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From mouldering Abbey's dark Scriptorium brought, See vellum tomes by Monkish labour wrought; Nor yet the comma born, Papyri see, And uncial letters wizard grammary; View my fifteeners in their rugged line; What ink! what linen! only known long syne— Entering where Aldus might have fixed his throne, Or Harry Stephens covetted his own. H.D. |
They were part and parcel of the Owner himself. His mind was traceable in many a fly leaf. His latinity was perspicuity and accuracy itself. He was, in all respects, a ripe and a good scholar; and the late Provost of Eton (The Rev. Dr. Goodall) told me, on an occasion which has been, perhaps, too emphasised in certain bibliographical pages,[476] that "England could not then produce a better Greek metrical scholar than his friend Henry Drury." What was remarkable, he never assumed an ex Cathedrâ position in society. In bringing forward or pressing quotations, whatever fell from him, came easily and naturally, but rarely. Accustomed for many years to be the favourite of the Harrovians, he never affected the airs of the pedagogue. How he could criticise, sufficiently appears in an article on the Musæ Edinburgenses in an early number of the Quarterly Review.
[476] Bibliographical Decameron. Dr. Goodall always appeared to me to affect irascibility upon the subject alluded to. The contents might have been published at Charing Cross.
Yet this may be considered secondary matter; and I hasten to record the qualities of his heart and disposition. They were truly Christian-like; inasmuch as a fond and large spirit of benevolence was always beating in his bosom, and mantling over a countenance of singular friendliness of expression. He had the power of saying sharp and caustic things, but he used his "giant-strength" with the gentleness of a child. His letters, of which many hundreds have fallen to my lot, are a perfect reflex of his joyous and elastic mind. There was not a pupil under his care who looked forward to a holiday with more unqualified delight than he; and when we strayed together beneath, or upon the heights of, the Dover Cliffs (where I last saw him, in the summer of 1840) he would expatiate, with equal warmth and felicity, upon the Abbey of St. Rhadagund, and the Keep of Dover Castle. Our visit to Barfreston Church, in the neighbourhood, can never be effaced from my mind. His mental enthusiasm and bodily activity could not have been exceeded by that of the Captain of Harrow School. He took up my meditated "History of the Dover" as if it were his own work; and his success, in cause of subscription, in most instances, was complete.
And now, after an intimacy (minutely recorded in my Reminiscences) of thirty-three years, it has pleased God to deprive me of his genial and heart-stirring society. His last moments were of those of a Christian—"rooted and built up" in that belief, which alone sustains us in the struggle of parting from those whom we cherish as the most idolised objects upon earth! It was towards sun-set that I first paused upon his tomb, in the church-yard, near the summit of Harrow Hill. For a few moments I was breathless—but not from the steepness of the ascent. The inscription, I would submit, is too much in the "minor key." It was the production of his eldest son, who preferred to err from under-rating, rather than over-rating, the good qualities of his parent. For myself—
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"As those we love decay, we die in part; String after string is severed from the heart!" &c. &c. &c. Thomson. |
On the death of Mr. Drury, his small library, the remains of his former one, was sold by auction; and those classical books, interleaved, and enriched with his manuscript notes, brought large prices. One manuscript, of especial celebrity—Childe Harold—given him by the Author, his pupil, Lord Byron—became the property of its publisher, Mr. Murray; who purchased it upon terms at once marking his high sense of the talents of the author, and his respect for the family where it had been placed. It may be doubtful whether the autograph of any poem, since Paradise Lost, would have obtained a larger sum—had it been submitted to public sale.
Rinaldo.—Rinaldo was the late Mr. Edwards; of the sale of whose library an extended account will be found in my Decameron. It remains, briefly, but emphatically, to remark, that of all the book heroes, whose valorous achievements are here recorded, two only have survived the lapse of thirty years. Let half of another similar course of time roll on, and where will the Survivors be? If not at rest in their graves, they will in all probability be "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything:"—at least, very far beyond "the lean and slippered pantaloon." Leaving my surviving friends to fight their own battles, I think I may here venture to say, in quiet simplicity and singleness of heart, that books, book-sales, and book-men, will then—if I am spared—pass before me as the faint reflex of "the light of other days!" ... when literary enterprise and literary fame found a proportionate reward; and when the sickly sentimentality of the novelist had not usurped the post of the instructive philologist. But enough of Rosicrusis.
