y£Wk r UNlV*;^SiTY OF CALlF01=;NiA SAN Dieeo w v.. • ^ ^t/^^ 7. li1!flBlllllll?lt,V.'^?.^V.',^,.SAND,EG0 '/ 9 2, . 3 1822 02559 3872 4,^ THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS ( AltK ATIKK OF TWO <:I!1;AI' \ K I'OinANS VV. M.TIIACKKRAY AND CHAHLKS DICKKNS THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS A. EDWARD NEWTON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BOSTON THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY A. EDWARD NBWTON First Impression, August, 1918 Second Impression, March, 1919 Third Impression, August, 1920 DEDICATION //, as Eugene Field suggests, womenfolk are few in that part of 'paradise especially reserved for hook-lovers I do not care. One woman will he there, for I shall insist that eight and twenty years prohation entitles her to share my bihlio-bliss above as she has shared it here below. That woman is my wife. a. edward newton October, 1918 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. "Bewildering!" I exclaimed to myself as I laid down the letter. It was from my publisher, telling me that a third edition of six thousand copies of the "Amenities" would go to press shortly (making fifteen thousand in all), and saying that, if there were "no objections or corrections, it would stand approved as read." I looked about my little office in which so many (to me) important matters had been decided, and said, as I have so often said, "It is so ordered. Is it moved we adjourn? All in favor — "; and as the meeting broke up, I reached for my hat and coat and took the next train for New York, there to join my wife in celebrating, as merrily as we could on White Rock, our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Going over on the train, I wondered whether I was not running away from duty unperformed, having in mind several little blunders that remained uncorrected. I decided that I was, and that added zest to the journey. But if blunders have been per- mitted to remain, a crime shall be pointed out; it was committed in ignorance. "But ignorance is no excuse," I hear a fledgling lawyer say. It is, however, the only excuse I have. One day there came a letter from a schoolteacher, who began by praising my book; then quietly and by degrees its defects were noted, until finally I was iv PREFACE accused of a crime. "On page 99, second line from the bottom," my correspondent said, "You have left what we grammarians call a participle dangling. Infinitives may be split occasionally and an author retain his self-respect, but participles must not be allowed to dangle." I read no further; seizing the book, I turned to the offending sentence; there seemed to be something queer about it, but I could not say just what it was, but I determined to go to the rescue of that dangling participle as I would go to a damsel in distress. But first I must know what was the matter with it. Grasping the telephone I got "long distance," and finally my friend Osgood, the head of the English Department at Princeton. "Charlie," I said, "I have been detected in a crime." "I 'm not surprised, Ned," he answered; "I've been expecting it for years. What have you been doing?" "Hanging a participle," I replied. "Hanging a what? " he cried. "A participle," I screamed. "I have left a par- ticiple dangling in my book. You remember my 'Amenities of Book-Collecting'?" "Of course," he said. "Well," said I, "on page 99, second line from the bottom, there is a sentence which reads, 'Turning to a book-seller's catalogue, published a year or two ago, there is a copy in original calf binding, and the price is twenty-five hundred dollars.' What 's the matter with that sentence?" PREFACE V "^^Tiy, don't you see," said Charlie, *'the sentence turns automatically, as it were. You don't say who does the turning. It's the second line from the bottom of the page you say, well then," (with a chuckle) '' it don't dangle very far. It would be more noticeable if it dangled from the second line from the top. I would not suppress the book on that account. Who made the discovery.'^" "A teacher at the H School," I replied. "Think of it!" said Charlie, "I wonder where he got the money to buy the book." "He gave the book to his wife instead of a new frock, I suppose," I said; "that 's the way I get most of my books." Then there was something about a Blake item I had just bought, and I hung up the telephone. I am relieved to have this matter off my mind. The "Amenities" has been received so well, in spite of its faults, — perhaps I should say by reason of them, — that it is inevitable that its readers should be rewarded or punished by another volume in a similar vein. It now only remains for me to write the papers, select the title, and attend to some, at present, very troublesome and expensive mechanical details, and the book will be ready for publication. Until then, I trust that the discriminating reader will remain satisfied with the third edition of this one. A. Edward Newton July 12, 1920. ESSAY INTRODUCTORY A MAN (or a woman) is the most interesting thing in the world; and next is a book, which enables one to get at the heart of the mystery; and although not many men can say why they are or what they are, any man who publishes a book can, if he is on good terms with his publisher, secure the use of a little space to tell how the book came to be what it is. Some years ago a very learned friend of mine pub- lished a book, and in the introduction warned the "gentle reader" to skip the first chapter, and, as I have always maintained, by inference suggested that the rest was easy reading, which was not the case. In point of fact, the book was not intended for the "gentle reader" at all: it was a book written by a scholar for the scholar. Now, I have worked on a different plan. My book is written for the "tired business man" (there are a goodly number of us), who flatters himself that he is fond of reading; and as it is my first book, I may be permitted to tell how it came to be published. One day in the autumn of 1913, a friend, my part- ner, with whom it has been my privilege to be asso- ciated for so many years, remarked that it was time for me to take a holiday, and handed me a copy of the " Geographical Magazine." The number was viii ESSAY INTRODUCTORY devoted to Egypt; and, seduced by the charm of the illustrations, on the spur of the moment I decided on a trip up the Nile. Things moved rapidly. In a few weeks my wife and I were in the Mediterranean, on a steamer headed for Alexandria. We had touched at Genoa and were soon to reach Naples, when I discovered a feeling of homesickness stealing over me. I have spent my happiest holidays in London. Already I had tired of Egypt. The Nile has been flowing for centuries and would continue to flow. There were books to be had in London, books which would not wait. Somewhat shamefacedly I put the matter up to my wife; and when I discovered that she had no insuperable objection to a change of plan, we left the steamer at Naples, and after a few weeks with friends in Rome, started en grande vitesse toward London. By this time it will have been discovered that I am not much of a traveler; but I have always loved Lon- don — London with its wealth of literary and historic association, with its countless miles of streets lined with inessential shops overflowing with things that I don't want, and its grimy old book-shops over- flowing with things that I do. One gloomy day I picked up in the Charing Cross Road, for a shilling, a delightful book by Richard Le Gallienne, "Travels in England." Like myself, Le Gallienne seems not to have been a great traveler — he seldom reached the place he started for; and losing his way or changing his mind, may be said to have ESSAY INTRODUCTORY ix arrived at his destination when he has reached a com- fortable inn, where, after a simple meal, he lights his pipe and proceeds to read a book. Exactly my idea of travel! The last time I read *' Pickwick" was while making a tour in Northern Italy. It is wonderful how conducive to reading I found the stuffy smoking-rooms of the little steamers that dart like w^ater-spiders from one landing to an- other on the Italian Lakes. It was while I was poking about among the old book-shops that it occurred to me to write a little story about my books — when and where I had bought them, the prices I had paid, and the men I had bought them from, many of whom I knew well; and so, when my holiday was done, I lived over again its pleasant associations in writing a paper that I called "Book-Collecting Abroad." Subsequently I wrote another, — "Book-Collecting at Home," — it being my purpose to print these papers in a little volume to be called "The Amenities of Book-Col- lecting." I intended this for distribution among my friends, who are very patient with me; and I sent my manuscript to a printer in the closing days of July, 1914. A few days later something happened in Europe, the end of which is not yet, and we all became panic-stricken. For a moment it seemed un- likely that one would care ever to open a book again. Acting upon impulse, I withdrew the order from my printer, put my manuscript aside, and devoted my- self to my usual task — that of making a living. X ESSAY INTRODUCTORY Byron says, "The end of all scribblement is to amuse." For some years I have been possessed of an itch for *' scribblement"; gradually this feeling reas- serted itself, and I came to see that we must become accustomed to working in a world at war, and to realizing that life must be permitted to resume, at least to some extent, its regular course; and the idea of my little book recurred to me. It had frequently been suggested by friends that my papers be published in the "Atlantic." What grudge they bore this excellent magazine I do not know, but they always said the "Atlantic"; and so, when one day I came across my manuscript, it oc- curred to me that it would cost only a few cents to lay it before the editor. At that time I did not know the editor of the "Atlantic" even by name. My pleasure then can be imagined when, a week or so later, I re- ceived the following letter: — Oct. 30, 1914. Dear Mr. Newton: — The enthusiasm of your pleasant paper is contagious, and I find myself in odd moments looking at the gaps in my own library with a feeling of dismay. I believe that very many readers of the " Atlantic" will feel as I do, and it gives me great pleasure to accept your paper. Yours sincerely, Ellery Sedgwick. Shortly afterward, a check for a substantial sum fluttered down upon my desk, and it was impossible that I should not remember how much Milton had ESSAY INTRODUCTORY 3d received for his "Paradise Lost," — the receipt for which is in the British Museum, — and draw con- clusions therefrom entirely satisfactory to my self- esteem. My paper was published, and the maga- zine, having a hardy constitution, survived; I even received some praise. There was nothing important enough to justify criticism, and as a result of this chance publication I made a number of delightful acquaintances among readers and collectors, many of whom I might almost call friends although we have never met. Not wishing to strain the rather precarious friend- ship with Mr. Sedgwick which was the outcome of my first venture, it was several years before I ven- tured to try him with another paper. This I called "A Ridiculous Philosopher." I enjoyed writing this paper immensely, and although it was the reverse of timely, I felt that it might pass editorial scrutiny. Again I received a letter from Mr. Sedgwick, in which he said : — Two days ago I took your paper home with me and spent a delightful half -hour with it. Now, as any editor would tell you, there is no valid reason for a paper on Godwin at this time, but your essay is so capitally sea- soned that I cannot find it in my heart to part with it. Indeed I have been gradually making the editorial dis- covery that, if a paper is sufficiently readable, it has some claim upon the public, regardless of what the plans of the editor are. And so the upshot of my deliberation is that we shall accept your paper with great pleasure and publish it when the opportunity occurs. xii ESSAY INTRODUCTORY The paper appeared in due course, and several more followed. The favor with which these papers were received led the "Atlantic" editors to the consideration of their reprint in permanent form, to- gether with several which now appear for the first time. All the illustrations have been made from items in my own collection. I am thus tying a string, as it were, around a parcel which contains the result of thirty-six years of collecting. It may not be much, but, as the Irishman said of his dog, "It's mine own." My volume might, with propriety, be called "Newton's Complete Recreations." I have referred to my enjoyment in writing my "Ridiculous Philosopher." I might say the same of all my papers. I am aware that my friend, Dr. Johnson, once remarked that no man but a block- head writes a book except for money. At some risk, then, I admit that I have done so. I have written for fun, and my papers should be read, if read at all, for the same purpose, not that the reader will or is expected to laugh loud. The loud laugh, in Gold- smith's phrase, it may be remembered, bespeaks the vacant mind. But I venture to hope that the judi- cious will pass a not unpleasant hour in turning my pages. f One final word: I buy, I collect "Presentation Books"; and I trust my friends will not think me churlish when I say that it is not my intention to turn a single copy of this, my book, into a presenta- tion volume. Whatever circulation it may have must ESSAY INTRODUCTORY xiii be upon its own merits. Any one who sees this book in the hands of a reader, on the Hbrary table, or on the shelves of the collector, may be sure that some one, either wise or foolish as the event may prove, has paid a substantial sum for it, either in the current coin of the realm, or perchance in thrift stamps. It may, indeed, be that it has been secured from a lend- ing library, in which case I would suggest that the book be returned instantly. "Go ye rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves." And having sepa- rated yourself from your money, in the event that you should feel vexed with your bargain, you are at liberty to communicate your grievance to the pub- lisher, securing from him what redress you may; and" in the event of failure there yet remains your in- alienable right, which should afford some satisfaction, that of damning The Author. "Oak Knoll," Daylesford, Pknnsylvania, April 7, 1918. TABLE OF CONTENTS I, Book-Collecting Abroad 1 II. Book-Collecting at Home . . . . .36 III. Old Catalogues and New Prices . . . .65 IV. "Association" Books and First Editions . ' . 107 V. " What Might Have Been " 129 VI. James Boswell — His Book 145 VII. A Light-Blue Stocking 186 VIII. A Ridiculous Philosopher 226 IX. A Great Victorian 249 X. Temple Bar Then and Now 267 XI. A Macaroni Parson 292 XII. Oscar Wilde 318 Xin. A Word in Memory 343 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Caricature of Two Great Victorians . Frontispiece in Color W. M. Thackeray and Charles Dickens Title OF " Paradise Lost. " First Edition .... 6 Title of Franklin's Edition of Cicero's "Cato Major" 9 Letter of Thomas Hardy to his First Publisher, "OldTinsley" 12 Page of Original MS. of Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd " . .14 Bernard Quaritch 14 Title of MS. of " Lyford Redivivus " 16 Bernard Alfred Quaritch 16 Samuel Johnson 20 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds about 1770, for Johnson's Step- Daughter, Lucy Porter. Engraved by Watson Page of Prayer in Dr. Johnson's Autograph ... 23 Title of Keats's Copy of Spenser's Works ... 24 Portrait of Tennyson reading "Maud" to the Brown- ings, BY Rossetti 26 Dr. Johnson's Church, St. Clement Danes ... 31 From a pen-and-ink sketch by Charles G. Osgood Inscription to Mrs. Thrale in Dr. Johnson's Hand . 32 Inscription to General Sir A. Gordon in Queen Vic- toria's Hand 35 George D. Smith 36 Photographed by Genthe xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Autograph MS. of Lamb's Poem, "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco" 40 Dr. a. S. W. Rosenbach 42 Photographed by Genthe Title OF "Robinson Crusoe." First Edition ... 45 Title OF " Oliver Twist " 47 Presentation Copy to W. C. Macready Original Illustration FOR "Vanity Fair" ... 48 Becky Sharp throwing Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary" out of the carriage window, as she leaves Miss Pinkerton's School From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated Specimen Proof-Sheet of George Moore's "Memoirs OF My Dead Life " 50 Title of George Moore's "Pagan Poems" ... 51 Presentation Copy to Oscar Wilde Title of Blake's "Marriage OF Heaven AND Hell" . 52 Charles Lamb's House at Enfield 54 Inscription by Joseph Conrad in a copy of "The Nigger OF the ' Narcissus '" 56 The Author's Book-Plate 60 Henry E. Huntington 72 Stoke Poges. Church 74 A fine example of fore-edge painting Title of Blake's " Songs of Innocence and Experience " 80 "A Leaf FROM AN Unopened Volume" 82 Specimen page of an unpublished manuscript of Charlotte Brontg Title of the Kilmarnock Edition of Burns's Poems . 85 Fifteenth-Century English MS. on Vellum: Boethius's " De Consolatione Philosophize " . .90 Title of George Herbert's "The Temple." First Edition 97 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix First Page of a Rare Edition of "Robinson Crusoe" 102 Autograph MS. of a Poem by Keats — "To the Misses M AT Hastings" 105 Inscription to Swinburne from Dante Rossetti . .106 Autograph Inscription by Stevenson, in a Copy of his "Inland Voyage" 109 Title of a Unique Copy of Stevenson's "Child's Gar- den of Verses" 110 New Building of the Grolier Club 114 Inscription to Charles Dickens, Junior, from Charles Dickens 116 Illustration, "The Last of the Spirits," by John Leech FOR Dickens's "Christmas Carol" 116 From the original water-color drawing Autograph Dedication to Dickens's "The Village Coquettes" 118 Title of Meredith's "Modern Love," with Autograph Inscription to Swinburne 121 Inscription by Dr. Johnson in a Copy of "Rasselas" . 125 Inscription by Woodrow Wilson, in a Copy of his "Con- stitutional Government of the United States" . 126 Inscription by James Whitcomb Riley . • . . . 128 Charles Lamb 130 Frances Maria Kelly 132 Miss Kelly in Various Characters 136 MS. Dedication of Lamb's Works to Miss Kelly . . 137 Autograph Letter of Lamb to Miss Kelly . . . 139 Charles and Mary Lamb 144 XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS James Boswell of Auchinleck, Esqr 146 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by John Jones Samuel Johnson in a Tie- Wig 150 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Zobel Inscription to Rev. William J. Temple, from James Boswell 159 Title OF Mason's "Elfrida." First Edition . . .163 MS. OF Boswell's Agreement with Mr. Dilly, recit- ing THE Terms agreed on for the Publication of "Corsica" 167 MS. Indorsement by Boswell on the First Paper drawn BY him as an Advocate . . 168 Dr. Johnson in Traveling Dress, as described in Boswell's "Tour" 174 Engraved by Trotter Inscription to James Boswell, Junior, from James Boswell 176 Samuel Johnson 184 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Heath Inscription to Edmund Burke, by James Boswell . . 185 Mrs. Piozzi ... 186 Engraved by Ridley from a miniature Extract from MS. Letter of Mrs. Thrale . . . 191 Title of Miss Burney's "Evelina." First Edition . . 199 Mrs. Thrale's Breakfast-Table 200 Samuel Johnson. The "Streath AM Portrait" . . .204 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Doughty MS. Inscriptions by Mrs. Thrale 206 Title of "The Prince of Abissinia" ("Rasselas"). First Edition 207 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxi MS. OF THE Last Page of Mrs. Thrale's "Journal of a Tour IN Wales" 219 Miss Amy Lowell, of Boston 222 Samuel Johnson 225 William Godwin, the Ridiculous Philosopher . . 227 Charles Lamb's Play-Bill of Godwin's "Antonio '* . 236 MS. Letter from William Godwin 241 Anthony Trollope 250 From a photograph by Elliot and Fry Temple Bar as it is To-Day 268 Old Temple Bar: Demolished in 1666 276 Temple Bar in Dr. Johnson's Time 280 Temple Bar 291 First Page of Dr. Johnson's Petition to the King on Behalf of Dr. Dodd 306 Mr. Allen's Copy of the Last Letter Dr. Dodd sent Dr. Johnson 312 Caricature of Oscar Wilde 319 From an original drawing by Aubrey Beardsley "Our Oscar" as he was when we loaned him to America 325 From a contemporary English caricature MS. Inscription to J. E. Dickinson, from Oscar Wilde . 342 Harry Elkins Widener 344 Title OF Stevenson's "Memoirs OF Himself" . . . 349 Printed for private distribution only, by Mr. Widener Beverly Chew 350 Henry E. Huntington among his Books .... 352 Photographed by Genthe Harry Elkins Widener's Book-Plate 355 THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS I BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD If my early training has been correct, which I am much incHned to doubt, we were not designed to be happy in this world. We were simply placed here to be tried, and doubtless we are — it is a trying place. It is, however, the only world we are sure of; so, in spite of our training, we endeavor to make the best of it, and have invented a lot of little tricks with which to beguile the time. The approved time-killer is work, and we do a lot of it. When it is quite unnecessary, we say it is in the interest of civilization ; and occasionally work is done on so high a plane that it becomes sport, and we call these sportsmen, "Captains of Industry." One of them once told me that making money was the finest sport in the world. This was before the rules of the game were changed. But for the relaxation of those whose life is spent in a persistent effort to make ends meet, games of skill, games of chance, and kissing games have been invented, and indoor and outdoor sports. These are 2 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING all very well for those who can play them; but I am like the little boy who declined to play Old Maid be- cause he was always "it." Having early discovered that I was always "it" in every game, I decided to take my recreation in another way. I read occasion- ally and have always been a collector. Many years ago, in an effort to make conversation on a train, — a foolish thing to do, — I asked a man what he did with his leisure, and his reply was, "I play cards. I used to read a good deal but I wanted some- thing to occupy my mind, so I took to cards." It was a disconcerting answer. It may be admitted that not all of us can read all the time. For those who cannot and for those to whom sport in any form is a burden not to be endured, there is one remaining form of exercise, the riding of a hobby — collecting, it is called; and the world is so full of such wonderful things that we collectors should be as happy as kings. Horace Greeley once said, "Young man, go West." I give advice as valuable and more easily followed: I say. Young man, get a hobby; preferably get two, one for indoors and one for out; get a pair of hobby-horses that can safely be ridden in opposite directions. We collectors strive to make converts; we want others to enjoy what we enjoy; and I may as well con- fess that the envy shown by our fellow collectors when we display our treasures is not annoying to us. But, speaking generally, we are a bearable lot, our hobbies are usually harmless, and if we loathe the BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD 3 subject of automobiles, and especially discussion rela- tive to parts thereof, we try to show an intelligent interest in another's hobby, even if it happen to be a collection of postage-stamps. Our own hobby may be, probably is, ridiculous to some one else, but in all the wide range of human interest, from postage- stamps to paintings, — the sport of the millionaire, — there is nothing that begins so easily and takes us so far as the collecting of books. And hear me. If you would know the delight of book-collecting, begin with something else, I care not what. Book-collecting has all the advantages of other hobbies without their drawbacks. The pleasure of acquisition is common to all — that 's where the sport lies; but the strain of the possession of books is almost nothing; a tight, dry closet will serve to house them, if need be. It is not so with flowers. They are a constant care. Some one once wrote a poem about "old books and fresh flowers." It lilted along very nicely; but I re- mark that books stay old, indeed get older, and flowers do not stay fresh: a little too much rain, a little too much sun, and it is all over. Pets die too, in spite of constant care — perhaps by reason of it. To quiet a teething dog I once took him, her, it, to my room for the night and slept soundly. Next morning I found that the dog had committed suicide by jumping out of the window. The joys of rugs are a delusion and a snare. They cannot be picked up here and there, tucked in a 4 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING traveling-bag, and smuggled into the house; they are hard to transport, there are no auction records against them, and the rug market knows no bottom. I never yet heard a man admit paying a fair price for a rug, much less a high one. "Look at this Schera- zak," a friend remarks; "I paid only nine dollars for it and it's worth five hundred if it's worth a penny." When he is compelled to sell his collection, owing to an unlucky turn in the market, it brings seven teen-fifty. And rugs are ever a loafing place for moths — But that's a chapter by itself. Worst of all, there is no literature about them. I know very well that there are books about rugs; I own some. But as all books are not literature, so all literature is not in books. Can a rug-collector enjoy a catalogue.^ I sometimes think that for the over- worked business man a book-catalogue is the best reading there is. Did you ever see a rug-collector, pencil in hand, poring over a rug-catalogue? Print-catalogues there are; and now I warm a lit- tle. They give descriptions that mean something; a scene may have a reminiscent value, a portrait sug- gests a study in biography. Then there are dimen- sions for those who are fond of figures and states and margins, and the most ignorant banker will tell you that a wide margin is always better than a narrow one. Prices, too, can be looked up and compared, and results, satisfactory or otherwise, recorded. Prints, too, can be snugly housed in portfolios. But for a lasting hobby give me books. BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD 5 Book-collectors are constantly being ridiculed by- scholars for the pains they take and the money they spend on first editions of their favorite authors; and it must be that they smart under the criticism, for they are always explaining, and attempting rather foolishly to justify their position. Would it not be better to say, as Leslie Stephen did of Dr. Johnson's rough sayings, that "it is quite useless to defend them to any one who cannot enjoy them without defense"? I am not partial to the "books which no gentle- man's library should be without," fashionable a gen- eration or two ago. The works of Thomas Frognall Dibdin do not greatly interest me, and where will one find room to-day for Audubon's "Birds" or Roberts's " Holy Land " except on a billiard-table or under a bed.'^ The very great books of the past have become so rare, so high-priced, that it is almost useless for the ordinary collector to hope ever to own them, and fash- ion changes in book-collecting as in everything else. Aldines and Elzevirs are no longer sought. Our in- terest in the Classics being somewhat abated, we pass them over in favor of books which, we tell ourselves, we expect some day to read, the books written by men of whose lives we know something. I would rather have a "Paradise Lost" with the first title-page,^ in ^ The facsimile (page 6) is from the first edition, with the first title-page. From the Hagen collection. Mr. Hagen has written on the fly-leaf, " Rebound from original calf binding which was too far gone to repair." In the process of binding it was seen that the title-page was part of a signature and not a separate leaf as in the case of the issue with the " Second " title, 1667, which would seem to settle the priority of these two titles. Paradife loft. A POEM Written in TEN BOOKS By JOHN MILTON. Licenfed and Encred according to Order. L l^ D l^ Printed, and are to be fold by Teur ParJ^er under Creed Church uqct Aldgate '-i And by Ibbert Boulter zt thc Tmkj Htad'm Bifhepfjrdtt'^rHt*, And UtaxAias Walk^ , under St. Dunjittis Church iii^leetfheit, l66^. BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD 7 contemporary binding, or an "Angler," than all the Aldines and Elzevirs ever printed. That this feeling is general, accounts, I take it, for the excessively high prices now being paid for first editions of modern authors like Shelley, Keats, Lamb, and, to come right down to our own day, Stevenson. Would not these authors be amazed could they know in what esteem they are held, and what fabulous prices are paid for volumes which, when they were published, fell almost stillborn from the press .^^ We all know the story of Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat": how a "remainder" was sold by Quaritch at a penny the copy. It is now worth its weight in gold, and Keats's "Endymion," once a "remainder" bought by a Lon- don bookseller at fourpence, now commands several hundred dollars. I paid three hundred and sixty dol- lars for mine — but it was once Wordsworth's and has his name on the title-page. But it is well in book-collecting, while not omitting the present, never to neglect the past. "Old books are best," says Beverly Chew, beloved of all col- lectors; and I recall Lowell's remark: "There is a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us." It was a recollection of these sayings that prompted me, if prompting was necessary, to pay a fabulous price the other day for a copy of "Hesper- ides, or the Works both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq.," a beautiful copy of the first edition in the original sheep. We collectors know the saying of Bacon: "Some 8 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested"; but the revised version is, Some books are to be read, others are to be collected. Mere reading books, the five-foot shelf, or the hundred best, every one knows at least by name. But at the moment I am concerned with collectors' books and the amenities of book-collecting; for, frankly, — I am one of those who seek What Bibliomaniacs love. Some subjects are not for me. Sydney Smith's question, "Who reads an American book.?" has, I am sure, been answered; and I am equally sure that I do not know what the answer is. "Americana" — which was not what Sydney Smith meant — have never caught me, nor has "black letter." It is not necessary for me to study how to tell a Caxton. Cax- tons do not fall in my way, except single leaves now and then, and these I take as Goldsmith took his religion, on faith. Nor am I the rival of the man who buys all his books from Quaritch. Buying from Quaritch is rather too much like the German idea of hunting: namely, sitting in an easy chair near a breach in the wall through which game, big or little, is shooed within easy reach of your gun. No, my idea of collecting is "watchful waiting," in season and out, in places likely and unlikely, most of all in London. But one need not begin in London: one can begin wherever one has pitched one's tent. BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD I have long wanted Franklin's "Cato Major." A copy was found not long ago in a farmhouse garret in my own county; but, unluckily, I did not hear of it until its price, through successive hands, had reached three hundred dollars. But if one does not be- gin in London, one ends there. It is the great market of the world for collectors' books — the best market, not neces- sarily the cheapest. My first purchase was a Bohn edition of Pope's Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey in two vol- umes — not a bad start for a boy; and under my youthful signature, with a fine flourish, is the date, 1882. I read them with de- light, and was sorry when I learned that Pope is by no means Homer. I have been a little chary about reading ever since. We collectors might just as well wait until scholars settle these questions. I have always liked Pope. In reading him one has the sense of progress from idea to idea, not a mere floundering about in Arcady amid star-stuff. When M,T.CICERO*s CATO MAJOR, OR HIS DISCOURSE OLD-AGE: With Explanatory NOTES. vM"^ PHILADELPHIA* Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, MDCCXLIV. 10 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Dr. Johnson was asked what poetry is, he repHed, "It is much easier to say what it is not." He was sparring for time and finally remarked, "If Pope is not poetry it is useless to look for it." Years later, when I learned from Oscar Wilde that there are two ways of disliking poetry, — one is to dislike it, and the other, to like Pope, — I found that I was not entirely prepared to change my mind about Pope. In 1884 I went to London for the first time, and there I fell under the lure of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. After that, the deluge! The London of 1884 was the London of Dickens. There have been greater changes since I first wan- dered in the purlieus of the Strand and Holborn than there were in the hundred years before. Dickens's London has vanished almost as completely as the Lon- don of Johnson. One landmark after another disap- peared, until finally the County Council made one grand sweep with Aldwych and Kingsway. But never to be forgotten are the rambles I enjoyed with my first bookseller, Fred Hutt of Clement's Inn Passage, sub- sequently of Red Lion Passage, now no more. Poor fellow! when, early in 1914, I went to look him up, I found that he had passed away, and his shop was being dismantled. He was the last of three brothers, all booksellers. From Hutt I received my first lesson in bibli- ography; from him I bought my first "Christmas Carol," with "Stave 1," not "Stave One," and with BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD 11 the green end-papers. I winced at the price: it was thirty shillings. I saw one marked twenty guineas not long ago. From Hutt, too, I got a copy of Swin- burne's "Poems and Ballads," 1866, with the Moxon imprint, and had pointed out to me the curious eccen- tricity of type on page 222. I did not then take his advice and pay something over two pounds for a copy of "Desperate Remedies." It seemed wiser to wait until the price reached forty pounds, which I sub- sequently paid for it. But I did buy from him for five shillings an autograph letter of Thomas Hardy to his first publisher, " old Tinsley." As the details throw some light on the subject of Hardy's first book, I reproduce the letter, from which it will be seen that Hardy financed the publication himself. When, thirty years ago, I picked up my Hardy letter for a few shillings, I never supposed that the time would come when I would own the complete manuscript of one of his most famous novels. Yet so it is. Not long since, quite unexpectedly, the orig- inal draft of "Far from the Madding Crowd" turned up in London. Its author, when informed of its dis- covery, wrote saying that he had "supposed the manuscript had been pulped ages ago." One page only was missing; Mr. Hardy supplied it. Then arose the question of ownership, which was grace- fully settled by sending it to the auction-room, the proceeds of the sale to go to the British Red Cross. I cannot say that the bookseller who bought it gave it to me exactly, but we both agree that it is an item ' / / / ' S(c^iJ y^^ tllu^ Mu^ ^ h^^ lu ^ ftffU LETTER OF THOMAS HARDY TO HIS FIRST PUBLISHER, " OLD TINSLEY " I paid five shillinp;8 for this letter many years ago, in London. Maggs, in his last catalogue, prices at fifteen guineas a much less interesting letter from Hardy to Artliur Sysaons, dated December 4, 1915, on the same subject. BOOK-COLLECTING ABROAD 13 which does honor to any collection. Although it is the original draft, there are very few corrections or interlineations, the page reproduced (see next page) being fairly representative. Only those who are trying to complete their sets of Hardy know how difficult it is to find " Desperate Remedies" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" "in cloth as issued." My love for book-collecting and my love for Lon- don have gone hand in hand. From the first, London with its wealth of literary and historic interest has held me; there has never been a time, not even on that gloomy December day twenty years ago, when, with injuries subsequently diagnosed as a "compound comminuted tibia and fibula," I was picked out of an overturned cab and taken to St. Bartholomew's Hos- pital for repairs, that I could not say with Boswell, ** There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress." The book-shops of London have been the subject of many a song in prose and verse. Every taste and pocket can be satisfied. I have ransacked the wretched little shops to be found in the by-streets of Holborn one day, and the next have browsed in the artificially stimulated pastures of Grafton Street and Bond Street, and with as much delight in one as in the other. I cannot say that "I was * broke' in London in the fall of '89," for the simple reason that I was not in ffw ki Jy.i^nri', / /4^, /^^ t A/ ;*-t»*^ a^^J<:-S. II BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME In the preceding chapter I wrote of the amenities of book-collecting in London, of my adventures in the shops of Bond Street and Piccadilly, of Holbom and the Strand — almost as though this paradise of the book-collector were his only happy hunting-ground. But all the good hunting is not found in London: New York has a number of attractive shops, Phila- delphia at least two, while there are several in Chicago and in unexpected places in the West. Where in all the world will you find so free a buyer, always ready to take a chance to turn a volume at a profit, as George D. Smith? He holds the record for having paid the highest price ever paid for a book at auction: fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, purchased for Mr. Henry E. Hunt- ington at the Hoe sale; and not only did he pay the highest price — he also bought more than any other purchaser of the fine books disposed of at that sale. I have heard Smith's rivals complain that he is not a bookseller in the proper sense of the word — that he buys without discretion and without exact knowledge. Such criticism, I take it, is simply the natural result of jealousy. George D. Smith has sold more fine books than perhaps any two of his rivals. GEORGE D. SMITH " G. D. S." as he is known in the New York Auction Rooms. Like " G. B. S." of London, he is something of an enigma. Wliat are the qualities which have made him, as he undoubtedly is, the greatest bookseller in the world ? From II pholooraph by Arnold Genthe BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 37 There is no affectation of dignity or of knowledge about him, and it is well that there is not. No one knows all there is to know about books ; a man might know much more than he — such men there are — and yet lack the qualities which have enabled him to secure and retain the confidence and commissions of his patrons. He is practically the main support of the auction-rooms in this country, and I have frequently seen him leave a sale at which he had purchased every important book that came up. He had knowledge and confidence enough for that, and I cannot see why his frankness and lack of affectation should be counted against him. It takes all kinds of men to make a world, and George is several kinds in himself. Twenty -five years ago, in London, early in my book-collecting days, I came across a bundle of dusty volumes in an old book-shop in the Strand, — the shop and that part of the Strand have long since dis- appeared, — and bought the lot for, as I remember, two guineas. Subsequently, upon going through the contents carefully, I found that I had acquired what appeared to be quite a valuable little parcel. There were the following : — "Tales from Shakespeare": Baldwin and Cradock, fifth edition, 1831. Lamb's "Prose Works": 3 volumes, Moxon, 1836. "The Letters of Charles Lamb": 2 volumes, Moxon, 1837; with the inscription, "To J. P. Collier, Esq. from his friend H. C. Robinson." Talf ourd's " Final Memorials of Charles Lamb " : 2 volumes, Moxon, 1848. S8 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING By the way, the last was Wordsworth's copy, with his signature on the title-page of each volume; and I observed for the first time that the book was dedi- cated to him. Loosely inserted in several of the vol- umes were newspaper clippings, a number of pages of manuscript in John Payne Collier's handwriting, a part of a letter from Mary Lamb addressed to Jane Collier, his mother, and in several of the volumes were notes in Collier's handwriting referring to matters in the text: as where, against a reference to Lamb's "Essay on Roast Pig," Collier says, in pencil, *'My mother sent the pig to Lamb." Again, where Tal- fourd, referring to an evening with Lamb, says, *' We mounted to the top story and were soon seated beside a cheerful fire: hot water and its better adjuncts were soon before us," Collier writes, "Both Lamb and Tal- fourd died of the 'Better Adjuncts.'" There was a large number of such pencil notes. The pages of manuscript in Collier's heavy and, as he calls it, "infirm" hand begin: — In relation to C. Lamb and Southey, Mr. Cosens pos- sesses as interesting a MS. as I know. It is bound as a small quarto, but the writing of