[196] Vita Jacobi Le Long., p. xx., Biblioth. Sacra, edit. 1778.
[197] See the note p. 11, in the first edition of the Bibliomania.
Lis. I am quite impatient to see Atticus in this glorious group; of whom fame makes such loud report—
"Yonder see he comes, Lisardo! 'Like arrow from the hunter's bow,' he darts into the hottest of the fight, and beats down all opposition. In vain Boscardo advances with his heavy artillery, sending forth occasionally a forty-eight pounder; in vain he shifts his mode of attack—now with dagger, and now with broadsword, now in plated, and now in quilted armour: nought avails him. In every shape and at every onset he is discomfited. Such a champion as Atticus has perhaps never before appeared within the arena of book-gladiators:
'Blest with talents, wealth, and taste;'[198]
and gifted with no common powers of general scholarship, he can easily master a knotty passage in Eschylus or Aristotle; and quote Juvenal and Horace as readily as the junior lads at Eton quote their 'As in præsenti:' moreover, he can enter, with equal ardour, into a minute discussion about the romance literature of the middle ages, and the dry though useful philology of the German school during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the pursuit after rare, curious, and valuable books, nothing daunts or depresses him. With a mental and bodily constitution such as few possess, and with a perpetual succession of new objects rising up before him, he seems hardly ever conscious of the vicissitudes of the seasons, and equally indifferent to petty changes in politics. The cutting blasts of Siberia, or the fainting heat of a Maltese sirocco, would not make him halt, or divert his course, in the pursuit of a favourite volume, whether in the Greek, Latin, Spanish, or Italian language. But as all human efforts, however powerful, if carried on without intermission, must have a period of cessation; and as the most active body cannot be at 'Thebes and at Athens' at the same moment; so it follows that Atticus cannot be at every auction and carry away every prize. His rivals narrowly watch, and his enemies closely way-lay, him; and his victories are rarely bloodless in consequence. If, like Darwin's whale, which swallows 'millions at a gulp,' Atticus should, at one auction, purchase from two to seven hundred volumes, he must retire, like the 'Boa Constrictor,' for digestion: and accordingly he does, for a short season, withdraw himself from 'the busy hum' of sale rooms, to collate, methodize, and class his newly acquired treasures—to repair what is defective, and to beautify what is deformed. Thus rendering them 'companions meet' for their brethren in the rural shades of H—— Hall; where, in gay succession, stands many a row, heavily laden with 'rich and rare' productions. In this rural retreat, or academic bower, Atticus spends a due portion of the autumnal season of the year; now that the busy scenes of book-auctions in the metropolis have changed their character—and dreary silence, and stagnant dirt, have succeeded to noise and flying particles of learned dust.
[198] Dr. Ferriar's Bibliomania, v. 12.
"Here, in his ancestral abode, Atticus can happily exchange the microscopic investigation of books for the charms and manly exercises of a rural life; eclipsing, in this particular, the celebrity of Cæsar Antoninus; who had not universality of talent sufficient to unite the love of hawking and hunting with the passion for book-collecting.[199] The sky is no sooner dappled o'er with the first morning sun-beams, than up starts our distinguished bibliomaniac, either to shoot or to hunt; either to realize all the fine things which Pope has written about 'lifting the tube, and levelling the eye;'[200] or to join the jolly troop while they chant the hunting song of his poetical friend.[201] Meanwhile, his house is not wanting in needful garniture to render a country residence most congenial. His cellars below vie with his library above. Besides 'the brown October'—'drawn from his dark retreat of thirty years'—and the potent comforts of every species of 'barley broth'—there are the ruddier and more sparkling juices of the grape—'fresh of colour, and of look lovely, smiling to the eyz of many'—as Master Laneham hath it in his celebrated letter.[202] I shall leave you to finish the picture, which such a sketch may suggest, by referring you to your favourite, Thomson."[203]
[199] This anecdote is given on the authority of Kesner's Pandects, fol. 29: rect. 'Ἁλλοι μεν ἵππων (says the grave Antoninus) ᾽άλλοι δε ὁρνὲων, ἅλλοι θηρὶων ἐβωσιν: ἐμοι δέ βιβλίων κτησεως ἐκ παιδοιρίου δεινος εντετηκε πόθος.'
[200] See Pope's Windsor Forest, ver. 110 to 134.