P. 234. Longfellow.—Bayard Taylor, born 1825, died 1878. The allusion is to the famous monument of the Emperor Maximilian in the Franciscan church, or Hofkirche, at Innsbruck, where a kneeling figure of Maximilian is surrounded by statues of his contemporaries and ancestors. The emperor is buried actually at Wiener-Neustadt. Taylor published Prince Deukalion: a lyrical drama, in 1878.
P. 236. Browning.—Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis 'is apparently', Mrs. Orr says, without adding to our store of knowledge, 'the name of an old pedant who has written a tiresome book.'
P. 239. de Bury.—J. H. Burton, in The Book-Hunter, tells the following story:—It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured him of the proprieties. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, 'feckless' character with impatient disgust. When the first of The Seasons—Winter it was, I believe—had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked what the book was about, but turning it round and round with his fingers in gratified admiration, exclaimed: 'Come, is that really our Jamie's doin' now? Weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the like!'
P. 246. H. Coleridge.—See Roscoe's poem to his books on parting with them, p. 9.
P. 247. Dibdin.—'There are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces set to sale; who shall prohibit them? shall twenty licensers?'—Milton. Areopagitica.
P. 249. Burns.—Mr. Andrew Lang states that Burns saw a splendidly bound but sadly neglected copy of Shakespeare in the library of a nobleman in Edinburgh, and he wrote these lines on the ample margin of one of its pages, where they were found long after the poet's death.
P. 250. Parnell.—'It was supposed that a binding of Russian leather secured books against insects, but the contrary was recently demonstrated at Paris by two volumes pierced in every direction. The first bookbinder in Paris, Bozerian, told me he knew of no remedy except to steep the blank leaves in muriatic acid.'—Pinkerton's Recollections of Paris. Parnell's poem is translated from Theodore Beza.
'Smith was very comical about a remedy of Lady Holland's for the bookworms in the library at Holland House, having the books washed with some mercurial preparation. He said it was Sir Humphry Davy's opinion that the air would become charged with the mercury, and that the whole family would be salivated, adding, "I shall see Allen some day, with his tongue hanging out, speechless, and shall take the opportunity to stick a few principles into him."'—Bon-Mots of Sydney Smith, edited by W. Jerrold.
John Allen, M.D., was the librarian, described by Byron as 'the best informed and one of the ablest men I know—a perfect Magliabechi; a devourer, a heluo of books'. His scepticism earned him the title of 'Lady Holland's atheist'.
P. 252. King.—This is from J. Nichols's Collection of Poems, vol. iii, Bibliotheca, and is ascribed 'upon conjecture only' to Dr. W. King. See p. 311.