Lamb, and chiefly by Southey is post 8vo. They seem to have been contributions to an "Annual Anthology" published by Cottle of Bristol. The MS. begins with an "Advertisement" in the hand- writing of Southey, and it is followed immediately by a poem in Lamb's handwriting headed "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco," in ten stanzas rhiming alternately thus: — It lay before me on the close grazed gra3S Beside my path, an old tobacco quid : BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 39 And shall I by the mute adviser pass Without one serious thought? now Heaven forbid ! ^ The next day, Collier copied more of the poem, for on another sheet he remarks, "As my hand is steadier to-day I have copied the remaining stanzas." On still another sheet, referring to the Cosens MS., Collier writes : — The whole consists of about sixty leaves chiefly in the handwriting of Southey and it contains . . . productions by Lamb, one a sort oi jeu d' esprit called "The Rhedycinian Barbers" on the hair-dressing of twelve young men of Christ Church College, and the other headed, "Dirge for Him Who Shall Deserve It." This has no signature but the whole is in Lamb's clear young hand, and it shows very plainly that he partook not only of 'the poetical but of the political feeling of the time. The signatures are various, Erthuryo, Ryalto, Walter, and so forth, and at the end are four Love Elegies and a serious poem by Charles Lamb, entitled, "Living without God in the World." How many of these were printed elsewhere, or in Cottle's "Anthology," I do not know. I would willingly copy more did not my hand fail me. J. P. C. Twenty years later, in New York one day, George D. Smith asked me if I would care to buy an inter- esting volume of Southey MSS., and to my great surprise handed me the identical little quarto which ^ The facsimile is from the original manuscript by Charles Lamb. First published in 1799 in what is usually referred to as Cottle's "An- nual Anthology." The poem is generally attributed to Southey, but it sounds like Lamb, who liked tobacco, whereas Southey did not. The MS., in ten stanzas, is undoubtedly in Lamb's handwriting. y_^Jt. UJeAu^t ^ - f oo lyppy, so o i ngiiltirly huppy , tl i i > J lUi hjpplliut>i^ Is, aflu 1 1 1], III! ii i u i u > lw i u ^— g Paculty ' ft*! l^lBg u uipii^ u J. — Ciu oe I was a buy f ^ \ BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 51 PAGAN POEMS. Tried," and "The First Stone," privately printed by the "Unspeakable Scot," already difficult to procure, are among the latest. For books of the moment, published in small editions which almost im- mediately become scarce, Drake's shop in Fortieth Street is headquarters; and as my club in New York is near by, I find myself fre- quently dropping in for a book and a bit of gossip. There are draw- backs as well as GEORGE MOORE. LONDON: NEWMAN AND CO., ♦3, HART STREET. BLOGMSBURY. W-C UCCCCUUUCL compensations to living in the coun- try. "Gossip about Book Collecting " has its charms, as William Loring Andrews has taught us. It is sometimes difficult to get it, living as I do "twelve miles from a lemon"; and so, when I am in New York and have absorbed what I can at Drake's, who is very exact in the in- formation he imparts, I usually call on Gabriel Wells. How Wells receives you with open arms and a good 52 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING cigar, in his lofty rooms on the Avenue overlooking the Library, is known to most collectors. Books in sets are, — perhaps I should say, were, — his spe- cialty; recently he has gone in for very choice items, which, when offered, must be secured, or anguish is one's portion thereafter. My last interview with him resulted in my separating myself from a bunch of Liberty Bonds, which I had intended as a solace for my old age; but a few words from Wells convinced me that Dr. Johnson was right when he said, "It is better to live rich than die rich"; and so I walked away with a copy of Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is about as rare a book as one can hope to find at the end of a busy day. It was, if I remember correctly, Ernest Dressel North who first aroused my interest in Lamb, bib- liographically. I had learned to love him in a dumpy little green cloth volume, " Elia and Eliana," published by Moxon, which I had picked up at Leary's, and which bears upon its title-page the glaring inaccu- racy, — "The Only Complete Edition." I have this worthless little volume among my first editions; to me it is one, and it is certainly the last volume of Lamb I would part with. It must be all of thirty years ago that I went to London with a list of books by and about Charles Lamb — some twenty volumes in all — w hich North had prepared for me. I came across this list not long ago, and was amused at the prices that he suggested I might safely pay. Guineas where his list gives BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 53 shillings would not to-day separate the books from their owners. It was at this time, too, that I made my first Lamb pilgrimage, going to every place of interest I could find, from Christ's Hospital, then in Newgate Street, where I saw the Blue-Coat boys at dinner, to the neglected grave in Edmonton Churchyard, where Charles and Mary Lamb lie buried side by side. The illustration facing page 54 is made from a negative I procured in 1890, of the house at Enfield in which Lamb lived from October, 1829, until May, 1833. A good story is told of my friend, Edmund D. Brooks, the bookseller of far-off Minneapolis. Brooks, who knows his way about London and is as much at home with the talent there as any other man, set out one day to make a "quick turn," in stock-market parlance. Armed with a large sum of money, the sinews of book-buying as well as of war, he casually dropped in on Walter Spencer, who was offering for sale the manuscript of Dickens's " Cricket." The price was known to be pretty steep, but Brooks was pre- pared to pay it. What he did not know was that, in an upper room over Spencer's shop, another book- seller, also with a large sum in pocket, was debating the price of this very item, raising his offer by slow degrees. But it did not take Brooks long to discover that negotiations were progressing and that quick action was necessary. Calling Spencer aside, he in- quired the price, paid the money, and took the in- valuable manuscript away in a taxi. The whole 54 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING transaction had occupied only a couple of minutes. Spencer then returned to his first customer, who continued the attack until, to close the argument, Spencer quietly remarked that the manuscript had been sold, paid for, and had passed out of his pos- session. It reminds one of the story of how the late A. J. Cassatt, the master mind of the railroad presidents of his time, bought the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railway right under the nose of Presi- dent Garrett of the Baltimore & Ohio. There were loud cries of anguish from the defeated parties on both occasions, but the book-selling story is not over yet, for a few hours later Sabin, the bookseller de luxe, had the Dickens manuscript displayed in his shop-window in Bond Street, and Brooks had a sheaf of crisp Bank of England notes in his pocket, with which to advance negotiations in other directions. I take little or no interest in bindings; I want the book as originally published, in boards uncut, in old sheep, or in cloth, and as clean and fair as may be. I am not without a sense for color, and the backs of books bound in various colored leathers, suitably gilt, placed with some eye for arrangement on the shelves, are to me as beautiful and suggestive as any picture; yet, as one cannot have everything, I yield the beauty and fragrance of leather for the fascination of the "original state as issued." Nor am I unmindful how invariably in binding a book, in trimming, be it ever so little, and gilding its BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 55 edges, one lops off no small part of its value. This fact should be pointed out to all young collectors. They should learn to let their books alone, and if they must patronize a binder, have slip-cases or pull-cases made. They serve every purpose. The book will be protected if it is falling apart and unpresentable, and one's craving for color and gilt will be satisfied. As Eckel says in his "Bibliography of Dickens," "The tendency of the modern collector has steadily moved toward books in their original state, — books as they were when created, — and it is doubtful if there will be much deviation from this taste in the future." Only the very immature book-buyer will deprive himself of the pleasure of "collecting," and buy a complete set of some author he much esteems, in first editions, assembled and bound without care or thought other than to produce a piece of merchandise and sell it for as much as it will fetch. The rich and ignorant buyer should be made to confine his atten- tion to the purchase of "subscription" books. These are produced in quantity especially for his benefit, and he should leave our books alone. The present combination of many rich men and relatively few fine books is slowly working my ruin; I know it is. We five in a law-full age, an age in which it seems to be every one's idea to pass laws. I would have a law for the protection of old books, and our legislators in Washington might do much worse than consider this suggestion. One other form of book the collector should be INSCRUTION LN A COPY OF "THE NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS" BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 57 warned against — the extra-illustrated volume. The extra-illustration of a favorite author is a tedious and expensive method of wasting money, and mutilating other books the while. I confess to having a few, but I have bought them at a very small part of what they cost to produce, and I do not encourage their pro- duction. I know something of the art of inlaying prints. I had a distinguished and venerable teacher, the late Ferdinand J. Dreer of Philadelphia, who formed a priceless collection of autographs, which at his death he bequeathed to the Historical Society of Pennsyl- vania. Mr. Dreer was a collector of the old school. He was a friend of John Allan, one of the earliest J^ok-collectors in this country, of whom a "Memo- rial" was published by the Bradford Club in 1864. Mr. Dreer spent the leisure of years and a small for- tune in inlaying plates and pages of text of such books as he fancied. I remember well as a lad being allowed to pore over his sumptuous extra-illustrated books, filled with autograph letters, portraits, and views, for hours at a time. Little did I think that these volumes, the object of such loving care, would be sold at auction. Many years after his death the family decided to dispose of a portion of his library. Stan. Henkels con- ducted the sale. When the well-known volumes came up, I was all in a tremble. It seemed hardly possible that any of the famous Dreer books were to come within my grasp. But alas! fashions change, as I have said before. A "History of the Bank of North 58 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING America," our oldest national bank, which enjoys the unique distinction of not calling itself a national bank, went, not to an officer or director of that sound old Philadelphia institution, but to George D. Smith of New York, for a song — in a high key, but a song nevertheless. An "Oration in Carpenter's Hall" in Philadelphia brought close to a thousand dollars; but, in addition to the rare portraits and views, there were fifty-seven autograph letters in it. Sold separately, thej^ would have brought several times as much. Smith was the buyer. Then there came a "History of Christ Church," full of most interesting material, as "old Christ Church" is the most beautiful and interesting colonial church in America. Where was the rector, where were the wardens and the vestry thereof? No sign of them. Smith was the buyer. The books were going and for almost nothing, in every case to "Smith." At last came the "Memoirs of Nicholas Biddle," of the famous old Bank of the United States. Hear! ye Biddies, if any Biddies there be. There are, in plenty, but not here. Smith, having bought all the rest, stopped when he saw me bidding; the hammer fell, and I was the owner of the most interesting volume in the whole Dreer collection, — the volume I had so often coveted as a boy, with the letters and portraits of Penn, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, and so forth, — in all twenty-eight of them, and mine for ten dollars apiece, book, portraits, and binding thrown in. It BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 59 is painful to witness the slaughter of another's pos- sessions; it makes one wonder — But that is not what we collect books for. In the last analj^sis pretty much everything, in- cluding poetry, is merchandise, and every important book sooner or later turns up in the auction rooms. The dozen or fifty men present represent the book- buyers of the world — you are buying against them. When you sell a book at auction the whole world is your market. This refers, of course, only to important sales. At other times books are frequently disposed of at much less than their real value. These sales it pays the book-collector to attend, personally, if he can ; or, better still, to entrust his bid to the auctioneer or to some representative in whom he has confidence. Most profitable of all for the buyer are the sales where furniture, pictures, and rugs are disposed of, with, finally, a few books knocked down by one who knows nothing of their value. Many are the volumes in my library which have been picked up on such occasions for a very few dol- lars, and which are worth infinitely more than I paid for them. I have in mind my copy of the first edition of Boswell's "Corsica," in fine old calf, with the in- scription "To the Right Honourable, the Earl Maris- chal of Scotland, as a mark of sincere regard and affection, from the Author, James Boswell." This stands me only a few dollars. In London I should have been asked — and w^ould have paid — twenty pounds for it. 60 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Some men haunt the auction rooms all the time. I do not. I have a living to make and I am not quick in making it; moreover, the spirit of competition in- variably leads me astray, and I never come away with- out finding myself the owner of at least one book, usually a large one, which should properly be en- titled, " What Will He Do With It?" No book-collector should be without a book-plate, and a book-plate once inserted in a volume should never be removed. When the plate is that of a good collector, it constitutes an indorsement, and adds a certain interest and value to the volume. I was once going through the collection of a friend, and observing the absence of a book-plate, I asked him why it was. He replied, " The selection of a book- plate is such a serious matter." It is; and I should never have been able to get one to suit me entirely had not my good friend, Osgood of Princeton, come to my rescue. He was working in my library some years ago on an exquisite appreciation of Johnson, when, noticing on my writing-table a pen-and-ink sketch, he asked, "What's this.'^" I replied with a sigh that it was a suggestion for a book-plate which I had just received from London. I had described in a letter exactly what I wanted — an association plate strictly in eighteenth- century style. Fleet Street was to be indicated, with Temple Bar in the background. It was to be plain and dignified in treatment. What came was indeed |)K'^"--rap)hicalpari of lileratnrc iswhal I love moR ' 1% The book-plate illustrates an incident described in Boswell. Johnson and Gold- smith were walking one day in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Looking at the graves, Johnson solemnly repeated a line from a Latin poet, which might be freely translated, "Perchance some dayour/urwes will minjrle with these." As they strolled home through the Strand, Goldsmith's eye lighted upon the heads of two traitors rotting on the spikes over Temple liar. Remembering that John- son and he were rather Jacobitic in sentiment, i)ointing to the heads and giving Johnson's quotation a twist, Goldsmith remarked, " Perhaps some day our heads will mingle with those." BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 61 a sketch of Fleet Street and very much more. There were scrolls and flourishes, eggs and darts and fleurs- de-lis — a little of everything. In a word it was im- possible. "Let me see what I can do," said Osgood. When I returned home that evening there was wait- ing for me an exquisite pencil sketch, every detail faultless: Fleet Street with its tavern signs, in the background Temple Bar with Johnson and Gold- smith, the latter pointing to it and remarking slyly, ''Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istis." I was delighted, as I had reason to be. In due course, after discussions as to the selection of a suitable motto, we finally agreed on a line out of Boswell: "Sir, the bio- graphical part of literature is what I love most"; and the sketch went off to Sidney Smith of Boston, the distinguished book-plate engraver. I have a fondness for college professors. I must have inherited it from a rich old uncle, from whom I unluckily inherited nothing else, who had a similar weakness for preachers. Let a man, however stupid, once get a license to wear his collar backwards, and the door was flung wide and the table spread. I have often thought what an ecstasy of delight he would have been thrown into had he met a churchman whose rank permitted him to wear his entire ecclesiastical panoply backwards. My weakness for scholars is just such a whimsy. As a rule they are not so indulgent to collectors as they should be. They write books that we buy and read — when we can. My lifelong friend, Felix Schelling 62 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING (in England he would be Sir Felix) is more lenient than most. My copy of his "Elizabethan Drama," which has made him famous among students, is uncut and, I am afraid, to some extent unopened. Frankly, it is too scholarly to read with enjoyment. Indeed, I sometimes think that it was my protest that led him to adopt the easier and smoother style apparent in his later books, "English Literature dur- ing the Lifetime of Shakespeare," and "The English Lyric." Be this as it may, he has shown that he can use the scholarly and the familiar style with equal facility; and when he chooses, he can turn a compli- ment like one of his own sixteenth-century courtiers. I had always doubted that famous book-index story, "Mill, J. S., 'On Liberty'; Ditto, 'On the Floss,'" until one day my friend Tinker sent me a dedication copy of his "Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney," in which I read — and knew that he was poking fun at me for my bookish weakness — this : — This copy is a genuine specimen of the first edition, un- cut and unopened, signed and certified by the editor. Chauncey Brewster Tinker. No copy is now known to exist of the suppressed first state of the first edition — that in which, instead of the present entry in the index, under Pope, Alexander, page 111, occurred the words, "Pope Alexander 111." How much more valuable this copy would have been if this blunder — "point," the judicious would call it — had not been corrected until the second edition ! BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME 63 The work of my office was interrupted one summer morning several years ago by the receipt of a cable from London, apparently in code, which, I was ad- vised, would not translate. Upon its being submitted to me I found that it did not require translating, but I was not surprised that it was somewhat bewilder- ing to others. It read, ''Johnson Piazza Dictionary Pounds Forty Hut.'' To me it was perfectly clear that Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi's copy of Johnson's Dictionary in two volumes folio was to be had from my friend Hutt for forty pounds. I dispatched the money and in due course received the volumes. Inserted in one of them was a long holograph letter to the Thrales, giving them some excellent advice on the management of their affairs. I think it very probably in your power to lay up eight thousand pounds a year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance, and surely such a state is not to be put in yearly hazard for the pleasure of keeping the house full, or the ambition of outbrewing Whitbread. Stop now and you are safe — stop a few years and ^^ou may go safely on thereafter, if to go on shall seem worth the vv hile. Johnson's letters, like his talks, are compact with wisdom, and many of them are as easy as the pro- verbial old shoe. Fancy Sam Johnson, the great lexi- cographer, writing to Mrs. Thrale and telling her to come home and take care of him and, as he says, to Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will, or come not at all. 64 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING I own thirty or forty Johnson letters, including the one in which he describes what she called his "me- nagerie" — dependents too old, too poor, or too peevish to find asylum elsewhere. He writes, "We have tolerable concord at home, but no love. Wil- liams hates everybody. Levet hates Desmoulines, and does not love Williams. Desmoulines hates them both. Poll loves none of them." But I must be careful. I had firmly resolved not to say anything which would lead any one to suspect that I am Johnson-mad, but I admit that such is the case. I am never without a copy of Boswell. What edition.? Any edition. I have them all — the first in boards uncut, for my personal satisfaction; an extra- illustrated copy of the same, for display; Birkbeck Hill's, for reference, and the cheap old Bohn copy which thirty years ago I first read, because I know it by heart. Yes, I can truly say with Leslie Stephen, *'My enjoyment of books began and will end with Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.'" 'SCbou fool ! to jseeh companionjs in a crototj I 3Into tbp room, anb tbere upon tbp hneejtf, ■^Before tbp boohiiWocg, bumblp tbanh tbp ©oD, (Cbat tbou baitft friendifi lihe tbcjse ! " Ill OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES The true book-lover is usually loath to destroy an old book-catalogue. It would not be easy to give a reason for this, unless it is that no sooner has he done so than he has occasion to refer to it. Such catalogues reach me by almost every mail, and I while away many hours in turning over their leaves. Anatole France in his charming story, "The Crime of Sylvestre Bon- nard," makes his dear old book-collector say, "There is no reading more easy, more fascinating, and more delightful than that of a catalogue "; and it is so, for the most part; but some catalogues annoy me ex- ceedingly: those which contain long lists of books that are not books; genealogies; county (and especially town) histories, illustrated with portraits; obsolete medical and scientific books; books on agriculture and diseases of the horse. How it is that any one can make a living by vending such merchandise is beyond me — but so are most things. Living, however, in the country, and going to town every day, I spend much time on the trains, and must have something to read besides newspapers, — who was it who said that reading newspapers is a nervous habit.^ — and it is not always convenient to carry a book; so I usually have a few catalogues which I mark industriously, thus presenting a fine imitation of a 66 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING busy man. One check means a book that I own, and I note with interest the prices; another, a book that I would Hke to have; while yet another indicates a book to which under no circumstances would I give a place on my shelves. When my library calls for a ridding up, these slim pamphlets are not discarded as they should be, but are stored in a closet, to be re- ferred to when needed, until at last something must be done to make room for those that came to-day and those that will come to-morrow. On one of these occasional house-clearings I came across, a bundle of old catalogues which I have never had it in me to destroy. One of them w^as published in 1886, by a man I knew well years ago, Charles Hutt, of Clement's Inn Gateway, Strand. Hutt him- self has long since passed away; so has his shop, the Gateway; and, indeed, the Strand itself — his part of it, that is. I sometimes think that the best part of old London has disappeared. Need I say that I refer to Holywell Street and the Clare Market district which lay between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields, which Dickens knew and described so well.'^ Hutt in his day was a man of considerable impor- tance. He was the first London bookseller to realize the direction and value of the American market. Had he lived, my friends Sabin and Spencer and Maggs would have had a serious rival. All the old catalogues before me are alike in one important respect, namely, the uniformly low prices. From the standpoint of to-day the prices were ab- OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 67 surdly low — or are those of to-day absurdly high? I, for one, do not think so. When a man puts pen to paper on the subject of the prices of rare books, he feels — at least I feel — that it is a silly thing to do, — and yet we collectors have been doing it always, or almost always, — to point out that prices have about reached top notch, and that the wise man will wait for the inevitable decline before he separates himself from his money. Now, it is my belief that books, in spite of the high prices that they are bringing in the shops and at auc- tion, have only just begun their advance, and that there is no limit to the prices they will bring as time goes on. The only way to guess the future is to study the past; and such study as I have been able to make leads me to believe that for the really great books the sky is the limit. "The really great books!" What are they, and where are they.f^ I am not sure that I know; they do not often come my way, nor, when they do, am I in a position to compete for them ; but as I can be per- fectly happy without an ocean-going yacht, content- ing myself with a motor-boat, so can I make shift to get along without a Gutenberg Bible, without a first folio of Shakespeare, or any of the quartos, in short, sans any of those books which no millionaire's li- brary can be without. But this I will say, that if I could afford to buy them, I would pay any price for the privilege of owning them. A man may be possessed of relatively small means 68 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING and yet indulge himself in all the joys of collecting, if he will deny himself other things not so important to his happiness. It is a problem in selection, as Elia points out in his essay "Old China," when a weighing for and against and a wearing of old clothes is recom- mended by his sister Bridget, if the twelve or sixteen shillings saved is to enable one to bring home in tri- umph an old folio. As a book-collector, Lamb would not take high rank; but he was a true book-lover, and the books he liked to read he liked to buy. And just here I may be permitted to record how I came across a little poem, in the manuscript of the author, which exactly voices his sentiments — and mine. . I was visiting Princeton not long ago, that beauti- ful little city, with its lovely halls and towers; and interested in libraries as I always am, had secured permission to browse at will among the collections formed by the late Laurence Hutton. After an in- spection of his "Portraits in Plaster," — a collection of death-masks, unique in this country or elsewhere, — I turned my attention to his association books. It is a difficult lot to classify, and not of overwhelming interest; not to be compared with the Richard Wain Meirs collection of Cruikshank, which has just been bequeathed to the Library; but nothing which is a book is entirely alien to me, and the Hutton books, with their inscriptions from their authors, testifying to their regard for him and to his love of books, are well worth examination. I had opened many volumes at random, and finally OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 69 chanced upon Brander Matthews's "Ballads of Books," a little anthology of bookish poems, for many years a favorite of mine. Turning to the inscription, I found — what I found; but what interested me particularly was a letter from an English admirer, one Thomas Hutchinson, inclosing some verses, of which I made a copy without the permission of any one. I did not ask the librarian, for he might have referred the question to the trustees, or something; but I did turn to a speaking likeness of "Larry" that hung right over the bookcase and seemed to say, "Why, sure, fellow book-lover; pass on the torch, print any- thing you please." And these are the verses: — BALLADE OF A POOR BOOK-LOVER Though in its stem vagaries Fate A poor book-lover me decreed, Perchance mine is a happy state — The books I buy I hke to read: To me dear friends they are indeed, But, howe'er enviously I sigh, Of others take I Uttle heed — The books I read I like to buy. n My depth of purse is not so great Nor yet my bibhophihc greed, That merely buying doth elate: The books I buy I like to read: Still e'en when dawdling in a mead, Beneath a cloudless summer sky. By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed, The books I read — I like to buy. 70 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING III Some books tho' tooled in style ornate, Yet worms upon their contents feed, Some men about their bindings prate — The books I buy I like to read : Yet some day may my fancy breed My ruin — it may now be nigh — They reap, we know, who sow the seed: The books I read I like to buy. ENVOY Tho' frequently to stall I speed. The books I buy I like to read; Yet wealth to me will never hie — The books I read I like to buy. Two things there are which go to make the price of a book — first the book itself, its scarcity, together with the urgency of the demand for it .(a book may be unique and yet practically valueless, because of the fact that no one much cares to have it); and second, the plentifulness of money, or the ease with which its owner may have acquired his fortune. No one will suppose that, at the famous auction in Lon- don something over a hundred years ago, when Earl Spencer bid two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds for the famous Boccaccio, and the Marquis of Blandford added, imperturbedly, "ten," and secured the prize — no one will suppose that either of the gentlemen had a scanty rent-roll. In England, the days of the great private libraries are over. For generations, indeed for centuries, the English have had the leisure, the inclination, and the OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 71 means to gratify their taste. They once searched the Continent for books and works of art, very much as we now go to England for them. They formed their hbraries when books were plentiful and prices low. Moreover, there were fewer collectors than there are to-day. We are paying big prices, — the English never sell except at a profit, — but, all things con- sidered, we are not paying more for the books than they are worth. There are probably now in England as many collectors as there ever were, but neverthe- less the books are coming to this country; and while we may never be able to rival the treasures of the British Museum and the Bodleian, outside the great public libraries the important collections are now in this country, and will remain here. And I am not sure how much longer the London dealers are going to retain their preeminence. We hear of New York becoming the centre of the financial world. It will in time become the centre of the book- selling world as well, the best market in which to buy and in which to sell. W ith the possible exception of Quaritch, George D. Smith has probably sold as many rare books as any man in the world; while Dr. Rosenbach, on the second floor of his shop in Phila- delphia, has a stock of rare books unequaled by any other dealer in this country. Ask any expert where the great books are, and you will be told, if you do not know already, of the won- ders of Mr. Morgan's collections; of how Mr. Hunt- ington has bought one library after another until he 72 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING has practically everything obtainable ; of Mr. William K. Bixby's manuscripts, of Mr. White's collection of the Elizabethans, and of Mr. Folger's Shakespeares. There are as many tastes as there are collectors. Caxtons and incunabula of any sort are highly re- garded; even the possession of a set of the Shake- speare folios makes a man a marked man, in spite of the fact that Henrietta Bartlett says they are not rare; but then. Miss Bartlett has been browsing on books rarer still, namely, the first quartos, of which there are of "Hamlet" two copies only, one in this country with a title-page, but lacking the last leaf, while the other copy, in the British Museum, has the last leaf but lacks the title-page; and "Venus and Adonis," of the first eight editions of which only thirteen copies are known to exist. All of these are as yet in England, except one copy of the second edition, which is ow^ned by the Elizabethan Club of Yale University. Of "Titus Andronicus" there is only one copy of the first printing, this in the library of H. C. Folger of New York. Surely no one will dis- pute Miss Bartlett's statement that the quartos are rare indeed. But why continue.'^ Enough has been said: the point I want to make is that fifty years from now someone will be regretting that he was not present when a faultless first folio could have been had for the trifling sum of twenty -five thousand dollars, at which figure a dealer is now offering one. Or, glancing over a copy of "Book Prices Current" for 1918, bewail the HEXRY E. HUNTINGTON OF NEW YORK A few years ago he conceived the idea of forming tlie greatest private library in the world. With the help of " (r. D. S." and assisted by a staff of able librarians, he has accomplished what he set out to do. OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 73 time when presentation copies of Dickens could have been had for the trifling sum of a thousand dollars. Hush ! I feel the spirit of prophecy upon me. I sat with Harry Widener at Anderson's auction rooms a few years ago, on the evening when George D. Smith, acting for Mr. Huntington, paid fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. No book had ever sold for so great a price, yet I feel sure that Mr. Huntington secured a bargain, and I told him so; but for the average collector such great books as these are mere names, as far above the ordinary man as the moon; and the wise among us never cry for them; we content ourselves with — something else. In collecting, as in everything else, experience is the best teacher. Before we can gain our footing we must make our mistakes and have them pointed out to us, or, by reading, discover them for ourselves. I have a confession to make. Forty years ago I thought that I had the makings of a numismatist in me, and was for a time diligent in collecting coins. In order that they might be readily fastened to a panel covered with velvet, I pierced each one with a small hole, and was much chagrined when I was told that I had ab- solutely ruined the lot, which was worth, perhaps, ten dollars. This was not a high price to pay for the dis- covery I then made and noted, that it is the height of wisdom to leave alone anything of value which may come my way; to repair, inlay, insert, mount, frame, or bind as little as possible. 74 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING This is not to suggest that my Ubrary is entirely devoid of books in bindings. A few specimens of the good binders I have, but what I value most is a sound bit of straight-grained crimson morocco covering the "Poems of Mr. Gray" with one of the finest examples of fore-edge painting I have ever seen, representing Stoke Poges Church Yard, the scene of the immortal *' Elegy." I was much pleased when I discovered that this binding bore the stamp of Taylor & Hessey, a name I had always associated with first editions of Charles Lamb. How many people have clipped signatures from old letters and documents, under the mistaken no- tion that they were collecting autographs. I happen to ow^n the receipt for the copyright of the "Essays of Elia." It was signed by Lamb twice, originally; one signature has been cut away. It is a precious possession as it is, but I could wish that the "col- lector" in whose hands it once was had not removed one signature for his "scrapbook" — properly so called. Nor is the race yet dead of those who, in- dulging a vicious taste for subscription books, think that they are forming a library. My coins I have kept as an ever-present reminder of the mistake of my early days. Luckily I escaped the subscription- book stage. What we collect depends as well upon our taste as upon our means, for, given zeal and intelligence, it is surprising how soon one acquires a collection of — whatever it may be — which becomes a source of re- OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 75 laxation and instruction; and after a little one be- comes, if not exactly expert, at least wise enough to escape obvious pitfalls, ^^'llen experience directs our efforts the chief danger is past. But how much there is to know ! I never leave the company of a man like Dr. Rosenbach, or A. J. Bowden, or the late Luther Livingston, without feeling a sense of hopelessness coming over me. What wonderful memories these men have! how many minute "points" about books they must have indexed, so to speak, in their minds! And there are collectors whose knowledge is equally bewildering. Mr. W^hite, or Beverly Chew, for ex- ample; and Harry Widener, who, had he lived, would have set a new and, I fear, hopeless standard for us. Not knowing much myself, I have found it wise not to try to beat the expert ; it is like trying to beat W^all Street — it cannot be done. Kow can an outsider with the corner of his mind compete with one who is playing the game ever and alwaj's.^^ The answer is simple — he can't; and he will do well not to try. It is better to confess ignorance and rely upon the word of a reliable dealer, than to endeavor to put one over on him. This method may enable a novice to buy a good horse, although such has not been my experi- ence. I think it was Trollope who remarked that not even a bishop could sell a horse without forgetting that he was a bishop. I think I would rather trust a bookseller than a bishop. And speaking of booksellers, they should be re- garded as Hamlet did his players, as the abstract and 76 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING brief chronicles of the time; and it would be well to remember that their ill report of you while you live is much worse than a bad epitaph after you are dead. Their stock in trade consists, not only in the books they have for sale, but in their knowledge. This may be at your disposal, if you use them after your own honor and dignity; but to live, they must sell books at a profit, and the delightful talk about books which you so much enjoy must, at least occasionally, result in a sale. Go to them for information as a possible customer, and you will find them, as Dr. Johnson said, generous and liberal-minded men; but use them solely as walking encyclopaedias, and you may come to grief. I have on the shelves over yonder a set of Foxe's "Martyrs" in three ponderous volumes, which I sel- dom have occasion to refer to; but in one volume is pasted a clipping from an old newspaper, telling a story of the elder Quaritch. A young lady once entered his shop in Piccadilly and requested to see the great man. She wanted to know all that is to be known of this once famous book, all about editions and prices and "points," of which there are many. Finally, after he had answered questions readily enough for some time, the old man became wise, and remarked, "Now, my dear, if you want to know anything else about this book, my fee will be five guineas." The trans- action was at an end. Had Quaritch been a lawyer and the young lady a stranger, her first question would have resulted in a request for a retainer. OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 77 But I am a long time in coming to my old cata- logues. Let me take one at random, and opening it at the first page, pick out the first item which meets my eye. Here it is : — Alken, Henry — Analysis of the Hunting Field. Wood- cuts and colored illustrations. First edition, royal 8vo. original cloth, uncut. Ackerman, 1846. £2. It was the last work but one of a man who is now *' collected" by many who, like myself, would as soon think of riding a zebra as a hunter. My copy cost me $100, while my "Life of Mytton," third edition, I regarded as a bargain at $50. Had I been wise enough to buy it five and thirty years ago, I would have paid about as many shillings for it. With sporting books in mind it is quite natural to turn to Surtees. His " Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities" is missing from this catalogue, but here are a lot of them. "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour" in full levant morocco, extra, b}^ Tout, for three guineas, and "Ask Mamma" in cloth, uncut, for £2 15s. "Handley Cross" is priced at fifty shillings, and "Facey Rom- ford's Hounds" at two pounds — all first editions, mind you, and for the most part just as you want them, in the original cloth, uncut. My advice would be to forget these prices of yesteryear, and if you want a set of the best sporting novels ever written (I know a charming woman who has read every one of them) go at once to them that sell. But while we are thinking of colored-plate books, let us see what it would have cost us to secure a copy 78 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING of A Beckett's " Comic History of Rome." Here it is, "complete in numbers as originally published," four guineas; while a "Comic History of England," two volumes, bound by Riviere from the original parts, in full red levant morocco, extra, cost five guineas. I have tried to read these histories — it cannot be done. It is like reading the not very funny book of an old- time comic opera (always excepting Gilbert's), which depended for its success on the music and the acting — as these books depend on their illustrations by Leech. It is on account of the humor of their wonder- fully caricatured portraits of historic personages, in anachronistic surroundings, that these books live and deserve to live. What could be better than the landing of Julius Csesar on the shores of Albion, from the deck of a channel steamer of Leech's own time.