I might here add, to the foregoing symptoms, a passion to possess works which have been suppressed, condemned, or burnt; but all these things rank under the head of causes of the rarity of books; and as an entire volume might be written upon this symptom alone, I can here only allude to to the subject; hoping some diligent bibliographer will one day do for us what foreigners have done for other nations.
Thus have I, rather slightly, discussed the Symptoms of the Disease, called The Bibliomania. During this discussion, I see our friend has been busy, as he was yesterday evening, in making sketches of notes; and if you examine the finished pictures of which such outlines may be made productive, you will probably have a better notion of the accuracy of my classification of these symptoms.
It is much to be wished, whatever may be the whims of desperate book-collectors, that, in some of those volumes which are constantly circulating in the bibliomaniacal market, we had a more clear and satisfactory account of the rise and progress of arts and sciences. However strong may be my attachment to the profession of the cloth, I could readily exchange a great number of old volumes of polemical and hortatory divinity for interesting disquisitions upon the manners, customs, and general history of the times. Over what a dark and troublesome ocean must we sail, before we get even a glimpse at the progressive improvement of our ancestors in civilised life! Oh, that some judicious and faithful reporter had lived three hundred and odd years ago!—we might then have had a more satisfactory account of the origin of printing with metal types.
Lis. Pray give us your sentiments upon this latter subject. We have almost the whole day before us:—the sun has hardly begun to decline from his highest point.
Lysand. A very pretty and smooth subject to discuss, truly! The longest day and the most effectually-renovated powers of body and mind, are hardly sufficient to come to any satisfactory conclusion, upon the subject. How can I, therefore, after the fatigues of the whole of yesterday, and with barely seven hours of daylight yet to follow, pretend to enter upon it? No: I will here only barely mention Trithemius[458]—who might have been numbered among the patriarchal bibliographers we noticed when discoursing in our friend's Cabinet—as an author from whom considerable assistance has been received respecting early typographical researches. Indeed, Trithemius merits a more marked distinction in the annals of Literature than many are supposed to grant him: at any rate, I wish his labours were better known to our own countrymen.
[458] We are indebted to the Abbé Trithemius, who was a diligent chronicler and indefatigable visitor of old Libraries, for a good deal of curious and interesting intelligence; and however Scioppius (De Orig. Domûs Austriac.), Brower (Vit. Fortunat. Pictav., p. 18.), and Possevinus (Apparant sacr. p. 945), may carp at his simplicity and want of judgment, yet, as Baillet (from whom I have borrowed the foregoing authorities) has justly remarked—"since the time of Trithemius there have been many libraries, particularly in Germany, which have been pillaged or burnt in the destruction of monasteries; so that the books which he describes as having seen in many places, purposely visited by him for inspection, may have been destroyed in the conflagration of religious houses." Jugemens des Savans; vol. ii., pt. i., p. 71, edit. 12mo. It is from Trithemius, after all, that we have the only direct evidence concerning the origin of printing with metal types: and the bibliographical world is much indebted to Chevelier (L'Origine de l'Imprimerie de Paris, 1691, 4to., pp. 3-6.) for having been the first to adduce the positive evidence of this writer; who tells us, in his valuable Chronicon Hirsaugiens (1690, 2 vols. folio), that he received his testimony from the mouth of Fust's son-in-law—"ex ore Petri Opilionis audivi,"—that Guttenburg was the author of the invention. The historical works of Trithemius were collected and published in 1601, in folio, two parts, and his other works are minutely detailed in the 9th volume of the Dictionnarie Historique, published at Caen, in 1789. Of these, one of the most curious is his Polygraphia: being first printed at Paris, in 1518, in a beautiful folio volume; and presenting us, in the frontispiece, with a portrait of the abbé; which is probably the first, if not the only legitimate, print of him extant. Whether it be copied from a figure on his tomb—as it has a good deal of the monumental character—I have no means of ascertaining. For the gratification of all tasteful bibliomaniacs, an admirable facsimile is here annexed. The Polygraphia of Trithemius was translated into French, and published in 1601, folio. His work De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, Colon, 1546, 4to., with two appendices, contains much valuable matter. The author died in his 55th year, A.D. 1516: according to the inscription upon his tomb in the monastery of the Benedictines at Wirtzburg. His life has been written by Busæus, a Jesuit. See La Monnoye's note in the Jugemens des Savans; ibid.
Lis. I will set his works down among my literary desiderata. But proceed.
Lysand. With what? Am I to talk for ever?
Belin. While you discourse so much to the purpose, you may surely not object to a continuance of this conversation. I wish only to be informed whether bibliomaniacs are indisputably known by the prevalence of all, or of any, of the symptoms which you have just described.