Loren. Treason—downright treason! Lisardo shall draw up a bill of indictment against you, and Lysander shall be your judge.

Belin. My case would then be desperate; and execution must necessarily follow.

Lis. I shall be better able to form an opinion of the expediency of such a measure after Lysander has given us his definition of this eighth and last symptom. Proceed, my friend.

Lysand. Of all symptoms of the Bibliomania, this eighth symptom is at present the most powerful and prevailing. Whether it was imported into this country, from Holland, by the subtlety of Schelhorn[454] (a knowing writer upon rare and curious books) may be a point worthy of consideration. But whatever be its origin, certain is that books printed in the black-letter, are now coveted with an eagerness unknown to our collectors in the last century. If the spirits of West, Ratcliffe, Farmer, and Brand, have as yet held any intercourse with each other, in that place "from whose bourne no traveller returns," which must be the surprise of the three former, on being told, by the latter, of the prices given for some of the books at the sale of his library!

[454] His words are as follows: "Ipsa typorum ruditas, ipsa illa atra crassaque literarum facies belle tangit sensus," &c. Was ever the black-letter more eloquently described: see his Amœntates Literariæ, vol. i., p. 5. But for the last time, let us listen to the concluding symptomatic stanza of an "aspirant;"

EIGHTH MAXIM.

Who dreams the Type should please us all,
That's not too thin, and not too tall,
Nor much awry, nor over small,
And, if but Roman, asks no better—
May die in darkness:—I, for one,
Disdain to tell the barb'rous Hun
That Persians but adore the sun
Till taught to know our God—Black-Letter.
Bibliosophia: p. vii.

However cruel may be the notes of one poet, it seems pretty clear that the glorious subject, or bibliomaniacal symptom, of which we are treating, excited numbers of a softer character in the muse of Dr. Ferriar: for thus sings he—inspired by the possession of black-letter tomes:

In red morocco drest, he loves to boast
The bloody murder, or the yelling ghost;
Or dismal ballads, sung to crowds of old,
Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.
v. 62-65.
Ev'n I, debarr'd of ease and studious hours,
Confess, mid' anxious toil, its lurking pow'rs.
How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold
The small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold!
The Bibliomania, l. 135-8.