^ Did you observe that the "History of Rome" was bound up from the original parts? This, according to modern notions, is a mistake. Parts should be left alone — severely alone, I should say. I have no love for books "in parts," and as this is admitted heresy, I should perhaps explain. As is well known, some of the most desired of modern books, "Pickwick" and "Vanity Fair" for example, were so published, and particulars as to one will indicate the reason for my prejudice against all books "in parts." In April, 1910, in New York, the Coggeshall Dickens collection was dispersed, and a copy of "Pick- wick" in parts was advertised, no doubt correctly, as the most nearly perfect copy ever offered at a public OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 79 sale. Two full pages of the catalogue were taken up in a painstaking description of the birthmarks of this famous book. It was, like most of the other great novels, brought out "twenty parts in nineteen," — that is, the last number was a double number, — and with a page of the original manuscript, it brought $5350. When a novel published less than a century ago brings such a price, it must be of extraordinary interest and rarity. W^as the price high.^ Decidedly not ! There are said to be not ten such copies in exist- ence. It was in superb condition, and manuscript pages of "Pickwick" do not grow on trees. All the details which go to make up a perfect set can be found in Eckel's "First Editions of Charles Dickens." Briefly, in order to take high rank it is necessary that each part should be clean and perfect and should have the correct imprint and date; it should have the proper number of illustrations by the right artist; and these plates must be original and not reetched, and almost every plate has certain peculiarities which will mislead the unwary. But this is not all. Each part carried certain announcements and advertise- ments. These must be carefully looked to, for they are of the utmost value in determining whether it be an early or a later issue of the first edition. An ad- vertisement of "Rowland and Son's Toilet Prepara- tions" where "Simpson's Pills" should be, might lead to painful discussion. But it is difficult to say whether the possession of a copy of "Pickwick" like the Coggeshall copy is an 80 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING asset or a liability. It must be handled with gloves; the pea-green paper wrappers are very tender, jand not everyone who insists on seeing your treasures knows how to treat such a pamphlet; and, horror of horrors! a "part" might get stacked up with a pile of "Outlooks" on the library table, or get mislaid alto- gether. So on the whole I am inclined to leave such books to those whose knowledge of bibliography is more exact than mine, and who would not regard the loss of a "part" as an irretrievable disaster. My preference is to get, when I can, books bound in cloth or boards "as issued." They are sufficiently expensive and can be handled with greater freedom. My library is, in a sense, a circulating library: my books move around with me, and a bound book, in some measure at least, takes care of itself. Having said all of which, I looked upon that Coggeshall "Pickwick," and lusted after it. There is, however, an even greater copy awaiting a purchaser at Rosenbach's. It is a presentation copy in parts, the only one known to exist. Each of the first fourteen parts has Dickens's autograph inscrip- tion, "Mary Hogarth from hers most affectionately," variously signed — in full, "Charles Dickens," with initials, or "The Editor." After the publication of the fourteenth part ]Miss Hogarth, his sister-in-law, a young girl in her eighteenth year, died suddenly, and the shock of her death was so great that Dickens was obliged to discontinue work upon "Pickwick" for two months. No doubt this is the finest "Pickwick" " lUakebeiiic; unable to find a publishor for liis songs, Mrs. Blake went out with lialf a crown, all the money they had in the world, and of that laid out Is. lod. on the sinijtle materials necessary for setting in practice the new revelation. T'pon that investment of Is. loil. he started what was to prove a principal means of supi)ort through his future life. . . . The poet and his wife did every tiling in making the book, — writing, designing, printing, engraving, everything except manufacturing the paper. The very ink, or color rather.they did make." — Gilchrist. OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 81 in the world. It has all the "pomts" and to spare — and the price, well, only a very rich or a very wise man could buy it. But to return to my catalogue. Here is Pierce Egan's "Boxiana," five volumes, 8vo, as clean as new, in the original boards, uncut, — that's my style, ^ — and the price, twelve pounds; three hundred and fifty dollars would be a fair price to-day. And here is the "Anecdotes of the Life and Transactions of Mrs. Margaret Rudd," a notorious woman who just es- caped hanging for forgery, of whom Dr. Johnson once said that he would have gone to see her> but that he was prevented from such a frolic by his fear that it would get into the newspapers. I have been looking for it in vain for years; here it is, in new calf, price nine shillings, and Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," first edition, in contemporary calf, for thirty. Let us turn to poetry. Arnold, Matthew, not in- teresting; nothing, it chances, by Blake; his "Poeti- cal Sketches," 1783, has always been excessively rare, only a dozen or so copies are known, and "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," while not so scarce, is much more desired. This lovely book was originally "Songs of Innocence" only; "Experience " came later, as it always does. Of all the books I know, this is the most interesting. It is in very deed "W. Blake, his book," the author being as well the designer, en- graver, printer, and illuminator of it. To attempt in a paragraph any bibliographical ac- count of the "Songs" is as impossible as to give the 82 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING genealogy of a fairy. In the ordinary sense the book was never published. Blake sold it to such of his friends as would buy, at prices ranging from thirty shillings to two guineas. Later, to help him over a difficulty (and his life was full of difficulties), they paid him perhaps as much as twenty pounds and in return got a copy glowing with colors and gold. Hence no two copies are exactly alike. It is one of the few books of which a man fortunate enough to own any copy may say, "I like mine best." The price to-day for an average copy is about two thou- sand dollars. I can see clearly now that in order to be up to date there must be a new edition of this book every min- ute. I had just suggested $2000 as the probable price of the "Songs" when a priced copy of the Linnell Catalogue of his Blake Collection reached me. This, the last and greatest Blake collection in England, was sold at auction on March 15, 1918, and accustomed as I am to high prices I was bewildered as I turned its pages. There were two copies of the "Songs"; each brought £735. The "Poetical Sketches" was conspicuous by its absence, while the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" was knocked down for £756. The drawings for Dante's "Divina Commedia," sixty- eight in all, brought the amazing price of £7665. And these prices will be materially advanced before the booksellers are done with them, as we shall see when their catalogues arrive. We come back to earth with a thud after this lofty flight, in the course -3 •- O > u a; ^ , ^ y-, ^ y '-' rt ^ Oj C o ■M 2; ^ ■" ^ rt CO 01 J3 ^ t^ S :i; ft ■* si >> A '•^ bX! ^tl -w n < s bJD a c hj £ 't^ OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 83 of which we seem to have been seeing visions and dreaming dreams, much as Blake himself did. Continuing to "beat the track of the alphabet,'* we reach Bronte and note that now scarce item, "Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell," the gen- uine first edition printed by Hasler in 1846, for Aylott & Jones, before the title-page bore the Smith- Elder imprint; price two pounds five. Walter Hill's last catalogue has a Smith-Elder copy at $12.50, but the right imprint now makes a difference of several hundred dollars. About a year ago Edmund D. Brooks, of Minneapolis, was offering Charlotte Bronte's own copy of the book, with the Aylott and Jones imprint, with some manuscript notes which made it especially interesting to Bronte collectors, the most important of whom, by the way, is my life- long friend, H. H. Bonnell of Philadelphia, whose unrivaled Bronte collection is not unworthy of an honored place in the Bronte Museum at Haworth. I called his attention to it, but he already had a presenta- tion copy to Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law rhymer. Burns: the first Edinburgh edition, for a song; no Kilmarnock edition — that fine old item which every collector wants has always been excessively scarce; and in this connection let me disinter a good story of how one collector secured a copy. The story is told of John Allan, from whom, as a collector, I am descended by the process of clasping hands. My old friend, Ferdinand Dreer, for more than sixty years a dis- tinguished collector in Philadelphia, was an intimate 84 AIMENITTES OF BOOK-COLLECTING friend of Allan's, and passed on to me the collecting legends he had received from him. Allan was an old Scotchman, living in New York when the story be- gins, who by his industry had acquired a small for- tune, much of which he spent in the purchase of books. He collected the books of his period and extra- illustrated them. Lives of Mary Queen of Scots, and Byron; Dibdin, of course, and Americana; but Burns was his ruling passion. He had the first Edinburgh edition, and longed for the Kilmarnock — as who does not? He had a standing order for a copy up to seven guineas, which in those days was considered a fair price, and finally one was reported to him from London at eight. He ordered it out, but it was sold before his letter arrived, and he was greatly disap- pointed. Some time afterward a friend from the old country visited him, and as he was sailing, asked if he could do anything for him at home. "Yes," said Allan, "get me, if you possibly can, the Kilmarnock edition of Burns." Llis friend was instructed as to its scarcity and the price he might have to pay for it. On his return his friend, engaged as usual in his affairs, discovered that one of his workmen was drunk. In those days it was not considered good form to get drunk except on Saturday night. How could he get drunk in the middle of the week.^ Where did he get the money.'* The answer was that by pnA^ning some books ten shillings had been raised. "And what books had you.^" "Oh, Burns and some others; every Scotchman has a copy of Burns." Then, suddenly i^*^53(^ *^tiJ^§rV^&sii£= POEMS,! CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT, B Y ROBERT BURNS. THE Simple Bard, unbroke by rules of Art, He pours the wild effufions of the heart : And if infpir'd, 'tis Nature's pow'rs infpire; Her's all the melting thrill, and hcr's the kindling fire. Anonymous. KILMARNOCK: PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON. M,DCC,LXXXVI. -r«* M 86 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING remembering his old friend in New York, he asked, "What sort of a copy was it?" "The old Kilmar- nock," was the reply. Not to make the story too long, the pawn-ticket was secured for a guinea, the books redeemed, and the Kilmarnock Burns passed into Allan's possession. After his death his books were sold at auction (1864). This was during our Civil War, and several times the sale was suspended owing to the noise of a passing regiment in the street. Notwithstanding that times were not propitious for book-sales, his friends were astonished at the prices realized: the Burns fetched $106. It was probably a poor copy. A gen- eration or two ago not as much care was paid to con- dition as now. Very few uncut copies are known. One is owned by a man as should n't. Another is in the Burns Museum in Ayrshire, which cost the Museum Trustees a thousand pounds; the Canfield, which was purchased by Harry Widener for six thousand dollars, and the Van Antwerp copy, which, at the sale of his collection in London in 1907, brought seven hundred pounds; but much bibliographical water has gone over the dam since 1907, and for some reason the Van Antwerp books, with the exception of one or two items, did not bring as good prices as they should have done. They were sold at an unfortunate moment and perhaps at the wrong place. In Walter Hill's current catalogue there is a Kilmarnock Burns, in an old binding, which looks very cheap to me at $2(100. At the Allan sale an Eliot Bible brought the then enor- OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 87 mous sum of $825. Supposing an Eliot Bible were obtainable to-day, it would bring, no doubt, five thousand dollars, perhaps more. This is a long digression. There are other desired volumes besides Burns. Here is a "Paradise Lost," perhaps not so fine a copy as Sabin is now offering for four hundred pounds; but the price is only thirty pounds; and this reminds me that in Beverly Chew's copy, an exceptionally fine one, as all the books of that fastidious collector are, there is an interesting note made by a former owner to this effect: "This is the first edition of this book and has the first title- page. It is worth nearly ten pounds and is rising in value. 1857." Alphabetically speaking, it is only a step from Mil- ton to Moore, George. Here is his "Flowers of Pas- sion," for which I paid fifteen dollars ten or more years ago — priced at half a crown. But let us take up another catalogue, one which issued from the world-famous shop in Piccadilly, Quaritch's. Forty years ago Quaritch thought it al- most beneath his dignity as a bookseller to offer for sale any except the very rarest books in English ; very much as, up to within the last few years, the Univer- sities of Oxford and Cambridge did not think it worth their while to refer more than casually to the glories of English literature. When we open an old Quaritch catalogue, we step out of this age into another, which leads me to observe how remarkable is the change in taste which has come over the collecting world in the 88 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING last fifty years. Formerly it was the fashion to collect extensively books of which few among us now know anything: books in learned or painful languages, on Philosophy or Religion, as well as those which, for the want of a better name, we call "Classics"; books frequently spoken of, but seldom read. Such books, unless very valuable indeed, no longer find ready buyers. We have come into our great in- heritance. We now dip deep in our "well of English undefyled"; Aldines and Elzevirs have gone out of fashion. Even one of the rarest of them, "Le Pastis- sier Frangois," is not greatly desired; and I take it that the reason for this change is chiefly due to the dif- ference in the type of men who are prominent among the buyers of fine books to-day. Formerly the col- lector was a man, not necessarily with a liberal educa- tion, but with an education entirely different from that which the best educated among us now receive. I doubt if there are in this country to-daj^ half a dozen important bookbuyers who can read Latin with ease, let alone Greek. Of French, German, and Italian some of us have a working knowledge, but most of us prefer to buy books which we can enjoy without con- stant reference to a dictionary. The world is the college of the book-collector of to-day. Many of us are busy men of affairs, familiar, it may be, with the price of oil, or steel, or copper, or coal, or cotton, or, it may be, with the price of the "shares" of all of these and more. Books are our re- laxation. We make it a rule not to buy what we can- OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 89 not read. Some of us indulge the vain hope that time will bring us leisure to acquaint ourselves fully with the contents of all our books. We want books written in our own tongue, and most of us have some pet author or group of authors, or period, it may be, in which we love to lose ourselves and forget the cares of the present. One man may have a collection of Pope, another of Goldsmith, another of Lamb, and so on. The drama has its votaries who are never seen in a theatre; but look into their libraries and j^ou will find everything, from "Ralph Roister Doister" to the " Importance of Being Earnest." And note that these collections are formed by men who are not stu- dents in the accepted sense of the word, but who, in the course of years, have accumulated an immense amount of learning. Clarence S. Bement is a fine example of the collector of to-day, a man of large affairs with the tastes and learning of a scholar. It has always seemed to me that professors of literature and collectors do not intermingle as they should. They might learn much from each other. I yield to no professor in my passion for English literature. My knowledge is deficient and inexact, but what I lack in learning I make up in love. But we are neglecting the Quaritch catalogue. Let us open it at random, as old people used to open their Bibles, and govern their conduct by the first text which met their eyes. Here we are: "Grammatica Graeca," Milan, 1476; the first edition of the first book printed in Greek; one of six known copies. So 90 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING it is possible for onlj^ six busy men to recreate them- selves after a hard day's work with a first Greek Grammar. Too bad! Here is another: Macrobius, "The Saturnalia" — "a miscellany of criticism and antiquities, full of erudition and very useful, similar in their plan to the 'Noctes Atticge' of Aulus Gellius." No doubt, but as dead as counterfeit money. Here is another: Boethius, "De Consolatione Philoso- phise." Boethius! I seem to have heard of him. Who was he.'^ Not in "Who's WTio," obviously. Let us look elsewhere. Ah! "Famous philosopher and offi- cial in the Court of Theodoric, born about 475 a.d., put to death without trial about 524." They had a short way with philosophers in those days. If Wil- liam the Second to None in Germany had adopted this method with his philosophers, the world might not now be in such a plight. Note : A college professor to whom I was in con- fidence showing these notes the other day, remarked, "I suggest that you soft-pedal that Boethius busi- ness, my boy." (How we middle-aged men love to call each other boys; very much as young boys flat- ter themselves with the phrase, "old man.") "The * Consolation of Philosophy ' was the best seller for a thousand years or so. Boethius's reputation is not in the making, as yours is, and when yours is made, it will in all probability not last as long." I thought I detected a slight note of sarcasm in this, but I may have been mistaken. Let us look further. Here we are: " Coryat*s Crudi- Fifteenth-century English manuscript on vellum, "De Consolatione Philo- sophiiv." Uubricated throughout. Its chief interest is the contemporary bind- ing, consisting of the usual oak boards covered with ))ink deerskin, let into another piece of tleerskin which completely surrounds it and terminates in a large knot. A clasp fastens the outer cover. It was evidently intended to be worn at the girdle. The British Museum possesses very few bindings of this character and these service books. Lay books are of even greater rarity. OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 91 ties, hastily gobbled up in five Moneths Trauells." Tom Coryat was a buffoon and a beggar and a brag- gart, who wrote what has come to be regarded as the first handbook on travel. Browning thought very highly of it, as I remember, and Walter Hill is at this very minute offering his copy of the "Crudities" for five hundred dollars. The catalogues say there are very few perfect copies in existence, in which case I should like to content myself with Browning's im- perfect copy. I love these old books, written by frail human beings for human beings frail as myself. Clowns are the true philosophers, and all vagabonds are beloved, most of all, Locke's. Don't confuse my Locke with the fellow who wrote on the "Human Understanding," a century or two ago. Here is the "Ship of Fools," another best seller of a bygone age. The original work, by Sebastian Brandt, was published not long after the invention of printing, in 1494. Edition followed edition, not only in its original Swabian dialect, but also in Latin, French, and Dutch. In 1509 an English version, — it could hardly be called a translation, — by Alex- ander Barclay, appeared from the press of Pynson — he who called Caxton "worshipful master." For quite two hundred years it was the rage of the read- ing world. In it the vices and weaknesses of all classes of society were satirized in a manner which gave great delight; and those who could not read were able to enjoy the fine, bold woodcuts with which the work was embellished. No form of folly 92 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING escaped. Even the mediaeval book-collector is made to say : — Still am I busy bookes assemblynge, For to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thynge, In my conceyt and to have them ay in hande. But what they mene do I not understande. This is one of the books which can usually be found in a Quaritch catalogue, if it can be found anywhere. At the Hoe sale a copy brought $1825; but the aver- age collector will make shift to get along with an ex- cellent reprint which was published in Edinburgh forty years or so ago, and which can be had for a few shillings, when he chances to come across it. Here is a great book! The first folio of Shakespeare, the cornerstone of ever^^ great Library. What's in a name.^ Did Shakespeare of Stratford write the plays.'' The late Dr. Furness declined to be led into a dis- cussion of this point, wisely remarking, "We have the plays; what difference does it make who wrote them.'^" But the question will not down. The latest theory is that Bacon wrote the Psalms of David also, and to disguise the fact tucked in a cryptogram, another name. If you have at hand a King James's version of the Bible, and will turn to the forty-sixth Psalm and count the words from the beginning to the forty-sixth word, and will then count the words from th^ end until you again come to the forty-sixth word, you may learn something to your advantage. But, whoever wrote them, the first folio — the plays collected by Heming and Condell, and printed OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 93 in 1623, at the charges of Isaac laggard, and Ed. Blount — is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, volume in all literature. In it not less than twenty dramas, many of which rank among the literary masterpieces of the world, were brought together for the first time. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the first folio of Shakespeare, Shakespeare! "not our poet, but the world's," is so highly regarded.^ The condi- tion and location of practically every copy in the world is known and recorded. Originally the price is supposed to have been a guinea, and a century passed before collectors and scholars realized that it, like its author, was not for an age, but for all time. In 1792 a copy brought £30, and in 1818 "an original copy in a genuine state" changed hands at £121; but what shall be said of the price it fetches to-day? When, a few years ago, a Philadelphia collector paid the record price of almost twenty thousand dollars, people unlearned in the lore of books ex- pressed amazement that a book should bring so large a sum ; but he secured one of the finest copies in ex- istence, known to collectors as the Locker-Lampson copy, which had been for a short time in the pos- session of William C. Van Antwerp, of New York, who, unluckily for himself and for the book-collecting world, stopped collecting almost as soon as he began. This splendid folio has now found a permanent rest- ing place in the W'idener Memorial Library at Har- vard. It is no doubt inevitable that these notable books should at last come to occupy honored niches 94 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING in great mausoleums, as public libraries really are, but I cannot escape the conviction that Edmond de Goncourt was right when he said in his will : — "My wish is that my drawings, my prints, my curi- osities, my books — in a word these things of art which have been the joy of my life — shall not be consigned to the cold tomb of a museum, and sub- jected to the stupid glance of the careless passer-by; but I require that they shall all be dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, so that the pleasure which the acquiring of each one of them has given me shall be given again, in each case, to some inheritor of my own tastes." I wish that my friends, the Pennells, had followed this course when they gave up their London apart- ments in the Adelphi and disposed of their valuable AYliistler collection. But no, with characteristic gen- erosity the whole collection goes to the nation as a gift — the Library of Congress at Washington is to be its resting-place. The demand for Whistler is ever increasing with his fame which, the Pennells say, will live forever. Those who have a lot of Whistler material smile — the value of their collections is enhanced. Those of us who, like the writer, have to be content with two butterflies, or at most three, sigh and turn aside. Possession is the grave of bliss. No sooner do we own some great book than we want another. The appetite grows by what it feeds on. The Shakespeare folio is a book for show and to be proud of, but we OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 95 want a book to love. Here it is: Walton's " Compleat Angler," beloved by gentle men, such as all collectors are. We welcome the peace and contentment which it suggests, "especially," as its author says, "in such days and times as I have laid aside business and gone a-fishing." Therein lies the charm of this book, for those of us who are wise enough occasionally to lay aside business and go a-fishing or a-hunting, albeit only book-hunt- ing; for it is the spirit of sport rather than the sport itself that is important. Old Isaak W^alton counted fishermen as honest men. I wonder did he call them truthful.'' If so, there has been a sad falling off since his day, for I seem to remember words to this effect: "The fisherman riseth up early in the morning and disturbeth the whole household. Mighty are his prep- arations. He goeth forth full of hope. WTien the day is far spent, he returneth, smelling of strong drink, and the truth is not in him." I wish that some day I might discover an "Angler," not on the banks of a stream, but all unsuspected on some book-stall. It is most unlikely; those days are past. I shall never own a first "Angler." This little book has been thumbed out of existence almost, by generations of readers with coarse, wet hands who carried the book in their pockets or left it lying by the river in the excitement of landing a trout. Five im- pressions, all rare, were made before the author died in his "neintyeth" year, and was buried in the South Transept of the Cathedral of W^illiam of Wykeham. 96 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING But Walton wrote of Fishers of Men as well as of fishing. His lives of John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's; of Richard Hooker, the "Judicious," as he is usually called, when called at all; of George Herbert, and several other men, honorable in their generation, are quaint and charming. These lives, published orig- inally at intervals of many years, are not rare, nor is the volume of 1670, the first collected edition of the Lives, unless it is a presentation copy. Such a copy sold twenty years ago for fifteen pounds. Some years ago I paid just three times this sum for a copy in- scribed by Walton to the Lord Bishop of Oxford. I did not then know that the Bishop of Oxford was also the famous Dr. John Fell, the hero of the well- known epigram : — I do not like you Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not like you Dr. Fell, — or I would willingly have paid more for it. But I am wandering from my text. To return to the "Angler." Fifty pounds was a fair price for a fine copy fifty years ago. George D. Smith sold a copy a few weeks since for five thousand dollars, and the Heck- scher copy a few years ago brought thirty-nine hun- dred dollars; but the record price appears to have been paid for the Van Antwerp copy, which is generally believed to be the finest in existence. It is bound in original sheepskin, and was formerly in the library of Frederick Locker-Lampson. It was sold in London JiiBeiiMI^llllMMi ... 13^ THE SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJA- CULATIONS. By Mf. George Herbert. PSAL. 2p. /;; his Temple doth every inmfpeak of his honour > CAMBRIDGE: Printed hjT'hon^. Buck, and Roger T>aniehyunicts to the Univerutie, i<533« m^ flsci* The rare first edition, and, according to Mr. Livingston in "The Bibliophile," the earlier issue of the two printed in that year. A very large copy. From the Hagen collec- tion. Said to be the finest copy in existence. It is bound in contemporary vellum, and measures SJ X 6J inches. 98 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING some ten years ago and was purchased by Quaritch for "an American," which was a sort of nom de guerre of the late J. P. Morgan, for £1290. When "Anglers" could be had for fifty pounds, "Vicars" brought ten, or fifteen if in exceptionally fine condition, and the man who then spent this sum for a "Vicar" chose as wisely as did the Vicar's wife her wedding gown, "not for a fine glossy surface, but for qualities as would wear well." These two little volumes, with the Salisbury imprint and a required blunder or two, will soon be worth a thousand dollars. Wlien I paid £120 for mine some years ago, I felt that I was courting ruin, especially when I recalled that Dr. Johnson thought rather well of himself for having secured for Goldsmith just half this sum for the copy- right of it. Boswell's story of the sale of the manu- script of the "Vicar of Wakefield," as Johnson related it to him, is as pretty a bit of bibliographical history as we have. Those who know it will pardon the in- trusion of the story for the sake of the pleasure it may give others. "I received," said Johnson, "one morning a mes- sage from poor Goldsmith that he was in great dis- tress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begged that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was drest, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 99 a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill . . . and Sir," continued Johnson, "it was a suf- ficient price, too, when it was sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was by his 'Traveller'; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by him a long time, and did not publish it till after 'The Traveller' had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money." Here we have a characteristic sketch of the two men — the excitable, amiable, and improvident Goldy, and the wise and kindly Johnson, instantly corking the bottle and getting down to brass tacks, as we should say. The first edition of "Robinson Crusoe" is another favorite book with collectors; as why should it not be.'' Here is a copy in two volumes (there should be three) in red morocco, super extra, gilt edges, by Bedford. It should be in contemporary calf, but the price was only £46. Turning to a bookseller's cata- logue published a year or two ago, there is a copy 100 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING "3 vols. 8vo. with map and 2 plates, in original calf binding," and the price is twenty-five hundred dollars. A note in one of Stan. Henkel's recent auction catalogues, and there are none better, clears up a point which has always troubled me, and which I will quote at length for the benefit of other collectors who may not have seen it. The supposed "points," signifying the first issues of this famous book, are stumbling-blocks to all bibliographers. Professor W. P. Trent, of Columbia University, un- doubtedly the foremost authority on Defoe, after ex- tended research and the comparison of many copies, states that he is of the opinion that any purchaser enter- ing Taylor's shop at the sign of the Ship, in Pater Noster Row on April 25th, 1719 (usually taken as the date of issue), might have been handed a copy falling under any of the following categories : — With "apply" in the preface, and "Pilot," on page 343, line 2. With "apply" in the preface, and "Pilate" on page 343. With "apyly " in the preface, and "Pilate" on page 343. With "apyly" in the preface, and "Pilot" on page 343. It is unquestionably wrong, in his opinion, to call any one of these "first issue." Prof. Trent sees no reason to believe that there was a re-issue with "apyly" corrected in the preface. Both these mistakes were quite probably corrected while the sheets were passing through the press, and it depends on how the sheets were collated by the binder what category of the four given any special copy belongs to. This is a great relief to me, as my copy, which was once Congreve's, while leaving nothing to be desired in the matter of condition, binding, and plates, has OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 101 the word "apply" in the preface and "pilot" on page 343; but it is perfectly clear, having in mind the spacing of the types, that the longer word has given way to the shorter. There is, however, another edition of "Robinson Crusoe" which, for rarity, puts all first editions in the shade. So immediate was the success of this won- derful romance that it was issued in a newspaper, very much as popular novels are now run. It was published in the "Original London Post," or "Heath- cot's Intelligence," numbers from 125 to 289, Octo- ber 7, 1719, to October 19, 1720. This was publica- tion in parts with a vengeance. Of the entire series of 165 leaves, only one is in facsimile. I see that I have not yet said that I own this copy. There is a copy in the British Museum, but I am told that it is very imperfect, and I know of no other. I was, a few evenings ago, looking over Arnold's "First Report of a Book-Collector." I had just given an old-time year's salary for a manuscript poem by Keats, and I was utterly bewildered by reading this: "Only a few months after I began collecting, more than one hundred pages of original manuscripts of Keats that were just then offered for sale came in my way and were secured at one-fifth of their value." If the price I paid for one page is any criterion as to the value of one hundred pages, Mr. Arnold is by now a very rich man; and elsewhere in his "Report" he gives a list of books sold at Sotheby's in 1896 at prices which make one's mouth water. 102 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Chapman's Homer, 1616, £15; Chaucer's Works, 1542, £15 10; "Robinson Crusoe," 1719-20, £75; Goldsmith's "Vicar," 1766, £65; Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," 1770, £25; Herrick's "Hesperides," 1648, £38. Milton's "Paradise Lost," 1667, £90. But why continue? The point of it all is his com- ment: "If the beginner is alarmed by these prices, let him remember that such are paid only for well- known and highly prized rarities"; and remember, too, that this is the comment of an astute collector upon the prices of only twenty years ago. But twenty years ago was the last century and seems to make a century's difference in auction prices. In May, 1918, there was sold at the Anderson Galleries in New York City the library of the late Winston H. Hagen. Beverly Chew wrote a brief introduction in the sale catalogue, the closing paragraph of which I must quote. "If I were asked what is the scarcest item in this sale, I should unhesitatingly say that charm- ing little volume containing four of the poems of John Skelton, Poet Laureate to King Henry VII. . . . but why point out the gems.'' . . . One who followed with some apprehension Mr. Hagen's continual investment in books said he thought he would do better to pur- chase good bonds. 'No,' said Hagen, 'my books are worth more than your bonds.' Let us hope he was right; and recent events in the stock market would seem to confirm his judgment." This was written before the event. WTiat happened? im^tm^s jlriMlf genres Fre/:ef> Advi lu ' omeftick. 1:19. 1 he PREFACE. hiipft« /'(':■:■ . ;'■ ■'':•£! dre A'j'j' ■ Lcr fi)n as to the h '.• tl'ir.it, lyabcut j fervid- in (he Fubi:- :rit to the U'crU^ hr . OLD CATALOGUES AND NEW PRICES 103 We know what has happened in the bond market. Bonds have gone down, I am told by those who own them, an average of twenty points. I was present when the books were sold, and saw Beverly Chew's hope confirmed. The books were very choice, it must be admitted, and there was that atmosphere of good- humor and good-fellowship which Mitchell Kennerley tries so successfully to disseminate, and which is so important in the auction-room. Listen to a few of the prices. The Skelton brought $9700; but let me tabulate a few other prices. Browning's "Pauline," first edition (1833), $1610. Kilmarnock Burns (1786), $2750. Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer" (1773), $305. Gray's "Elegy" (1751), $4350. (Note that Gray 's Elegy must be " Wrote in a Coun- try Church Yard." WTien it becomes "Written," it brings only $111 although published in the same year.) Herrick's "Hesperides" (1648), $1075. Milton's "Lycidas" (1638), $3500. Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667); first edition, first title page, $1510. And there is not the slightest doubt that in twenty years from now these prices will look as cheap as Mr. Arnold's now look to me. Returning for a moment to Mr. Arnold and his con- tributions to bibliography, he did the booksellers a good turn and helped collectors justify their extrav- agance to their wives by publishing some years ago "A Record of Books and Letters." Mr. Arnold de- 104 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING voted the leisure of six years to forming a collection of books with perseverance and intelligence; then he suddenly stopped and turned over to Bangs & Com- pany, the auctioneers, the greater part of his collec- tion, and awaited the result with interest. I say "with interest" advisedly, for the result fully justified his judgment. In his "Record" he gives the date of ac- quisition, together with the cost of each item, in one column, and in another the selling price. He also states whether the item was bought of a bookseller or a collector, or at auction. He had spent a trifle over ten thousand dollars, and his profit almost exactly equalled his outlay. I said his profit, but I have used the wrong word. His profit was the pleasure he re- ceived in discovering, buying, and owning the treas- ures which for a time were in his possession. The dif- ference in actual money between what he paid and what he received, some ten thousand dollars, was the reward for his industry and courage in paying what doubtless many people supposed to be extravagant prices for his books. Let us examine one only. It is certainly not a fair example, but it happens to interest me. He had a copy of Keats's "Poems," 1817, with an inscription in the poet's handwriting: "My dear Giovanni, I hope your eyes will soon be well enough to read this with pleasure and ease." There were some other inscriptions in Keats's hand, and for this treasure Arnold paid a bookseller, in 1895, seventy-one dollars. At the auction in 1901 it brought five hundred dollars. 1 LJi^Ji ^ ^^ ''ewPcZif^ V/iicJ' ^^fi^t* e^^tik.t^» (fiju \^.«n^^.uju L ^,MjUj -S^ ^ t-^-^M.^ t^o.^^ Oct- { /vvct, _ "TrT *v-ii '^oua^A-o/^ ^Wito^^ou-^ 106 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING and it subsequently passed into the Van Antwerp col- lection, finally going back to London, where it was sold in 1907 for ninety pounds, being bought by Quaritch. Finally it passed into the possession of the late W. H. Hagen and, at the sale of his library, in May, 1918, was knocked down to "G.D.S." for $1950. From him I tried to secure it, but was "too late."