Alman. Is there any other passion, or fancy, in the book-way, from which we may judge of Bibliomaniacism?
Lysand. Let me consider. Yes; there is one other characteristic of the book-madman that may as well be noticed. It is an ardent desire to collect all the editions of a work which have been published. Not only the first—whether uncut, upon large paper, in the black-letter, unique, tall, or illustrated—but all the editions.[459]
[459] I frankly confess that I was, myself, once desperately afflicted with this eleventh symptom of The Bibliomania; having collected not fewer than seventy-five editions of the Greek Testament—but time has cooled my ardour, and mended my judgment. I have discarded seventy, and retain only five: which are R. Steevens's of 1550, The Elzevir of 1624, Mill's of 1707, Westein's of 1751, and Griesbach's of 1810—as beautifully and accurately reprinted at Oxford.
Belin. Strange—but true, I warrant!
Lysand. Most true; but, in my humble opinion, most ridiculous; for what can a sensible man desire beyond the earliest and best editions of a work?
Be it also noticed that these works are sometimes very capricious and extroardinary. Thus, Baptista is wretched unless he possess every edition of our early grammarians, Holt, Stanbridge, and Whittinton: a reimpression, or a new edition, is a matter of almost equal indifference: for his slumbers are broken and oppressive unless all the dear Wynkyns and Pynsons are found within his closet!—Up starts Florizel, and blows his bugle, at the annunciation of any work, new or old, upon the diversions of Hawking, Hunting, or Fishing![460] Carry him through Camillo's cabinet of Dutch pictures, and you will see how instinctively, as it were, his eyes are fixed upon a sporting piece by Wouvermans. The hooded hawk, in his estimation, hath more charms than Guido's Madonna:—how he envies every rider upon his white horse!—how he burns to bestride the foremost steed, and to mingle in the fair throng, who turn their blue eyes to the scarcely bluer expanse of heaven! Here he recognises Gervase Markham, spurring his courser; and there he fancies himself lifting Dame Juliana from her horse! Happy deception! dear fiction! says Florizel—while he throws his eyes in an opposite direction, and views every printed book upon the subject, from Barnes to Thornton.
[460] Some superficial notes, accompanied by an interesting wood-cut of a man carrying hawks for sale, in my edition of Robinson's translation of More's Utopia, kindled, in the breast of Mr. Joseph Haslewood, a prodigious ardour to pursue the subjects above-mentioned to their farthest possible limits. Not Eolus himself excited greater commotion in the Mediterranean waves than did my bibliomaniacal friend in agitating the black-letter ocean—'a sedibus imis'—for the discovering of every volume which had been published upon these delectable pursuits. Accordingly there appeared in due time—'[post] magni procedere menses'—some very ingenious and elaborate disquisitions upon Hunting and Hawking and Fishing, in the ninth and tenth volumes of The Censura Literaria; which, with such additions as his enlarged experience has subsequently obtained, might be thought an interesting work if reprinted in a duodecimo volume. But Mr. Haslewood's mind, as was to be expected, could not rest satisfied with what he considered as mere nuclei productions: accordingly, it became clothed with larger wings, and meditated a bolder flight; and after soaring in a hawk-like manner, to mark the object of its prey, it pounced upon the book of Hawking, Hunting, Fishing, &c., which had been reprinted by W. de Worde, from the original edition published in the abbey of St. Albans. Prefixed to the republication of this curious volume, the reader will discover a great deal of laborious and successful research connected with the book and its author. And yet I question whether, in the midst of all the wood-cuts with which it abounds, there be found any thing more suitable to the 'high and mounting spirit' (see Braithwait's amusing discourse upon Hawking, in his English Gentleman, p. 200-1.) of the editor's taste, than the ensuing representation of a pilgrim Hawker?!—taken from one of the frontispieces of L'Acadamia Peregrina del Doni; 1552, 4to., fol. 73.
We will conclude this Hawking note with the following excerpt from one of the earliest editions of the abridgment of our statutes:—'nul home pringe les oves dascu[n] faucon, goshawke, lan, ou swan hors de le nyst sur peyn de inprison p[our] vn an et vn iour et de faire fyn all volunte le roy et que nul home puis le fest de paque p[ro]chyn auenpart ascun hawke de le brode dengl' appell vne nyesse, goshawke, lan, ou laneret sur sa mayn, sur peyn de forfaiture son hawke, et que null enchasse ascun hawke hors de c[ou]uerte sur peyne de forfaiture x li. lun moyte al roy et lauter a celuy que voet sur.' Anno xi. H. vij. ca. xvij. Abbreviamentum Statutorum; printed by Pynson, 1499, 8vo., fol. lxxvij.
There are other tastes of an equally strange, but more sombre, character. Dion will possess every work which has any connexion, intimate or remote, with Latimer and Swedenborg;[461] while Antigonus is resolved upon securing every lucubration of Withers or Warburton; whether grave or gay, lively or severe.