In this instance the manager was even more considerate towards the feelings of an author than that other dramatic demigod who, it is said, was regularly in receipt of so many new pieces, good, bad, and indifferent, that he devised an ingenious method of getting rid of them. During that particular season, the exigencies of the play required a roll of papers—presumably a will—to be nightly burned in a candle in full sight of the audience; and in this way he managed to make room for the numerous manuscripts which young authors only too eagerly poured in upon him, quite unconscious of their certain fate!
Indeed, volumes might be written upon the difficulties sometimes encountered in climbing the literary ladder, and whilst the more persevering have ultimately achieved the goal of their ambition, others have been fated to see their writings consigned to oblivion, and have themselves perhaps sunk into an early grave, consequent upon the disappointments and privations endured. When the poet Chatterton was found lying dead in his garret in Brook Street, his manuscripts had been strewn upon the floor, torn into a thousand pieces. Thus much good literature has often been lost to posterity. A number of instances, too, might be cited wherein persons have risen from their deathbed to destroy their manuscripts, and which task has either proved so distressing to their sensibilities, or fatiguing to their physical powers, that they immediately afterwards expired. It is placed upon record how Colardeau, that elegant versifier of Pope’s Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, recollected at the approach of his death that he had not destroyed what was written of a translation of Tasso; and unwilling to intrust this delicate office to his friends, he raised himself from his bed, and dragging his feeble frame to the place where the manuscript was deposited, with a last effort he consumed it in the flames. In another example, an author of celebrity directed his papers to be brought to his bed, and there, the attendant holding a light, he burned them, smiling as the greedy flames devoured what had been his work for years.
Few authors willingly destroy any manuscript that has cost them a long period of toil and research, though history records numerous examples where the loss of certain manuscripts has almost proved an irremediable misfortune to their author. The story of Mr Carlyle lending the manuscript of the first volume of his French Revolution to his friend John Stuart Mill, and its accidental destruction by fire, is well known. A similar disaster once happened to M. Firmin Abauzit, a philosopher who had applied himself to every branch of human learning, and to whom the great Newton had remarked, among other compliments: ‘You are worthy to distinguish between Leibnitz and me.’ It happened on one occasion that he had engaged a fresh female servant, rustic, simple, and thoughtless, and being left alone in his study for a while, she declared to herself that she would ‘set his things to rights;’ with which words she deliberately cleared the table, and swept the whole of his papers into the fire, thus destroying calculations which had been the work of upwards of forty years. Without one word, however, the philosopher calmly recommenced his task, with more pain than can readily be imagined. Most readers also will remember the similar misadventure which occurred to Sir Isaac Newton.
Of manuscripts which have perished through the ignorance or malignancy of the illiterate, there are numerous instances. The original ‘Magna Charta,’ with all its appendages of seals and signatures, was one day discovered, by Sir Robert Cotton, in the hands of his tailor, who with his shears was already in the act of cutting up into measures that priceless document, which had been so long given up as for ever lost. He bought the curiosity for a trifle; and caused it to be preserved, where it is still to be seen, in the Cottonian Library, with the marks of dilapidation plainly apparent. The immortal works of Agobart were found by Papirius Masson in the hands of a bookbinder at Lyons, the mechanic having long been in the habit of using the manuscript sheets for the purpose of lining the covers of his books. Similarly, a stray page of the second decade of Livy was found by a man of letters concealed under the parchment of his battledore, as he was amusing himself at that pastime in the country. He at once hastened to the maker of the battledore; but alas! it was too late—the man had used the last sheet of the manuscript of Livy about a week before!
A treatise printed among the works of Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, fell into the possession of that worthy, it is said, in a rather singular manner. Having sent out for a fish for his table, his domestic brought him one rolled up in a piece of written paper, which excited the bishop’s curiosity so much, that he forthwith rushed out to the market, just in time to discover and rescue the original manuscript from which the leaf had been torn. This work he afterwards published under the title of De Officio Episcopi.
The manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci suffered greatly from the wilful ignorance of his relatives. Once, when a curious collector of antiquities chanced to discover a portion of his writings by the merest accident, he eagerly carried them to one of the descendants of the great painter; but the man coldly observed that ‘he had a great deal more in his garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats had not destroyed them.’
Cardinal Granville was in the habit of preserving his letters, and at his death, he left behind him a prodigious number, written in all languages, and duly noted, underlined, and collated by his own hand. These relics were left in several immense chests, to the mercy of time and the rats; and subsequently, five or six of the chestsful were sold to the grocers as waste paper. It was then that an examination of the treasure was made; and as the result of the united labours of several literary men, enough of the papers to fill eight thick folios were rescued, and afterwards published.
Fire and shipwreck have at various periods caused considerable havoc among manuscripts. Many of our oldest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were consumed some years ago by a fire in the Cottonian Library; and those which remain present a baked and shrivelled appearance, rendering them almost unrecognisable. Ben Jonson on one occasion sustained the loss of the labours of twenty-one years within one short hour, by fire; and Meninsky’s famous Persian Dictionary met with a like fate from the effects of a bomb falling upon the roof of his house during the siege of Vienna by the Turks.
National libraries have occasionally been lost at sea. In the beginning of last century, a wealthy burgomaster of Middelburg, in the Netherlands, named Hudde, actuated solely by literary curiosity, made a journey to China; and after travelling through the whole of the provinces, he set sail for Europe, laden with a manuscript collection of his observations, the labour of thirty years, the whole of which was sunk in the ocean. Again, Guarino Verenese, one of those learned Italians who volunteered to travel through Greece for the recovery of ancient manuscripts, had his perseverance repaid by the acquisition of many priceless treasures. Returning to Italy, however, he was shipwrecked; and such was his grief at the loss of this collection, that his hair became suddenly white.
Differing from those authors who have destroyed their manuscripts before death, are those who have delivered them into the hands of relatives and friends, together with the fullest instructions as to their disposal. It is well known that Lord Byron handed the manuscript of his autobiography to Tom Moore, with the strictest injunctions not to publish it till after his death. Immediately after he expired, Moore sold the manuscript to John Murray the publisher for two thousand pounds; but subsequently knowing something of the nature of the autobiography, and the effect which its publication would exert upon the memory of the deceased author, his own better feelings, united to the persuasions of Byron’s friends, prompted him to regain possession of the document, which he did, at the same time refunding the money to Mr Murray. The manuscript was then burned.