^ My copy of the Poems has, alas, no inscription, but it cost me in excess of five hundred dollars; and a well-known collector has just paid Rosenbach nine thousand dollars for Keats's three slender vol- umes, each with inscriptions in the poet's hand. Three into nine is a simple problem: even I can do it; but the volume of "Poems" is much rarer than "Endymion" or "Lamia." ^ The facsimile on page 105 is from the original manuscript of John Keats's "To some Ladies," published in Keats's first volume (1817). The ladies were the sisters of George Felton Mathew, to whom Keats also addressed a poem. It will be observed that in the second verse he used the word "gushes" at the end of the third as well as the first line. This error does not occur in the printed text. On the other hand the MS. shows a correction which has never been made in the printed text, where the word " rove " is corrected to " muse." There is an interesting communication in the Athenaeum, April 16, 1904, by H. Buxton Forman, anent this holograph. J5 IV "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS AND FIRST EDITIONS No books have appreciated more in value than pres- entation or association volumes, and the reason is not far to seek. Of any given copy there can hardly be a duplicate. For the most part presentation copies are first editions — plus. Frequently there is a note or a comment which sheds biographical light on the author. In the slightest inscription there is the rec- ord of a friendship by means of which we get back of the book to the writer. And speaking of association books, every one will remember the stovy that Gen- eral Wolfe, in an open boat on the St. Lawrence as he was being rowed down the stream to a point just be- low Quebec, recited the lines from Gray's "Elegy," — "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave," — adding, "I would rather be the author of that piece than have the honor of beating the French to-mor- row." When Wolfe left England he carried with him a copy of the "Elegy," the gift of his fiancee. Miss Katherine Lowther. He learned the poem by heart, he underscored his favorite lines, among them the passage quoted; he filled the book with his notes. 108 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING After his death the book and a miniature of the lady were returned to her, and only a few days ago this book, a priceless volume of unique association interest, was offered for sale. The first man who saw it bought it. He had never bought a fine book before, but he could not resist this one. When I heard of the trans- action I was grieved and delighted — grieved that so wonderful a volume had escaped me, delighted that I had not been subjected to so terrible a temptation. \Miat was the price of it.^ Only the seller and the buyer know, but I fancy some gilt-edged securities had to be parted with. How the prices of these books go a-soaring is shown by the continuous advance in the price of a copy of Shelley's "Queen Mab." It is a notable copy, re- ferred to in Dowden's "Life of Shelley." On the fly leaf is an inscription in Shelley's hand, "Mary Woll- stonecraft Godwin, from P.B.S. "; inside of the back cover Shelley has written in pencil, "You see, Marj'-, I have not forgotten you"; and elsewhere in the book in Mary's hand, we read, "This book is sacred to me, and as no other creature shall ever look into it, I may write in it what I please. Yet what shall I write.'^ That I love the author beyond all powers of expression and that I am parted from him"; and much more to the same effect. At the Ives sale in 1891 this volume of supreme interest brought $190; in 1897, at the Fred- erickson sale, it brought $015; and a year ago a dealer sold it for $7500; and cheap at that, I say, for where will you find another? "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 109 I have before me a copy of Stevenson's "Inland Voyage." Pamphlets aside, which, by reason of their manner of publication, are now rare, it may be said to be the author's first book. It has an inscription, "My dear Cummy: If you had not taken so much trouble with me all the years of my childhood, this little book would never have been written. Many a long night Jut CwJlvl<^\ you sat up with me when I was ill; I wish I could hope by way of return to amuse a single evening for you with my little book! But whatever you may think of it, I know you will continue to think kindly of the Author." I thought, when I gave four hundred dol- lars for it, that I was paying a fabulous price; but as I have since been offered twice that sum, Rosenbach evidently let me have a bargain. He tells me that it is good business sometimes to sell a book for less than it is worth. He regards it as bait. He angles for you very skilfully, does Rosy, and lands you — me — every time. "A Child's Garden of Verses" is another book which has doubled in value two or three times in the no AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING last few years. Gabriel Wells is now offering a copy, with a brief inscription, for three hundred dollars, hav- ing sold me not long ago, for twice this sum, a copy in which Stevenson's writing is mingled with the type of the title-page so that it reads : — Robert Louis Stevenson his copy of A Child's Garden of Verses and if it is [in] the hands of any one else, explain it who can! but not by the gift of Robert Louis Stevenson That Stevenson afterward changed his mind and gave it to "E. F. Russell, with hearty good will," is shown by another inscription. This copy was pur- chased at the sale for the British Red Cross in Lon- don, shortly after the outbreak of the war. It may be some time before it is worth what I paid for it, or the price may look cheap to-morrow — who shall say.'' Watching the quotations of the first editions of Stevenson is rather like looking at the quotations of stocks you have n't got, as they recover from a panic. A point or two a day is added to their prices; but Stevenson's move five or ten points at a time, and there has been no reaction — as yet. Only a year or two ago I paid Drake fifty dollars for a copy of "The New Arabian Nights"; and a few days ago I saw in the papers that a copy had just been sold for fifty pounds in a London auction room.^ ' In Walter Hill's recent catalogue a copy is priced at $350. o A CHILD S GARDEN OF FEA'SF.S OX i "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 111 I cannot quite understand Stevenson's immense vogue. Perhaps it is the rare personaHty of the man. Try as we may, it is impossible to separate the per- sonaHty of a man from his work. Why is one author "collected" and another not.^ I do not know. Prac- tically no one collects Scott, or George Eliot, or TroUope; but Trollope collectors there will be, and "The Macdermots of Ballycloran" and "The Kellys and the O'Kellys" will bring fabulous prices some of these days — five hundred dollars each; more, a thousand, I should say; and when you pay this sum, look well for the errors in pagination and see that Mortimer Street is spelt Morimer on the title-page of volume three of the former. And remember, too, that this book is so rare that there is no copy of it in the British Museum — at least so I am told; but you will find one on my shelves, in the corner over there, together with everything else this great Victorian has Written — of all novelists my favorite. Trollope proved the correctness of Johnson's remark, "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly at it." This we know Trollope did, we have his word for it. His personality was too sane, too matter of fact, to be attractive; but his books are delightful. One does n't read Trollope as Coleridge did Shake- speare — by flashes of lighting (this is n't right, but it expresses the idea); but there is a good, steady glow emanating from the author himself, which, once you get accustomed to it, will enable you to see a whole group of mid-Victorian characters so perfectly that 112 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING you come to know them as well as the members of your own family, and, I sometimes think, understand them better. But for one collector who expresses a mild interest in Trollope, there are a thousand who regard the brave invalid, who, little more than twenty years ago, passed away on that lonely Samoan island in the Pacific, as one of the greatest of the moderns, as cer- tain of immortality as Charles Lamb. They may be right. His little toy books and leaflets, those which The author and the printer With various kinds of skill Concocted in the Winter At Davos on the Hill, and elsewhere, are simply invaluable. The author and the printer were one and the same — R- L. S., as- sisted, or perhaps hindered, by S. L. 0., Mrs. Steven- son's son, then a lad. Of these Stevensons, "Penny Whistles" is the rarest. But two copies are known. One is in a private collection in England; the other was bought at the Borden sale in 1913 by Mrs. Widener, for twenty-five hundred dollars, in order to complete, as far as might be, the Stevenson collection now in the Widener Memorial Library. It was a privately printed forerunner of "A Child's Garden of Verses," published several years later. It is a far cry from these bijoux to Stevenson's regularly published volumes; but when it is remem- bered that these latter were printed in fairly large editions and relatively only a few years ago, it will be "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 113 seen that no other author of yesterday fetches such high prices as Stevenson. In recent years there have been published a num- ber of bibUographies without which no collector can be expected to keep house. We are indebted to the Grolier Club for some of the best of these. Its mem- bers have the books and are most generous in exhibit- ing them, and it must indeed be a churlish scholar who cannot freely secure access to the collections of its members. Aside from the three volumes entitled "Contribu- tions to English Bibliography," published and sold by the Club, the handbooks of the exhibitions held from time to time are much sought, for the wealth of information they contain. The Club's librarian, Miss Ruth S. Granniss, working in cooperation with the members, is largely responsible for the skill and intelligence with which these little catalogues are compiled. The time and amount of painstaking re- search which enter into the making of them is sim- ply enormous. Indeed, no one quite understands the many questions which arise to vex the bibliographer unless they have attempted to make for themselves even the simplest form of catalogue. Over the door of the room in which they work should be inscribed the text, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Some blunders are redeemed by the laughter they arouse. Here is a famous one: — Shelley — Prometheus — unbound, etc. — Prometheus — bound in olive morocco, etc. 114 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING But for the most part the lot of the bibliographer, as Dr. Johnson said of the dictionary-maker, is to be exposed to censure without hope of praise. That Oscar Wilde continues to interest the col- lector is proved, if proof were necessary, by the splen- did bibliography by Stuart Mason, in two large vol- umes. Its editor tells us that it was the work of ten years, which I can readily believe; and Robert Ross, ^Yilde's literary executor, says in the introduction, that, in turning over the proof for ten minutes, he learned more about Wilde's writings than W^ilde him- self ever knew. It gave me some pleasure, when I first took the book up, to see that Mason had used for his frontispiece the caricature of W^ilde by Aubrey Beardsley, the original of which now hangs on the wall near my writing-table, together with a letter from Ross in which he says, "From a technical point of view this drawing is interesting as showing the artistic development of what afterwards was called his Japanese method in the 'Salome' drawings. Here it is only in embryo, but this is the earliest draw- ing I remember in which the use of dotted lines, a peculiarity of Beardsley, can be traced." ^ Another favorite bibliography is that of Dickens, by John C. Eckel. His "First Editions of Charles Dickens" is a book which no lover of Dickens — and who is not? — can do without. It is a book to be read, as well as a b(jok of reference. In it Mr. Eckel does one thing, however, which is, from its verj^ nature, 1 See irij'ra, page 319. THE NEW BUILDING OF THE GROLIER CLUB 47 EAST SIXTIETH ST., NEW YORK "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 115 hopeless and discouraging. He attempts to indicate the prices at which first editions of his favorite author can be secured at auction, or from the dealers in Lon- don and this country. Alas, alas ! while waiting to se- cure prizes at Eckel's prices I have seen them soar- ing to figures undreamed of a few years ago. In his chapter on "Presentation Copies," he refers to a copy of "Bleak House" given b}^ Dickens to Dudley Cos- tello. " Some years ago," he says, " it sold for $150.00. Eighteen months later the collector resold the book to the dealer for $380.00, who made a quick turn and sold the book for ten per cent advance, or $418.00." These figures Mr. Eckel considers astonishing. I now own the book, but it came into my possession at a figure considerably in excess of that named. A copy of "American Notes," with an inscription, "Thomas Carlyle from Charles Dickens, Nineteenth October, 1842," gives an excellent idea of the rise in the price of a book, interesting itself and on account of its inscription. At auction, in London, in 1902, it sold for £45. After passing through the hands of sev- eral dealers it was purchased by W. E. Allis, of Mil- waukee; and at the sale of his books in New York, in 1912, it was bough't by George D. Smith for $1050. Smith passed the book on to Edwin W. Coggeshall; but its history is not yet at an end, for at his sale, on April 25, 1916, it was bought by the firm of Dutton for $1850, and by them passed on, the story goes, to a discriminating collector in Detroit, a man who can call all the parts of an automobile by name. For- 116 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING tunately, while this book was in full flight, I secured a copy with an inscription, "W. C. Macready from his friend Charles Dickens, Eighteenth October, 1842." Now, what is my copy worth? Seven years ago I paid Charles Sessler nine hun- dred dollars for three books: a presentation "Carol," to Tom Beard, a "Cricket," to Macready, and a "Haunted Man," to Maclise. At the Coggeshall sale a dealer paid a thousand dollars for a "Carol," while vaasaas '/fu^Jif'iuJs:r7«^&'^, I gave Smith ten per cent advance on a thousand dol- lars for a "Chimes," with an inscription, "Charles Dickens, Junior, from his affectionate father, Charles Dickens." This copy at the Allis sale had brought seven hundred and seventy-five dollars, at which time I was prepared to pay five hundred dollars for it. AN ILLUSTRATION. '> THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS," BY JOHX I E^CH FOR DICKENS'S " CHRISTMAS CAROL ' ' From the ornjmal ,n,ter-cohr drawim, "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 117 I always return from these all-star performances depressed in spirit and shattered in pocket. "Where will it stop? " I say to myself. " When will you stop.^ " my wife says to me. And both questions remain un- answered; certainly not, while presentation Dickenses can be had and are lacking from my collection. I now possess twenty-one, and it is with presentation Dick- enses as with elephants — a good many go to the dozen; but I lack and sadly want — Shall I give a list? No, the prices are going up fast enough without stimulation from me. Wait until my "wants" are complete; then let joy be unconfined. A final word on Dickens: the prices are skyrocket- ing because everyone loves him. Age cannot wither nor custom stale his infinite variety. As a great crea- tive genius he ranks with Shakespeare. He has given pleasure to millions ; he has been translated into all the languages of Europe. "Pickwick," it is said, stands fourth in circulation among English printed books, being exceeded only by the Bible, Shakespeare, and the English Prayer-Book; and the marvel is that when Dickens is spoken of, it is difficult to arrive at an agreement as to which is his greatest book. But this paper is supposed to relate to prices rather than to books themselves. Other seductive argu- ments having failed, one sometimes hears a vendor of rare books add, in his most convincing manner, "And you could n't possibly make a better investment." The idea, I suppose, is calculated to enable a man to meet his wife's reproachful glance, or something - — -35- TQtji^ vw./^ tA.*X. UoJ^^^^^xM ; Jf\Aji Irfit cwi^t^ r DEDICATION TO "THE VILLAGE COtiUETTES," BY CHARLES DICKENS From the manuscript formerly in the Coggeihall collection, much reduced in size "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 119 worse, as he returns home with a book under his arm. But when one is about to commit some piece of extravagance, such as buying a book of which one already has several copies, one will grasp at any straw, the more so as there may be some truth in the statement. There are, however, so many good reasons why we should buy rare books, that it seems a pity ever to refer to the least of them. I am not sure that I am called on to give any judgment in the matter; but my belief is that the one best and sufficient reason for a man to buy a book is because he thinks he will be happier with it than without it. I always question myself on this point, and another which presses it closely — can I pay for it.^ I confess that I do not al- ways listen so attentively for the answer to this sec- ond question ; but I try so to live as to be able to look my bookseller in the eye and tell him where to go. I govern myself by few rules, but this is one of them — never to allow a book to enter my library as a creditor. "Un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais"; I want to enjoy my friends whenever I am with them. One would get very tired of a friend if, every time one met him, he should suggest a touch for fifty or five hundred dollars. On the shelves in my office are some books that are mine, some in which there is at the moment a joint ownership, and some which will be mine in the near future, I hope — and doubtless in this hope I am not alone; but the books on the shelves 120 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING around the room in which I write are mine, all of them. The advice given by "Punch" to those about to marry — "Don't" — seems, then, to be the best ad- vice to a man who is tempted to buy by the hope of making a profit out of his books; but I observe that this short and ugly word deters very few from fol- lowing their inclinations in the matter of marriage, and this advice may fall, as advice usually falls, on deaf ears. Only when a man is safely ensconced in six feet of earth, with several tons of enlauding granite upon his chest, is he in a position to give advice with any certainty, and then he is silent; but it will never- theless be understood that I do not recommend the purchase of rare books as an investment, and this in spite of the fact that many collectors have made handsome profits out of the books they have sold. While a man may do much worse with his money than buy rare books, he cannot be certain that he can dis- pose of them at a profit, nor is it necessary that he should do so. He should be satisfied to eat his cake and have it; books selected with any judgment will almost certainly afford this satisfaction, and of what other hobby can this be said with the same assurance.'^ The possession of rare books is a delight best un- derstood by the owners of them. They are not called upon to explain. The gentle will understand, and the savage may be disregarded. It is the scholar whose sword is usually brandished against collectors; and I would not have him think that, in addition MODEM LOVE POEMS OF THE ENGLISH ROADSIDE, locms antr lalla!trs. BT GEORGE MEREDITH, AUTHOB OF ' THE SHAVINO OF SHAQPAT,' ' THE OBDBAX OF BICHAfiD FEVEITEL,' ETC. LONDON : CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY, 1862. 122 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING to our being ignorant of our books, we are specula- tors in them also. Let him remember that we have our uses. Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair. It may as well be admitted that we do not buy ex- pensive books to read. We may say that it is a de- light to us to look upon the very page on which ap- peared for the first time such a sonnet as "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," or to read that bit of realism unsurpassed, where Robinson Crusoe one day, about noon, discovered the print of a man's naked foot upon the sand; but when we sit down with a copy of Keats, we do not ask for a first edition; much less when we want to live over again the joys of our childhood, do we pick up a copy of Defoe which would be a find at a thousand dollars. But first editions of Keats's Poems, 1817, in boards, with the paper label if possible, and a Defoe unwashed, in a sound old calf binding, are good things to have. They are indeed a 303^ forever, and will never pass into nothingness. I cannot see whj^ the possession of fine books is more reprehensible than the possession of valuable property of any other sort. In speaking of books as an investment, one implies first editions. First editions are scarce; tenth edi- tions, as Charles Lamb stutteringly suggested, are scarcer, but there is no demand for them. Why, then, first editions.'^ The question is usually dodged; the "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 123 truth may as well be stated. There is a joy in mere ownership. It may be silly, or it may be selfish; but it is a joy, akin to that of possessing land, which Feems to need no defense. We do not walk over our property every day; we frequently do not see it; but when the fancy takes us, we love to forget our cares and re- sponsibilities in a ramble over our fields. In like man- ner, and for the same reason, we browse with delight in a corner of our library in which we have placed our most precious books. We should buy our books as we buy our clothes, not only to cover our naked- ness, but to embellish us; and we should buy more books and fewer clothes. I am told that, in proportion to our numbers and our wealth, less money is spent on books now than was spent fifty years ago. I suppose our growing love of sport is to some extent responsible. Golf has taken the place of books. I know that it takes time and costs money. I do not play the game myself, but I have a son who does. Perhaps when I am his age, I shall feel that I can afford it. My sport is book- hunting. I look upon it as a game, a game requiring skill, some money, and luck. The pleasure that comes from seeing some book in a catalogue priced at two or three times what I may have paid for a copy, is a pleasure due to vindicated judgment. I do not wish to rush into the market and sell and secure my profit. What is profit if I lose my book.f^ Moreover, if one thinks of profit rather than of books, there is an in- terest charge to be considered. A book for which I 124 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING paid a thousand dollars a few years ago, no longer stands me at a thousand dollars, but at a consider- ably greater sum. A man neat at figures could tell with mathematical accuracy just the actual cost of that book down to any given minute. I neither know nor want to know. There is another class of collector with whom I am not in keen sympathy, and that is the men who spe- cialize in the first published volumes of some given group of authors. These works are usually of rela- tively little merit, but they are scarce and expensive : scarce, because published in small editions and at first neglected; expensive, because they are desired to complete sets of first editions. Anthony Trollope's first two novels have a greater money value than all the rest of his books put together — but they are hard to read. In like manner, a sensational novel, *' Desperate Remedies," by Hardy, his first venture in fiction, is worth perhaps as much as fifty copies of his "Woodlanders," one of the best novels of the last half century. George Gissing, when he was walking our streets penniless and in rags, could never have supposed that a few j^^ears later his first novel, "Work- ers in the Dawn," would sell for one hundred and fifty dollars, but it has done so. I have a friend who has just paid this price. Just here I would like to remark that for several years I have been seeking, witliout success, a copy of the first edition of that very remarkable book, Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh." Book- "ASSOCIATION" BOOKS 125 sellers who jauntily advertise, "Any book got," will please make a note of this one. Nor do I think it necessary to have every scrap, every waif and stray, of any author, however much I may esteem him. My collection of Johnson is fairly complete, but I have no copy of Father Lobo's "Abyssinia." It was ^ an early piece of hack- Jo ^W\ J iJX" C U work, a translation C/ from the French, for /lorted my lame foot on her knee. Am I not fortunate in having something about me that interests most people at first sight in my favour.^* In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, Johnson once wrote: "It has become so much the fashion to publish let- ters that in order to avoid it, I put as little into mine as I can." Boswell was not afraid of publication. His fear, as he said, was that letters, like sermons, would not continue to attract public curiosity, so he spiced his highly. Did he do or say a foolish thing, he at once sat down and told Temple all about it, usually adding that in the near future he intended to amend. His comment on his contemporaries is characteristic. "Hume," he says, "told me that he would give me half-a-crown for every page of John- 162 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING son's Dictionary in which he could not find an ab- surdity, if I would give him half-a-crown for every page in which he could find one. He announces Adam Smith's election to member- ship in the famous literary club by saying: "Smith is now of our club — it has lost its select merit." Of Gibbon he says: "I hear nothing of the publication of his second volume. He is an ugly, affected, dis- gusting fellow, and poisons our literary club to me." As he grows older and considers how unsuccessful his life has been, how he had failed at the bar both in Scotland and in London, he begins to complain. He can get no clients; he fears that, even were he en- trusted with cases, he would fail utterly. I am afraid [he says], that, were I to be tried, I should be found so deficient in the forms, the quirks and the quiddities, which early habit acquires, that I should ex- pose myself. Yet the delusion of Westminster Hall, of brilliant reputation and splendid fortune as a barrister, still weighs upon my imagination. I must be seen in the Courts, and must hope for some happy openings in causes of importance. The Chancellor, as you observe, has not done as I expected; but why did I expect it.'* I am going to put him to the test. Could I be satisfied with being Baron of Auchinleck, with a good income for a gentleman in Scotland, I might, no doubt, be independent. What can be done to deaden the ambition which has ever raged in my veins like a fever? But the highest spirits will sometimes flag. Bos- well, the friendly, obliging, generous roue, was get- ting old. He begins to speak of the past. JAMES BOSWELL — HIS BOOK 163 Do you remember when you and I sat up all night at Cambridge, and read Gray with a noble enthusiasm; when we first used to read Mason's "Elfrida," and when we talked of that elegant knot of worthies, Gray, Mason and Walpole? "Elfrida" calls itself on the title-page, "A Dra- matic Poem written on the model of the Ancient Greek Tra- gedy." I happen to own and value highly the very copy of this once famous poem, which Boswell and Temple read together ; on the fly leaf, un- der Boswell's signa- ture, is a character- istic note in his bold, clear hand: "A pres- ent from my worthy friend Temple." He becomes more than ever before the butt of his acquaint- ance. He tells his old friend of a trick which has been played on him — only one of many. He was staying at a great house crowded with guests. I and two other gentlemen were laid in one room. On Thursday morning my wig was missing; a strict search ELFRIDA, Dramatic Poem. Written on the Mod s t of The Ancient Greek Tragedy. By Mr M A S O N. The SIXTH EDITION, Corrected. LONDON: Printed for J. K N A PT O N in Ludgate-Streec. MDCCLIX. 164 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING was made, all in vain. I was obliged to go all day in my nightcap, and absent myself from a party of ladies and gentlemen who went and dined with an Earl on the banks of the lake, a piece of amusement which I was glad to shun, as well as a dance which they had at night. But I was in a ludicrous situation. I suspect a wanton trick, which some people think witty; but I thought it very ill- timed to one in my situation. When his father dies and he comes into his estates, he is deeply in debt; he hates Scotland, he longs to be in London, to enjoy the Club, to see Johnson, to whom he writes of his difficulties, asking his advice. Johnson gives him just such advice as might be expected. To come hither with such expectations at the expense of borrowed money, which I find you know not where to bor- row, can hardly be considered prudent. I am sorry to find, what your solicitations seem to imply, that you have al- ready gone the length of your credit. This is to set the quiet of your whole life at hazard. If you anticipate your inheritance, you can at last inherit nothing; all that you receive must pay for the past. You must get a place, or pine in penury, with the empty name of a great estate. Poverty, my dear friend, is so great an evil, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to avoid it. Live on what you have; live, if you can, on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure; the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret; stay therefore at home till you have saved money for your journey hither. His wife dies and Johnson dies. One by one the props are pulled from under him; he drinks, con- stantly gets drunk; is, in this condition, knocked down in the streets and robbed, and thinks with horror of JAMES BOSWELL — HIS BOOK 165 giving up his soul, intoxicated, to his Maker. "Oh, Temple, Temple!" he writes, "is this realizing any of the towering hopes which have so often been the subject of our conversation and letters?" At last he begins a letter which he is never to finish. "I would fain write you in my own hand but really cannot." These were the last words poor Boswell ever wrote. But Boswell's life is chiefly interesting where it impinges upon that of his great friend. A few months after the famous meeting in Davies's book-shop, he started for the Continent, with the idea, following the fashion of the time, of studying law at Utrecht, Johnson accompanying him on his way as far as Harwich. After a short time at the University, during which he could have learned nothing, we find him wander- ing about Europe in search of celebrities, — big game, — the hunting of which was to be the chief interest of his life. He succeeded in bagging Voltaire and Rousseau, — there was none bigger, — and after a short stay in Rome he turned North, sailing from Leghorn to Corsica, where he met Paoli, the patriot, and finally returned home, escorting Therese Levas- seur, Rousseau's mistress, as far as London. Hume at this time speaks of him as "a friend of mine, very good-humored, very agreeable and very mad." Meanwhile his father. Lord Auchinleck, who had borne with admirable patience such stories as had reached him of his son's wild ways, insisted that it 166 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING was time for him to settle down; but Boswell was too full of his adventures in the island of Corsica and his meeting with Paoli, to begin drudgery at the law. His accounts of his travels made him a welcome guest at London dinner-parties, and he had finally decided to write a book of his experiences. At last the father, by a threat to cut off supplies, secured his son's return; but his desire to publish a book had not abated, and while he finally was ad- mitted to the Scotch bar, we find him corresponding with his friend Mr. Dilly, the publisher, in regard to the book upon which he was busily employed. From an unpublished letter, which I was fortunate enough to secure quite recently from a book-seller in New York, Gabriel Wells, we may follow Boswell in his negotiations. Edinburgh, 6 August, 1767. Sir I have received your letter agreeing to pay me One Hun- dred Guineas for the Copy-Right of my Account of Cor- sica, &c., the money to be due three months after the pub- lication of the work in London, and also agreeing that the first Edition shall be printed in Scotland, under my direc- tion, and a map of Corsica be engraved for the work at your Expence. In return to which, I do hereby agree that you shall have the sole Property of the said work. Our Bargain therefore is now concluded and I heartily wish that it may be of advantage to you. I am Sir Your most humble Servant James Boswell. To Mn. DiLLv. Bookseller, London. ^£p,^^ ^4f-^ry^ ^jfii^/i« . being twenty-two and her husband thirty-five, she became Mrs. Thrale. "My uncle," she records in her journal, "went with us to the church, gave me away, dined with us at Streatham after the ceremony, and then left me to conciliate as best I could a husband who had never thrown away five minutes of his time upon me unwitnessed by company till after the wed- ding day was done." More happiness came from this marriage than might have been expected. Henry Thrale, besides his sub- urban residence, Streatham, had two other estab- lishments, one adjoining the brewery in Southwark, where he lived in winter, and another, an unpreten- tious villa at the seaside. He also maintained a stable 192 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING of horses and a pack of hounds at Croydon; but, although a good horsewoman, Mrs. Thrale was not permitted to join her husband in his equestrian di- versions; indeed, her place in her husband's estab- lishment was not unlike that of a woman in a seraglio. She was allowed few pleasures, and but one duty was impressed upon her, namely, that of supplying an heir to the estate; to this duty she devoted herself unremittingly. In due time a child was born, a daughter; and while this was of course recognized as a mistake, it was believed to be one which could be corrected. Meanwhile Thrale was surprised to find that his wife could think and talk — that she had a mind of her own. The discovery dawned slowly upon him, as did the idea that the pleasure of living in the country may be enhanced by hospitality. Finally the doors of Streatham Park were thrown open. For a time her husband's bachelor friends and companions were the only company. Included among these was one Arthur Murphy, who had been un maitre de plaisir to Henry Thrale in the gay days before his marriage, when they had frequented the green rooms and Ranelagh to- gether. It was Murphy who suggested that "Dic- tionary Johnson" might be secured to enliven a din- ner-party, and then followed some discussion as to the excuse which should be given Johnson for inviting liim to the table of the rich brewer. It was finally sug- gested that he be invited to meet a minor celebrity, Jnmos Woodhouse, the shoemaker poet. A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 193 Johnson rose to the bait, — Johnson rose easily to any bait which would provide him a good dinner and lift him out of himself, — and the dinner passed off successfully. Mrs. Thrale records that they all liked each other so well that a dinner was arranged for the following week, without the shoemaker, who, having served his purpose, disappears from the record. And now, and for twenty years thereafter, we find Johnson enjoying the hospitality of the Thrales, which opened for him a new world. When he was taken ill, not long after the introduction, Mrs. Thrale called on him in his stuffy lodgings in a court off Fleet Street, and suggested that the air of Streatham would be good for him. Would he come to them.^^ He would. He was not the man to deny himself the care of a young, rich, and charming woman, who would feed him well, understand him, and add to the joys of conversation. From that time on, whether at their residence in Deadman's Place in Southwark, or at Streatham, or at Brighton, even on their journeys, the Thrales and Johnson were constantly together; and when he went on a journey alone, as was some- times the case, he wrote long letters to his misft'ess or his master, as he affectionately called his friends. Who gained most by this intercourse.^ It would be hard to say. It is a fit subject for a debate, a copy of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" to go to the successful contestant. Johnson summed up his obligations to the lady in the famous letter written just before her second marriage, probably the last he ever wrote her. 194 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING "I wish that God may grant you every blessing, that you may be happy in this world . . . and eternally happy in a better state; and whatever I can contribute to your happiness I am ready to repay for that kind- ness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched." On the other hand, the Thrales secured what, per- haps unconsciously, they most desired, social posi- tion and distinction. At Streatham they entertained the best, if not perhaps the very highest, society of the time. Think for a moment of the intimates of this house, whose portraits, painted by Reynolds, hung in the library. There were my Lords Sandys and Westcote, college friends of Thrale; there were John- son and Goldsmith; Garrick and Burke; Burney, and Reynolds himself, and a number of others, all from the brush of the great master; and could we hear the voices which from time to time might have been heard in the famous room, we should recognize Bos- well and Piozzi, Baretti, and a host of others; and would it })e necessary for the servant to announce the entrance of the great Mrs. Siddons, or Mrs. Garrick, or Fanny Burney, or Hannah More, or Mrs. Mon- tagu, or any of the other ladies who later formed that famous coterie which came to be known as the Blue- Stockings.