Lis. What your newspaper may hold forth I will not pretend to enter into.
Lysand. Nay, here is the paragraph; which I cut out from "The Observer," and will now read it to you. "A German Magazine recently announced the death of a schoolmaster in Suabia, who, for 51 years, had superintended a large institution with old fashioned severity. From an average, inferred by means of recorded observations, one of the ushers had calculated that, in the course of his exertions, he had given 911,500 canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, and 22,700 tasks by heart. It was further calculated that he had made 700 boys stand on peas, 6000 kneel on a sharp edge of wood, 5000 wear the fool's cap, and 1,700 hold the rod. How vast (exclaims the journalist) the quantity of human misery inflicted by a single perverse educator!" Now, my friends, what have you to say against the English system of education?
Phil. This is only defending bad by worse.
Lis. Where are we digressing? What are become of our bibliomaniacal heroes?
Lysand. You do right to call me to order. Let us turn from the birch, to the book, history.
Contemporaneous with Peacham, lived that very curious collector of ancient popular little pieces, as well as lover of "sacred secret soul soliloquies," the renowned melancholy composer, ycleped Robert Burton;[345] who, I do not scruple to number among the most marked bibliomaniacs of the age; notwithstanding his saucy railing against Frankfort book-fairs. We have abundance of testimony (exclusive of the fruits of his researches, which appear by his innumerable marginal references to authors of all ages and characters) that this original, amusing, and now popular, author was an arrant book-hunter; or, as old Anthony hath it, "a devourer of authors." Rouse, the Librarian of Bodleian, is said to have liberally assisted Burton in furnishing him with choice books for the prosecution of his extraordinary work.
[345] I suppose Lysander to allude to a memorandum of Hearne, in his Benedictus Abbas, p. iv., respecting Robert Burton being a collector of "ancient popular little pieces." From this authority we find that he gave "a great variety" of these pieces, with a multitude of books, of the best kind, to the "Bodleian Library."—One of these was that "opus incomparabile," the "History of Tom Thumb," and the other, the "Pleasant and Merry History of the Mylner of Abingdon." The expression "sacred secret soul soliloquies" belongs to Braithwait: and is thus beautifully interwoven in the following harmonious couplets:
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——No minute but affords some tears. No walks but private solitary groves Shut from frequent, his contemplation loves; No treatise, nor discourse, so sweetly please As sacred-secret soule soliloquies. Arcadian Princesse, lib. 4, p. 162. |
And see, gentle reader, how the charms of solitude—of "walking alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook-side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject" are depicted by the truly original pencil of this said Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. i., p. 126, edit. 1804. But our theme is Bibliomania. Take, therefore, concerning the same author, the following: and then hesitate, if thou canst, about his being infected with the book-disease. "What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age (I say) have our Frank-furt marts, our domestic marts, brought out! Twice a year, 'Proferunt se nova ingenia et ostentant;' we stretch our wits out! and set them to sale: 'Magno conatu nihil agimus,' &c. 'Quis tam avidus librorum helluo,' who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them; our eyes ake with reading, our fingers with turning," &c. This is painting ad vivum—after the life. We see and feel every thing described. Truly, none but a thorough master in bibliomaniacal mysteries could have thus thought and written! See "Democritus to the Reader," p. 10; perhaps the most highly finished piece of dissection in the whole anatomical work.
About this period lived Lord Lumley; a nobleman of no mean reputation as a bibliomaniac. But what shall we say to Lord Shaftesbury's eccentric neighbour, Henry Hastings? who, in spite of his hawks, hounds, kittens, and oysters,[346] could not for forbear to indulge his book propensities though in a moderate degree! Let us fancy we see him, in his eightieth year, just alighted from the toils of the chase, and listening, after dinner, with his "single glass" of ale by his side, to some old woman with "spectacle on nose" who reads to him a choice passage out of John Fox's Book of Martyrs! A rare old boy was this Hastings. But I wander—and may forget another worthy, and yet more ardent, bibliomaniac, called John Clungeon, who left a press, and some books carefully deposited in a stout chest, to the parish church at Southampton. We have also evidence of this man's having erected a press within the same; but human villany has robbed us of every relic of his books and printing furniture.[347] From Southampton, you must excuse me if I take a leap to London; in order to introduce you into the wine cellars of one John Ward; where, I suppose, a few choice copies of favourite authors were sometimes kept in a secret recess by the side of the oldest bottle of hock. We are indebted to Hearne for a brief, but not uninteresting, notice of this vinous book collector.[348]