenced was a mere sensible practical respect for good workmanship. The aspirations of the collectors, however, in this matter, go out of the boundaries of the sphere of the utilitarian into that of the æsthetic. Their priests and prophets, by the way, do not seem to be aware how far back this veneration for the coverings of books may be traced, or to know how strongly their votaries have been influenced in the direction of their taste by the traditions of the middle ages. The binding of a book was, of old, a shrine on which the finest workmanship in bullion and the costliest gems were lavished. The psalter or the breviary of some early saint, a portion of the Scriptures, or some other volume held sacred, would be thus enshrined. It has happened sometimes that tattered fragments of them have been preserved as effective relics within outer shells or shrines; and in some instances, long after the books themselves have disappeared, specimens of these old bindings have remained to us beautiful in their decay;—but we are getting far beyond the Inchrule.
Your affluent omnivorous collector, who has more of that kind of business on hand than he can perform for himself, naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to—the price of their merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of the unfortunates who employ them. Not that they are destitute of all sympathy with the malady which they feed. The caterer generally gets infected in a superficial cutaneous sort of way. He has often a collection himself, which he eyes complacently of an evening as he smokes his pipe over his brandy-and-water, but to which he is not so distractedly devoted but that a pecuniary consideration will tempt him to dismember it. It generally consists, indeed, of blunders or false speculations—books which have been obtained in a mistaken reliance on their suiting the craving of some wealthy collector. Caterers unable to comprehend the subtle influences at work in the mind of the book-hunter, often make miscalculations in this way. Fitzpatrick Smart punished them so terribly, that they at last abandoned him in despair to his own devices.
Several men of this class were under the authority of the Inchrule, and their communings were instructive. "Thorpe's catalogue just arrived, sir—several highly important announcements," says a portly person with a fat volume under his arm, hustling forward with an air of assured consequence. There is now to be a deep and solemn consultation, as when two ambassadors are going over a heavy protocol from a third. It happened to me to see one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless errand of inspection to a reputed collection; he was hot and indignant "A collection," he sputtered forth—"that a collection!—mere rubbish, sir—irredeemable trash. What do you think, sir?—a set of the common quarto edition of the Delphini classics, copies of Newton's works and Bacon's works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth—nothing better, I declare to you: and to call that a collection!" Whereas, had it contained The Pardoner and the Frere, Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, A Knacke to knowe a Knave, Banke's Bay Horse in a Trance, or the works of those eminent dramatists, Nabbes, May, Glapthorne, or Chettle, then would the collection have been worthy of distinguished notice. On another occasion, the conversation turning on a name of some repute, the remark is ventured, that he is "said to know something about books," which brings forth the fatal answer—"He know about books! Nothing—nothing at all, I assure you; unless, perhaps, about their insides."
The next slide of the lantern is to represent a quite peculiar and abnormal case. It introduces a strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and puerile figure, wherein, however, resided one of the most potent and original spirits that ever frequented a tenement of clay. He shall be called, on account of associations that may or may not be found out, Thomas Papaverius. But how to make palpable to the ordinary human being one so signally divested of all the material and common characteristics of his race, yet so nobly endowed with its rarer and loftier attributes, almost paralyses the pen at the very beginning.
In what mood and shape shall he be brought forward? Shall it be as first we met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical opinions regarding the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on when a commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival—he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? a street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-coloured belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list-shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers—some one suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in the world—it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest at hand. Had chance thrown to him a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his entry.
The first impression that a boy has appeared vanishes instantly. Though in one of the sweetest and most genial of his essays he shows how every man retains so much in him of the child he originally was—and he himself retained a great deal of that primitive simplicity—it was buried within the depths of his heart—not visible externally. On the contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous reference to an event as being a century old, by saying that he recollected its occurrence, one felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in his age, so old did he appear, with his arched brow loaded with thought, and the countless little wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thickly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. These lips are speedily opened by some casual remark, and presently the flood of talk passes forth from them, free, clear, and continuous—never rising into declamation—never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as exquisitely jointed together as if they were destined to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. Still the hours stride over each other, and still flows on the stream of gentle rhetoric, as if it were labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum. It is now far in to the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilisation, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the special, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours; for, was it not the other night that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but the old woman within either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might indeed nourish kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to which it was appropriated, but was not a comfortable place of repose for adult man.