^ But Johnson was the Thrales' first lion and re- mained their greatest. He first gave Streatham parties distinction. The master of the house enjoyed having Ihc wits about him, but was not one himself. Johnson A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 195 said of him that "his mind struck the hours very regularly but did not mark the minutes." It was his wife who, by her sprightliness and her wit and readi- ness, kept the ball rolling, showing infinite tact and skill in drawing out one and, when necessary, re- pressing another; asking — when the Doctor was not speaking — for a flash of silence from the company that a newcomer might be heard. But I am anticipating. All this was not yet. A salon such as she created at Streatham Park is not the work of a month or of a year. If Mrs. Thrale had ever entertained any illusions as to her husband's regard for her, they must have received a shock when she discovered, as she soon did, that Mr. Thrale had previously offered his hand to several ladies, coupling with his proposal the fact that, in the event of its being accepted, he would expect to live for a portion of each year in his house adjoining the brewery. The famous brewery is now Barclay & Perkins's, and still stands on its original site, where the Globe Theatre once stood, not far from the Surrey end of Southwark Bridge. A more unattrac- tive place of residence it would be hard to imagine, but for some reason Mr. Thrale loved it. On the other hand, Streatham was delightful. It was a fine estate, something over an hour's drive from Fleet Street in the direction of Croydon. The house, a mansion of white stucco, stood in a park of more than a hundred acres, beautifully wooded. Drives and gravel-walks gave easy access to all parts of the 196 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING grounds. There was a lake with a drawbridge, and conservatories, and glass houses stocked with fine fruits. Grapes, peaches, and pineapples were grown in abundance, and Dr. Johnson, whose appetite was robust, was able for the first time in his life to in- dulge himself in these things to his heart's content. In these delightful surroundings the Thrales spent the greater part of each year, and here assembled about them a coterie almost, if not quite, as distinguished as that which made Holland House famous half a century later. A few years ago Barrie wrote a delightful play, "What Every Woman Knows"; and I hasten to say, for the benefit of those who have not seen this play, that what every woman knows is how to manage a husband. In this respect Mrs. Thrale had no superior. Making due allowance, the play suggests the rela- tionship of the Thrales. A cold, self-contained, and commonplace man is married to a sprightly and en- gaging wife. With her to aid him, he is able so to carry himself that people take him for a man of great abil- ity; without her, he is utterly lost. To give point to the play, the husband is obliged to make this painful discovery. Mrs. Thrale, mercifully, never permitted her husband to discover how commonplace he was. Could he have looked in her diary he might have read this description of himself, and, had he read it, he would probably have made no remark. He spoke little. "Mr. Thrale's sobriety, and the decency of his A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 197 conversation, being wholly free from all oaths, rib- aldry and profaneness, make him exceedingly comfort- able to live with; while the easiness of his temper and slowness to take offence add greatly to his value as a domestic man. Yet I think his servants do not love him, and I am not sure that his children have much af- fection for him. With regard to his wife, though little tender of her person, he is very partial to her under- standing; but he is obliging to nobody, and confers a favor less pleasingly than many a man refuses one." Elsewhere she refers to him as the handsomest man in London, by whom she has had thirteen children, two sons and eleven daughters. Both sons and all but three of the daughters died either in infancy or in early childhood. Constantly in that condition in which ladies wish to be who love their lords, Mrs. Thrale, by her advice and efforts, once, at least, saved her husband from bankruptcy, and frequently from making a fool of himself. She grew to take an intel- ligent interest in his business affairs, urged him to enter Parliament, successfully electioneered for him, and in return was treated with just that degree of affection that a man might show to an incubator which, although somewhat erratic in its operations, might at any time present him with a son. Such was the household of which Dr. Johnson be- came a member, and which, to all intents and pur- poses, became his home. Retaining his lodgings in a court off Fleet Street, he established in them what 198 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Mrs. Thrale called his menagerie of old women: de- pendents too poor and wretched to find asylum else- where. To them he was at all times considerate, if not courteous. It was his custom to dine with them two or three times each week, thus insuring them an ample dinner; but the library at Streatham was especially devoted to his service. When he could be induced to work on his "Lives of the Poets," it be- came his study; but for the most part it was his arena, where, in playful converse or in violent discussion, he held his own against all comers. In due time, under the benign influence of the Thrales, he overcame his repugnance to clean linen. Mr. Thrale suggested silver buckles for his shoes, and he bought them. As he entered the drawing-room, a servant might have been seen clapping on his head a wig which had not been badly singed by a midnight candle as he tore the heart out of a book. The great bear became bearable. One of his most intimate friends, Baretti, a highly cultivated man, was secured as a tutor for the Thrale children, of whom the eldest, nicknamed "Queenie," was Johnson's favorite. Henry Thrale's table was one of the best in London. By degrees it became known that at Streatham one might always be sure of an excellent dinner and the best conversation in England. Dr. Johnson voiced, not only his own, but the general opinion, that to smile with the wise and to feed with the rich was very close upon human felicity; and he would have ad- mitted, liad his attention been called to it, that there MRS. THRALE'S BREAKFAST -TABLE A UGHT-BLUE STOCKING 199 EVELINA, was at least one house in London in which people could enjoy themselves as much as at a capital inn. And people did. For the best description of life at Streatham we must turn to the pages of Fanny Burney (Ma- dame d'Arblay). Her diary is a work of art, but that part of it which pleases most is where the art is so con- cealed that one feels that the daily entries are intended for no other eye than the wri- ter's. It is its confiden- tial character which is its greatest charm. As the years pass, it loses this quality, and to the extent that it does so it becomes less interest- ing to us. "Evelina" O R, A YOUNG LADY^S E N TRA N C E INTO TUK WORLD* VOL. L LONDON: FrinKd ibr T. Lowndes, N* 77, in Fleet-Street. has just been published and Fanny has become a welcome guest at the Thrales' when the record opens. "I have now to write an account of the most consequential day I have spent since my birth; namely, my Streatham visit," is an early entry. Johnson is there and "is very proud to sit by Miss Burney at dinner." Mrs. 200 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Thrale, described as a very pretty woman, gay and agreeable, without a trace of pedantry, repeats some lines in French, and Dr. Johnson quotes Latin which Mrs. Thrale turns into excellent English. Then the talk is of Garrick, who, some one says, appears to be getting old, on which Johnson remarks that it must be remembered that his face has had more wear and tear than any other man's. Then Mrs. Montagu is mentioned, and the merits of her book on Shakespeare are discussed, and Reynolds and his art, and finally the talk drifts back again to "Evelina," and Dr. Johnson, stimulated by the gayety of an excellent dinner in such surroundings, cries, "Harry Fielding never drew so good a character. . . . There is no character better drawn anywhere — in any book, by any author"; and Fanny pinches herself in delight, under the table, as she had a right to do, for was not the great Cham of literature praising her.'^ And so with talks and walks and drives and din- ners and tea-drinkings unceasing, with news, gossip, and scandal at retail, wholesale, and for exportation, it was contrived that life at Streatham was as de- lightful as life can be made to be. Occasionally there was work to be done. Dr. Johnson was called on for an introduction to something, or the proof-sheets of "The Lives of the Poets" arrived, and it became Mrs. Thrale's duty to keep the Doctor up to his work — no easy task when a pretty woman was around, and there were always several at Streatham. Breakfast was always served in the library, and tea was pouring A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 201 incessantly. Thanks to Boswell and to "Little Bur- ney," we know this life better than we know any other whatever; and what life elsewhere is so intimate and personal, so well worth knowing? One morning Mrs. Thrale, entering the library and finding Johnson there, complained that it was her birthday, and that no one had sent her any verses. She admitted to being thirty -five, yet Swift, she said, fed Stella with them till she was forty -six. Thereupon Johnson without hesitation began to compose aloud, and Mrs. Thrale to write at his dictation, — "Oft in danger, yet alive. We are come to thirty -five; Long may better years arrive. Better years than thirty-five. Could philosophers contrive Life to stop at thirty-five. Time his hours should never drive O'er the bounds of thirty-five. High to soar, and deep to dive. Nature gives at thirty-five. Ladies, stock and tend your hive. Trifle not at thirty -five; For howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five: He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty -five; And all who wisely wish to wive Must look on Thrale at thirty-five," — adding, as he concluded, "And now, my dear, you see what it is to come for poetry to a dictionary- maker. You may observe that the rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly." But life is not all cakes and ale. Mr. Thrale's ample 202 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING income was constantly in jeopardy from his business speculations. He was led by a charlatan to spend a fortune in the endeavor to brew without hops; this failing, he sought to recoup himself by over-brewing, despite the protests of his wife, seconded by Dr. John- son, who was becoming an excellent man of affairs. Listen to the man whose boast was that he was bred in idleness and the pride of literature. "The brew- house must be the scene of action. . . . The first con- sequence of our late trouble ought to be an endeavor to brew at a cheaper rate, an endeavor not violent and transient, but steady and continual, prosecuted with total contempt of censure or wonder, and ani- mated by resolution not to stop while more can be done. Unless this can be done, nothing can help us; and if this is done we shall not want help. Surely there is something to be saved; there is to be saved whatever is the difference between vigilance and neglect, between parsimony and profusion." It is proper to observe that it is Dr. Johnson, and not Andrew Carnegie, who is speaking, and in Mrs. Thrale's copy of the Dictionary, which I happen to own, his gift to her, there is pasted in the book a letter in Dr. Johnson's autograph w^ritten about this time, one paragraph of which reads, "I think it very prob- ably in your power to lay up eight thousand pounds a year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance; and surely such a state is not to be put in yearly hazard for the pleasure of keep- A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 203 ing the house full, or the ambition of out-brewing Whitbread. Stop now and you are safe — stop a few years and you may go safely on thereafter, if to go on shall seem worth the while." Meanwhile, Mr. Thrale was quietly digging his grave with his teeth. Warned by his physician and his friends that he must exercise more and eat less, he snapped his fingers at them, I was going to say; but he did nothing so violent. He simply disregarded their advice and gave orders that the best and earliest of everything should be placed upon his table in pro- fusion. His death was the result, and at forty Mrs. Thrale found herself a widow, wealthy, and with her daughters amply provided for. She, with Dr. John- son and several others, was an executor of the estate, and promptly began to grapple with the problems of managing a great business. Not long after Thrale's death we find this entry in her journal: "I have now appointed three days a week to attend at the count- ing-house. If an angel from Heaven had told me twenty years ago that the man I knew by the name of Dictionary Johnson should one day become partner with me in a great trade, and that we should jointly or separately sign notes, drafts, etc., for three or four thousand pounds, of a morning, how unlikely it would have seemed ever to happen! Unlikely is not the word, it would have seemed incredible, neither of us then being worth a groat, and both as immeasurably removed from commerce as birth, literature, and inclination could get us." ^04 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING The opinion was general that Mrs. Thrale had been a mere sleeping partner, and her friends were amazed at the insight the sparkling little lady showed in the management of a great business. "Such," says Mrs. Montagu, "is the dignity of Mrs. Thrale's virtue, and such her superiority in all situations of life, that nothing now is wanting but an earthquake to show how she will behave on that occasion." But this state of things was not long to continue. A knot of rich Quakers came along, and purchased the enterprise for a hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds. Dr. Johnson was not quite clear that the property ought to be sold; but when the sale was finally decided upon, he did his share toward securing a good price. Capitalization of earning power has never been more succinctly described than when, in going over the great establishment with the intending purchasers, he made his famous remark, "We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the poten- tiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." For Mrs. Thrale and her daughters the affair was a matter of great moment; excitement ran high. Fanny Burney was staying at Streatham while the business was pending, and it was arranged that on the day the transaction was to be consummated, if all went well, Mrs. Thrale would, on her return from town, wave a white pocket-handkerchief out of the coach window. Dinner was at four; no Mrs. Thrale. Five came, and no Mrs. Thrale. At last the coach appeared and out of the window fluttered a handkerchief. THE BEST-KNOWX PORTKAIT OF DR. JOHNSON, BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. ORKUNALLY IN THE LIBRARY AT STREATHA:M. SOLD IN 1816 FOR £378. PASSED EVENTUALLY INTO THE NATIONAL (iALLERY. Eiigraveil bii Doughty A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 205 Mrs. Thrale's own notes are amusing. She was glad to bid adieu to the brewhouse and to the Borough — the business had been a great burden. Her daughters were provided for, and she did not much care for money for herself. By the bargain she had purchased peace, and, as she said, "restoration to her orig- inal rank in life"; recording in her journal, "Now that it is all over I'll go to church and give God thanks and forget the frauds, follies and inconveni- ences of commercial life; as for Dr. Johnson, his honest heart was cured of its incipient passion for trade by letting him into some and only some of its mysteries." A final word on the subject of the Thrale brewhouse, which still exists. A year or two ago I spent a morn- ing looking for Deadman's Place, which has disap- peared, but the great enterprise dominates the whole district, which is redolent with the odor of malt and hops. Johnson's connection with the business is im- mortalized by his portrait — the famous one so gen- erally known — being used as its trademark. The original picture is in the National Gallery, but an ex- cellent copy hangs in the directors' room of the brew- ery. The furnishings of this room are of the simplest. I doubt if they would fetch at auction a five-pound note, were it not for the fact that Johnson's chair and desk are among them. In this room a business run- ning annually into millions is transacted. The Eng- lish love to leave old things as they are. With them history is always in the making. cy^//2y?Ul a^^m-^ A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 207 Not many Sundays after Mrs. Thrale's thanksgiv- ing she had a visitor at Streatham — a visitor who, when he left, carried with him as a token of her re- gard two Uttle calf -bound volumes, in one of which was the inscription, "These books written by Dr. Samuel Johnson were presented to Mr. Gabbrielle Piozzi by Hester-Lynch Thrale. Streatham, Sunday 10 June, 1781"; with a further note in an equally clear and flowing hand: "And Twenty Eight Years after that Time pre- sented again to his Nephew John Piozzi Salusbury by Hester Lynch Piozzi. Brynbel- la 1st August, 1809." I am able to be exact in this small matter, for the volumes in ques- tion were given me not long ago by a friend who understands my passion for such things. The book was the first edition of the "Prince of Abissinia" (it was not known as "Ras- selas" until after Dr. Johnson's death), and Mrs. Thrale at the time did not know Piozzi sufficiently well to spell his name correctly; but she was soon to learn, and to learn, THE PRINCE OP ABISSINIA. E. IN rwO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON; Prin'ed for R. and J. DoDsiEV, inPall-Mall; and W. J H N s T o H, in Ludgate-Strett. M DCCLIX. 208 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING too, that she was in love with him and he with her. She had first met Piozzi about a year before, at a musicale at the house of Dr. Burney, Fanny's father. On this occasion she had taken advantage of his back being turned to mimic him as he sat at the piano. For this she was reprimanded by Dr. Burney, and she must have felt that she deserved the correction, for she took it in good part and behaved with great decorum during the rest of the evening. After a year in her widow's weeds, — which must have tormented Johnson, for he hated the thought of death and liked to see ladies dressed in gay colors, — she laid aside her severe black and began to resume her place in society. The newspapers marked the change, and every man who entered her house was referred to as a possible husband for the rich and attractive widow. Finally she was obliged to write to the papers and ask that they would let the subject alone. But it soon became evident to Johnson and to the rest of the world that Piozzi was successfully laying siege to the lady; as why should he not? The fact that he was a Catholic, an Italian, and a musician could hardly have appeared to him as reasons why he should not court a woman of rare charm and dis- tinction, with whom he had been on terms of friend- ship for several years; a woman who was of suitable age, the mistress of a fine estate and three thousand pounds a year, and whose children were no longer children but young ladies of independent fortune. A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 209 That she should marry some one seemed certain. Why not Piozzi? Her daughters protested that their mother was disgracing herself and them, and the world held up its hands in horror at the thought; the co-executors of the estate became actually insulting, and Fanny Burney was so shocked at the idea that she finally gave up visiting Streatham altogether. Society ranged itself for and against the lady — few for, many against. There were other troubles, too: a lawsuit involving a large sum was decided against her, and Johnson, ill, querulous, and exacting, behaved as an irritable old man would who felt his influence in the family waning. I am a Johnsonian, — Tinker has called me so and Tinker may be depended upon to know a Johnsonian when he sees one, — but I am bound to admit that Johnson had behaved badly and was to behave worse. Johnson was very human and the lady was very human, too. They had come to a parting of the ways. It was inevitable that the life at Streatham must be terminated. Its glory had departed, and the ex- pense of its upkeep was too great for the lady; so a tenant was secured and Mrs. Thrale and Dr. John- son prepared to leave the house in which so many happy years had been spent. Dr. Johnson was once more to make his lodgings in Bolt Court, and Mrs. Thrale, after a visit to Brighton, was to go to Bath to repose her purse. The engagement, or understand- ing, or whatever it was, with Piozzi was broken off. 210 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING and Italy was proposed as a place of residence for him. Broken hearts there were in plenty. Life for Mrs. Thrale at Bath proved to be impos- sible. If concealment did not feed on the damask of her cheek, love did, and at last it became evident, even to the young ladies, that their mother was pining away for Piozzi, and they gave their consent that he be recalled. He came at once. Mvs. Thrale, on his departure, had sent him a poem which reached him at Dover. She now sent him another which was designed to reach him on his return, at Calais. Over mountains, rivers, vallies. See my love returns to Calais, After all their taunts and malice, Ent'ring safe the gates of Calais. "While Delay'd by winds he dallies, Fretting to be kept at Calais, Muse, prepare some sprightly sallies To divert my dear at Calais; Say how every rogue who rallies Envies him who waits at Calais For her that would disdain a Palace Compar'd to Piozzi, Love and Calais. Pretty poor poetr^^ those who know tell me; but if Piozzi liked it, it served its purpose. And now Mrs. Thrale announced her engagement in a circular letter to her co-executors under the Thrale will, sending, in addition, to Johnson a letter in which she says, *'The dread of your disapprobation has given me some anxious moments, and I feel as if acting with- out a parent's consent till you write kindly to me." A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 211 Johnson's reply is historic: — Madam, — If I interpret your letter right, you are ignominiously married : if it is yet undone, let us once more talk together. If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive your wickedness; if you have forfeited your fame and your country, may your folly do no further mischief. If the last act is yet to do, I who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you, I who long thought you the first of womankind, entreat that, before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I once was. Madam, most truly yours, Sam Johnson. July 2, 1784. It was a smashing letter, and showed that the mind which had composed the famous letter to Chester- field and another, equally forceful, to Macpherson had not lost its vigor. But those letters had brought no reply. His letter to Mrs. Thrale did, and one at once dignified and respectful. The little lady was no novice in letter-writing, and I can imagine that upon the arrival of her letter the weary, heartsick old man wept. Remember that his emotions were seldom com- pletely under his control, and that he had nothing of the bear about him but its skin. Sir [she wrote]; I have this morning received from you so rough a letter in reply to one which was both tenderly and respectfully written, that I am forced to desire the conclusion of a correspondence which I can bear to con- tinue no longer. The birth of my second husband is not meaner than that of my first; his sentiments are not meaner; his profession is not meaner; and his superiority in what he professes acknowledged by all mankind. Is 212 AINIENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING it want of fortune, then, that is ignominious? The char- acter of the man I have chosen has no other claim to such an epithet. The reh'gion to which he has been always a zealous adherent will, I hope, teach him to forgive insults he has not deserved; mine will, I hope, enable me to bear them at once with dignity and patience. To hear that I have forfeited my fame is indeed the greatest insult I ever yet received. My fame is as unsullied as snow, or I should think it unworthy of him who must henceforth protect it. Johnson, she says, wrote once more, but the letter has never come to light; the correspondence, which had continued over a period of twenty years, w^as at an end. An interesting letter of Thomas Hardy on this subject came into my possession recently. In it he says, "I am in full sympathy with Mrs. Thrale under the painful opposition to her marriage with Piozzi. The single excuse for Johnson's letter to her on that occasion would be that he was her lover him- self, and hoped to win her, otherwise it was simply brutal." I do not think that Johnson was her lover, and I am afraid I must agree that Johnson was brutal. In extenuation I urge that he was a very weary, sick old man. At the time Mrs. Thrale's detractors were many and her defenders few. Two dates were given as to the time of her marriage, which started some wan- dering lies, much to her disadvantage. The fact is that both dates were correct, for she was married to Piozzi once by a Catholic and several weeks later by a Church of England ceremony. In her journal she writes under date of July 25, 1784, "I am now the A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 213 wife of my faithful Piozzi ... he loves me and will be mine forever. . . . The whole Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, all are witnesses." For two years they traveled on the continent. No marriage could have been happier. Piozzi, by com- parison with his wife, is a rather shadowy person. He is described as being a handsome man, a few months older than she, with gentle, pleasant, unaffected man- ners, very eminent in his profession; nor was he, as was so frequently stated, a man without a fortune. The difference in their religious views was the cause of no difficulty. Each respected the religion of the other and kept his or her own. "I would preserve my relig- ious opinions inviolate at Milan as my husband did his at London," is an entry in her journal. She was staying at Milan when tidings of John- son's death reached her. All of her correspondents hastened to apprize her of the news. I have a long letter to her from one Henry Johnson, — who he was, I am unable to determine, — written one day after the funeral, describing the procession forming in Bolt Court; the taking of mourning coaches in Fleet Street and "proceeding to Westminster Abbey where the corpse was laid close to the remains of David Gar- rick, Esquire." That Madam Piozzi, as we must now call her, was deeply affected, we cannot doubt. Only a few days before the news of his death reached her, we find her writing to a friend, urging him not to neglect Dr. Johnson, saying, "You will never see any other mortal 214 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING so wise or so good. I keep his picture constantly be- fore me." Before long she heard, too, that several of her old friends had engaged to write his life, and Piozzi urged her to be one of the number. The result was the "Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson during the last Twenty Years of his Life." It is not a great work, but considering the circumstances under which it was written, her journals being locked up in Eng- land while she was writing at Florence, greater faults than were found in it could have been overlooked. It provided Boswell with some good anecdotes for his great book, and it antedated Hawkins's "Life of Johnson" by about a year. The public appetite was whetted by the earlier publication of Boswell's "Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides," in which he had given a taste of his quality, and the "Anecdotes" appeared at a time when everything which related to Johnson had a great vogue. The book was published by Cadell, and so great was the demand, that the first edition was exhausted on the day of publication; so that, when the King sent for a copy in the evening, on the day of its publication, the publisher had to beg for one from a friend. Bozzy and Piozzi thus became rival biographers in the opinion of the public, and the public got what pleasure it could out of numerous caricatures and satires with which the bookshops abounded, many of these being amusing and some simply scurrilous, after the fashion of the time. A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 215 Meanwhile, the Piozzis had become tired of travel and wished again to enjoy the luxury of a home. "Prevail on Mr. Piozzi to settle in England," had been Dr. Johnson's parting advice. It was not diffi- cult to do so, and on their return, after a short stay in London, they took up residence in Bath. Here Madam Piozzi, encouraged by the success of the "Anecdotes," devoted herself to the publication of two volumes of "Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson." Their preparation for the press was somewhat crude: it consisted largely in mak- ing omissions here and there, and substituting aster- isks for proper names; but the copyright was sold for five hundred pounds, and the letters showed, if indeed it was necessary to show, how intimate had been the relationship between the Doctor and herself. As time went on, there awakened in Madam Piozzi a longing for the larger life of Streatham, and her husband, always anxious to accomplish her wishes, decided that she should return to the scene of her former triumphs; but Dr. Johnson,, the keystone of her social arch, was gone, and there was no one to take his place. Her husband was a cultured gentleman, but he was not to the English manner born. The attempt was made, however, and on the seventh anniversary of their wedding day Streatham was thrown open. Seventy people sat down to din- ner, the house and grounds were illuminated, and the villagers were made welcome. A thousand people 216 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING thronged through the estate. One might have sup- posed that a young lord had come into his own. It was a brave effort, but it was soon seen to be un- availing. A man's fame may be like a shuttle-cock, having constantly to be struck to prevent its falling; but not a woman's. She had lost caste by her mar- riage. It was not forgotten that her husband was "a foreigner," that he had been a "fiddler"; while his wife had been the object of too much ridicule, the subject of too many lampoons. But the lady had resources within herself; she was an inveterate reader and she had tasted the joys of authorship. She now published a volume of travels and busied herself with several other works, the very names of which are forgotten except by the curious in such matters. While she was thus engaged a bitter and scandalous attack was made upon her by Baretti. Now, Baretti was a liar, and in proof of her good sense and for- giving disposition, I offer in evidence the entry that she made in her journal when she heard of his death. "Baretti is dead. Poor Baretti! ... he died as he lived, less like a Christian than a philosopher, leav- ing no debts (but those of gratitude) undischarged and expressing neither regret for the past nor fear for the future. ... A wit rather than a scholar, strong in his prejudices, haughty in spirit, cruel in anger. He is dead! So is my enmity." On anotlier occasion she contrived to quiet a hostile critic who liad ridiculed her in verse; much damage A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 217 may be done by a couplet, as she well knew, and the lines, — See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam And bring in pomp laborious nothings home, — were not nice, however true they might be. Madam Piozzi determined to take him in hand. She con- trived at the house of a friend to get herself placed op- posite to him at a supper-table, and after observing his perplexity with amusement for a time, she raised her wine-glass to him and proposed the toast, "Good fellowship for the future." The critic was glad to avail himself of the dainty means of escape from an awkward situation. However, it was evident that life at Streatham could not be continued on the old scale. Funds were not as plentiful as in the days of the great brew- master; so after a few years, when her husband sug- gested their retiring to her native Wales, she was glad to fall in with the idea. A charming site was selected, and a villa built in the Italian style after her husband's design. It was called "Brynbella," meaning beautiful brow; half Welsh and half Italian, like its owners. I fancy their lives were happier here than they had been elsewhere, for they built upon their own foundation. Piozzi had his piano and his violin, and the lady busied herself with her books; while the monotony of existence was pleasantly broken by occasional visits to Bath, where they had many friends. And during these years, letters and notes, com- 218 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING ment and criticism, dropped from her pen like leaves from a tree in autumn. She lived over again in mem- ory her life in London, reading industriously, and busy in the pleasant and largely profitless way which tends to make days pass into months and months into years and leave no trace of their passing. She must always have had a pen in her hand: it goes without saying that she had kept a diary ; in those days every- one did, and most had less than she to record. It was Dr. Johnson who suggested that she get a little book and write in it all the anecdotes she might hear, observations she might make, or verse that might otherwise be lost. These instructions were followed literally, but no little book sufficed. She filled many large quarto volumes, six of which, entitled "Thrali- ana," passed through the London auction rooms in 1908, bringing £2050. One volume, which perhaps does not belong to the series, but which in every way accords with Dr. Johnson's suggestion, formed part of the late A. M. Broadley's collection until, at his death, it passed with several other items, into that of the writer. Mr. Broadley took an ardent interest in every- thing that related to Mrs. Thrale, and published, a few years ago, her "Journal of the Welsh Tour," under- taken in the summer of 1774. Dr. Johnson also kept a diary on this journey, but his is bald and fragmen- tary, while that of the lady is an intimate and con- secutive narrative. The original manuscript volume, in its original dark, limp leather binding is before me. /s p^vuoA- A/ ^' A^n^-^"^^ (Tt~^,w fyoy/ fyi. tcJjL^ y^Ci^tr^ t^t^ ujtM.'^^ FACSIMILE, MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE, OF THE LAST PAGE OF MRS. THRALE'S "JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN WALES," UNDERTAKEN IN THE COMPANY OF DR. JOHNSON IN THE SUMMER OF 1774 220 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING It comprises ninety-seven pages in Mrs. Thrale's beautiful hand, beginning, "On Tuesday, 5th July, 1774, 1 began my journey through Wales. We set out from Streatham in our coach and four post horses, accompanied by Dr. Johnson and our eldest daughter. Baretti went with us as far as London, where we left him and hiring fresh horses they carried us to the Mitre at Barnet"; and so on throughout the whole tour, until she made this, her final entry: — September 30th. When I rose Mr. Thrale informed me that the Parliament was suddenly dissolved and that all the world was bustle; that we were to go to South wark, not to Streatham, and canvass away. I heard the first part of this report with pleasure, the hitter with pain; nothing but a real misfortune could, I think, affect me so much as the thoughts of going to Town thus to settle for the Winter before I have had any enjoyment of Streatham at all; and so all my hopes of pleasure blow away. I thought to have lived in Streatham in quiet and comfort, have kissed my children and cuffed them by turns, and had a place always for them to play in; and here I must be shut up in that odious dungeon, where nobody will come near me, the children are to be sick for want of air, and I am never to see a face but Mr. Johnson's. Oh, what a life that is! and how truly do I abhor it! At noon however I saw my Girts and thought Susan vastly improved. At evening I saw my Boys .and Hked them very well too. How much is there always to thank God for! But I dare not enjoy poor Streatham lest I should be forced to quit it. I value this little volume highly, as who, interested in the lady, would not? It is an unaffected record of a journey, of interesting people who met interest- A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 221 ing people wherever the}^ went, and its publication by Broadley was a pious act. But that the Broadley volume, published a few years ago, gets its chief value from the sympathetic introduction by Thomas Seccombe, must, I think, be admitted. It is no longer the fashion to "blush as well as weep for Mrs. Thrale." This silly phrase is Macaulay's. Rather, as Sir Walter Raleigh remarked to me in going over some of her papers in my library, "What a dear, delightful person she was ! I have always wanted to meet her." In the future, what may be written of Mrs. Thrale will be written in better taste. At this time of day why should she be attacked because she married a man who did not speak English as his mother tongue, and who was a musician rather than a brewer.^ One may be an enthusiastic admirer of Dr. Johnson — I confess I am — and yet keep a warm place in one's heart for the kindly and charming little woman. Admit that she was not the scholar she thought she was, that she was "inaccurate in narra- tion": what matters it? She was a woman of char- acter, too. She was not overpowered by Dr. Johnson, as was Fanny Burney, to such a degree that at last she came to write like him, only more so. Mrs. Thrale, by her own crisp, vigorous English, influenced the Doctor finally to write as he talked, naturally, without that undue elaboration which was character- istic of his earlier style. If Johnson mellowed under the benign influence of the lady, she was the gainer in knowledge, especially 222 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING in such knowledge as comes from books. It was Mrs. Thrale rather than her husband who formed the Streatham Ubrary. Her taste was robust, she baulked at no foreign language, but set about to study it. I have never seen a book from her library — and I have seen many — which was not filled with notes written in her clear and beautiful hand. These vol- umes, like the books which Lamb lent Coleridge, and which he returned with annotations tripling their value, are occasionally offered for sale in those old book-shops where our resolutions not to be tempted are writ in so much water; or they turn up at auction sales and astonish the uninitiated by the prices they bring. Several of these volumes are in the collection of the writer: her Dictionary, the gift of Dr. Johnson, for instance, and a "Life of Psalmanazar," another gift from the same source; but the book which, above all others, every Johnsonian would wish to own is the property of Miss Amy Lowell of Boston, a poet of rare distinction, a critic, and America's most dis- tinguished woman collector. Who does not envy her the possession of the first edition of Bos well's "Life of Johnson," filled with the marginalia of the one person in the world whose knowledge of the old man rivaled that of the great biographer himself? And to hear Miss Lowell quote these notes in a manner sug- gestive of the charm of Madam Piozzi herself, is a delight never to be forgotten. About the time of the Piozzis' removal to Wales, MISS AMY LOAVELL, OF BOSTON, POET, CRITIC, AND AMERICA'S MOST DISTINGUISHED WOMAN COLLECTOR A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 223 they decided to adopt a nephew, the son of Piozzi's brother, who had met with financial reverses in Italy. The boy had been christened John Salusbury in honor of Mrs. Piozzi, and she became greatly at- tached to the lad and decided to leave him her entire fortune. He was brought up as an English boy, and his education was a matter which gave her serious concern. Meanwhile, the years that had touched the lady so lightly had left their impress upon her husband, who does not seem to have been strong. He was a great sufferer from gout, and finally died, and was buried in the parish church of Tremeirchion, which years before he had caused to be repaired, and had built there a burial vault in which his remains were placed. They had lived in perfect harmony for twenty-five years, thus effectually overturning the prophecies of their friends. She continued to reside at Brynbella until the marriage of her adopted son, when she gen- erously gave him the estate and removed to Bath, that lovely little city where so many celebrities have gone to pass the closing years of eventful lives. As a "Bath cat" she continued her interest in men, women, and books until the end. Having outlived all her old friends, she proceeded to make new; and when nearly eighty astonished everyone by showing great partiality for a young and handsome actor, — and, if reports be true, a very bad actor, — named Conway. There was much smoke and doubtless some fire in the affair: letters purporting to be hers to him 224 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING were published after her death. They may not be genuine, and if they are they show simply, as Leslie Stephen says, that at a very advanced age she be- came silly. On her eightieth birthday she gave a ball to six or seven hundred people in the Assembly Rooms at Bath, and led the dancing herself with her adopted son (who by this time was Sir John Salusbury Piozzi), very much to her satisfaction. A year later she met with an accident, from the effects of which she died. She was buried in Tre- meirchion Church beside her husband. A few years ago, on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Johnson, a memorial tablet was erected in the quaint old church, reading, — Near this place are interred the remains of HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale Bom 1741, died 1821 Mrs. Piozzi's life is her most enduring work. Trifles were her serious business, and she was never idle. Always a great letter-writer, she set in motion a correspondence which would have taxed the capac- ity of a secretary with a typewriter. To the last she was a great reader, and observing a remark in Boswell on the irksomeness of books to people of advanced age, she wrote on the margin, "Not to me, at eighty." Ilcr wonderful memory remained unimpaired until A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING 225 the last. She knew EngHsh hterature well. She spoke French and Italian fluently. Latin she transcribed with ease and grace; of Greek she had a smattering, and she is said to have had a working knowledge of Hebrew; but I suspect that her Hebrew would have set a scholar's hair on end. With all these accom- plishments, she was not a pedant, or, properly speak- ing, a Blue-Stocking, or if she was, it was of a very light shade of blue. She told a capital story, omitted everything irrelevant and came to the point at once; in brief, she was a man's woman. And to end the argument where it began, — for arguments always end where they begin, — I came across a remark the other day which sums up my contention. It was to the effect that, in whatever company Mrs. Piozzi found herself, others found her the most charming person in the room. VIII A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER I AM not sure that I know what philosophy is ; a phi- losopher is one who practices it, and we have it on high authority that "there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently." There is an old man in Wilkie Collins's novel, "The Moonstone," the best novel of its kind in the lan- guage, who, when in doubt, reads "Robinson Crusoe." In like manner I, when in doubt, turn to Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and there I read that the fine, crusty old doctor was hailed in the Strand one day by a man who half a century before had been at Pem- broke College with him. It is not surprising that Johnson did not at first remember his former friend, and he was none too well pleased to be reminded that they were both "old men now." "We are, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "but do not let us discourage one an- other"; and they began to talk over old times and compare notes as to where they stood in the world. Edwards, his friend, had practiced law and had made money, but had spent or given away much of it. "I shall not die rich," said he. "But, sir," said John- son, "it is better to live rich than to die rich." And now comes Edwards's immortal remark, "You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried, too, in my iW^)7?7 4iW?^ THE RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER From a drawing I'M Maclise 228 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know h \,, cheerfulness was always breaking in." With the word "cheerfulness," Edwards had de- molished the scheme of life of most of our professed philosophers, who have no place in their systems for the attribute that goes furthest toward making life worth while to the average man. Cheerfulness is a much rarer quality than is gen- erally supposed, especially among the rich. It was not common even before we learned that, in spite of Browning, though God may be in his heaven, never- theless, all is wrong with the world. If "most men lead lives of quiet desperation," as Thoreau says they do, it is, I suspect, because they will not allow cheerfulness to break in upon them when it will. A good disposition is worth a fortune. Give cheerfulness a chance and let the professed philosopher go hang. But it is high time for me to turn my attention, and yours, if I may, to the particular philosopher through whom I wish to stick my pen, and whom, thus im- paled, I wish to present for your edification — say, rather, amusement. His name was William Godwin; he was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and the father-in-law of Shelley. Godwin was born in Cambridgeshire in 1756, and came of preaching stock. It is related that, when only a lad, he used to steal away, not to go in swim- ming or to rob an orchard, but to a meeting-house to preach; this at the age of ten. The boy was father to A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 229 the man : to the end of his Hfe he never did anything else. He first preached orthodoxy, later heterodoxy, but he was always a preacher. I do not like the tribe. I am using the word as indicating one who elects to teach by word rather than by example. When a boy he had an attack of smallpox. Relig- ious scruples prevented him from submitting to vac- cination, for he said he had no wish to run counter to the will of God. In this frame of mind he did not long remain. He seems to have been a hard student — what we would call a grind. He read enormously, and by twenty he considered that he was fully equipped for his life's work. He was as ready to preach as an Irishman is to fight, for the love of it; but he was quarrelsome as well as pious, and, falling out with his congregation, he dropped the title of Reverend and betook himself to literature and London. At this time the French Revolution was raging, and the mental churning which it occasioned had its effect upon sounder minds than his. Godwin soon became intimate with Tom Paine and others of like opinions. Wherever political heresy and schism was talked, there Godwin was to be found. He stood for everything which was "advanced" in thought and conduct; he joined the school which was to write God with a small g. All the radical visionaries in London were attracted to him, and he to them. He thought and dreamed and talked, and finally grew to feel the need of a larger audience. The result was "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice," a book which created a tremendous 230 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING sensation in its day. It seemed the one thing needed to bring pohtical dissent and dissatisfaction to a head. Much was wrong at the time, much is still wrong, and doubtless reformers of Godwin's type do a certain amount of good. They call attention to abuses, and eventually the world sets about to remedy them. A "movement" is in the air; it centres in some man who voices and directs it. For the moment the man and the movement seem to be one. Ultimately the movement becomes diffused, its character changes; frequently the man originally identified with it is forgotten — so it was with Godwin. "Political Justice" was published in 1793. In it Godwin fell foul of everything. He assailed all forms of government. The common idea that blood is thicker than water, is wrong: all men are brothers; one should do for a stranger as for a brother. The distribution of property is absurd. A man's needs are to be taken as the standard of what he should receive. He that needs most is to be given most — by whom, Godwin did not say. Marriage is a law and the worst of all laws: it is an affair of property, and like property must be abol- ished. The intercourse of the sexes is to be like any other species of friendship. If two men happen to feel a preference for the same woman, let them both enjoy her conversation and be wise enough to consider sexual intercourse "a very trivial object indeed." I have a copy of "Political Justice," before me, with Tom Paine's signature on the title-page. What A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 231 a whirlwind all this once created, especially with the young! Its author became one of the most-talked-of men of his time, and Godwin's estimate of himself could not have been higher than that his disciples set upon him. Compared with him, "Paine was nowhere and Burke a flashy sophist." He gloried in the reputa- tion his book gave him, and he profited by it to the extent of a thousand pounds; to him it was a fortune. Pitt, who was then Prime Minister, when his atten- tion was called to the book, wisely remarked, "It is not worth while to prosecute the author of a three- guinea book, because at such a price very little harm can be done to those who have not three shillings to spare." The following year Godwin published his one other book that has escaped the rubbish heap of time — *'The Adventures of Caleb Williams," a novel. It is the best of what might be called "The Nightmare Series," which would begin with "The Castle of Otranto," include his own daughter's "Franken- stein," and end, for the moment, with Brani Stoker's "Dracula." "Caleb Williams" has genuine merit; that it is horrible and unnatural may be at once ad- mitted, but there is a vitality about it which holds your interest to the last; unrelieved by any flash of sentiment or humor, it is still as entirely readable as it was once immensely popular. Colman, the younger, dramatized it under the name of "The Iron Chest," and several generations of playgoers have shuddered at the character of Falkland, the murderer, who, and 232 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING not Caleb Williams, is the chief character. His other novels are soup made out of the same stock, as a chef would say, with a dash of the supernatural added. Godwin had now written all that he was ever to write on which the dust of years has not settled, to be disturbed only by some curious student of a forgotten literature; yet he supposed that he was writing for posterity ! Meanwhile he, who had been living with his head in the clouds, became aware of the existence of "females." It was an important, if belated, discov- ery. He was always an inveterate letter-writer, and his curious letters to a number of women have been preserved. He seems to have had more than a pass- ing fancy for Amelia Alderson, afterward Mrs. Opie, the wife of the artist. He was intimate with Mrs. Robinson, the "Perdita" of the period, in which part she attracted the attention of the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley were also friends, with whom he had frequent misunderstandings. His views on the subject of marriage being well known, perhaps these ladies, merely to test the philosopher, sought to overcome his objection to "that worst of institutions." If so, their efforts were unsuccessful. Godwin, however, seems to have exerted a peculiar fascination over the fair sex, and he finally met one with whom, as he says, "friendship melted into love." Godwin, saying he would ne'er consent, consented. Mary WollstonecrafL, the author of the "Rights of Woman," now calhng herself Mrs. Imlay, triumphed. A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 233 Her period of romance, followed fast by tragedy, was for a brief time renewed with Godwin. She had had one experience, the result of which was a fatherless infant daughter, Fanny; and some time after she took up with Godwin, she urged upon him the desirability of "marriage lines." Godwin demurred for a time; but when Mary con- fided to him ihat she was about to become a mother, a private wedding in St. Pancras Church took place. Separate residence was attempted, in order to conform to Godwin's theory that too close familiarity might result in mutual weariness; but Godwin was not destined to become bored by his wife. She had intel- ligence and beauty; indeed, it seems likely that he loved her as devotedly as it was possible for one of his frog-like nature to do. Shortly after the marriage a daughter was born, and christened Mary; and a few days later the remains of Mary Wollstonecraft God- win were interred in the old graveyard of St. Pancras, close by the church which she had recently left as a bride. No sketch of Godwin's life would be complete without the well-known story of the expiring wife's exclamation: "I am in heaven"; to which Godwin replied, "No, my dear, you only mean that your physical sensations are somewhat easier." Thus, by that "divinity that shapes our ends rough," Godwin, who did not approve of marriage and who had no place in his philosophy for the do- mestic virtues, became within a few months a hus- 234 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING band, a widower, a stepfather, and a father. Probably no man was less well equipped than he for his imme- diate responsibilities. He had been living in one house and his wife in another, to save his face, as it were, and also to avoid interruptions ; but this scheme of life was no longer possible. A household must be estab- lished ; some sort of a family nurse became an imme- diate necessity. One was secured, who tried to marry Godwin out of hand. To escape her attentions he fled to Bath. But his objections to marriage as an institution were waning, and when he met Harriet Lee, the daughter of an actor, and herself a writer of some small distinc- tion, the}^ were laid aside altogether. His courtship of Miss Lee took the forni of interminable letters. He writes her: "It is not what you are but what you might be that charms me"; and he chides her for not being prepared faithfully to discharge the duties of a wife and mother. Few women have been in this humor won; Miss Lee was not among them. Godwin finally returned to London. He was now a man approaching middle age, cold, methodical, dogmatic, and quick to take offense. He began to live on borrowed money. The story of his life at this time is largely a story of his squabbles. A more industrious man at picking a quarrel one must go far to find ; and that the record might remain, he wrote letters — not short, angry letters, but long, serious, disputatious epistles, such as no one likes to receive, and which seem to demand and usually get an immediate answer. A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 235 Ritson writes him: "I wish you would make it con- venient to return to me the thirty pounds I loaned you. My circumstances are by no means what they were at the time I advanced it, nor did I, in fact, imagine you would have retained it so long." And again: "Though you have not the ability to repay the money I losjied you, you might have integrity enough to return the books you borrowed. I do not wish to bring against you a railing accusation, but am com- pelled, nevertheless, to feel that you have not acted the part of an honest man." Godwin seems to have known his weakness, for he writes of himself: "I am feeble of tact and liable to the grossest mistakes respecting theory, taste, and character." And again: "No domestic connection is fit for me but that of a person who should habitually study my gratification and happiness." This sounds ominous from one who was constantly looking for a "female companion"; and it was to prove so. It is with a feeling of relief that we turn, for a mo- ment, from the sordid life of Godwin the philosopher to Godwin the dramatist. He was sadly in need of funds, and, following the usual custom of an author in distress, had written a tragedy, for which Charles Lamb had provided the epilogue. John Philip Kemble, seduced by Godwin's flattery and insistence, had finally been prevailed upon to put it on the stage. Kemble had made up his mind that all the good tragedies that could be written had been 236 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING written, and had not his objections been overruled, the tragedy, "Antonio," would never have been pro- duced, and one of Lamb's most delightful essays, in consequence, never written. With the usual preliminaries, and after much cor- respondence and discussion, the night of the play came. It was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane — what a ring it has ! Lamb was there in a box next to the author, who was cheerful and confident. It is a pity to mutilate Lamb's account of it, but it is too long to quote except in fragments. The first act swept by solemn and silent . . . applause would have been impertinent, the interest would warm in the next act. . . . The second act rose a little in interest, the audience became complacently attentive. . . . The third act brought the scene which was to warm the piece progressively to the final flaming forth of the catastrophe, but the interest stood stone still. . . . It was Christmas time and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for asthmatic affections. Some one began to cough, his neighbors sympathized with him, till it became an epidemic ; but when from being artificial in the pit the cough got naturahzed on the stage, and Antonio himself seemed more intent upon relieving his own lungs than the distress of the author, then Godwin "first knew fear," and intimated that, had he been aware that Mr. Kemble la- bored under a cold, the performance might possibly have been postponed. In vain did the plot thicken. The procession of verbiage stalked on, the audience paid no attention whatever to it, the actors became smaller and smaller, the stage re- ceded, the audience was going to sleep, when suddenly Antonio whips out a dagger and stabs his sister to the (tjjaS^'sW^-- v.--»KAr>HCi:'Trjr>T ■_- \f VTR PKRFOR MKD. Tiieatrc Ri^yal, Drury Laiv% 'rlii' prcf(-ai SATURD.iY, Dcceinbcr 13111, ifcco, 1 11. 1 ■' : will ait a Ncn- Traced)' called AN;roN:i O R, ^.^'"•' THE SOLDlEirS RETURN. 111:;. d::■'^a^!UM•s bv rvlr.' V/ R (> u ou't O X, Mr. B A i; R Y M O R E, Mr. K ]'. M B L K. ^'•. C V 1; ^} ]; I. :; i. 1. i.. / /^,^,«?^, The Piolo The VI i £ - "'P «ko The Docrjto! . .. tor the |:«\.s , loxc^ fc». Seen, ■ Ljijitr Uiiicry r,. .;. : tv C-. . I>pcarincc P' mM 1,-, ,.■ K< ' . • 1 "1:1 ^. ' »' ■ ' 1 1, i;mit-l to hcnotiivc.l Sih tiHic this Sealb'i. . K\V l'\NI(WI\: ■*'*''^"-^ '"^ .-■-.^-^i«ri'.'..-: ' .^^-.liA^itat"': .' tcri^»i^tf- CHARLES LAMB'S PLAY-BILL OF "ANTONIO," BY GODWIN. "DAMNED WITH UNIVERSAL CONSENT" A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 237 heart. The effect was as if a milrder had been committed in cold blood, with the audience betrayed into being ac- complices. The whole house rose in clamorous indigna- tion — they would have torn the unfortunate author to pieces if they could have got him. The play was hopelessly and forever damned, and the epilogue went down in the crash. Over my writing-table hangs a dark oak frame containing a souvenir of this performance — the programme which Charles Lamb used on this fateful evening. It is badly crumpled, crumpled no doubt by Elia in his agony. No reference is made to the play being by Godwin except a note in Charles Lamb's handwriting which reads, "By Godwin," with the sig- nificant words, "Damned with universal consent." Godwin bore his defeat with philosophic calm. He appealed to friends for financial assistance and to posterity for applause. But it was really a serious matter. He was on the verge of ruin, and now did what many another man has done when financial difficulties crowded thick and fast — he married again. A certain Mrs. Clairmont fell in love with God- win even before she had spoken to him. She was a fat, unattractive widow, and apparently did all the courting. She took lodgings close by Godwin's, and introduced herself — "Is it possible that I behold the immortal Godwin.'^" This is flattery fed with a knife. When a widow makes up her mind to marry, one of two things must 238 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING be done, and quickly — her victim must run or sub- mit. Godwin was unable to run and a marriage was the result. Like his first w^edding, it was for a time kept a profound secret. An idea of Godwin and his wife at this period is to be had from Lamb's letters. He refers constantly to Godwin as the Professor, and to his wife as the Pro- fessor's Rib, who, he says, "has turned out to be a damned disagreeable woman, so much so as to drive Godwin's old cronies" — among whom was Lamb — "from his house." It was a difficult household. Mrs. Godwin had two. children by her first husband : a daughter whose right name was Mary Jane, but who called herself Claire — she lived to become the mistress of Lord Byron and the mother of his daughter AUegra; also a son, who was raised a pet and grew up to be a nuisance. God- win's immediate contribution to the establishment was the illegitimate daughter of his first wife, who claimed Imlay for her father, and his own daughter Mary, whose mother had died in giving her birth. In due course there was born another son, christened Wil- liam, after his father. Something had to be done, and promptly. Godwin began a book on Chaucer, of whose life we know almost as little as of Shakespeare's. In dealing with Chaucer, Godwin introduced a method which sub- sequent writers have followed. Actual material be- ing scanty, they fill out the picture by supposing what he might have done and seen and thought. A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 239 Godwin filled two volumes quarto with musings about the fourteenth century, and called it a "Life of Chaucer." Mrs. Godwin — who was a "managing woman" — had more confidence in trade than in literature. She opened a bookshop in Hanway Street under the name of Thomas Hodgkins, the manager; subsequently in Skinner Street, under her own name, M. J. Godwin. From this shop there issued children's books, the prettiest and wisest, for "a penny plain and tuppence colored," and more. "The Children's Book-Seller," as he called himself, was presently successful, and parents presented his little volumes to their children, with no suspicion that the lessons of piety and good- ness which charmed away selfishness were published, revised, and sometimes written by a philosopher whom they would scarcely venture to name. It was Godwin who suggested to Charles Lamb and his sis- ter that the "Tales from Shakespeare" be written. Godwin's own contributions were produced under the name of Baldwin. Lamb writes: "Hazlitt has written some things and a grammar for Godwin, but the gray mare is the bet- ter horse. I do not allude to Mrs. Godwin, but to the word grammar, which comes near gray mare, if you observe." It would certainly surprise Godwin could he know that, while his own "w^orks" are forgotten, some of the little publications issued by the "Juvenile Library," 41 Skinner Street, Snow Hill, are worth their weight in gold. 240 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING The years passed on. Godwin lived more or less in constant terror of his wife, of whom Lamb writes : **Mrs. Godwin grows every day in disfavor with God and man. I will be buried with this inscription over me: 'Here lies Charles Lamb, the woman-hater, I mean that hated one woman. For the rest, God bless 'em, and when He makes any more, make 'em prettier.'" As he grew older Godwin moderated his views of men somewhat, so that "he ceased to be disrespectful to any one but his Maker"; and he once so far for- got himself as to say "God bless you" to a friend, but quickly added, "to use a vulgar expression." He re- mained, however, always prepared to sacrifice a friend for a principle. He seemed to feel that truth had taken up its abode in him, and that any question which he had submitted to the final judgment of his own breast had been passed upon finally and forever. This search for truth has a great fascination for a certain type of mind. It does not appear dangerous: all one has to do is thrust one's feet in slippers and muse; but it has probably caused as much misery as the search for the pole. The pole has now been dis- covered and can be dismissed, but the search for truth continues. It will always continue, for the reason that its location is always changing. Every generation looks for it in a new place. One night Lamb, dropping in on Godwin, found him discussing with Coleridge his favorite problem, "Man as he is and man as he ought to be." The 9^^d // /fj9-- ^ftO?^ LETTER FROM WILLIAM GODWIN I bought this letter one hundred years to a day after it had been written, for a sum which would have amazed its writer, and temporarily, at least, have relieved him of his financial difficulties. 242 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING discussion seemed interminable. "Hot water and its better adjuncts" had been entirely overlooked. Fin- ally Lamb stammered out, " Give me man as he ought not to be, and something to drink." It must have been on one of these evenings that Godwin remarked that he wondered why more people did not write like Shakespeare ; to which Lamb replied that he could — if he had the mind to. The older generation was passing away. Long be- fore he died Godwin was referred to as though he were a forgotten classic ; but there was to be a revival of interest in him, due entirely to the poet Shelley. The mere mention of Shelley's name produced an ex- plosion. He had been expelled from Oxford for athe- ism. Reading revolutionary books, as well as writing them, he had come across "Political Justice" and was anxious to meet the author. He sought him out, eventually made the acquain- tance of his daughter Mary, by this time a beautiful and interesting girl of seventeen years, and in due course eloped with her, deserting his wife Harriet. Where was Godwin's philosophy now? we may well ask. At no time in his long life was Godwin so ridicu- lous as in his relations with Shelley. In their flight, Shelley and Mary had taken with them Mrs. Godwin's daughter Claire. The mother made after the runaways post-haste and overtook them in Calais, her arrival creating consternation in the camp of the fugitives; but they all declined to re- turn. In such scorn was Shelley generally held, that A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 243 the rumor that he had bought both Godwin's daugh- ter and his step-daughter for a sum in hand created no amazement, the pity rather than the possibihty of it being most discussed. Financial affairs, too, in Skinner Street were going badly. From the record of notes given and protested at maturity, one might have supposed that Godwin was in active business in a time of panic. "Don't ask me whether I won't take none or whether I will, but leave the bottle on the chimley- piece and let me put my lips to it when I am so dis- poged." Such was the immortal Mrs. Gamp's atti- tude toward gin. Godwin's last manner in money matters was much the same: money he would take from any one and in any way when he must, but, like Mrs. Gamp, he was "dispoged" to take it indirectly. Indignant with Shelley, whose views on marriage were largely of his teaching, Godwin refused to hold any communication with him except such as would ad- vance his (Godwin's) fortunes at Shelley's expense. Their transactions were to be of a strictly business character (business with Shelley!). We find Godwin writing him and returning a check for a thousand pounds because it was drawn to his order. How sure he must have been of it! "I return your cheque because no consideration can induce me to utter a cheque drawn by you and containing my name. To what purpose make a disclosure of this kind to your banker? I hope you will send a duplicate of it by the post which will reach me on Saturday morning. 244 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING You may make it payable to Joseph Hume or James Martin or any other name in the whole directory." And then Godwin would forge the name of "Joseph Hume or James Martin or any other name in the whole directory," and guarantee the signature by his own indorsement, and the business transaction would be complete. Pretty high finance this, for a philosopher ! Not until after the death of Harriet, when Shelley's connection with Mary was promptly legalized, would Godwin consent to receive them. He then expressed his great satisfaction, and wrote to his brother in the country that his daughter had married the eldest son of a wealthy baronet. If this world affords true happiness, it is to be found in a home where love and confidence increase with years, where the necessities of life come with- out severe strain, where luxuries enter only after their cost has been carefully considered. We are told that wealth is a test of character — few of us have to sub- mit to it. Poverty is the more usual test. It is dif- ficult to be very poor and maintain one's self-respect. Godwin found it impossible. He, whose chief wish it had been to avoid domestic entanglements and who wanted his gratification and happiness studied habitually, was living in a storm- centre of poverty, misery, and tragedy. Claire was known to have had a baby by Lord Byron, who had deserted her; Harriet Shelley had drowned herself in the Serpentine; Fanny Godwin, his step-daughter, A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 245 took poison at Bristol. The philosopher, almost over- come, sought to conceal his troubles with a lie. To one of his correspondents he refers to Fanny's hav- ing been attacked in Wales with an inflammatory fever "which carried her off." Meanwhile, the sufferings of others he bore with splendid fortitude. In a very brief letter to Mary Shelley, answering hers in which she told him of the death of her child, he said, "You should recollect that it is only persons of a very ordinary sort and of a pusillanimous disposition that sink long under a calamity of this nature." But he covered folio sheets in his complainings to her, counting on her sensitive heart and Shelley's good-nature for sympathy and relief. With the death of Shelley, Godwin's affairs be- came desperate. Taking advantage of some defect in the title of the owner of the property which he had leased, he declined for some time to pay any rent, meanwhile carrying on a costly and vexatious law- suit. Curiously enough, in the end, justice triumphed. Godwin was obliged to pay two years' arrears of rent and the costs of litigation. Of course, he looked upon this as an extreme hardship, as another indication of the iniquity of the law. But he was now an old man; very little happiness had broken in upon him, and his friends took pity on him. Godwin was most ingenious in stimulating them to efforts on his be- half. A subscription was started under his direction. He probably felt that he knew best how to vary his 246 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING appeals and make them effective. So much craft one would not have suspected in the old beggar. One thing he always was — industrious. He fin- ished a wretched novel and at once began a "History of the Commonwealth." He finished "The Lives of the Necromancers," and promptly began a novel; but with all his writings he has not left one single phrase with which his name can be associated, or a single thought worth thinking. It is almost superfluous to say that he had no sense of humor. With his head in the clouds and his feet in his slippers, he mused along. Hazlitt tells a capital story of him. Godwin was writing a "Life of Chatham," and applied to his ac- quaintances to furnish him with anecdotes. Among others, a Mr. Fawcett told him of a striking passage in a speech by Lord Chatham on General Warrants, at the delivery of which he (Mr. Fawcett) had been present. "Every man's house has been called his castle. And why is it called his castle? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw- built shed. It may be open to all the elements; the wind may enter it, the rain may enter — but the king cannot enter." Fawcett thought that the point was clear enough; but when he came to read the printed volume, he found it thus: "Every man's house is his castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it A RIDICULOUS PHILOSOPHER 247 may be nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements; the rain may enter into it, all the winds of heaven may whistle around it, but the king cannot," — and so forth. Things were going from bad to worse. Most of his friends were dead or estranged from him. He had made a sad mess of his life and he was very old. Fin- ally, an appeal on his behalf was made to the govern- ment, the government against which he had written and talked so much. It took pity on him. Lord Grey conferred on him the post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, whatever that may be, with a residence in New Palace Yard. The ofRce was a sinecure, "the duties performed by menials." For this exquisite phrase I am indebted to his biographer, C. Kegan Paul. It seems to suggest that a " menial " is one who does his duty. Almost immediately, however, a re- formed Parliament abolished the office, and Godwin seemed again in danger; but men of all creeds were now disposed to look kindly on the old man. He was assured of his position for life, and writing to the last, in 1836 he died, at the age of eighty, and was buried by the side of Mary WoUstonecraft in St. Pancras Churchyard. If there is to be profit as well as pleasure in the study of biography, what lesson can be learned from such a life.'^ Many years before he died Godwin had written a little essay on "Sepulchres." It was a proposal for erecting some memorial to the dead on the spot where 248 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING their remains were interred. Were one asked to sug- gest a suitable inscription for Godwin's tomb it might be HOW NOT TO DO IT. In the ever-dehghtful "Angler," speaking of the operation of baiting a hook with a live frog, Walton finally completes his general instructions with the spe- cific advice to "use him as though you loved him." In baiting my hook with a dead philosopher I have been unable to accomplish this. I do not love him; few did; he was a cold, hard, self-centred man who did good to none and harm to many. As a husband, father, friend, he was a complete failure. His search for truth was as unavailing as his search for "grati- fication and happiness." He is all but forgotten. It is his fate to be remembered chiefly as the husband of the first suffragette. What has become of the Wonderful things he was going to do AH complete in a minute or two? Where are now his novel philosophies and theories? To ask the question is to answer it. Constant striving for the unobtainable frequently results in neglect of important matters close at hand — such things as bread and cheese and children are neglected. Some happiness comes from the successful effort to make both ends meet habitually and lap over occasionally. My philosophy of life may be called smug, but it can hardly be called ridiculous. IX A GREAT VICTORIAN For a time after the death of any author, the world, if it has greatly admired that author, begins to feel that it has been imposed upon, becomes a little ashamed of its former enthusiasm and ends by neg- lecting him altogether. This would seem to have been Anthony Trollope's case, to judge from the occasional comment of English critics, who, if they refer to him at all, do so in some such phrase as, "About this time TroUope also enjoyed a popularity which we can no longer understand." From one brief paper purporting to be an estimate of his present status, these nuggets of criticism are extracted : — Mr. Trollope was not an artist. Trollope had something of the angry impatience of the middle-class mind with all points of view not his own. "Tancred" is as far beyond anything that Trollope wrote as "Orley Farm " is superior to a Chancery pleading. We have only to lay "Alroy" on the same table with "The Prime Minister" to see where Anthony Trollope stands. It is not likely that Trollope's novels will have any vogue in the immediate future; every page brings its own flavor of unreality. [Italics mine.] And in referring to Plantagenet Palliser, who figures largely in so many of his novels, the author says: — 250 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Some nicknames are engaging; "Planty Pall" is not one of these. The man is really not worth writing about. "Is He Popenjoy?" is perhaps the most readable of all Mr. Trollope's works. It is shorter than many. Finally, when it is grudgingly admitted that he did some good work, the answer to the question, "Why is such work neglected.^" is, "Because the world in which Trollope lived has passed away." It would seem that absurdity could go no further. American judgment is in general of a different tenor, although Professor Phelps, of Yale, in his recent volume, "The Advance of the English Novel," dis- misses Trollope with a single paragraph, in which is embedded the remark, "No one w^ould dare call Trol- lope a genius." Short, sharp and decisive work this; but Professor Phelps is clearing the decks for Mere- dith, to w^hom he devotes twenty or more pages. I respect the opinion of college professors as much as Charles Lamb respected the equator; nevertheless, I maintain that, if Trollope was not a genius, he was a very great writer; and I am not alone. Only a few days ago a cultivated man of affairs, referring to an interesting contemporary caricature of Dickens and Thackeray which bore the legend, "Two Great Victorians," remarked, "They were great Vic- torians, indeed, but I have come to wonder in these later years whether Anthony Trollope will not out- live them both." And while the mere book-collector should be careful how he challenges the opinion of "one who makes his living by reading books and -^PH BY MESS' A GREAT VICTORIAN 251 then writing about them," — the phrase is Professor Phelps's, — nevertheless, when one's opinion is sup- ported, as mine is, by the authority of such a novelist as our own Ho wells, he may perhaps be forgiven for speaking up. Mr. Howells not long ago, in a criticism of the novels of Archibald Marshall, refers to him as a "dis- ciple of Anthony Trollope," whom he calls "the greatest of the Victorians." This is high praise — perhaps too high. Criticism is, after all, simply the expression of an opinion; the important question is, whether one has a right to an opinion. It is easy to understand why the author of "Silas Lapham" should accord high place to Trollope. Trollope can never be popular in the sense that Dickens is popular, nor is it so necessary to have him on the shelves as to have Thackeray; but any one who has not made Trollope's acquaintance has a great treat in store ; nor do I know an author who can be read and re-read with greater pleasure. But to fall completely under the lure of his — genius, I was going to say, but I must be careful — he should be read quietly — and thoroughly : that is to say, some thirty or forty volumes out of a possible hundred or more. It may at once be admitted that there are no mag- nificent scenes in Trollope as there are in Thackeray; as, for example, where Rawdon Crawley in "Vanity Fair," coming home unexpectedly, finds Becky enter- taining the Marquis of Steyne. On the other hand, 252 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING you will not find in any of his best stories anything so deadly dull as the endless talk about Georgie Osborne, aged variously five, seven, or ten years, in the same volume. How often have I longed to snatch that infant from his nurse and impale him on the railings of St. James's Park! For the most part, people in Trollope's stories lead lives very like our own, dependent upon how our fortunes may be cast. They have their failures and their successes, and fall in love and fall out again, very much as we do. At last we begin to know their peculiarities better than we know our own, and we think of them, not as characters in a book, but as friends and acquaintances whom we have grown up with. Some we like and some bore us exceedingly — just as in real life. His characters do not lack style, — the Duke of Omnium is a very great person in- deed, — but Trollope himself has none. He has little or no brilliancy, and we like him the better for it. The brilliant person may become very fatiguing to live with — after a time. It is, however, in this country rather than in Eng- land that Trollope finds his greatest admirers. To- day the English call him ''mid-Victorian." Nothing worse can be said. Even Dickens and Thackeray have to fight against an injunction to this effect, which I cannot believe is to be made permanent. Nothing is more seductive and dangerous than prophecy, but one more forecast will not greatly increase its bulk, and so I venture to say that, Dickens and Thackeray A GREAT VICTORIAN 253 aside, Trollope will outlive all the other novelists of his time. Dickens has come to stay; Thackeray will join the immortals with two novels under his arm, and perhaps one novel of George Eliot and one by Charles Reade will survive; but Beaconsfield, Bulwer- Lytton, Kingsley, and a host of others once famous, will join the long procession headed for oblivion, led by Ann Radcliife. And if it be Trollope's fate to outlast all but the greatest of his contemporaries, it will be due to the simplicity and lack of effort with which he tells his tale. There is no straining after effect — his char- acters are real, live men and women, without a trace of caricature or exaggeration. His humor is delicious and his plots sufficient, although he has told us that he never takes any care with them; and aside from his character-drawing, he will be studied for the life- like pictures of the upper- and middle-class English society of his time. Not one only, but all of his novels might be called "The Way We Live Now." Someone has said that he is our greatest realist since Fielding; he has been compared with Jane Austen, lacking her purity of style, but dealing with a much larger world. *'I do not think it probable that my name will re- main among those who in the next century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction." So wrote Trollope in the concluding chapter of his auto- biography. And he adds: "But if it does, that per- manency of success will probably rest on the characters 254 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING of Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Rev- erend Mr. Crawley." Now it is as certain that Trol- lope is remembered as it is that we are in the next cen- tury; but it is not so much for any single character, or group of characters, or, indeed, any single book, that he is remembered, as it is for the qualities I have referred to. We may not love the English people, but we all love England; we love to go there and revel in its past; and the England that Trollope described so accurately is rapidly passing away; it was going perhaps more quickly than the English people them- selves knew, even before this war began. To read Trollope is to take a course in modern Eng- lish history — social history to be sure, but just as important as political, and much more interesting. He has written a whole series of English political novels, it is true, but their interest is entirely aside from politics. It may be admitted that there are dreary places in Trollope, as there are dreary reaches on the lovely Thames, but they can be skipped, and more rapidly; and, as Dr. Johnson says, "Who but a fool reads a book through?" The reason so many American girls marry, or at least used to marry. Englishmen, was because they found them different from the men whom they had grown up with; not finer, not as fine, perhaps, but more interesting. It is for some such reason as this that we get more pleasure out of Trollope than we do out of I lo wells, whose work, in some respects, resembles his. And Trollope, although he frequently A GREAT VICTORIAN 255 stops the progress of his story to tell us what a fine thing an English gentleman is, never hesitated to "Paint the warts," and it is not altogether unpleasant to see the warts — on others. Trollope takes, or appears to take, no care with his plots. The amazing thing about him is that he some- times gives his plot away; but this seems to make no difference. In the dead centre of "Can You Forgive Her.f'" Trollope says that you must forgive her if his book is written aright. Lady Mason, in " Orley Farm," confesses to her ancient lover that she is guilty of a crime; but when she comes to be tried for it, the in- terest in her trial is intense; so in "Phineas Redux," where Phineas is tried for murder, the reader is as- sured that he is not guilty and that it will come out all right in the end ; but this does not in the least de- tract from the interest of the story. Compare with this Wilkie Collins's "Moonstone," probably the best plot in English fiction. The moment that you know who stole the diamond and how it was stolen, the interest is at an end. I have referred to the trial in "Orley Farm." It is, in my judgment, the best trial scene in any novel. I made this statement once to a well-read lawj^er, and he was inclined to dispute the point, and of course mentioned "Pickwick." I reminded him that I had said the best, not the best known. Bardell vs. Pick- wick is funny, inimitably funny, never to be forgotten, but burlesque. The trial in "A Tale of Two Cities" is heroic romance; but the trial in "Orley Farm" is 256 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING real life. The only trial which can be compared to it is Effie Deans's, which I confess is infinitely more pathetic, too much so to be thoroughly enjoyed. In "Orley Farm" one can see and hear Mr. Furni- val, with his low voice and transfixing eye; one knows that the witness in his hands is as good as done for; and as for Mr. Chaffanbrass, — and did Dickens ever invent a better name? — he knew his work was cut out for him, and he did it with horrible skill. One sees plainly that the witnesses were trying to tell the truth, but that Chaffanbrass, intent on winning his case, would not let them : he was fighting, not for the truth, but for victory. The sideplay is excellent, the suppressed excitement in the court-room, the judge, the lawyers, are all good. At last Mr. Furnival rises: "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I never rose to plead a client's cause with more confidence than I now feel in pleading that of my friend. Lady Mason." And after three hours he closes his great speech with this touching bit: "And now I shall leave my client's case in your hands. As to the verdict which you will give, I have no appre- hension. You know as well as I do that she has not been guilty of this terrible crime. That you will so pronounce I do not for a moment doubt. But I do hope that the verdict will be accompanied by some expression on your part which may show to the world at large how great has been the wickedness displayed in the accusation." And Trollope adds: "And yet as he sat down he A GREAT VICTORIAN 257 knew that she had been guilty! To his ear her guilt had never been confessed ; but yet he knew that it was so, and knowing that, he had been able to speak as though her innocence were a thing of course. That those witnesses had spoken the truth he also knew, and yet he had been able to hold them up to the exe- cration of all around them as though they had com- mitted the worst of crimes from the foulest of mo- tives ! And more than this, stranger than this, worse than this, — when the legal world knew, — as the legal world soon did know, — that all this had been so, the legal world found no fault with Mr. Furnival, conceiving that he had done his duty by his client in a manner becoming an English barrister and an Eng- lish gentleman." I have frequently heard people say that they would like to attend a trial. It is not worth while: trials are either shocking or stupid; the best way to see a trial is to read "Orley Farm." Those of us who love Trollope love him for those very qualities which cause fatigue in others. Our lives, it may be, are fairly strenuous; it is hardly necessary for us to have our feelings wrung of an eve- ning. When the day is done and I settle down in my arm-chair by the crackling wood fire, I am no longer inclined to problems, real or imaginary. I suppose the average man does his reading with what comfort he may after dinner; it is the time for peace — and Trollope. It may be that the reader falls asleep. What matter? Better this, I should say, than that he 258 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING should be kept awake by the dissection of a human soul. This vivisection business is too painful. No, give me those long descriptions of house-parties, those chapters made up of dinner conversations, of endless hunting scenes, of editorials from newspapers, of meetings of the House, of teas on the Terrace, and above all, give me the clergy — not in real life for a minute, but in the pages of Trollope. But nothing happens, you say. I admit that there is very little blood and no thunder; but not all of us care for blood and thunder. Trollope interests one in a gentler way; in fact, you may not know that you have been interested until you look at your watch and find it past midnight. And you can step from one book to another almost without knowing it. The characters, the situations repeat themselves over and over again; your interest is not always intense, but it never entirely flags. You are always saying to your- self, I'll just read one more chapter. After you have read fifteen or twenty of his novels, — and you will surely read this number if you read him at all, — you will find that you are as intimate with his characters as you are with the members of your own family, and you will probably understand them a great deal better. Professor Phelps says that he is constantly besieged with the question: "Where can I find a really good story?" I would recommend that he keep a list of Trollope's best novels at hand. Surely they are in accord with his own definition of what a novel should be — a good story well told. I A GREAT VICTORIAN 259 will make such a list for him if he is in any difficulty about it. I am told by those who know, that Trollope's sporting scenes are faultless. Never having found a horse with a neck properly adjusted for me to cling to, I have given up riding. Seated in my easy -chair, novel in hand, in imagination I thrust my feet into riding-boots and hear the click of my spurs on the gravel, as I walk to my mount; for some one has "put me up"; forgetful of my increasing girth, I rather fancy myself in my hunting clothes. Astride my borrowed mount, following a pack of hounds, I am off in the direction of Trumpeton Wood. Fox-hunting, so fatiguing and disappointing in reality, becomes a delight in the pages of Trollope. The fox "breaks" at last, the usual accident happens, someone misjudges a brook or a fence and is thrown. If the accident is serious, they have a big man down from London. I know just who he will be before he arrives; and when the services of a solicitor or man of business are required, he turns out to be an old friend. Although I have never knowingly killed a grouse or a partridge, being utterly unfamiliar with the use of shooting irons of any kind, Trollope makes me long for the first of August, that I may tell my man to pack my box and take places in the night mail for Scotland. And then comes the long hoped-for invitation to spend a week end at Matching Priory; or, it may 260 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING be that the Duke of Omnium's great establishment, Gatherum Castle, is to be open to me. Dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, M.P.'s, with the latest news from town, of ministries falling and forming — I have been through it all before. I know the com- pany; when a man enters the room, I know in advance just what turn the gossip will take. But, above all, the clergy! Was there ever a more wonderful gallery of portraits? Balzac, you will say. I don't know — perhaps; but beginning with the de- lightful old Warden, his rich, pompous, but very hu- man son-in-law, Archdeacon Grantley, Bishop Proudie and his shrewish lady, and that Uriah Heep of clergy- men, Mr. Slope — it is a wonderful assemblage of living men and women leading everyday lives without romance, almost without incident. Trollope was the painter, perhaps I should say the photographer, "par excellence of his time. He set up his camera and took his pictures from every point of view. Possibly he was not a very great artist, but he was a wonderfully skillful workman. As he says of himself, he was at his writing-table at half-past five in the morning; he required of himself 250 words every quarter of an hour; his motto was nulla dies sine tinea — no wet towel around his brow. He went "doggedly" at it, as Dr. Johnson says, and wrote an enormous number of books for a total of over seventy thousand pounds. He looked upon the result as com- fortable, but not splendid. J' You are defied to find in Trollope a remark or an A GREAT VICTORIAN 261 action out of keeping with the character concerned. I would give a pound for every such instance found by an objector, if he would give me a penny for every strictly consistent speech or instance I might find in return." I am quoting from a little book of essays by Street; and it seems to me that he has here put his finger upon one of Trollope's most remarkable quali- ties: his absolute faithfulness. He was a realist, if I understand the word, but he did not care to deal much with the disagreeable or the shocking, as those whom we call realists usually do. His pictures of the clergy, of whom he says that, when he began to write, he really knew very little, de- lighted some and offended others. An English critic, Hain Friswell, a supreme prig, says they are a dis- grace, almost a libel; but the world knows better. On the whole his clergy are a very human lot, with faults and weaknesses just like our own. To my mind Mrs. Proudie, the bishop's lady, is a character worthy of Dickens at his very best. There is not a trace of cari- cature or exaggeration about her, and the description of her reception is one of the most amusing chapters ever written. In another vein, and very delicate, is the treatment of Mrs. Proudie's death. The old Bishop feels a certain amount of grief: his mainstay, his life- long partner has been taken from him; but he re- members that life with her was not always easy; one feels that he will be consoled. Trollope tells an amusing story of Mrs. Proudie. He was writing one day at the Athenaeum Club when two 262 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING clergymen entered the room, each with a novel in his hand. Soon they began to abuse what they were read- ing, and it turned out that each was reading one of his novels. Said one, "Here is that Archdeacon whom we have had in every novel that he has ever written." *'And here," said the other, "is that old Duke whom he talked about till everyone is tired of him. If I could not invent new characters I would not write novels at all." Then one of them fell foul of Mrs. Proudie. It was impossible for them not to be overheard. Trol- lope got up and, standing between them, acknowl- edged himself to be the culprit; and as to Mrs. Proudie, said he, "I'll go home and kill her before the week is out." "The biographical part of literature is what I love most." After his death in 1882, his son published an autobiography which Trollope had written some years before. Swinburne calls it "exquisitely comical and conscientiously coxcombical." Whatever this may mean, it is generally thought to have harmed his reputation somewhat. In it he speaks at length of his novels: tells us how and when and where he wrote them; expressing his opinion as dispassionately as if he were discussing the work of an author he had never seen. Painstaking and conscientious he may have been, but in his autobiography he shows no sign of it — on the contrary, he stresses quantity rather than quality. For this very reason a set — what the publishers call a "definitive edition" — of Trollope will never A GREAT VICTORIAN 263 be published. There is no demand for one. Editions of him in sumptuous binding, gilt-top, with uncut (and unopened) edges, under glass, will not be found in the houses of those who select their books at the same time they make their choice of the equipment of their billiard-room. The immortality of morocco Trollope will never have; but on the open shelves of the man or woman whose leisure hours are spent in their libraries, who know what is best in English fic- tion, there will be found invariably six or ten of his novels in cloth, by this publisher or that, worn and shapeless from much reading. There is frequently some discussion as to the se- quence in which Trollope's books should be read. Especially is this true of what his American pub- lishers, Dodd, Mead & Co., call the "Barsetshire" series and the "Parliamentary" series. The novels forming what they term the "Manor House" series have no particular connection with each other. They recommend the following order: — THE BAESETSHIRE NOVELS The Warden Barchester Towers Dr. Thorne Framley Parsonage The Small House at Allington The Last Chronicle of Barset THE PARLIAMENTARY NOVELS The Eustace Diamonds Can You Forgive Her.'^ 264 AiViENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Phineas Finn Phineas Redux The Prime Minister The Duke's Children THE MANOR-HOUSE NOVELS Orley Farm The Vicar of Bullhampton Is He Popenjoy? John Caldigate The Belt on Estate Good stories all of them; and the enthusiastic Trol- lopian may wish also to read "The Three Clerks," in which Chaff anbrass is introduced for the first time; "The Bertrams," of which Trollope says, "I do not remember ever to have heard even a friend speak well of it"; "Castle Richmond," which is hard going: "Miss MacKenzie," in which there is a description of a dinner-party a la Russe, not unworthy of the author of Mrs. Proudie's reception in "Barchester Towers." The list is by no means complete, but by this time we may have enough and not wish to make Lotta Schmidt's acquaintance, or give a hoot "Why Frau Frohman Raised Her Prices." I once knew but have forgotten. Personally, Trollope was the typical Englishman: look at his portrait. He was dogmatic, self-assertive, rather irritable and hard to control, as his superiors in the Post-Office, in which he spent the greater part of his life, well knew; not altogether an amiable char- acter, one would say. His education was by no means A GREAT VICTORIAN 265 first-class, and his English is the English we talk rather than the English we write; but he was able to use it in a way sufficient for his purpose. Listen to the conclusion of his Autobiography : — It will not, I trust, be supposed by any reader that I have intended in this so-called autobiography to give a record of my inner life. No man ever did so truly — and no man ever will. Rousseau probably attempted it, but who doubts but that Rousseau has confessed in much the thoughts and convictions, rather than the facts, of his life? If the rustle of a woman's petticoat has ever stirred my blood; if a cup of wine has been a joy to me; if I have thought tobacco at midnight in pleasant company to be one of the elements of an earthly paradise; if, now and again, I have somewhat recklessly fluttered a five-pound note over a card-table — of what matter is that to any reader? I haye betrayed no woman. Wine has brought me no sorrow. It has been the companionship of smoking that I have loved, rather than the habit. I have never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill effects — to have the sweet, and leave the bitter un- tasted — that has been my study. The preachers tell us that this is impossible. It seems to me that hitherto I have succeeded fairly well. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger — but I carry no ugly wounds. For what remains to me of life I trust for my happiness still chiefly to my work — hoping that when the power of work is over with me, God may be pleased to take me from a world in which, according to my view, there can be no joy; secondly, to the love of those who love me; and then to my books. That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I remember, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call my- self an educated man. 266 amj:nities of book-collecting To trust for happiness chiefly to work and books, — to taste the sweet and leave the bitter untasted, — some may call such a scheme of life commonplace; but the most eventful lives are not the happiest — prob- ably few authors have led happier lives than Anthony Trollope. One final word I am forced to say. Since this awful war broke out, I read him in a spirit of sadness. The England that he knew and loved and described with such pride is gone forever. It will, to the coming gen- eration, seem almost as remote as the England of Elizabeth. The Church will go, the State will change, and the common people will come into their own. The old order of things among the privileged class, much pay for little work, will be reversed. It will be useless to look for entailed estates and a leisure class — for all that made England a delightful retreat to us. If England is to continue great and powerful, as I earn- estly hope and believe she is, England must be a bet- ter place for the poor and not so enervating for the rich, or both rich and poor are valiantly fighting her battles in vain. JFor the toto tbat 3! prise is ponder, Sttoap on the unolascb jJbcltafjS; dbe buloEb anb tbe btuitifb octabojEf, <^he bear anb tfte bumpji ttociuej*. 3Cufltin ©ob;Son. X TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW The King of England is not a frequent visitor to the City of London, meaning by "the City" that square mile or so of old London whose political destinies are in the keeping of the Lord Mayor, of which the Bank of England is almost the exact centre, St. Paul's the highest ground, and Temple Bar the western boundary. It might be said that the King is the only man in England who has no business in the City. His duties are in the West End — in Westminster; but to the City he goes on state occasions; and it so happened that several years ago I chanced to be in London on one of them. I had reached London only the night before, and I did not know that anything out of the ordinary was going on, until over my breakfast of bacon and eggs — and such bacon! — I unfolded my "Times" and learned that their Majesties were that morning going in state to St. Paul's Cathedral to give thanks for their safe return from India. It was not known that they had been in any great peril in India; but royal progresses are, I suppose, always attended with a cer- tain amount of danger. At any rate the King and Queen had reached home safely, and wanted to give 268 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING thanks, according to historic precedent, in St. Paul's; and the ceremony was set for that very morning. Inquiring at the office of my hotel in Pall Mall, I learned that the Royal procession would pass the doors in something over an hour, and that the windows of a certain drawing-room were at my disposal. It would have been more comfortable to view the Royal party from a drawing-room of the Carlton; but what I wanted to see would take place at Temple Bar; so, my breakfast dispatched, I sallied forth to take up my position in the crowded street. It was in February — a dark, gloomy, typical Lon- don morning. The bunting and decorations, every- where apparent, had suffered sadly from the previous night's rain and were flapping dismally in the cold, raw air; and the streets, though crowded, wore a look of hopeless dejection. I am never so happy as in London. I know it well, if a man can be said to know London well, and its streets are always interesting to me; but the Strand is not my favorite street. It has changed its character sadly in recent years. The Strand no longer suggests interesting shops and the best theatres, and I grieve to think of the ravages that time and Hall Caine have made in the Lyceum, which was once Irving's, where I saw him so often in his, and my, heyday. However, my way took me to the Strand, and, passing Charing Cross, I quoted to myself Dr. Johnson's famous re- mark: "Fleet Street has a very animated appearance; but the full tide of human existence is at Charing TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 269 Cross." As I neared the site of Temple Bar, how- ever, I observed that, for this morning, at any rate, the tide was setting toward the City. My progress through the crowd was slow, but I finally reached my objective point, the Griffin, which marks the spot where for many centuries Temple Bar stood. Taking up my position just in front of the rather absurd monument, which forms an "island" in the middle of the street, I waited patiently for the simple but historic and picturesque ceremony to begin. Before long the city dignitaries began to arrive. First came the Sheriffs and Aldermen in coaches of state, wearing their scarlet-and-ermine robes. Fi- nally, a coach appeared, out of the window of which protruded the end of the great mace, emblem of City authority; and at last the Lord Mayor himself, in all his splendor, in a coach so wonderful in its gold and color that one might have supposed it had been borrowed from Cinderella for the occasion. While I was wondering how many times and under what varying conditions this bit of pageantry had been enacted on this very spot, a slight wave of cheer- ing down the Strand apprised me of the approach of the Royal procession. The soldiers who lined both sides of the street became, at a word of command, more immovable than ever, standing at "attention," if that is the word which turns men into statues. At the same time a band began the national anthem, and this seemed the signal for the Mayor and his attend- 270 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING ants to leave their coaches and group themselves just east of the monument. A moment later the Royal party, in carriages driven by postilions with outriders, swept by; but the state carriage in which sat the King and Queen was brought to a halt immediately in front of the City party. The Lord Mayor, carrying his jeweled sword in his hand, bowed low before his sovereign, who remained seated in the open carriage. Words, I presume, were spoken. I saw the Lord Mayor extend his greetings and tender his sword to the King, who, saluting, placed his hand upon its hilt and seemed to congratu- late the City upon its being in such safe keeping. The crowd cheered — not very heartily ; but history was in the making, and the true Londoner, although he might not like to confess it, still takes a lively interest in these scenes which link him to the past. WTiile the City officials, their precious sword — it was a gift from Queen Elizabeth — still in their keep- ing, were returning to their coaches and taking their places, there was a moment's delay, which gave me a good opportunity of observing the King and his con- sort, who looked very much like the pictures of them we so frequently see in the illustrated papers. The King looked bored, and I could not help noticing that he was not nearly as interested in me as I was in him. I felt a trifle hurt until I remembered that his father, King Edward, had in the same way ignored Mark Twain, that day when the King was leading a pro- cession in Oxford Street, and Mark was on top of an TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 271 omnibus, dressed to kill in his new top-coat. Evi- dently kings do not feel bound to recognize men in the street whom they have never seen before. The Lord Mayor and his suite, having resumed their places, were driven rapidly down Fleet Street to- ward St. Paul's, the Royal party following them. The whole ceremony at Temple Bar, the shadow of former ceremonies hardly more real, had not occupied much over five minutes. The crowd dispersed. Fleet Street and the Strand immediately resumed their wonted appearance except for the bunting and decorations, and I was left to discuss with myself the question, what does this King business really mean.^^ Many years ago Andrew Carnegie wrote a book, "Triumphant Democracy," in which, as I vaguely remember, he likened our form of government to a pyramid standing on its base, while a pyramid rep- resenting England was standing on its apex. There is no doubt whatever that a pyramid looks more com- fortable on its base than on its apex; but let us drop these facile illustrations of strength and weakness and ask ourselves, "In what way are we better off, polit- ically, than the English.'^" In theory, the king, from whom no real authority flows, may seem a little bit ridiculous, but in practice how admirably the English hajve learned to use him! If he is great enough to exert a powerful influence on the nation for good, his position gives him an immense opportunity. How great his power is, we do not know, — it is not written down in books, — 272 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING but he has it. If, on the other hand, he has not the full confidence of the people, if they mistrust his judg- ment, his power is circumscribed: wise men rule and Majesty does as Majesty is told to do. "We think of our Prime Minister as the wisest man in England for the time being," says Bagehot. The English scheme of government permits, indeed, neces- sitates, her greatest men entering politics, as w^e call it. Is it so with us.^ Our plan, however excellent it may be in theory, in practice results in our having constantly to sub- mit ourselves — those of us who must be governed — to capital operations at the hands of amateurs who are selected for the job by drawing straws. That we escape with our lives is due rather to our youth and hardy constitution than to the skill of the operators. To keep the king out of mischief, he may be set the innocuous task of visiting hospitals, opening ex- positions, or laying corner-stones. Tapping a block of granite with a silver trowel, he declares it to be "well and truly laid," and no exception can be taken to the masterly manner in which the work is done. Occasionally, once a year or so, plain Bill Smith, who has made a fortune in the haberdashery line, say, bends the knee before him and at a tap of a sword across his shoulder arises Sir William Smith. Bill Smith was not selected for this honor by the king himself; certainly not! the king probably never heard of him; but the men who rule the nation, those in authority, for reasons sufficient if not good, selected TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 273 Smith for "birthday hon'ors," and he is given a stake in the nation. And so it goes. The knight may become a baronet, the baronet a baron, the baron a duke — this last not often now, only for very great service rendered the Empire; and with each advance in rank comes in- creases of responsibility — in theory, at least. Have our political theories worked out so well that we are justified in making fun of theirs as we sometimes do.^ I think not. After our country has stood as well as England has the shocks which seven or ten centuries may bring it, we may have the right to say, "We order these things better at home." WTiile musing thus, the Strand and Temple Bar of a century and a half ago rise up before me, and I notice coming along the footway a tall, burly old man, walking with a rolling gait, dressed in a brown coat with metal buttons, knee-breeches, and worsted stockings, with large silver buckles on his clumsy shoes. He seems like a wise old fellow, so I approach him and tell him who I am and of my perplexities. " Wiat! Sir, an American? They are a race of con- victs and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." And then, seeing me some- what disconcerted, he adds less ferociously: "I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of gov- ernment rather than another." Saying which, he turns into a court off Fleet Street and is lost to view. 274 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING It was only after he had disappeared that I reahzed that I had been speaking to Dr. Johnson. Just when the original posts, bars, and chains gave way to a building known as Temple Bar, we have no means of knowing. Honest John Stow, whose effigy in terra cotta still looks down on us from the wall of the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft, pub- lished his famous "Survay of [Elizabethan] London" in 1598. In it he makes scant mention of Temple Bar; and this is the more remarkable because he describes so accurately many of the important build- ings, and gives the exact location of every court and lane, every pump and well, in the London of his day. Stow assures his readers that his accuracy cost him many a weary mile's travel and many a hard-earned penny, and his authority has never been disputed. He refers to the place several times, but not to the gate itself. "Why this is, I have not heard, nor can I conjecture," to use a phrase of his; but we know that a building known as Temple Bar must have been standing when the "Survay" appeared; for it is clearly indicated in Aggas's pictorial map of London, published a generation earlier; otherwise we might infer that in Stow's time it was merely what he terms it, a "barre" separating the liberties of London from Westminster — the city from the shire. It is obvious that it gets its name from that large group of build- ings known as the Temple, which lies between Fleet Street and the river, long the quarters of the Knights TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 275 Templar, and for centuries past the centre of legal learning in England. Referring to the "new Temple by the Barre," Stow tells us that "over against it in the high streets stand a pay re of stockes"; and adds that the whole street "from the Barre to the Savoy was commanded to be paved in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of King Henry the Sixt" (this sturdy lad, it will be remembered, began to "reign" when he was only nine months old), with "tole to be taken towards the charges thereof." This practice of taking "tole" from all non-freemen at Temple Bar continued until after the middle of the nineteenth century, and fine con- fusion it must have caused. The charge of two pence each time a cart passed the City boundary finally aroused such an outcry against the " City turnpike" that it was done away with. Whoever received this revenue must have heartily bewailed the passing of the good old days ; for a few years before the custom was abandoned, the toll collected amounted to over seven thousand pounds per annum. The first reference which seems to suggest a build- ing dates back to the time when "Sweet Anne Bul- len" passed from the Tower to her coronation at Westminster, at which time the Fleet Street conduit poured forth red wine, and the city waits — or min- strels — "made music like a heavenly noyse." We know, too, that it was "a rude building," and that it was subsequently replaced by a substantial timber structure of classic appearance, with a pitched roof, 276 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING spanning the street and gabled at each end. Old prints show us that it was composed of three arches — a large central arch for vehicular traffic, with smaller OLD TEJIPLE BAR Demolished in 1666 arches, one on each side, over the footway. All of the arches were provided with heavy oaken doors, stud- ded with iron, which could be closed at night, or when unruly mobs, tempted to riot, threatened — and TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 277 frequently carried out their threat — to disturb the peace of the city. The City proper terminated at Lud Gate, about halfway up Ludgate Hill; but the jurisdiction of the City extended to Temple Bar, and those residing be- tween the two gates were said to be within the liber- ties of the City and enjoyed its rights and privileges, among them that of passing through Temple Bar with- out paying toll. Although Lud Gate was the most important gate of the old city, originally forming a part of the old London wall, from time immemorial Temple Bar has been the great historic entrance to the City. At Temple Bar it was usual, upon an ac- cession to the throne, the proclamation of a peace, or the overthrow of an enemy, for a state entry to be made into the City. The sovereign, attended by his trumpeters, would proceed to the closed gate and demand entrance. From the City side would come the inquiry, "Who comes here.?" and the herald having made reply, the Royal party would be ad- mitted and conducted to the lord mayor. With the roll of years this custom became slightly modified. When Queen Elizabeth visited St. Paul's to return thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada, we read that, upon the herald and trumpeters having announced her arrival at the Gate, the Lord Mayor advanced and surrendered the city sword to the Queen, who, after returning it to him, proceeded to St. Paul's. On this occasion — as on all previous occasions — the sovereign was on horseback, Queen 278 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Elizabeth having dedined to ride, as had been sug- gested, in a vehicle drawn by horses, on the ground that it was new-fangled and eflfeminate. For James I, for Charles I and Cromwell and Charles II, similar ceremonies were enacted, the coronation of Charles II being really magnificent and testifying to the joy of England in again having a king. Queen Anne enters the City in a coach drawn by eight horses, " none with her but the Duchess of Marl- borough, in a very plain garment, the Queen full of jewels," to give thanks for the victories of the duke abroad; and so the stately historic procession winds through the centuries, always pausing at Temple Bar, right down to our own time. But to return to the actual "fabrick," as Dr. John- son would have called it. We learn that, soon after the accession of Charles II, old Temple Bar was marked for destruction. It was of wood, and, al- though "newly paynted and hanged" for state oc- casions, it was felt that something more worthy of the great city, to which it gave entrance, should be erected. Inigo Jones was consulted and drew plans for a new gate, his idea being the erection of a really triumphant arch; but, as he died soon after, his plan was abandoned. Other architects with other plans came forward. At length the King became interested in the project and promised money toward its accom- plishment; but Charles II was an easy promiser, and as the money he promised belonged to someone else. TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 279 nothing came of it. While the project was being thus discussed, the plague broke out, followed by the fire which destroyed so much of old London, and public attention was so earnestly directed to the rebuilding of London itself that the gate, for a time, was for- gotten. Temple Bar had escaped the flames, but the re- building of London occasioned by the fire gave Chris- topher Wren his great opportunity. A new St. Paul's with its "mighty mothering dome," a lasting mon- ument to his genius, was erected, and churches in- numerable, the towers and spires of which still point the way to heaven — instructions which, we may suspect, are neglected when we see how deserted they are; but they serve, at least, to add charm and in- terest to a ramble through the City. Great confusion resulted from the fire, but London was quick to see that order must be restored, and it is much to be regretted that Wren's scheme for replan- ning the entire burned district was not carried out. Fleet Street was less than twenty-four feet wide at Temple Bar ■■ — not from curb to curb, for there was none, but from house to house. This was the time to rebuild London ; although something was done, much was neglected, and Wren was finally commissioned to build a new gate of almost the exact dimensions of the old one. The work was begun in 1670 and progressed slowly, for it was not finished until two years later. What a fine interruption to traffic its rebuilding must have 280 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING occasioned! Constructed entirely of Portland stone, the same material as St. Paul's, it consisted, like the old one, of three arches — a large flattened centre llvM.l.K J5AK IN 1)K. JOHNSON'S I'lME arch, with small semicircular arches on either side. Above the centre arch was a large window, which gave light and air to a spacious chamber within; while on either side of the window were niches, in which were placed statues of King James and his Queen, Anne TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 281 of Denmark, on the City side and of Charles I and Charles II on the Westminster side. The curious may wish to know that the mason was Joshua Marshall, whose father had been master- mason to Charles I; that the sculptor of the statues was John Bushnell, who died insane; and that the cost of the whole, including the statues at four hun- dred and eighty pounds, was but thirteen hundred and ninety-seven pounds, ten shillings. The fog and soot and smoke of London soon give the newest building an appearance of age, and mer- cifully bring it into harmony with its surroundings. Almost before the new gate was completed, it had that appearance; and before it had a chance to grow really old, there arose a demand for its removal alto- gether. Petitions praying for its destruction were cir- culated and signed. Verse, if not poetry, urging its retention was written and printed. If that Gate is pulled down, 'twixt the Court and the City, You '11 blend in one mass, prudent, worthless and witty. If you league cit and lordhng, as brother and brother, You'll break order's chain and they'll war with each other. Like the Great Wall of China, it keeps out the Tartars From making irruptions, where industry barters. Like Samson's Wild Foxes, they '11 fire your houses, And madden your spinsters, and cousin your spouses. They '11 destroy in one sweep, both the Mart and the Forum, Which your fathers held dear, and their fathers before 'em. But, attacked by strong city men and defended only by sentiment, Temple Bar still continued to impede traffic and shut out light and air, while the 282 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING generations who fought for its removal passed to their rest. It became the subject of jokes and conundrums. Why is Temple Bar like a lady's veil? it was asked; the answer being that both must be raised (razed) for busses. The distinction between a buss and a kiss, suggested by Herrick, of whom the eighteenth-cen- tury City man never heard, would have been lost; but we know that — Kissing and bussing differ both in this, We buss our wantons and our wives we kiss. No account of Temple Bar would be complete with- out reference to the iron spikes above the centre of the pediment, on which were placed occasionally the heads of persons executed for high treason. This ghastly custom continued down to the middle of the eighteenth century, and gave rise to many stories, most of them legendary, but which go to prove, were proof necessary, that squeamishness was not a com- mon fault in the days of the Georges. To refer, however briefly, to the taverns which clustered east and west of Temple Bar and to the authors who frequented them, would be to stop the progress of this paper — and begin another. Dr. Johnson only voiced public opinion when he said that a tavern chair is a tlii'one of human felicity. For more than three centuries within the shadow of Temple Bar there was an uninterrupted flow of wine and wit and wisdom, with, doubtless, some wickedness. From Ben Jonson, whose favorite resort was The Devil, adjoining the Bar on the south side, down to Tenny- TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 283 son, who frequented The Cock, on the north, came the same cry, for good talk and good wine. O plump head-waiter at the Cock, To which I most resort, How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock — Go fetch a pint of port. This does not sound like the author of "Locksley Hall," but it is; and while within the taverns, "the chief glory of England, its authors," were writing and talking themselves into immortality, just outside there ebbed and flowed beneath the arches of Temple Bar, east in the morning and west at night, the human stream which is one of the wonders of the world. On Thursday evening last, some gentlemen, who supped and spent some agreeable hours at The Devil Tavern near Temple Barr, upon calling for the bill of expenses had the following given them by the landlord, viz. : For geese, the finest ever seen £ s. d By Duke or Duchess, King or Queen, o. 6. 6. For nice green peas, as plump and pretty. Better ne'er ate in London City, o. 3. 9. For charming gravy, made to please. With butter, bread & Cheshire cheese, o. 3. o. For honest porter, brown and stout. That cheers the heait, & cures the gout, o. i. 5. For unadulterated wine; Genuine! Noble! Pure! Divine! o. 6. o. For my Nan's punch (and Nan knows how To maike good punch, you '11 all allow) o. 7. o. For juniper, most clear and fine. That looks and almost tastes, like wine, o. 1. 4. For choice tobacco, undefiled Harmless and pleasant, soft and mild o. o. 2. £1. CUPPING FROM A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED IN 1767 Meanwhile the importance of Temple Bar as a city gate was lessening; "a weak spot in our defenses," a wit calls it, and points out that the enemy can dash 284 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING around it through the barber's shop, one door of which opens into the City, and the other into the " suburbs " ; but down to the last it continued to play a part in City functions. In 1851 it is ht with twenty thousand lamps as the Queen goes to a state ball in Guildhall. A fev/ months later, it is draped in black as the re- mains of the Iron Duke pause for a moment under its arches, on the way to their final resting-place in St. Paul's Cathedral. In a few years we see it draped with the colors of England and Prussia, when the Princess Royal, as the bride of Frederick William, gets her "Farewell" and "God bless you" from the City, on her departure for Berlin. Five years pass and the young Prince of Wales and his beautiful bride, Alexandra, are received with wild applause by the mob as their carriage halts at Temple Bar; and once again when, in February, 1872, Queen Victoria, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and their Court go to Si. Paul's to return thanks for the Prince's happy recovery from a dangerous illness. With this event the history of Temple Bar in its old location practically ceases. It continued a few years longer a "bone in the throat of Fleet Street"; but at last its condition became positively dangerous, its gates were removed because of their weight, and its arches propped up with timbers. Finally, in 1877, its removal was decided upon, by the Corporation of London, and Tcmi)le Bar, from time immemorial one of London's most notable landmarks, disappears and the Griflin on an "island" rises in its stead. TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 285 "The ancient site of Temple Bar has been disfig- gured by Boehm with statues of the Queen and the Prince of Wales so stupidly modeled that they look like statues out of Noah's Ark. It is bad enough that we should have German princes foisted upon us, but German statues are worse." In this manner George Moore refers to the Me- morial commonly called the Griffin, which, shortly after the destruction of the old gate, was erected on the exact spot where Temple Bar formerly stood. It is not a handsome object; indeed, barring the Albert Memorial, it may be said to represent Vic- torian taste at its worst. It is a high, rectangular pedestal, running lengthwise with the street, placed on a small island which serves as a refuge for pedes- trians crossing the busy thoroughfare. On either side are niches in which are placed the lifesize marble fig- ures described by Moore. But this is not all: there are bronze tablets let into the masonry, show^ing in basso- rilievo incidents in the history of old Temple Bar, with portraits, medallions, and other things. This base pedestal, if so it may be called, is surmounted by a smaller pedestal on which is placed a heraldic dragon or griffin, — a large monster in bronze, — which is supposed to guard the gold of the City. We do not look for beauty in Fleet Street, and we know that only in the Victorian sense is this monu- ment a work of art; but it has the same interest for us as a picture by Frith — it is a human document. Memories of the past more real than the actual pres- 286 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING ent crowd upon us, and we turn under an archway into the Temple Gardens, glad to forget the artistic sins of Boehm and his compeers. Ask the average Londoner what has become of old Temple Bar, and he will look at you in blank amaze- ment, and then, with an effort of memory, say, "They've put it up somewhere in the north." And so it is. On its removal the stones were carefully numbered, with a view to reerection, and there was some discus- sion as to where the old gate should be located. It is agreed now that it should have been placed in the Temple Gardens ; but for almost ten years the stones, about one thousand in number, were stored on a piece of waste ground in the Farrington Road. Finally, they were purchased by Sir Henry Meux, the rich brewer, whose brewery, if out of sight, still indicates its presence by the strong odor of malt, at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Sir Henry Meux was the owner of a magnificent country seat, Theobald's Park, near Waltham Cross, about twelve miles north of London; and he determined to make Temple Bar the principal entrance gate to this historic estate. So to Theobald's Park, anciently Tibbals, I bent my steps one morning. Being in a reminiscent mood, I had intended to follow in the footsteps of Izaak Walton, from the site of his shop in Fleet Street just east of Temple Bar, and having, in the words of TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 287 the gentle angler, "stretched my legs up Tottenham Hill," to take the high road into Hertfordshire; but the English spring having opened with more than its customary severity, I decided to go by rail. It was raining gently but firmly when my train reached its destination, Waltham Cross, and I was deprived of the pleasure I had promised myself of reaching Temple Bar on foot. An antique fly, drawn by a superan- nuated horse, was secured at the railway station, and after a short drive I was set down before old Temple Bar, the gates of which were closed as securely against me as ever they had been closed against an unruly mob in its old location. Driving along a flat and monotonous country road, one comes on the old gate almost suddenly, and ex- periences a feeling, not of disappointment but of sur- prise. The gate does not span the road, but is set back a little in a hedge on one side of it, and seems large for its setting. One is prepared for a dark, grimy portal, whereas the soot and smoke of London have been erased from it, and, instead, one sees an antique, creamy-white structure tinted and toned with the green of the great trees which overhang it. Prowling about in the drenching rain, I looked in vain for some sign of life. I shouted to King James, who looked down on me from his niche ; and receiving no reply, addressed his consort, inquiring how I was to secure admittance. A porter's lodge on one side, almost hidden in the trees, supplied an answer to my question, and on my 288 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING giving a lusty pull at the bell, the door was opened and a slatternly woman appeared and inquired my business. "To look over Temple Bar," I replied. "Hutterly himpossible," she said; and I saw at once that tact and a coin were required. I used both. "Go up the drive to the great 'ouse and hask for the clerk [pronounced dark] of the works, Mr. 'Arrison ; 'e may let ye hover." I did as I was told and had little difficulty with Mr. Harrison. The house itself was undergoing extensive repairs and alterations. It has recently passed, under the w^ill of Lady jNIeux, to its present owner, together with a fortune of five hundred thousand pounds in money. Many years ago Henry Meux married the beauti- ful and charming Valerie Langton, an actress, — a Gaiety girl, in fact, — but they had had no children, and when he died in 1900, the title became extinct. Thereafter Lad}^ Meux, enormously wealthy, without relatives, led a retired life, chiefly interested in breed- ing horses. A chance courtesy paid her by the wife of Sir Hed worth Lamb ton, who had recently married, together with the fact that he had established a rep- utation for ability and courage, decided her in her thought to make him her heir. Sir Hedworth, a younger son of the second Earl of Durham, had early adopted the sea as his profession. He had distinguished himself in the bombardment of Alexandria, and had done something wonderful at Ladysmith. He was a hero, no longer a young man. TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 289 without means — who better fitted to succeed to her wealth and name? In 1911 Lady Meux died, and this lovely country seat, originally a hunting-lodge of King James, subsequently the favorite residence of Charles I, and with a long list of royal or noble owners, became the property of the gallant sailor. All that he had to do was to forget that the name of Meux sug- gested a brewery and exchange his own for it, and the great property was his. It reads like a chapter out of a romance. Thus it was that the house was being thor- oughly overhauled for its new owner at the time of my visit. But I am wandering from Temple Bar. Armed with a letter from Mr. Harrison, I returned to the gate. First, I ascertained that the span of the centre arch, the arch through which for two centuries the traffic of London had passed, was but twenty-one feet "in the clear," as an architect would say; next, that the span of the small arches on either side w^as only four feet six inches. No wonder that there was always congestion at Temple Bar. I was anxious also to see the room above, the room in which formerly Messrs. Child, when it had ad- joined their banking-house, had stored their old ledgers and cash-books. Keys were sought and found, and I was admitted. The room was bare except for a large table in the centre, on which were quill pens and an inkstand in which the ink had dried up years be- fore. One other thing there was, a visitor's book, which, like a new diary, had been started off bravely 290 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING years before, but in which no signature had recently- been written. I glanced over it and noticed a few well-known names — English names, not American, such as one usually finds, for I was off the beaten track of the tourist. The roof was leaking here and there, and little pools of water were forming on the floor. It was as cold as a tomb. I wished that a tavern, the Cock, the Devil, or any other, had been just outside, as in the old days when Temple Bar stood in Fleet Street. The slatternly woman clanked her keys ; she too was cold. I had seen all there was to see. The beauty of Temple Bar is in its exterior, and, most of all, in its wealth of literary and historic associations. I could muse elsewhere with less danger of pneumonia, so I said farewell to the kings in their niches, who in this suburban retreat seemed like monarchs retired from business, and returned to my cab. The driver w^as asleep in the rain. I think the horse was, too. I roused the man and he roused the beast, and we drove almost rapidly back to the station; no, not to the station, but to a public house close by it, where hot water and accompaniments were to be had. "When is the next train up to London?" I asked an old man at the station. "In ten minutes, but you'll find it powerful slow." I was not deceived; it took me over an hour to reach London. As if to enable me to bring this story to a fitting close, I read in the papers only a few days ago: "Vice- TEMPLE BAR THEN AND NOW 291 Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was to-day promoted to the rank of Admiral, and Sir Hedworth Meux, who until now has been commander-in-chief at Portsmouth, was appointed Admiral of the Home Fleet." ^ Good luck be with him! Accepting the burdens which properly go with rank and wealth, he is at this moment cruising somewhere in the cold North Sea, in command of perhaps the greatest fleet ever as- sembled. Upon the owner of Temple Bar, at this moment, devolves the duty of keeping watch and ward over England. 1 This was written in April, 1915. Sir Hedworth Menx is not nov in active service. XI A MACARONI PARSON It will hardly be questioned that the influence of the priesthood is waning. Why this is so, it is not within the province of a mere book-collector to discuss; but the fact will, I think, be admitted. In the past, how- ever, every country and almost every generation has produced a type of priest which seems to have been the special product of its time. The soothsayer of old Rome, concealed, perhaps, in a hollow wall, whispered his warning through the marble lips of a conveniently placed statue, in return for a suitable present indi- rectly offered; while to-day Billy Sunday, leaping and yelling like an Apache Indian, shrieks his admo- nitions at us, and takes up a collection in a clothes- basket. It is all very sad and, as Oscar Wilde would have said, very tedious. Priests, prophets, parsons, or preachers! They are all human, like the rest of us. Too many of them are merely insurance agents soliciting us to take out policies of insurance against fire everlasting, for a fee commensurate, not with the risk, but with our means. It is a well-established trade, in which the representatives of the old-line companies, who have had the cream of the business, look with disapproval upon new methods, as well they may, their own having A MACARONI PARSON 293 worked so well for centuries. The premiums collected have been enormous, and no evidence has ever been produced that the insurer took any risk whatever. And the profession has been, not only immensely lucrative, but highly honorable. In times past priests have ranked with kings: sometimes wearing robes of iilk studded with jewels; on fortune's cap the top- most button, exhibit Wolsey; sometimes appearing in sackcloth relieved by ashes; every man in his humor. But it is not my purpose to inveigh against any creed or sect ; only I confess my bewilderment at the range of human interest in questions of doctrine, while simple Christianity stands neglected. The subject of this paper, however, is not creeds in general or in particular, but an eighteenth-century clergyman of the Church of England. It will not, I think, be doubted by those w^ho have given the sub- ject any attention that religious affairs in England in the eighteenth century were at a very low ebb in- deed. Carlyle, as was his habit, called that century some hard names ; but some of us are glad occasionally to steal away from our cares and forget our present *' efficiency" in that century of leisure. Perhaps not for always, but certainly for a time, it is a relief to . . . live in that past Georgian day Wlien men were less inclined to say That "Time is Gold," and overlay With toil, their pleasure. And to quote Austin Dobson again, with a slight variation : — 294 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Seventeen hundred and twenty -nine : — That is the date of this tale of mine. First great George was buried and gone; George the Second was plodding on. Whitefield preached to the colliers grim; Bishops in lawn sleeves preached at him; Walpole talked of "a man and his price"; Nobody's virtue was over-nice : — certainly not that of the clergyman of whom I am about to speak. And now, without further delay, I introduce Wil- liam Dodd. Doctor Dodd, he came to be called; sub- sequently, the "unfortunate Doctor Dodd," which he certainly considered himself to be, and with good reason, as he was finally hanged. William Dodd was born in Lincolnshire, in 1729, and was himself the son of a clergyman. He early became a good student, and entering Clare Hall, Cam- bridge, at sixteen, attracted some attention by his close application to his studies. But books alone did not occupy his time: he attained some reputation as a dancer and was noted for being very fond of dress. He must have had real ability, however, for he was graduated with honors, and his name appears on the list of wranglers. Immediately after receiving his Arts degree, he set out to make a career for himself in London. Young Dodd was quick and industrious: he had good manners and address, made friends quickly, and A MACARONI PARSON 295 was possessed of what, in those days, was called "a lively imagination," which seems to have meant a fondness for dissipation; with friends to help him, he soon knew his way about the metropolis. Its many pitfalls he discovered by falling into them, and the pitfalls for a gay young blade in London in the middle of the eighteenth century were many and sundry. But whatever his other failings, of idleness Dodd could not be accused. He did not forget that he had come to London to make a career for himself. He had already published verse; he now began a comedy, and the death of the Prince of Wales afforded him a subject for an elegy. From this time on he was pre- pared to write an ode or an elegy at the drop of a hat. The question, should he become author or minister, perplexed him for some time. For success in either direction perseverance and a patron were necessary. Perseverance he had, but a patron was lacking. While pondering these matters, Dodd seemed to have nipped his career in the bud by a most improvi- dent marriage. His wife was a Mary Perkins, which means little to us. She may have been a servant, but more likely she was the discarded mistress of a noble- man who was anxious to see her provided with a hus- band. In any event, she was a handsome woman, and his marriage was not his greatest misfortune. Shortly after the wedding, we hear of them living in a small establishment in Wardour Street, not then, as now, given over to second-hand furniture shops, but rather a good quarter frequented by literary men 296 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING and artists. Who supplied the money for this venture we do not know; it was probably borrowed from some- one, and we may suspect that Dodd already was headed the wrong way — or that, at least, his father thought so ; for we hear of his coming to London to persuade his son to give up his life there and return to Cambridge to continue his studies. Shortly after this time he published two small vol- umes of quotations which he called "Beauties of Shakespeare." He was the first to make the discovery that a book of quotations "digested under proper heads" would have a ready sale. Shakespeare in the dead centre of the eighteenth century was not the colossal figure that he is seen to be as we celebrate the tercentenary of his death. I suspect that my friend Felix Schelling, the great Elizabethan scholar, feels that anyone who would make a book of quota- tions from Shakespeare deserves Dodd's end, namely, hanging; indeed, I have heard him suggest as much; but we cannot all be Schellings. The book was well received and has been reprinted right down to our own time. In the introduction he refers to his at- tempt to present a collection of the finest passages of the poet, "who was ever," he says, "of all modern authors, my first and greatest favorite"; adding that "it would have been no hard task to have multiplied notes and parallel passages from Greek, Latin and English writers, and thus to have made no small dis- play of what is commonly called learning"; but that he had no desire to perplex the reader. There is much A MACARONI PARSON 297 good sense in the introduction, which we must also think of as coming from a young man Uttle more than a year out of college. As it was his first, so he thought it would be his last, serious venture into literature, for in his preface he says: "Better and more important things henceforth demand my attention, and I here, with no small pleasure, take leave of Shakespeare and the critics: as this work was begun and finish'd before I enter'd upon the sacred function in w^iich I am now happily employ 'd." Dodd had already been ordained deacon and settled down as a curate in West Ham in Essex, where he did not spare himself in the dull round of parochial drudgery. So passed two years which, looking back on them from w^ithin the portals of Newgate Prison, he declared to have been the happiest of his life. But he soon tired of the country, his yearning for city life was not to be resisted, and securing a lectureship at St. Olave's, Hart Street, he returned to London and relapsed into literature. A loose novel, "The Sisters," is credited to him. Whether he wrote it or not is a question, but he may well have done so, for some of its pages seem to have inspired his sermons. Under cover of being a warn- ing to the youth of both sexes, he deals with London life in a manner which w ould have put the author of "Peregrine Pickle" to shame; but as nobody's virtue was over-nice, nobody seemed to think it particularly strange that a clergyman should have written such a 298 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING book. In many respects he reminds us of his more gifled rival, Laurence Sterne. Dodd's great chance came in 1758, when a certain Mr. Hingiey and some of his friends got together three thousand pounds and estabhshed an asylum for Magdalens, presumably penitent. The scheme was got under way after the usual difficulties; and as, in the City, the best way to arouse public interest is by a dinner, so in the West End a sermon may be made to serve the same purpose. Sterne had talked a hundred and sixt}^ pounds out of the pockets of his hearers for the recently established Foundling Hospital; Dodd, when selected to preach the inaugural sermon at Mag- dalen House, got ten times as much. Who had the greater talent? Dodd was content that the question should be put. The charity became immensely popu- lar. " Her Majesty " subscribed three hundred pounds, and the cream of England's nobility, feeling a personal interest in such an institution, and perhaps a personal responsibility for the urgent need of it, made large con- tributions. The success of the venture was assured. Dodd was made Chaplain. At first this was an hon- orary position, but subsequently a small stipend was attached to it. The post was much to his liking, a,nd it became as fashionable to go to hear Dodd and see the penitent magdalens on Sunday, as to go to Rane- lagh and Vauxhall with, and to see, impenitent mag- dalens during the week. Services at Magdalen House were always crowded: royalty attended; everybody went. A MACAIIONI PARSON 299 Sensational and melodramatic, Dodd drew vivid pictures of the lite from which the women and young girls had been rescued: the penitents on exhibition and the impenitents in the congregation, alike, were moved to tears. Frequently a woman swooned, as was the fashion in those daj's, and her stays had to be cut; or someone went into hysterics and had to be carried screaming from the room. Dodd must have felt that he had made no mistake in his calling. Horace Walpole says that he preached very eloquently in the French style; but it can hardly have been in the style of Bossuet, I should say. The general wanton- ness of his subject he covered by a veneer of decency; but we can guess what his sermons were like, without reading them, from our knowledge of the man and the texts he chose. "These things I command you, that ye love one another," packed the house; but his greatest effort was inspired by the text, "Whosoever looketh on a woman." It does not require much im- agination to see what he would make out of that ! But for all his immense popularity Dodd was get- ting very little money. His small living in the coun- try and his hundred guineas or so from the Magdalen did not suffice for his needs. He ran into debt, but he had confidence in himself and his ambition was boundless; he even thought of a bishopric. Why not.'^ It was no new way to pay old debts. Influence in high places was his; but first he must secure a doctor's de- gree. This was not difficult. Cambridge, if not ex- actly proud of him, could not deny him, and Dodd got 300 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING his degree. The King was appealed to, and he was appointed a Royal Chaplain. It was a stepping-stone to something better, and Dodd, always industrious, now worked harder than ever. He wrote and pub- lished incessantly: translations, sermons, addresses, poems, odes, and elegies on anybody and everything: more than fifty titles are credited to him in the Brit- ish Museum catalogue. And above all things, Dodd was in demand at a "city dinner." His blessings — he was always called upon to say grace — were carefully regulated accord- ing to the scale of the function. A brief "Bless, O Lord, we praj' thee" sufficed for a simple dinner; but when the table was weighted down, as it usually was, with solid silver, and the glasses suggested the variety and number of wines which were to follow one an- other in orderly procession until most of the company got drunk and were carried home and put to bed, then Dodd rose to the occasion, and addressed a sonorous appeal which began, "Bountiful Jehovah, who has caused to groan this table with the abundant evidences of thy goodness." The old-line clergy looked askance at all these do- ings. Bishops, secure in their enjoyment of princely incomes, and priests of lesser degree with incomes scarcely less princely, regarded Dodd with suspicion. Why did he not get a good living somewhere, from someone; hire a poor wretch to mumble a few prayers to half-empty })enches on a Sunday while he col- lected the tithes? Why this zeal? When a substantial A MACARONI PARSON 301 banker hears of an upstart guaranteeing ten per cent interest, he awaits the inevitable crash, certain that, the longer it is postponed, the greater the crash will be. In the same light the well-beneficed clergyman regarded Dodd. Dodd himself longed for tithes; but as they were delayed in coming, he, in the meantime, decided to turn his reputation for scholarship to account, and accordingly let it be known that he would board and suitably instruct a limited number of young men; in other words, he fell back upon the time-honored cus- tom of taking pupils. He secured a country house at Ealing and soon had among his charges one Philip Stanhope, a lad of eleven years, heir of the great Earl of Chesterfield, who was so interested in the worldly success of his illegitimate son, to whom his famous letters were addressed, that he apparently gave him- self little concern as to the character of instruction that his lawful son received. Dodd's pupils must have brought a substantial in- crease of his small income, which was also suddenly augmented in another way. About the time he began to take pupils, a lady to whom his wife had been a sort of companion died and left her, quite unex- pectedly, fifteen hundred pounds. Nor did her good fortune end there. As she w^as attending an auction one day, a cabinet was put up for sale, and Mrs. Dodd bid upon it, until, observing a lady who seemed anx- ious to obtain it, she stopped bidding, and it became the property of the lady, who in return gave her a lot- 302 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING tery ticket, which drew a prize of a thousand pounds for Mrs. Dodd. With these windfalls at his disposal, Dodd em- barked upon a speculation quite in keeping with his tastes and abilities. He secured a plot of ground not far from the royal palace, and built upon it a chapel of ease which he called Charlotte Chapel, in honor of the Queen. Four pews were set aside for the royal house- hold, and he soon had a large and fashionable con- gregation. His sermons were in the same florid vein which had brought him popularity, and from this venture he was soon in receipt of at least six hundred pounds a year. With his increased income his style of living became riotous. He dined at expensive taverns, set up a coach, and kept a mistress, and even tried to force himself into the great literary club which numbered among its members some of the most dis- tinguished men of the day; but this was not permitted. For years Dodd led, not a double, but a triple life. He went through the motions of teaching his pupils. He preached, in his own chapels and elsewhere, ser- mons on popular subjects, and at the same time man- aged to live the life of a fashionable man about town. No one respected him, but he had a large following and he contrived every day to get deeper into debt. It is a constant source of bewilderment to those of us who are obliged to pay our bills with decent regu- larity, how, in England, it seems to have been so easy to live on year after year, paying apparently nothing to anyone, and resenting the appearance of a bill- A MACARONI PARSON 303 collector as an impertinence. When Goldsmith died, he owed a sum which caused Dr. Johnson to exclaim, "Was ever poet so trusted before.^^" and Goldsmith's debts were trifling in comparison with Dodd's. But, at the moment when matters were becoming really serious, a fashionable living — St. George's — fell vacant, and Dodd felt that if he could but secure it his troubles would be over. The parish church of St. George's, Hanover Square, was one of the best known in London. It was in the centre of fashion, and then, as now, enjoyed almost a monopoly of smart weddings. Its rector had just been made a bishop. Dodd looked upon it with long- ing eyes. What a plum! It seemed beyond his reach, but nothing venture, nothing have. On investiga- tion Dodd discovered that the living was worth fifteen hundred pounds a year and that it was in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. The old adage, "Give thy pres- ent to the clerk, not to the judge," must have come into his mind; for, not long after, the wife of the Chancellor received an anonymous letter offering three thousand pounds down and an annuity of five hundred a year if she would successfully use her in- fluence with her husband to secure the living for a clergyman of distinction who should be named later. The lady very properly handed the letter to her hus- band, who at once set inquiries on foot. The matter was soon traced to Dodd, who promptly put the blame on his wife, saying that he had not been aware of the oflScious zeal of his consort. 304 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING The scandal became public, and Dodd thought it best to go abroad. His name was removed from the list of the King's chaplains. No care was taken to dis- guise references to him in the public prints. Libel laws in England seem to have been circumvented by the use of asterisks for letters: thus, Laurence Sterne would be referred to as "the Rev. L. S*****," coupled with some damaging statement; but in Dodd's case precaution of this sort was thought unnecessary. He was bitterly attacked and mercilessly ridiculed. Even Goldsmith takes a fling at him in " Retaliation," which appeared about this time. It remained, however, for Foote, the comedian, to hold him up to public scorn in one of his Haymarket farces, in which the parson and his wife were introduced as Dr. and Mrs. Simony. The satire was very coarse; but stomachs were strong in those good old days, and the whole town roared at the humor of the thing, which was admitted to be a great success. On Dodd's return to London his fortunes were at a very low ebb indeed. A contemporary account says that, although almost overwhelmed with debt, his extravagance continued undiminished until, at last, "he descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper." My editorial friends will note well the depth of his infamy. After a time the scandal blew over, as scandal will when the public a})petite has been appeased, and Dodd began to preach again: a sensational preacher will always ha\c followers. Someone presented him A MACARONI PARSON 305 to a small living in Buckinghamshire, from which he had a small addition to his income; but otherwise he was almost neglected. At last he was obliged to sell his interest in his chapel venture, which he "unloaded," as we should say to-day, on a fellow divine by misstating its value as a going concern, so that the purchaser was ruined by his bargain. But he continued to preach with great pathos and effect, when suddenly the announce- ment was made that the great preacher. Dr. Dodd, the Macaroni Parson, had been arrested on a charge of forgery; that he was already in the Compter; that he had admitted his guilt, and that he would doubtless be hanged. The details of the affair were soon public property. It appears that, at last overwhelmed with debt, Dodd had forged the name of his former pupil, now the Earl of Chesterfield, to a bond for forty-two hundred pounds. The bond had been negotiated and the money paid when the fraud was discovered. A war- rant for his arrest was at once made out, and Dodd was taken before Justice Hawkins (Johnson's first biographer) , who sat as a committing magistrate, and held him for formal trial at the Old Bailey. Mean- while all but four hundred pounds of the money had been returned; for a time it seemed as if this small sum could be raised and the affair dropped. This cer- tainly was Dodd's hope; but the law had been set in motion, and justice, rather than mercy, was allowed to take its course. The crime had been committed early 306 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING in February. At the trial a few weeks later, the Earl of Chesterfield, disregarding Dodd's plea, appeared against him, and he was sentenced to death ; but some legal point had been raised in his favor, and it was several months before the question was finally de- cided adversely to him. Dodd was now in Newgate Prison. There he was indulged in every way, according to the good old cus- tom of the time. He was plentifully supplied with money, and could secure whatever money w ould buy. Friends were admitted to see him at all hours, and he occupied what leisure he had with correspondence, and wrote a long poem, "Thoughts in Prison," in five parts. He also projected a play and several other hterary ventures. Meanwhile a mighty effort was set on foot to secure a pardon. Dr. Johnson was appealed to, and while he entertained no doubts as to the wisdom of capital punishment for fraud, forgery, or theft, the thought of a minister of the Church of England being publicly haled through the streets of London to Tyburn and being there hanged seemed horrible to him, and he promised to do his best. He was as good as his word. With his ready pen he wrote a number of letters and petitions which were conveyed to Dodd, and which, subsequently copied by him, were presented to the King, the Lord Chancellor, to any one, in fact, who might have influence and be ready to use it. He even w eni so far as lo write a letter ^^'hich, when transcribed by Mrs. Dodd, was presented to the Queen. One i FAC'SIMILK OF THE FIRST PAGE OF DR. JOHNSONS PETITION TO THE KING ON BEHALF OF DR. DODD A MACARONI PARSON 307 petition, drawn by Johnson, was signed by twenty- three thousand people; but the King — under the influence of Lord Mansfield, it is said — declined to interest himself. And this brings me to a point where I must ex- plain my peculiar interest in this thoroughgoing scoundrel. I happen to own a volume of manuscript letters written by Dodd, from Newgate Prison, to a man named Edmund Allen; and as not every reader of Boswell can be expected to remember who Ed- mund Allen was, I may say that he was Dr. John- son's neighbor and landlord in Bolt Court, a pi-inter by trade and an intimate friend of the Doctor. It was Allen who gave the dinner to Johnson and Bos- well which caused the old man to remark, "Sir, we could not have had a better dinner had there been a Synod of Cooks." The Dodd letters to Allen, how- ever, are only a part of the contents of the volume. It contains also a great number of Johnson's letters to Dodd, and the original drafts of the petitions which he drew up in his efforts to secure mitigation of Dodd's punishment. The whole collection came into my possession many years ago, and has afforded me a subject of investigation on many a winter's evening when I might otherwise have occupied myself with soli- taire, did I happen to know one card from another. Allen appears to have been an acquaintance of Dodd's, and, I judge from the letters before me, called on Johnson with a letter from a certain Lady Harring- ton, who for some reason which does not appear, was 308 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING greatly interested in Dodd's fate. Boswell records that Johnson was much agitated at the interview, walking up and down his chamber saying, "I will do what I can." Dodd was personally unknown to Johnson and had only once been in his presence; and while an elaborate correspondence was being carried on be- tween them, Johnson declined to go to see the pris- oner, and for some reason wished that his name should not be drawn into the afTarr; but he did not relax his efforts. Allen was the go-between in all that passed between the two men. In the volume before me, in all of Dodd's letters to Allen, Johnson's name has been carefully blotted out, and Johnson's letters in- tended for Dodd are not addressed to him, but bear the inscription, "This may be communicated to Dr. Dodd." Dodd's letters to Johnson were delivered to him by Allen and were probably destroyed, Allen having first made the copies which are now in my possession. Most of Dodd's letters to Allen appear to have been preserved, and Johnson's letters to Dodd, together with the drafts of his petitions, were care- fully preserved by Allen, Dodd being supplied with unsigned copies. Allen in this way carried out John- son's instructions to "tell nobody." Dodd's letters seem for the most part to have been written at night. The correspondence began early in May, and his last letter was dated June 26, a few hours before he died. None of Dodd's letters seem to have been published, and Johnson's, although of supreme interest, do not appear to have been known A MACARONI PARSON 309 in their entirety either to Hawkins, iBoswell, or Bos- well's greatest editor, Birkbeck Hill. The petitions, so far as they have been published, seem to have been printed from imperfect copies of the original drafts. Boswell relates that Johnson had told him he had written a petition from the City of London, but they mended it. In the original draft there are a few re- fairs, but they are in Dr. Johnson's own hand. The petition to the King evidently did not require mend- ing, as the published copies are almost identical with the original. In the petition which he wrote for Mrs. Dodd to copy and present to the Queen, Johnson, not know- ing all the facts, left blank spaces in the original draft for Mrs. Dodd to fill when making her copy; thus the original draft reads : — To THE Queen's Most Excellent Majesty Madam : — It is most humbly represented by — — Dodd, the Wife of Dr. William Dodd, now lying in prison under Sentence of death. That she has been the Wife of this unhappy Man for more than — years, and has lived with him in the greatest happiness of conjugal union, and the highest state of con- jugal confidence. That she has been therefore for — years a constant Witness of his unwearied endeavors for publick good and his laborious attendance on charitable institutions. Many are the Families whom his care has relieved from want; many are the hearts which he has freed from pain, and the Faces which he has cleared from sorrow. 310 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING Tliat therefore she most humbly throws herself at the feet of the Queen, earnestly entreating that the petition of a distressed Wife asking mercy for a husband may be con- sidered as naturally exciting the compassion of her Ma- jesty, and that when her Wisdom has compared the of- fender's good actions with his crime, she will be graciously pleased to represent his case in such terms to our most gracious Sovereign, as may dispose him to mitigate the rigours of the law. The case of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd was by now the talk of the town. If agitation and discussion and letters and positions could have saved him, saved hy w^ould have been, for all London was in an uproar, and efforts of every kind on his behalf were set in motion. He can hardly have been blamed for feeling sure that they would never hang him. Johnson was not so certain, and warned him against over-confi- dence. Rather curiously, merchants, "city people," who, one might suppose, would be inclined to regard the crime of forgery with severitj^ were disposed to think that Dodd's sufferings in Newgate were sufficient punishment for any crime he had committed. After all, it was said, the money, most of it, had been re- turned; so they signed a monster petition; twenty- three thousand names were secured without diffi- culty. But the West End was rather indifferent, and Dr. Johnson finally came to the conclusion that, while no effort should be relaxed (in a letter to Mr. Allen he says, "Nothing can do harm, let everything be tried"), it was time for Dodd to prepare himself A MACARONI PARSON 311 for his fate. He thereupon wrote the following letter, which we may suppose Allen either transcribed or read to the unfortunate prisoner: — Sir: — You know that my attention to Dr. Dodd has incited me to enquire what is the real purpose of Government; the dreadful answer I have put into your hands. Nothing now remains but that he whose profession it has been to teach others to dve, learn how to dve him- self. It will be wise to deny admission from this time to all who do not come to assist his preparation, to addict him- self wholly to prayer and meditation, and consider himself as no longer connected with the world. He has now noth- ing to do for the short time that remains, but to reconcile himself to God. To this end it will be proper to abstain totally from all strong liquors, and from all other sensual indulgences, that his thoughts may be as clear and calm as his condition can allow. If his Remissions of anguish, and intervals of Devotion leave him any time, he may perhaps spend it profitably in writing the histoiy of his own depravation, and marking the gradual declination from innocence and quiet to that state in which the law has found him. Of his advice to the Clergy, or admonitions to Fathers of families, there is no need; he will leave behind him those who can write them. But the history of his own mind, if not written by himself, cannot be written, and the instruction that might be de- rived from it must be lost. This therefore he must leave if he leaves anything; but whether he can find leisure, or obtain tranquillity sufficient for this, I cannot judge. Let him however shut his doors against all hope, all trifles and all sensuality. Let him endeavor to calm his thoughts by abstinence, and look out for a proper director in his peni- tence, and May God, who would that all men shall be 312 AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING saved, help him with his Holy Spirit, and have mercy on him for Jesus Christ's Sake. I am, Sir, Your most humble Servant, Sam Johnson. June 17, 1777. Then, in response to a piteous appeal, Johnson wrote a brief letter for Dodd to send to the King, begging him at least to save him from the horror and ignominy of a public execution; and this was accom- panied by a brief note. Sir: — I most seriously enjoin you not to let it be at all known that I have written this letter, and to return the copy to Mr. Allen in a cover to me. I hope I need not tell you that I wish it success, iDUt I do not indulge hope. Sam Johnson. As the time for Dodd's execution drew near, he wrote a final letter to Johnson, which, on its deliv- ery, must have moved the old man to tears. It was written at midnight on the 25th of June, 1777. Accept, thou great and good heart, my earnest and fer- vent thanks and prayers for all thy benevolent and kind efforts in my behalf. Oh! Dr. Johnson! as I sought your knowledge at an early hour in life, would to heaven I had cultivated the love and acquaintance of so excellent a man ! I pray God most sincerely to bless you with the highest transports — the inf elt satisfaction of humane and benevo- lent exertions! And admitted, as I trust I shall be, to the realms of bliss before you, I shall hail your arrival there with transports, and rejoice to acknowledge that you were my Comforter, my Advocate and my Friend I God be ever with you I ^Ce c/i/ //fIA y'T-.^T- /?Vt: