THE ENEMIES OF BOOKS

By William Blades

Revised and Enlarged by the Author

SECOND EDITION

LONDON ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW

1888

Contents

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
FIRE.
Libraries destroyed by Fire.—Alexandrian.—St.
Paul’s destruction
of MSS., Value of.—Christian books
destroyed by Heathens.—Heathen
books destroyed by
Christians.—Hebrew books burnt at Cremona.—Arabic
books at Grenada.—Monastic libraries.—Colton library.—Birmingham

riots.—Dr. Priestley’s library.—Lord Mansfield’s
books.—Cowper.
—Strasbourg library bombarded.—Offor
Collection burnt.—Dutch
Church library damaged.—Library
of Corporation of London.
CHAPTER II.
WATER.
Heer
Hudde’s library lost at sea.—Pinelli’s library captured
by
Corsairs.—MSS. destroyed by Mohammed II—Books damaged by

rain.—Woffenbuttel.—Vapour and Mould.—Brown
stains.—Dr.
Dibdin.—Hot water pipes.—Asbestos
fire.—Glass doors to bookcases.
CHAPTER III.
GAS AND
HEAT.
Effects of Gas on leather.—Necessitates re-binding.—Bookbinders.—Electric

light.—British Museum.—Treatment of books.—Legend
of Friars and
their books.
CHAPTER IV.
DUST AND
NEGLECT.
Books should have gilt tops.—Old libraries were
neglected.—Instance
of a College library.—Clothes
brushed in it.—Abuses in French
libraries.—Derome’s
account of them.—Boccaccio’s story of
library at the Convent
of Mount Cassin.
CHAPTER V.
IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY.
Destruction of Books at the Reformation.—Mazarin library.—Caxton

used to light the fire.—Library at French Protestant Church,

St. Martin’s-le-Grand.—Books stolen.—Story of books
from Thonock
Hall.—Boke of St. Albans.—Recollet Monks
of Antwerp.—Shakespearian
“find.”—Black-letter books
used in W.C.—Gesta Romanorum.—Lansdowne
collection.—Warburton.—Tradesman
and rare book.—Parish Register.—Story
of Bigotry by M.
Muller.—Clergymen destroy books.—Patent Office sell
books for waste.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BOOKWORM.
Doraston.—Not
so destructive as of yore.—Worm won’t eat
parchment.—Pierre
Petit’s poem.—Hooke’s account and image.—Its
natural
history neglected.—Various sorts—Attempts to breed
Bookworms.—Greek worm.—Havoc made by worms.—Bodleian
and Dr.
Bandinel.—”Dermestes.”—Worm won’t eat modern
paper.—America
comparatively free.—Worm-hole at
Philadelphia.
CHAPTER VII.
OTHER VERMIN.
Black-beetle
in American libraries.—germanica.—Bug Bible.—Lepisma.

—Codfish.—Skeletons of Rats in Abbey library,
Westminster.—Niptus
hololeucos.—Tomicus Typographicus.—House
flies injure books.
CHAPTER VIII.
BOOKBINDERS.
A good
binding gives pleasure.—Deadly effects of the “plough” as used

by binders.—Not confined to bye-gone times.—Instances
of injury.—De
Rome, a good binder but a great cropper.—Books
“hacked.”—Bad
lettering—Treasures in book-covers.—Books
washed, sized, and
mended.—”Cases” often Preferable to
re-binding.
CHAPTER IX.
COLLECTORS.
Bagford the
biblioclast.—Illustrations torn from MSS.—Title-pages
torn from books.—Rubens, his engraved titles.—Colophons torn
out of
books.—Lincoln Cathedral—Dr. Dibdin’s Nosegay.—Theurdanck.—Fragments

of MSS.—Some libraries almost useless.—Pepysian.—Teylerian.—Sir

Thomas Phillipps.
CHAPTER X.
SERVANTS AND CHILDREN.

Library invaded for the purpose of dusting.—Spring clean.—-Dust
to be
got rid of.—Ways of doing so.—Carefulness
praised.—Bad nature of
certain books—Metal clasps and
rivets.—How to dust.—Children
often injure books.—Examples.—Story
of boys in a country library.
POSTSCRIPTUM.
Anecdote of
book-sale in Derbyshire.
CONCLUSION.
The care that should be
taken of books.—Enjoyment derived from them.
ILLUSTRATIONS.

SERVANT USING A “CAXTON” TO LIGHT THE FIRE —- Frontispiece,

PIRATES THROWING LIBRARY OVER-BOARD —————
page 19
FRIARS AND THEIR ASS-LOAD ——————————
35
BRUSHING CLOTHES IN A COLLEGE LIBRARY ————
45
BOOKWORMS ——————————————————
73
RATS DESTROYING BOOKS ————————————
99
HOUSEHOLD FLY-DAMAGE ————————————
102
BOYS RAMPANT IN LIBRARY ———————————
141

THE ENEMIES OF BOOKS.

CHAPTER I. FIRE.

THERE are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books; but
among them all not one has been half so destructive as Fire. It would be
tedious to write out a bare list only of the numerous libraries and
bibliographical treasures which, in one way or another, have been seized
by the Fire-king as his own. Chance conflagrations, fanatic incendiarism,
judicial bonfires, and even household stoves have, time after time,
thinned the treasures as well as the rubbish of past ages, until,
probably, not one thousandth part of the books that have been are still
extant. This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had
not the “cleansing fires” removed mountains of rubbish from our midst,
strong destructive measures would have become a necessity from sheer want
of space in which to store so many volumes.

Before the invention of Printing, books were comparatively scarce; and,
knowing as we do, how very difficult it is, even after the steam-press has
been working for half a century, to make a collection of half a million
books, we are forced to receive with great incredulity the accounts in old
writers of the wonderful extent of ancient libraries.

The historian Gibbon, very incredulous in many things, accepts without
questioning the fables told upon this subject. No doubt the libraries of
MSS. collected generation after generation by the Egyptian Ptolemies
became, in the course of time, the most extensive ever then known; and
were famous throughout the world for the costliness of their
ornamentation, and importance of their untold contents. Two of these were
at Alexandria, the larger of which was in the quarter called Bruchium.
These volumes, like all manuscripts of those early ages, were written on
sheets of parchment, having a wooden roller at each end so that the reader
needed only to unroll a portion at a time. During Caesar’s Alexandrian
War, B.C. 48, the larger collection was consumed by fire and again burnt
by the Saracens in A.D. 640. An immense loss was inflicted upon mankind
thereby; but when we are told of 700,000, or even 500,000 of such volumes
being destroyed we instinctively feel that such numbers must be a great
exaggeration. Equally incredulous must we be when we read of half a
million volumes being burnt at Carthage some centuries later, and other
similar accounts.

Among the earliest records of the wholesale destruction of Books is that
narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul, many of the
Ephesians “which used curious arts brought their books together, and
burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found
it 50,000 pieces of silver” (Acts xix, 19). Doubtless these books of
idolatrous divination and alchemy, of enchantments and witchcraft, were
righteously destroyed by those to whom they had been and might again be
spiritually injurious; and doubtless had they escaped the fire then, not
one of them would have survived to the present time, no MS. of that age
being now extant. Nevertheless, I must confess to a certain amount of
mental disquietude and uneasiness when I think of books worth 50,000
denarii—or, speaking roughly, say L18,750, (1) of our modern money
being made into bonfires. What curious illustrations of early heathenism,
of Devil worship, of Serpent worship, of Sun worship, and other archaic
forms of religion; of early astrological and chemical lore, derived from
the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks; what abundance of superstitious
observances and what is now termed “Folklore”; what riches, too, for the
philological student, did those many books contain, and how famous would
the library now be that could boast of possessing but a few of them.

The ruins of Ephesus bear unimpeachable evidence that the City was very
extensive and had magnificent buildings. It was one of the free cities,
governing itself. Its trade in shrines and idols was very extensive, being
spread through all known lands. There the magical arts were remarkably
prevalent, and notwithstanding the numerous converts made by the early
Christians, the [gr ‘Efesia grammata], or little scrolls upon which magic
sentences were written, formed an extensive trade up to the fourth
century. These “writings” were used for divination, as a protection
against the “evil eye,” and generally as charms against all evil. They
were carried about the person, so that probably thousands of them were
thrown into the flames by St. Paul’s hearers when his glowing words
convinced them of their superstition.

Imagine an open space near the grand Temple of Diana, with fine buildings
around. Slightly raised above the crowd, the Apostle, preaching with great
power and persuasion concerning superstition, holds in thrall the
assembled multitude. On the outskirts of the crowd are numerous bonfires,
upon which Jew and Gentile are throwing into the flames bundle upon bundle
of scrolls, while an Asiarch with his peace-officers looks on with the
conventional stolidity of policemen in all ages and all nations. It must
have been an impressive scene, and many a worse subject has been chosen
for the walls of the Royal Academy.

Books in those early times, whether orthodox or heterodox, appear to have
had a precarious existence. The heathens at each fresh outbreak of
persecution burnt all the Christian writings they could find, and the
Christians, when they got the upper hand, retaliated with interest upon
the pagan literature. The Mohammedan reason for destroying books—”If
they contain what is in the Koran they are superfluous, and if they
contain anything opposed to it they are immoral,” seems, indeed, mutatis
mutandis, to have been the general rule for all such devastators.

The Invention of Printing made the entire destruction of any author’s
works much more difficult, so quickly and so extensively did books spread
through all lands. On the other hand, as books multiplied, so did
destruction go hand in hand with production, and soon were printed books
doomed to suffer in the same penal fires, that up to then had been fed on
MSS. only.

At Cremona, in 1569, 12,000 books printed in Hebrew were publicly burnt as
heretical, simply on account of their language; and Cardinal Ximenes, at
the capture of Granada, treated 5,000 copies of the Koran in the same way.

At the time of the Reformation in England a great destruction of books
took place. The antiquarian Bale, writing in 1587, thus speaks of the
shameful fate of the Monastic libraries:—

“A greate nombre of them whyche purchased those superstycyouse mansyons (Monasteries)
reserved of those librarye bookes some to serve their jakes, some to
scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe theyr bootes. Some they
solde to the grossers and sope sellers, and some they sent over see to yeS
booke bynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to
yeS, wonderynge of foren nacyons. Yea yeS. Universytees of thys realme are
not alle clere in thys detestable fact. But cursed is that bellye whyche
seketh to be fedde with suche ungodlye gaynes, and so depelye shameth hys
natural conterye. I knowe a merchant manne, whych shall at thys tyme be
namelesse, that boughte yeS contentes of two noble lybraryes for forty
shyllynges pryce: a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hathe heoccupyed
in yeS stede of greye paper, by yeS, space of more than these ten yeares,
and yet he bathe store ynoughe for as manye years to come. A prodygyous
example is thys, and to be abhorred of all men whyche love theyr nacyon as
they shoulde do. The monkes kepte them undre dust, yeS, ydle-headed
prestes regarded them not, theyr latter owners have most shamefully abused
them, and yeS covetouse merchantes have solde them away into foren nacyons
for moneye.”

How the imagination recoils at the idea of Caxton’s translation of the
Metamorphoses of Ovid, or perhaps his “Lyf of therle of Oxenforde,”
together with many another book from our first presses, not a fragment of
which do we now possess, being used for baking “pyes.”

At the Great Fire of London in 1666, the number of books burnt was
enormous. Not only in private houses and Corporate and Church libraries
were priceless collections reduced to cinders, but an immense stock of
books removed from Paternoster Row by the Stationers for safety was burnt
to ashes in the vaults of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Coming nearer to our own day, how thankful we ought to be for the
preservation of the Cotton Library. Great was the consternation in the
literary world of 1731 when they heard of the fire at Ashburnham House,
Westminster, where, at that time, the Cotton MSS. were deposited. By great
exertions the fire was conquered, but not before many MSS. had been quite
destroyed and many others injured. Much skill was shown in the partial
restoration of these books, charred almost beyond recognition; they were
carefully separated leaf by leaf, soaked in a chemical solution, and then
pressed flat between sheets of transparent paper. A curious heap of
scorched leaves, previous to any treatment, and looking like a monster
wasps’ nest, may be seen in a glass case in the MS. department of the
British Museum, showing the condition to which many other volumes had been
reduced.

Just a hundred years ago the mob, in the “Birmingham Riots,” burnt the
valuable library of Dr. Priestley, and in the “Gordon Riots” were burnt
the literary and other collections of Lord Mansfield, the celebrated
judge, he who had the courage first to decide that the Slave who reached
the English shore was thenceforward a free man. The loss of the latter
library drew from the poet Cowper two short and weak poems. The poet first
deplores the destruction of the valuable printed books, and then the
irretrievable loss to history by the burning of his Lordship’s many
personal manuscripts and contemporary documents.

The second poem commences with the following doggerel:—

The much finer and more extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left
unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a
complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the owner
being an Unitarian Minister.

The magnificent library of Strasbourg was burnt by the shells of the
German Army in 1870. Then disappeared for ever, together with other unique
documents, the original records of the famous law-suits between Gutenberg,
one of the first Printers, and his partners, upon the right understanding
of which depends the claim of Gutenberg to the invention of the Art. The
flames raged between high brick walls, roaring louder than a blast
furnace. Seldom, indeed, have Mars and Pluto had so dainty a sacrifice
offered at their shrines; for over all the din of battle, and the
reverberation of monster artillery, the burning leaves of the first
printed Bible and many another priceless volume were wafted into the sky,
the ashes floating for miles on the heated air, and carrying to the
astonished countryman the first news of the devastation of his Capital.

When the Offor Collection was put to the hammer by Messrs Sotheby and
Wilkinson, the well-known auctioneers of Wellington Street, and when about
three days of the sale had been gone through, a Fire occurred in the
adjoining house, and, gaining possession of the Sale Rooms, made a speedy
end of the unique Bunyan and other rarities then on show. I was allowed to
see the Ruins on the following day, and by means of a ladder and some
scrambling managed to enter the Sale Room where parts of the floor still
remained. It was a fearful sight those scorched rows of Volumes still on
the shelves; and curious was it to notice how the flames, burning off the
backs of the books first, had then run up behind the shelves, and so
attacked the fore-edge of the volumes standing upon them, leaving the
majority with a perfectly untouched oval centre of white paper and plain
print, while the whole surrounding parts were but a mass of black cinders.
The salvage was sold in one lot for a small sum, and the purchaser, after
a good deal of sorting and mending and binding placed about 1,000 volumes
for sale at Messrs. Puttick and Simpson’s in the following year.

So, too, when the curious old Library which was in a gallery of the Dutch
Church, Austin Friars, was nearly destroyed in the fire which devastated
the Church in 1862, the books which escaped were sadly injured. Not long
before I had spent some hours there hunting for English Fifteenth-century
Books, and shall never forget the state of dirt in which I came away.
Without anyone to care for them, the books had remained untouched for many
a decade-damp dust, half an inch thick, having settled upon them! Then
came the fire, and while the roof was all ablaze streams of hot water,
like a boiling deluge, washed down upon them. The wonder was they were not
turned into a muddy pulp. After all was over, the whole of the library, no
portion of which could legally be given away, was lent for ever to
the Corporation of London. Scorched and sodden, the salvage came into the
hands of Mr. Overall, their indefatigable librarian. In a hired attic, he
hung up the volumes that would bear it over strings like clothes, to dry,
and there for weeks and weeks were the stained, distorted volumes, often
without covers, often in single leaves, carefully tended and dry-nursed.
Washing, sizing, pressing, and binding effected wonders, and no one who
to-day looks upon the attractive little alcove in the Guildhall Library
labelled [oe “Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Londonino-Belgiae”] and sees the rows
of handsomely-lettered backs, could imagine that not long ago this, the
most curious portion of the City’s literary collections, was in a state
when a five-pound note would have seemed more than full value for the lot.

CHAPTER II. WATER.

NEXT to Fire we must rank Water in its two forms, liquid and vapour, as
the greatest destroyer of books. Thousands of volumes have been actually
drowned at Sea, and no more heard of them than of the Sailors to whose
charge they were committed. D’Israeli narrates that, about the year 1700,
Heer Hudde, an opulent burgomaster of Middleburgh, travelled for 30 years
disguised as a mandarin, throughout the length and breadth of the
Celestial Empire. Everywhere he collected books, and his extensive
literary treasures were at length safely shipped for transmission to
Europe, but, to the irreparable loss of his native country, they never
reached their destination, the vessel having foundered in a storm.

In 1785 died the famous Maffei Pinelli, whose library was celebrated
throughout the world. It had been collected by the Pinelli family for many
generations and comprised an extraordinary number of Greek, Latin, and
Italian works, many of them first editions, beautifully illuminated,
together with numerous MSS. dating from the 11th to the 16th century. The
whole library was sold by the Executors to Mr. Edwards, bookseller, of
Pall Mall, who placed the volumes in three vessels for transport from
Venice to London. Pursued by Corsairs, one of the vessels was captured,
but the pirate, disgusted at not finding any treasure, threw all the books
into the sea. The other two vessels escaped and delivered their freight
safely, and in 1789-90 the books which had been so near destruction were
sold at the great room in Conduit Street, for more than L9,000.

These pirates were more excusable than Mohammed II who, upon the capture
of Constantinople in the 15th century, after giving up the devoted city to
be sacked by his licentious soldiers, ordered the books in all the
churches as well as the great library of the Emperor Constantine,
containing 120,000 Manuscripts, to be thrown into the sea.

In the shape of rain, water has frequently caused irreparable injury.
Positive wet is fortunately of rare occurrence in a library, but is very
destructive when it does come, and, if long continued, the substance of
the paper succumbs to the unhealthy influence and rots and rots until all
fibre disappears, and the paper is reduced to a white decay which crumbles
into powder when handled.

Few old libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were
thirty years ago. The state of many of our Collegiate and Cathedral
libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many
instances, one especially, where a window having been left broken for a
long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, each
of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water was
conducted, as by a pipe, along the tops of the books and soaked through
the whole.

In another and smaller collection, the rain came straight on to a
book-case through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf
containing Caxtons and other early English books, one of which, although
rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners for
L200.

Germany, too, the very birth-place of Printing, allows similar destruction
to go on unchecked, if the following letter, which appeared about a Year
ago (1879) in the Academy has any truth in it:—

“For some time past the condition of the library at Wolfenbuttel has been
most disgraceful. The building is in so unsafe a condition that portions
of the walls and ceilings have fallen in, and the many treasures in Books
and MSS. contained in it are exposed to damp and decay. An appeal has been
issued that this valuable collection may not be allowed to perish for want
of funds, and that it may also be now at length removed to Brunswick,
since Wolfenbuttel is entirely deserted as an intellectual centre. No
false sentimentality regarding the memory of its former custodians,
Leibnitz and Lessing, should hinder this project. Lessing himself would
have been the first to urge that the library and its utility should be
considered above all things.”

The collection of books at Wolfenbuttel is simply magnificent, and I
cannot but hope the above report was exaggerated. Were these books to be
injured for the want of a small sum spent on the roof, it would be a
lasting disgrace to the nation. There are so many genuine book-lovers in
Fatherland that the commission of such a crime would seem incredible, did
not bibliographical history teem with similar desecrations. (1)

Water in the form of vapour is a great enemy of books, the damp attacking
both outside and inside. Outside it fosters the growth of a white mould or
fungus which vegetates upon the edges of the leaves, upon the sides and in
the joints of the binding. It is easily wiped off, but not without leaving
a plain mark, where the mould-spots have been. Under the microscope a
mould-spot is seen to be a miniature forest of lovely trees, covered with
a beautiful white foliage, upas trees whose roots are embedded in the
leather and destroy its texture.

Inside the book, damp encourages the growth of those ugly brown spots
which so often disfigure prints and “livres de luxe.” Especially it
attacks books printed in the early part of this century, when paper-makers
had just discovered that they could bleach their rags, and perfectly white
paper, well pressed after printing, had become the fashion. This paper
from the inefficient means used to neutralise the bleach, carried the
seeds of decay in itself, and when exposed to any damp soon became
discoloured with brown stains. Dr. Dibdin’s extravagant bibliographical
works are mostly so injured; and although the Doctor’s bibliography is
very incorrect, and his spun-out inanities and wearisome affectations
often annoy one, yet his books are so beautifully illustrated, and he is
so full of personal anecdote and chit chat, that it grieves the heart to
see “foxey” stains common in his most superb works.

In a perfectly dry and warm library these spots would probably remain
undeveloped, but many endowed as well as private libraries are not in
daily use, and are often injured from a false idea that a hard frost and
prolonged cold do no injury to a library so long as the weather is dry.
The fact is that books should never be allowed to get really cold, for
when a thaw comes and the weather sets in warm, the air, laden with damp,
penetrates the inmost recesses, and working its way between the volumes
and even between the leaves, deposits upon their cold surface its
moisture. The best preventative of this is a warm atmosphere during the
frost, sudden heating when the frost has gone being useless.

Our worst enemies are sometimes our real friends, and perhaps the best way
of keeping libraries entirely free from damp is to circulate our enemy in
the shape of hot water through pipes laid under the floor. The facilities
now offered for heating such pipes from the outside are so great, the
expense comparatively so small, and the direct gain in the expulsion of
damp so decided, that where it can be accomplished without much trouble it
is well worth the doing.

At the same time no system of heating should be allowed to supersede the
open grate, which supplies a ventilation to the room as useful to the
health of the books as to the health of the occupier. A coal fire is
objectionable on many grounds. It is dangerous, dirty and dusty. On the
other hand an asbestos fire, where the lumps are judiciously laid, gives
all the warmth and ventilation of a common fire without any of its
annoyances; and to any one who loves to be independent of servants, and to
know that, however deeply he may sleep over his “copy,” his fire will not
fail to keep awake, an asbestos stove is invaluable.

It is a mistake also to imagine that keeping the best bound volumes in a
glass doored book-case is a preservative. The damp air will certainly
penetrate, and as the absence of ventilation will assist the formation of
mould, the books will be worse off than if they had been placed in open
shelves. If security be desirable, by all means abolish the glass and
place ornamental brass wire-work in its stead. Like the writers of old
Cookery Books who stamped special receipts with the testimony of personal
experience, I can say “probatum est.”

CHAPTER III. GAS AND HEAT.

WHAT a valuable servant is Gas, and how dreadfully we should cry out were
it to be banished from our homes; and yet no one who loves his books
should allow a single jet in his library, unless, indeed he can afford a
“sun light,” which is the form in which it is used in some public
libraries, where the whole of the fumes are carried at once into the open
air.

Unfortunately, I can speak from experience of the dire effect of gas in a
confined space. Some years ago when placing the shelves round the small
room, which, by a euphemism, is called my library, I took the precaution
of making two self-acting ventilators which communicated directly with the
outer air just under the ceiling. For economy of space as well as of
temper (for lamps of all kinds are sore trials), I had a gasalier of three
lights over the table. The effect was to cause great heat in the upper
regions, and in the course of a year or two the leather valance which hung
from the window, as well as the fringe which dropped half-an-inch from
each shelf to keep out the dust, was just like tinder, and in some parts
actually fell to the ground by its own weight; while the backs of the
books upon the top shelves were perished, and crumbled away when touched,
being reduced to the consistency of Scotch snuff. This was, of course, due
to the sulphur in the gas fumes. I remember having a book some years ago
from the top shelf in the library of the London Institution, where gas is
used, and the whole of the back fell off in my hands, although the volume
in other respects seemed quite uninjured. Thousands more were in a similar
plight.

As the paper of the volumes is uninjured, it might be objected that, after
all, gas is not so much the enemy of the book itself as of its covering;
but then, re-binding always leaves a book smaller, and often deprives it
of leaves at the beginning or end, which the binder’s wisdom has thought
useless. Oh! the havoc I have seen committed by binders. You may assume
your most impressive aspect—you may write down your instructions as
if you were making your last will and testament—you may swear you
will not pay if your books are ploughed—’tis all in vain—the
creed of a binder is very short, and comprised in a single article, and
that article is the one vile word “Shavings.” But not now will I follow
this depressing subject; binders, as enemies of books, deserve, and shall
have, a whole chapter to themselves.

It is much easier to decry gas than to find a remedy. Sun lights require
especial arrangements, and are very expensive on account of the quantity
of gas consumed. The library illumination of the future promises to be the
electric light. If only steady and moderate in price, it would be a great
boon to public libraries, and perhaps the day is not far distant when it
will replace gas, even in private houses. That will, indeed, be a day of
jubilee to the literary labourer. The injury done by gas is so generally
acknowledged by the heads of our national libraries, that it is strictly
excluded from their domains, although the danger from explosion and fire,
even if the results of combustion were innocuous, would be sufficient
cause for its banishment.

The electric light has been in use for some months in the Reading Room of
the British Museum, and is a great boon to the readers. The light is not
quite equally diffused, and you must choose particular positions if you
want to work happily. There is a great objection, too, in the humming fizz
which accompanies the action of the electricity. There is a still greater
objection when small pieces of hot chalk fall on your bald head, an
annoyance which has been lately (1880) entirely removed by placing a
receptacle beneath each burner. You require also to become accustomed to
the whiteness of the light before you can altogether forget it. But with
all its faults it confers a great boon upon students, enabling them not
only to work three hours longer in the winter-time, but restoring to them
the use of foggy and dark days, in which formerly no book-work at all
could be pursued. (1)

Heat alone, without any noxious fumes, is, if continuous, very injurious
to books, and, without gas, bindings may be utterly destroyed by
desiccation, the leather losing all its natural oils by long exposure to
much heat. It is, therefore, a great pity to place books high up in a room
where heat of any kind is as it must rise to the top, and if sufficient to
be of comfort to the readers below, is certain to be hot enough above to
injure the bindings.

The surest way to preserve your books in health is to treat them as you
would your own children, who are sure to sicken if confined in an
atmosphere which is impure, too hot, too cold, too damp, or too dry. It is
just the same with the progeny of literature.

If any credence may be given to Monkish legends, books have sometimes been
preserved in this world, only to meet a desiccating fate in the world to
come. The story is probably an invention of the enemy to throw discredit
on the learning and ability of the preaching Friars, an Order which was at
constant war with the illiterate secular Clergy. It runs thus:—”In
the year 1439, two Minorite friars who had all their lives collected
books, died. In accordance with popular belief, they were at once
conducted before the heavenly tribunal to hear their doom, taking with
them two asses laden with books. At Heaven’s gate the porter demanded,
‘Whence came ye?’ The Minorites replied ‘From a monastery of St. Francis.’
‘Oh!’ said the porter, ‘then St. Francis shall be your judge.’ So that
saint was summoned, and at sight of the friars and their burden demanded
who they were, and why they had brought so many books with them. ‘We are
Minorites,’ they humbly replied, ‘and we have brought these few books with
us as a solatium in the new Jerusalem.’ ‘And you, when on earth, practised
the good they teach?’ sternly demanded the saint, who read their
characters at a glance. Their faltering reply was sufficient, and the
blessed saint at once passed judgment as follows:—’Insomuch as,
seduced by a foolish vanity, and against your vows of poverty, you have
amassed this multitude of books and thereby and therefor have neglected
the duties and broken the rules of your Order, you are now sentenced to
read your books for ever and ever in the fires of Hell.’ Immediately, a
roaring noise filled the air, and a flaming chasm opened in which friars,
and asses and books were suddenly engulphed.”

CHAPTER IV. DUST AND NEGLECT.

DUST upon Books to any extent points to neglect, and neglect means more or
less slow Decay.

A well-gilt top to a book is a great preventive against damage by dust,
while to leave books with rough tops and unprotected is sure to produce
stains and dirty margins.

In olden times, when few persons had private collections of books, the
collegiate and corporate libraries were of great use to students. The
librarians’ duties were then no sinecure, and there was little opportunity
for dust to find a resting-place. The Nineteenth Century and the Steam
Press ushered in a new era. By degrees the libraries which were unendowed
fell behind the age, and were consequently neglected. No new works found
their way in, and the obsolete old books were left uncared for and
unvisited. I have seen many old libraries, the doors of which remained
unopened from week’s end to week’s end; where you inhaled the dust of
paper-decay with every breath, and could not take up a book without
sneezing; where old boxes, full of older literature, served as preserves
for the bookworm, without even an autumn “battue” to thin the breed.
Occasionally these libraries were (I speak of thirty years ago) put even
to vile uses, such as would have shocked all ideas of propriety could our
ancestors have foreseen their fate.

I recall vividly a bright summer morning many years ago, when, in search
of Caxtons, I entered the inner quadrangle of a certain wealthy College in
one of our learned Universities. The buildings around were charming in
their grey tones and shady nooks. They had a noble history, too, and their
scholarly sons were (and are) not unworthy successors of their ancestral
renown. The sun shone warmly, and most of the casements were open. From
one came curling a whiff of tobacco; from another the hum of conversation;
from a third the tones of a piano. A couple of undergraduates sauntered on
the shady side, arm in arm, with broken caps and torn gowns—proud
insignia of their last term. The grey stone walls were covered with ivy,
except where an old dial with its antiquated Latin inscription kept count
of the sun’s ascent. The chapel on one side, only distinguishable from the
“rooms” by the shape of its windows, seemed to keep watch over the
morality of the foundation, just as the dining-hall opposite, from whence
issued a white-aproned cook, did of its worldly prosperity. As you trod
the level pavement, you passed comfortable—nay, dainty—apartments,
where lace curtains at the windows, antimacassars on the chairs, the
silver biscuit-box and the thin-stemmed wine-glass moderated academic
toils. Gilt-backed books on gilded shelf or table caught the eye, and as
you turned your glance from the luxurious interiors to the well-shorn lawn
in the Quad., with its classic fountain also gilded by sunbeams, the
mental vision saw plainly written over the whole “The Union of Luxury and
Learning.”

Surely here, thought I, if anywhere, the old world literature will be
valued and nursed with gracious care; so with a pleasing sense of the
general congruity of all around me, I enquired for the rooms of the
librarian. Nobody seemed to be quite sure of his name, or upon whom the
bibliographical mantle had descended. His post, it seemed, was honorary
and a sinecure, being imposed, as a rule, upon the youngest “Fellow.” No
one cared for the appointment, and as a matter of course the keys of
office had but distant acquaintance with the lock. At last I was rewarded
with success, and politely, but mutely, conducted by the librarian into
his kingdom of dust and silence. The dark portraits of past benefactors
looked after us from their dusty old frames in dim astonishment as we
passed, evidently wondering whether we meant “work”; book-decay—that
peculiar flavour which haunts certain libraries—was heavy in the
air, the floor was dusty, making the sunbeams as we passed bright with
atoms; the shelves were dusty, the “stands” in the middle were thick with
dust, the old leather table in the bow window, and the chairs on either
side, were very dusty. Replying to a question, my conductor thought there
was a manuscript catalogue of the Library somewhere, but thought, also,
that it was not easy to find any books by it, and he knew not at the
minute where to put his hand upon it. The Library, he said, was of little
use now, as the Fellows had their own books and very seldom required 17th
and 18th century editions, and no new books had been added to the
collection for a long time.

We passed down a few steps into an inner library where piles of early
folios were wasting away on the ground. Beneath an old ebony table were
two long carved oak chests. I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a
once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts—Commonwealth
quartos, unbound—a prey to worms and decay. All was neglect. The
outer door of this room, which was open, was nearly on a level with the
Quadrangle; some coats, and trousers, and boots were upon the ebony table,
and a “gyp” was brushing away at them just within the door—in wet
weather he performed these functions entirely within the library—as
innocent of the incongruity of his position as my guide himself. Oh!
Richard of Bury, I sighed, for a sharp stone from your sling to pierce
with indignant sarcasm the mental armour of these College dullards.

Happily, things are altered now, and the disgrace of such neglect no
longer hangs on the College. Let us hope, in these days of revived respect
for antiquity, no other College library is in a similar plight.

Not Englishmen alone are guilty, however, of such unloving treatment of
their bibliographical treasures. The following is translated from an
interesting work just published in Paris, (1) and shows how, even at this
very time, and in the centre of the literary activity of France, books
meet their fate.

M. Derome loquitur:—

“Let us now enter the communal library of some large provincial town. The
interior has a lamentable appearance; dust and disorder have made it their
home. It has a librarian, but he has the consideration of a porter only,
and goes but once a week to see the state of the books committed to his
care; they are in a bad state, piled in heaps and perishing in corners for
want of attention and binding. At this present time (1879) more than one
public library in Paris could be mentioned in which thousands of books are
received annually, all of which will have disappeared in the course of 50
years or so for want of binding; there are rare books, impossible to
replace, falling to pieces because no care is given to them, that is to
say, they are left unbound, a prey to dust and the worm, and cannot be
touched without dismemberment.”

“All history shows that this neglect belongs not to any particular age or
nation. I extract the following story from Edmond Werdet’s Histoire du
Livre.” (1)

“The Poet Boccaccio, when travelling in Apulia, was anxious to visit the
celebrated Convent of Mount Cassin, especially to see its library, of
which he had heard much. He accosted, with great courtesy, one of the
monks whose countenance attracted him, and begged him to have the kindness
to show him the library. ‘See for yourself,’ said the monk, brusquely,
pointing at the same time to an old stone staircase, broken with age.
Boccaccio hastily mounted in great joy at the prospect of a grand
bibliographical treat. Soon he reached the room, which was without key or
even door as protection to its treasures. What was his astonishment to see
that the grass growing in the window-sills actually darkened the room, and
that all the books and seats were an inch thick in dust. In utter
astonishment he lifted one book after another. All were manuscripts of
extreme antiquity, but all were dreadfully dilapidated. Many had lost
whole sections which had been violently extracted, and in many all the
blank margins of the vellum had been cut away. In fact, the mutilation was
thorough.

“Grieved at seeing the work and the wisdom of so many illustrious men
fallen into the hands of custodians so unworthy, Boccaccio descended with
tears in his eyes. In the cloisters he met another monk, and enquired of
him how the MSS. had become so mutilated. ‘Oh!’ he replied, ‘we are
obliged, you know, to earn a few sous for our needs, so we cut away the
blank margins of the manuscripts for writing upon, and make of them small
books of devotion, which we sell to women and children.”

As a postscript to this story, Mr. Timmins, of Birmingham, informs me that
the treasures of the Monte Cassino Library are better cared for now than
in Boccaccio’s days, the worthy prior being proud of his valuable MSS. and
very willing to show them. It will interest many readers to know that
there is now a complete printing office, lithographic as well as
typographic, at full work in one large room of the Monastery, where their
wonderful MS. of Dante has been already reprinted, and where other
fac-simile works are now in progress.

CHAPTER V. IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY.

IGNORANCE, though not in the same category as fire and water, is a great
destroyer of books. At the Reformation so strong was the antagonism of the
people generally to anything like the old idolatry of the Romish Church,
that they destroyed by thousands books, secular as well as sacred, if they
contained but illuminated letters. Unable to read, they saw no difference
between romance and a psalter, between King Arthur and King David; and so
the paper books with all their artistic ornaments went to the bakers to
heat their ovens, and the parchment manuscripts, however beautifully
illuminated, to the binders and boot makers.

There is another kind of ignorance which has often worked destruction, as
shown by the following anecdote, which is extracted from a letter written
in 1862 by M. Philarete Chasles to Mr. B. Beedham, of Kimbolton:—

“Ten years ago, when turning out an old closet in the Mazarin Library, of
which I am librarian, I discovered at the bottom, under a lot of old rags
and rubbish, a large volume. It had no cover nor title-page, and had been
used to light the fires of the librarians. This shows how great was the
negligence towards our literary treasure before the Revolution; for the
pariah volume, which, 60 years before, had been placed in the Invalides,
and which had certainly formed part of the original Mazarin collections,
turned out to be a fine and genuine Caxton.”

I saw this identical volume in the Mazarin Library in April, 1880. It is a
noble copy of the First Edition of the “Golden Legend,” 1483, but of
course very imperfect.

Among the millions of events in this world which cross and re-cross one
another, remarkable coincidences must often occur; and a case exactly
similar to that at the Mazarin Library, happened about the same time in
London, at the French Protestant Church, St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Many years
ago I discovered there, in a dirty pigeon hole close to the grate in the
vestry, a fearfully mutilated copy of Caxton’s edition of the Canterbury
Tales, with woodcuts. Like the book at Paris, it had long been used, leaf
by leaf, in utter ignorance of its value, to light the vestry fire.
Originally worth at least L800, it was then worth half, and, of course, I
energetically drew the attention of the minister in charge to it, as well
as to another grand Folio by Rood and Hunte, 1480. Some years elapsed, and
then the Ecclesiastical Commissioners took the foundation in hand, but
when at last Trustees were appointed, and the valuable library was
re-arranged and catalogued, this “Caxton,” together with the fine copy of
“Latterbury” from the first Oxford Press, had disappeared entirely.
Whatever ignorance may have been displayed in the mutilation, quite
another word should be applied to the disappearance.

The following anecdote is so apropos, that although it has lately
appeared in No. 1 of The Antiquary, I cannot resist the temptation
of re-printing it, as a warning to inheritors of old libraries. The
account was copied by me years ago from a letter written in 1847, by the
Rev. C. F. Newmarsh, Rector of Pelham, to the Rev. S. R. Maitland,
Librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and is as follows:—

“In June, 1844, a pedlar called at a cottage in Blyton and asked an old
widow, named Naylor, whether she had any rags to sell. She answered, No!
but offered him some old paper, and took from a shelf the ‘Boke of St.
Albans’ and others, weighing 9 lbs., for which she received 9d. The
pedlar carried them through Gainsborough tied up in string, past a
chemist’s shop, who, being used to buy old paper to wrap his drugs in,
called the man in, and, struck by the appearance of the ‘Boke,’ gave him 3s.
for the lot. Not being able to read the Colophon, he took it to an equally
ignorant stationer, and offered it to him for a guinea, at which price he
declined it, but proposed that it should be exposed in his window as a
means of eliciting some information about it. It was accordingly placed
there with this label, ‘Very old curious work.’ A collector of books went
in and offered half-a-crown for it, which excited the suspicion of the
vendor. Soon after Mr. Bird, Vicar of Gainsborough, went in and asked the
price, wishing to possess a very early specimen of printing, but not
knowing the value of the book. While he was examining it, Stark, a very
intelligent bookseller, came in, to whom Mr. Bird at once ceded the right
of pre-emption. Stark betrayed such visible anxiety that the vendor,
Smith, declined setting a price. Soon after Sir C. Anderson, of Lea
(author of Ancient Models), came in and took away the book to collate, but
brought it back in the morning having found it imperfect in the middle,
and offered L5 for it. Sir Charles had no book of reference to guide him
to its value. But in the meantime, Stark had employed a friend to obtain
for him the refusal of it, and had undertaken to give for it a little more
than any sum Sir Charles might offer. On finding that at least L5 could be
got for it, Smith went to the chemist and gave him two guineas, and then
sold it to Stark’s agent for seven guineas. Stark took it to London, and
sold it at once to the Rt. Hon. Thos. Grenville for seventy pounds or
guineas.

“I have now shortly to state how it came that a book without covers of
such extreme age was preserved. About fifty years since, the library of
Thonock Hall, in the parish of Gainsborough, the seat of the Hickman
family, underwent great repairs, the books being sorted over by a most
ignorant person, whose selection seems to have been determined by the
coat. All books without covers were thrown into a great heap, and
condemned to all the purposes which Leland laments in the sack of the
conventual libraries by the visitors. But they found favour in the eyes of
a literate gardener, who begged leave to take what he liked home. He
selected a large quantity of Sermons preached before the House of Commons,
local pamphlets, tracts from 1680 to 1710, opera books, etc. He made a
list of them, which I found afterwards in the cottage. In the list, No. 43
was ‘Cotarmouris,’ or the Boke of St. Albans. The old fellow was something
of a herald, and drew in his books what he held to be his coat. After his
death, all that could be stuffed into a large chest were put away in a
garret; but a few favourites, and the ‘Boke’ among them remained on the
kitchen shelves for years, till his son’s widow grew so ‘stalled’ of
dusting them that she determined to sell them. Had she been in poverty, I
should have urged the buyer, Stark, the duty of giving her a small sum out
of his great gains.”

Such chances as this do not fall to a man’s lot twice; but Edmond Werdet
relates a story very similar indeed, and where also the “plums” fell into
the lap of a London dealer.

In 1775, the Recollet Monks of Antwerp, wishing to make a reform, examined
their library, and determined to get rid of about 1,500 volumes—some
manuscript and some printed, but all of which they considered as old
rubbish of no value.

At first they were thrown into the gardener’s rooms; but, after some
months, they decided in their wisdom to give the whole refuse to the
gardener as a recognition of his long services.

This man, wiser in his generation than these simple fathers, took the lot
to M. Vanderberg, an amateur and man of education. M. Vanderberg took a
cursory view, and then offered to buy them by weight at sixpence per
pound. The bargain was at once concluded, and M. Vanderberg had the books.

Shortly after, Mr. Stark, a well-known London bookseller, being in
Antwerp, called on M. Vanderberg, and was shown the books. He at once
offered 14,000 francs for them, which was accepted. Imagine the surprise
and chagrin of the poor monks when they heard of it! They knew they had no
remedy, and so dumbfounded were they by their own ignorance, that they
humbly requested M. Vanderberg to relieve their minds by returning some
portion of his large gains. He gave them 1,200 francs.

The great Shakespearian and other discoveries, which were found in a
garret at Lamport Hall in 1867 by Mr. Edmonds, are too well-known and too
recent to need description. In this case mere chance seems to have led to
the preservation of works, the very existence of which set the ears of all
lovers of Shakespeare a-tingling.

In the summer of 1877, a gentleman with whom I was well acquainted took
lodgings in Preston Street, Brighton. The morning after his arrival, he
found in the w.c. some leaves of an old black-letter book. He asked
permission to retain them, and enquired if there were any more where they
came from. Two or three other fragments were found, and the landlady
stated that her father, who was fond of antiquities, had at one time a
chest full of old black-letter books; that, upon his death, they were
preserved till she was tired of seeing them, and then, supposing them of
no value, she had used them for waste; that for two years and a-half they
had served for various household purposes, but she had just come to the
end of them. The fragments preserved, and now in my possession, are a
goodly portion of one of the most rare books from the press of Wynkyn de
Worde, Caxton’s successor. The title is a curious woodcut with the words
“Gesta Romanorum” engraved in an odd-shaped black letter. It has also
numerous rude wood-cuts throughout. It was from this very work that
Shakespeare in all probability derived the story of the three caskets
which in “The Merchant of Venice” forms so integral a portion of the plot.
Only think of that cloaca being supplied daily with such dainty
bibliographical treasures!

In the Lansdowne Collection at the British Museum is a volume containing
three manuscript dramas of Queen Elizabeth’s time, and on a fly-leaf is a
list of fifty-eight plays, with this note at the foot, in the handwriting
of the well-known antiquary, Warburton:

“After I had been many years collecting these Manuscript Playes, through
my own carelessness and the ignorance of my servant, they was unluckely
burned or put under pye bottoms.”

Some of these “Playes” are preserved in print, but others are quite
unknown and perished for ever when used as “pye-bottoms.”

Mr. W. B. Rye, late Keeper of the Printed Books at our great National
Library, thus writes:—

“On the subject of ignorance you should some day, when at the British
Museum, look at Lydgate’s translation of Boccaccio’s ‘Fall of Princes,’
printed by Pynson in 1494. It is ‘liber rarissimus.’ This copy when
perfect had been very fine and quite uncut. On one fine summer afternoon
in 1874 it was brought to me by a tradesman living at Lamberhurst. Many of
the leaves had been cut into squares, and the whole had been rescued from
a tobacconist’s shop, where the pieces were being used to wrap up tobacco
and snuff. The owner wanted to buy a new silk gown for his wife, and was
delighted with three guineas for this purpose. You will notice how
cleverly the British Museum binder has joined the leaves, making it,
although still imperfect, a fine book.”

Referring to the carelessness exhibited by some custodians of Parish
Registers,

Mr. Noble, who has had great experience in such matters, writes:—

“A few months ago I wanted a search made of the time of Charles I in one
of the most interesting registers in a large town (which shall be
nameless) in England. I wrote to the custodian of it, and asked him kindly
to do the search for me, and if he was unable to read the names to get
some one who understood the writing of that date to decipher the entries
for me. I did not have a reply for a fortnight, but one morning the
postman brought me a very large unregistered book-packet, which I found to
be the original Parish Registers! He, however, addressed a note with it
stating that he thought it best to send me the document itself to look at,
and begged me to be good enough to return the Register to him as soon as
done with. He evidently wished to serve me—his ignorance of
responsibility without doubt proving his kindly disposition, and on that
account alone I forbear to name him; but I can assure you I was heartily
glad to have a letter from him in due time announcing that the precious
documents were once more locked up in the parish chest. Certainly, I think
such as he to be ‘Enemies of books.’ Don’t you?”

Bigotry has also many sins to answer for. The late M. Muller, of
Amsterdam, a bookseller of European fame, wrote to me as follows a few
weeks before his death:—

“Of course, we also, in Holland, have many Enemies of books, and if I were
happy enough to have your spirit and style I would try and write a
companion volume to yours. Now I think the best thing I can do is to give
you somewhat of my experience. You say that the discovery of printing has
made the destruction of anybody’s books difficult. At this I am bound to
say that the Inquisition did succeed most successfully, by burning
heretical books, in destroying numerous volumes invaluable for their
wholesome contents. Indeed, I beg to state to you the amazing fact that
here in Holland exists an Ultramontane Society called ‘Old Paper,’ which
is under the sanction of the six Catholic Bishops of the Netherlands, and
is spread over the whole kingdom. The openly-avowed object of this Society
is to buy up and to destroy as waste paper all the Protestant and Liberal
Catholic newspapers, pamphlets and books, the price of which is offered to
the Pope as ‘Deniers de St. Pierre.’ Of course, this Society is very
little known among Protestants, and many have denied even its existence;
but I have been fortunate enough to obtain a printed circular issued by
one of the Bishops containing statistics of the astounding mass of paper
thus collected, producing in one district alone the sum of L1,200 in three
months. I need not tell you that this work is strongly promoted by the
Catholic clergy. You can have no idea of the difficulty we now have in
procuring certain books published but 30, 40, or 50 years ago of an
ephemeral character. Historical and theological books are very rare;
novels and poetry of that period are absolutely not to be found; medical
and law books are more common. I am bound to say that in no country have
more books been printed and more destroyed than in Holland. W. MULLER.”

The policy of buying up all objectionable literature seems to me, I
confess, very short-sighted, and in most cases would lead to a greatly
increased reprint; it certainly would in these latitudes.

From the Church of Rome to the Church of England is no great leap, and Mr.
Smith, the Brighton bookseller, gives evidence thus:—

“It may be worth your while to note that the clergy of the last two
centuries ought to be included in your list (of Biblioclasts). I have had
painful experience of the fact in the following manner. Numbers of volumes
in their libraries have had a few leaves removed, and in many others whole
sections torn out. I suppose it served their purpose thus to use the
wisdom of greater men and that they thus economised their own time by
tearing out portions to suit their purpose. The hardship to the trade is
this: their books are purchased in good faith as perfect, and when resold
the buyer is quick to claim damage if found defective, while the seller
has no redress.”

Among the careless destroyers of books still at work should be classed
Government officials. Cart-loads of interesting documents, bound and
unbound, have been sold at various times as waste-paper, (1) when modern
red-tape thought them but rubbish. Some of them have been rescued and
resold at high prices, but some have been lost for ever.

In 1854 a very interesting series of blue books was commenced by the
authorities of the Patent Office, of course paid for out of the national
purse. Beginning with the year 1617 the particulars of every important
patent were printed from the original specifications and fac-simile
drawings made, where necessary, for the elucidation of the text. A very
moderate price was charged for each, only indeed the prime cost of
production. The general public, of course, cared little for such
literature, but those interested in the origin and progress of any
particular art, cared much, and many sets of Patents were purchased by
those engaged in research. But the great bulk of the stock was, to some
extent, inconvenient, and so when a removal to other offices, in 1879,
became necessary, the question arose as to what could be done with them.
These blue-books, which had cost the nation many thousands of pounds, were
positively sold to the paper mills as wastepaper, and nearly 100 tons
weight were carted away at about L3 per ton. It is difficult to believe,
although positively true, that so great an act of vandalism could have
been perpetrated, even in a Government office. It is true that no demand
existed for some of them, but it is equally true that in numerous cases,
especially in the early specifications of the steam engine and printing
machine, the want of them has caused great disappointment. To add a climax
to the story, many of the “pulped” specifications have had to be reprinted
more than once since their destruction.

CHAPTER VI. THE BOOKWORM.

A most destructive Enemy of books has been the bookworm. I say “has been,”
because, fortunately, his ravages in all civilised countries have been
greatly restricted during the last fifty years. This is due partly to the
increased reverence for antiquity which has been universally developed—more
still to the feeling of cupidity, which has caused all owners to take care
of volumes which year by year have become more valuable—and, to some
considerable extent, to the falling off in the production of edible books.

The monks, who were the chief makers as well as the custodians of books,
through the long ages we call “dark,” because so little is known of them,
had no fear of the bookworm before their eyes, for, ravenous as he is and
was, he loves not parchment, and at that time paper was not. Whether at a
still earlier period he attacked the papyrus, the paper of the Egyptians,
I know not—probably he did, as it was a purely vegetable substance;
and if so, it is quite possible that the worm of to-day, in such evil
repute with us, is the lineal descendant of ravenous ancestors who plagued
the sacred Priests of On in the time of Joseph’s Pharaoh, by destroying
their title deeds and their books of Science.

Rare things and precious, as manuscripts were before the invention of
typography, are well preserved, but when the printing press was invented
and paper books were multiplied in the earth; when libraries increased and
readers were many, then familiarity bred contempt; books were packed in
out-of-the-way places and neglected, and the oft-quoted, though seldom
seen, bookworm became an acknowledged tenant of the library, and the
mortal enemy of the bibliophile.

Anathemas have been hurled against this pest in nearly every European
language, old and new, and classical scholars of bye-gone centuries have
thrown their spondees and dactyls at him. Pierre Petit, in 1683, devoted a
long Latin poem to his dis-praise, and Parnell’s charming Ode is well
known. Hear the poet lament:—

and then—

while Petit, who was evidently moved by strong personal feelings against
the “invisum pecus,” as he calls him, addresses his little enemy as
“Bestia audax” and “Pestis chartarum.”

But, as a portrait commonly precedes a biography, the curious reader may
wish to be told what this “Bestia audax,” who so greatly ruffles the
tempers of our eclectics, is like. Here, at starting, is a serious
chameleon-like difficulty, for the bookworm offers to us, if we are guided
by their words, as many varieties of size and shape as there are
beholders.

Sylvester, in his “Laws of Verse,” with more words than wit, described him
as “a microscopic creature wriggling on the learned page, which, when
discovered, stiffens out into the resemblance of a streak of dirt.”

The earliest notice is in “Micrographia,” by R. Hooke, folio, London,
1665. This work, which was printed at the expense of the Royal Society of
London, is an account of innumerable things examined by the author under
the microscope, and is most interesting for the frequent accuracy of the
author’s observations, and most amusing for his equally frequent blunders.

In his account of the bookworm, his remarks, which are rather long and
very minute, are absurdly blundering. He calls it “a small white
Silver-shining Worm or Moth, which I found much conversant among books and
papers, and is supposed to be that which corrodes and eats holes thro’ the
leaves and covers. Its head appears bigg and blunt, and its body tapers
from it towards the tail, smaller and smaller, being shap’d almost like a
carret…. It has two long horns before, which are streight, and tapering
towards the top, curiously ring’d or knobb’d and brisled much like the
marsh weed called Horses tail…. The hinder part is terminated with three
tails, in every particular resembling the two longer horns that grow out
of the head. The legs are scal’d and hair’d. This animal probably feeds
upon the paper and covers of books, and perforates in them several small
round holes, finding perhaps a convenient nourishment in those husks of
hemp and flax, which have passed through so many scourings, washings,
dressings, and dryings as the parts of old paper necessarily have
suffer’d. And, indeed, when I consider what a heap of sawdust or chips
this little creature (which is one of the teeth of Time) conveys into its
intrals, I cannot chuse but remember and admire the excellent contrivance
of Nature in placing in animals such a fire, as is continually nourished
and supply’d by the materials convey’d into the stomach and fomented by
the bellows of the lungs.” The picture or “image,” which accompanies this
description, is wonderful to behold. Certainly R. Hooke, Fellow of the
Royal Society, drew somewhat upon his imagination here, having apparently
evolved both engraving and description from his inner consciousness. (1)

Entomologists even do not appear to have paid much attention to the
natural history of the “Worm.” Kirby, speaking of it, says, “the larvae of
Crambus pinguinalis spins a robe which it covers with its own excrement,
and does no little injury.” Again, “I have often observed the caterpillar
of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, and there
commits great ravages, and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days
of bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been
snatched by these devastators,” etc., etc.

As already quoted, Doraston’s description is very vague. To him he is in
one verse “a sort of busy worm,” and in another “a puny rankling reptile.”
Hannett, in his work on book-binding, gives “Aglossa pinguinalis” as the
real name, and Mrs. Gatty, in her Parables, christens it “Hypothenemus
cruditus.”

The, Rev. F. T. Havergal, who many years ago had much trouble with
bookworms in the Cathedral Library of Hereford, says they are a kind of
death-watch, with a “hard outer skin, and are dark brown,” another sort
“having white bodies with brown spots on their heads.” Mr. Holme, in
“Notes and Queries” for 1870, states that the “Anobium paniceum” has done
considerable injury to the Arabic manuscripts brought from Cairo, by
Burckhardt, and now in the University Library, Cambridge. Other writers
say “Acarus eruditus” or “Anobium pertinax” are the correct scientific
names.

Personally, I have come across but few specimens; nevertheless, from what
I have been told by librarians, and judging from analogy, I imagine the
following to be about the truth:—

There are several kinds of caterpillar and grub, which eat into books,
those with legs are the larvae of moths; those without legs, or rather
with rudimentary legs, are grubs and turn to beetles.

It is not known whether any species of caterpillar or grub can live
generation after generation upon books alone, but several sorts of
wood-borers, and others which live upon vegetable refuse, will attack
paper, especially if attracted in the first place by the real wooden
boards in which it was the custom of the old book-binders to clothe their
volumes. In this belief, some country librarians object to opening the
library windows lest the enemy should fly in from the neighbouring woods,
and rear a brood of worms. Anyone, indeed, who has seen a hole in a
filbert, or a piece of wood riddled by dry rot, will recognize a
similarity of appearance in the channels made by these insect enemies.

Among the paper-eating species are:—

1. The “Anobium.” Of this beetle there are varieties, viz.: “A. pertinax,”
“A. eruditus,” and “A. paniceum.” In the larval state they are grubs, just
like those found, in nuts; in this stage they are too much alike to be
distinguished from one another. They feed on old dry wood, and often
infest bookcases and shelves. They eat the wooden boards of old books, and
so pass into the paper where they make long holes quite round, except when
they work in a slanting direction, when the holes appear to be oblong.
They will thus pierce through several volumes in succession, Peignot, the
well-known bibliographer, having found 27 volumes so pierced in a straight
line by one worm, a miracle of gluttony, the story of which, for myself, I
receive “cum grano salis.” After a certain time the larva changes
into a pupa, and then emerges as a small brown beetle.

2. “Oecophora.”—This larva is similar in size to that of Anobium,
but can be distinguished at once by having legs. It is a caterpillar, with
six legs upon its thorax and eight sucker-like protuberances on its body,
like a silk-worm. It changes into a chrysalis, and then assumes its
perfect shape as a small brown moth. The species that attacks books is the
OEcophora pseudospretella. It loves damp and warmth, and eats any fibrous
material. This caterpillar is quite unlike any garden species, and,
excepting the legs, is very similar in appearance and size to the Anobium.
It is about half-inch long, with a horny head and strong jaws. To
printers’ ink or writing ink he appears to have no great dislike, though I
imagine that the former often disagrees with his health, unless he is very
robust, as in books where the print is pierced a majority of the
worm-holes I have seen are too short in extent to have provided food
enough for the development of the grub. But, although the ink may be
unwholesome, many grubs survive, and, eating day and night in silence and
darkness, work out their destiny leaving, according to the strength of
their constitutions, a longer or shorter tunnel in the volume.

In December, 1879, Mr. Birdsall, a well-known book-binder of Northampton,
kindly sent me by post a fat little Worm, which had been found by one of
his workmen in an old book while being bound. He bore his journey
extremely well, being very lively when turned out. I placed him in a box
in warmth and quiet, with some small fragments of paper from a Boethius,
printed by Caxton, and a leaf of a seventeenth century book. He ate a
small piece of the leaf, but either from too much fresh air, from
unaccustomed liberty, or from change of food, he gradually weakened, and
died in about three weeks. I was sorry to lose him, as I wished to verify
his name in his perfect state. Mr. Waterhouse, of the Entomological
department of the British Museum, very kindly examined him before death,
and was of opinion he was OEcophora pseudospretella.

In July, 1885, Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum, gave me two worms which
had been found in an old Hebrew Commentary just received from Athens. They
had doubtless had a good shaking on the journey, and one was moribund when
I took charge, and joined his defunct kindred in a few days. The other
seemed hearty and lived with me for nearly eighteen months. I treated him
as well as I knew how; placed him in a small box with the choice of three
sorts of old paper to eat, and very seldom disturbed him. He evidently
resented his confinement, ate very little, moved very little, and changed
in appearance very little, even when dead. This Greek worm, filled with
Hebrew lore, differed in many respects from any other I have seen. He was
longer, thinner, and more delicate looking than any of his English
congeners. He was transparent, like thin ivory, and had a dark line
through his body, which I took to be the intestinal canal. He resigned his
life with extreme procrastination, and died “deeply lamented” by his
keeper, who had long looked forward to his final development.

The difficulty of breeding these worms is probably due to their formation.
When in a state of nature they can by expansion and contraction of the
body working upon the sides of their holes, push their horny jaws against
the opposing mass of paper. But when freed from the restraint, which
indeed to them is life, they CANNOT eat although surrounded with food, for
they have no legs to keep them steady, and their natural, leverage is
wanting.

Considering the numerous old books contained in the British Museum, the
Library there is wonderfully free from the worm. Mr. Rye, lately the
Keeper of the Printed Books there, writes me “Two or three were discovered
in my time, but they were weakly creatures. One, I remember, was conveyed
into the Natural History Department, and was taken into custody by Mr.
Adam White who pronounced it to be Anobium pertinax. I never heard of it
after.”

The reader, who has not had an opportunity of examining old libraries, can
have no idea of the dreadful havoc which these pests are capable of
making.

I have now before me a fine folio volume, printed on very good unbleached
paper, as thick as stout cartridge, in the year 1477, by Peter Schoeffer,
of Mentz. Unfortunately, after a period of neglect in which it suffered
severely from the “worm,” it was about fifty years ago considered worth a
new cover, and so again suffered severely, this time at the hands of the
binder. Thus the original state of the boards is unknown, but the damage
done to the leaves can be accurately described.

The “worms” have attacked each end. On the first leaf are 212 distinct
holes, varying in size from a common pin hole to that which a stout
knitting-needle would make, say, [1/16] to [1/23] inch. These holes run
mostly in lines more or less at right angles with the covers, a very few
being channels along the paper affecting three or four sheets only. The
varied energy of these little pests is thus represented:—

These 90 leaves being stout, are about the thickness of 1 inch. The volume
has 250 leaves, and turning to the end, we find on the last leaf 81 holes,
made by a breed of worms not so ravenous. Thus,

It is curious to notice how the holes, rapidly at first, and then slowly
and more slowly, disappear. You trace the same hole leaf after leaf, until
suddenly the size becomes in one leaf reduced to half its normal diameter,
and a close examination will show a small abrasion of the paper in the
next leaf exactly where the hole would have come if continued. In the book
quoted it is just as if there had been a race. In the first ten leaves the
weak worms are left behind; in the second ten there are still forty-eight
eaters; these are reduced to thirty-one in the third ten, and to only
eighteen in the fourth ten. On folio 51 only six worms hold on, and before
folio 61 two of them have given in. Before reaching folio 7, it is a neck
and neck race between two sturdy gourmands, each making a fine large hole,
one of them being oval in shape. At folio 71 they are still neck and neck,
and at folio 81 the same. At folio 87 the oval worm gives in, the round
one eating three more leaves and part way through the fourth. The leaves
of the book are then untouched until we reach the sixty-ninth from the
end, upon which is one worm hole. After this they go on multiplying to the
end of the book.

I have quoted this instance because I have it handy, but many worms eat
much longer holes than any in this volume; some I have seen running quite
through a couple of thick volumes, covers and all. In the “Schoeffer” book
the holes are probably the work of Anobium pertinax, because the centre is
spared and both ends attacked. Originally, real wooden boards were the
covers of the volume, and here, doubtless, the attack was commenced, which
was carried through each board into the paper of the book.

I remember well my first visit to the Bodleian Library, in the year 1858,
Dr. Bandinel being then the librarian. He was very kind, and afforded me
every facility for examining the fine collection of “Caxtons,” which was
the object of my journey. In looking over a parcel of black-letter
fragments, which had been in a drawer for a long time, I came across a
small grub, which, without a thought, I threw on the floor and trod under
foot. Soon after I found another, a fat, glossy fellow, so long —-,
which I carefully preserved in a little paper box, intending to observe
his habits and development. Seeing Dr. Bandinel near, I asked him to look
at my curiosity. Hardly, however, had I turned the wriggling little victim
out upon the leather-covered table, when down came the doctor’s great
thumb-nail upon him, and an inch-long smear proved the tomb of all my
hopes, while the great bibliographer, wiping his thumb on his coat sleeve,
passed on with the remark, “Oh, yes! they have black heads sometimes.”
That was something to know—another fact for the entomologist; for my
little gentleman had a hard, shiny, white head, and I never heard of a
black-headed bookworm before or since. Perhaps the great abundance of
black-letter books in the Bodleian may account for the variety. At any
rate he was an Anobium.

I have been unmercifully “chaffed” for the absurd idea that a paper-eating
worm could be kept a prisoner in a paper box. Oh, these critics! Your
bookworm is a shy, lazy beast, and takes a day or two to recover his
appetite after being “evicted.” Moreover, he knew his own dignity better
than to eat the “loaded” glazed shoddy note paper in which he was
incarcerated.

In the case of Caxton’s “Lyf of oure ladye,” already referred to, not only
are there numerous small holes, but some very large channels at the bottom
of the pages. This is a most unusual occurrence, and is probably the work
of the larva of “Dermestes vulpinus,” a garden beetle, which is very
voracious, and eats any kind of dry ligneous rubbish.

The scarcity of edible books of the present century has been mentioned.
One result of the extensive adulteration of modern paper is that the worm
will not touch it. His instinct forbids him to eat the china clay, the
bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of
adulterants now used to mix with the fibre, and, so far, the wise pages of
the old literature are, in the race against Time with the modern rubbish,
heavily handicapped. Thanks to the general interest taken in old books
now-a-days, the worm has hard times of it, and but slight chance of that
quiet neglect which is necessary to his, existence. So much greater is the
reason why some patient entomologist should, while there is the chance,
take upon himself to study the habits of the creature, as Sir John Lubbock
has those of the ant.

I have now before me some leaves of a book, which, being waste, were used
by our economical first printer, Caxton, to make boards, by pasting them
together. Whether the old paste was an attraction, or whatever the reason
may have been, the worm, when he got in there, did not, as usual, eat
straight through everything into the middle of the book, but worked his
way longitudinally, eating great furrows along the leaves without passing
out of the binding; and so furrowed are these few leaves by long channels
that it is difficult to raise one of them without its falling to pieces.

This is bad enough, but we may be very thankful that in these temperate
climes we have no such enemies as are found in very hot countries, where a
whole library, books, bookshelves, table, chairs, and all, may be
destroyed in one night by a countless army of ants.

Our cousins in the United States, so fortunate in many things, seem very
fortunate in this—their books are not attacked by the “worm”—at
any rate, American writers say so. True it is that all their black-letter
comes from Europe, and, having cost many dollars, is well looked after;
but there they have thousands of seventeenth and eighteenth century books,
in Roman type, printed in the States on genuine and wholesome paper, and
the worm is not particular, at least in this country, about the type he
eats through, if the paper is good.

Probably, therefore, the custodians of their old libraries could tell a
different tale, which makes it all the more amusing to find in the
excellent “Encyclopaedia of Printing,” (1) edited and printed by Ringwalt,
at Philadelphia, not only that the bookworm is a stranger there, for
personally he is unknown to most of us, but that his slightest ravages are
looked upon as both curious and rare. After quoting Dibdin, with the
addition of a few flights of imagination of his own, Ringwalt states that
this “paper-eating moth is supposed to have been introduced into England
in hogsleather binding from Holland.” He then ends with what, to anyone
who has seen the ravages of the worm in hundreds of books, must be
charming in its native simplicity. “There is now,” he states, evidently
quoting it as a great curiosity, “there is now, in a private library in
Philadelphia, a book perforated by this insect.” Oh! lucky Philadelphians!
who can boast of possessing the oldest library in the States, but must ask
leave of a private collector if they wish to see the one wormhole in the
whole city!

CHAPTER VII. OTHER VERMIN.

BESIDES the worm I do not think there is any insect enemy of books worth
description. The domestic black-beetle, or cockroach, is far too modern an
introduction to our country to have done much harm, though he will
sometimes nibble the binding of books, especially if they rest upon the
floor.

Not so fortunate, however, are our American cousins, for in the “Library
Journal” for September, 1879, Mr. Weston Flint gives an account of a
dreadful little pest which commits great havoc upon the cloth bindings of
the New York libraries. It is a small black-beetle or cockroach, called by
scientists “Blatta germanica” and by others the “Croton Bug.” Unlike our
household pest, whose home is the kitchen, and whose bashfulness loves
secrecy and the dark hours, this misgrown flat species, of which it would
take two to make a medium-sized English specimen, has gained in impudence
what it has lost in size, fearing neither light nor noise, neither man nor
beast. In the old English Bible of 1551, we read in Psalm xci, 5, “Thou
shalt not nede to be afraied for eny Bugges by night.” This verse falls
unheeded on the ear of the Western librarian who fears his “bugs” both
night and day, for they crawl over everything in broad sunlight, infesting
and infecting each corner and cranny of the bookshelves they choose as
their home. There is a remedy in the powder known as insecticide, which,
however, is very disagreeable upon books and shelves. It is, nevertheless,
very fatal to these pests, and affords some consolation in the fact that
so soon as a “bug” shows any signs of illness, he is devoured at once by
his voracious brethren with the same relish as if he were made of fresh
paste.

There is, too, a small silvery insect (Lepisma) which I have often seen in
the backs of neglected books, but his ravages are not of much importance.

Nor can we reckon the Codfish as very dangerous to literature, unless,
indeed, he be of the Roman obedience, like that wonderful
Ichthiobibliophage (pardon me, Professor Owen) who, in the year 1626,
swallowed three Puritanical treatises of John Frith, the Protestant
martyr. No wonder, after such a meal, he was soon caught, and became
famous in the annals of literature. The following is the title of a little
book issued upon the occasion: “Vox Piscis, or the Book-Fish containing
Three Treatises, which were found in the belly of a Cod-Fish in Cambridge
Market on Midsummer Eve, AD 1626.” Lowndes says (see under “Tracey,”)
“great was the consternation at Cambridge upon the publication of this
work.”

Rats and mice, however, are occasionally very destructive, as the
following anecdote will show: Two centuries ago, the library of the Dean
and Chapter of Westminster was kept in the Chapter House, and repairs
having become necessary in that building, a scaffolding was erected
inside, the books being left on their shelves. One of the holes made in
the wall for a scaffold-pole was selected by a pair of rats for their
family residence. Here they formed a nest for their young ones by
descending to the library shelves and biting away the leaves of various
books. Snug and comfortable was the little household, until, one day, the
builder’s men having finished, the poles were removed, and—alas! for
the rats—the hole was closed up with bricks and cement. Buried
alive, the father and mother, with five or six of their offspring, met
with a speedy death, and not until a few years ago, when a restoration of
the Chapter House was effected, was the rat grave opened again for a
scaffold pole, and all their skeletons and their nest discovered. Their
bones and paper fragments of the nest may now be seen in a glass case in
the Chapter House, some of the fragments being attributed to books from
the press of Caxton. This is not the case, although there are pieces of
very early black-letter books not now to be found in the Abbey library,
including little bits of the famous Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer book, with
woodcuts, 1568.

A friend sends me the following incident: “A few years since, some rats
made nests in the trees surrounding my house; from thence they jumped on
to some flat roofing, and so made their way down a chimney into a room
where I kept books. A number of these, with parchment backs, they entirely
destroyed, as well as some half-dozen books whole bound in parchment.”

Another friend informs me that in the Natural History Museum of the Devon
and Exeter Institution is a specimen of “another little pest, which has a
great affection for bindings in calf and roan. Its scientific name is
Niptus Hololeucos.” He adds, “Are you aware that there was a terrible
creature allied to these, rejoicing in the name of Tomicus Typographus,
which committed sad ravages in Germany in the seventeenth century, and in
the old liturgies of that country is formally mentioned under its vulgar
name, ‘The Turk’?” (See Kirby and Spence, Seventh Edition, 1858, p. 123.)
This is curious, and I did not know it, although I know well that
Typographus Tomicus, or the “cutting printer,” is a sad enemy of (good)
books. Upon this part of our subject, however, I am debarred entering.

The following is from W. J. Westbrook, Mus. Doe., Cantab., and represents
ravages with which I am personally unacquainted:

“Dear Blades,—I send you an example of the ‘enemy’-mosity of an
ordinary housefly. It hid behind the paper, emitted some caustic fluid,
and then departed this life. I have often caught them in such holes.’
30/12/83.” The damage is an oblong hole, surrounded by a white fluffy
glaze (fungoid?), difficult to represent in a woodcut. The size here given
is exact.

CHAPTER VIII. BOOKBINDERS.

IN the first chapter I mentioned bookbinders among the Enemies of Books,
and I tremble to think what a stinging retort might be made if some irate
bibliopegist were to turn the scales on the printer, and place HIM in the
same category. On the sins of printers, and the unnatural neglect which
has often shortened the lives of their typographical progeny, it is not
for me to dilate. There is an old proverb, “‘Tis an ill bird that befouls
its own nest”; a curious chapter thereupon, with many modern examples,
might nevertheless be written. This I will leave, and will now only place
on record some of the cruelties perpetrated upon books by the ignorance or
carelessness of binders.

Like men, books have a soul and body. With the soul, or literary portion,
we have nothing to do at present; the body, which is the outer frame or
covering, and without which the inner would be unusable, is the special
work of the binder. He, so to speak, begets it; he determines its form and
adornment, he doctors it in disease and decay, and, not unseldom, dissects
it after death. Here, too, as through all Nature, we find the good and bad
running side by side. What a treat it is to handle a well-bound volume;
the leaves lie open fully and freely, as if tempting you to read on, and
you handle them without fear of their parting from the back. To look at
the “tooling,” too, is a pleasure, for careful thought, combined with
artistic skill, is everywhere apparent. You open the cover and find the
same loving attention inside that has been given to the outside, all the
workmanship being true and thorough. Indeed, so conservative is a good
binding, that many a worthless book has had an honoured old age, simply
out of respect to its outward aspect; and many a real treasure has come to
a degraded end and premature death through the unsightliness of its
outward case and the irreparable damage done to it in binding.

The weapon with which the binder deals the most deadly blows to books is
the “plough,” the effect of which is to cut away the margins, placing the
print in a false position relatively to the back and head, and often
denuding the work of portions of the very text. This reduction in size not
seldom brings down a handsome folio to the size of quarto, and a quarto to
an octavo.

With the old hand plough a binder required more care and caution to
produce an even edge throughout than with the new cutting machine. If a
careless workman found that he had not ploughed the margin quite square
with the text, he would put it in his press and take off “another
shaving,” and sometimes even a third.

Dante, in his “Inferno,” deals out to the lost souls various tortures
suited with dramatic fitness to the past crimes of the victims, and had I
to execute judgment on the criminal binders of certain precious volumes I
have seen, where the untouched maiden sheets entrusted to their care have,
by barbarous treatment, lost dignity, beauty and value, I would collect
the paper shavings so ruthlessly shorn off, and roast the perpetrator of
the outrage over their slow combustion. In olden times, before men had
learned to value the relics of our printers, there was some excuse for the
sins of a binder who erred from ignorance which was general; but in these
times, when the historical and antiquarian value of old books is freely
acknowledged, no quarter should be granted to a careless culprit.

It may be supposed that, from the spread of information, all real danger
from ignorance is past. Not so, good reader; that is a consummation as yet
“devoutly to be wished.” Let me relate to you a true bibliographical
anecdote: In 1877, a certain lord, who had succeeded to a fine collection
of old books, promised to send some of the most valuable (among which were
several Caxtons) to the Exhibition at South Kensington. Thinking their
outward appearance too shabby, and not knowing the danger of his conduct,
he decided to have them rebound in the neighbouring county town. The
volumes were soon returned in a resplendent state, and, it is said, quite
to the satisfaction of his lordship, whose pleasure, however, was sadly
damped when a friend pointed out to him that, although the discoloured
edges had all been ploughed off, and the time-stained blanks, with their
fifteenth century autographs, had been replaced by nice clean fly-leaves,
yet, looking at the result in its lowest aspect only—that of market
value—the books had been damaged to at least the amount of L500;
and, moreover, that caustic remarks would most certainly follow upon their
public exhibition. Those poor injured volumes were never sent.

Some years ago one of the most rare books printed by Machlinia—a
thin folio—was discovered bound in sheep by a country bookbinder,
and cut down to suit the size of some quarto tracts. But do not let us
suppose that country binders are the only culprits. It is not very long
since the discovery of a unique Caxton in one of our largest London
libraries. It was in boards, as originally issued by the fifteenth-century
binder, and a great fuss (very properly) was made over the treasure trove.
Of course, cries the reader, it was kept in its original covers, with all
the interesting associations of its early state untouched? No such thing!
Instead of making a suitable case, in which it could be preserved just as
it was, it was placed in the hands of a well-known London binder, with the
order, “Whole bind in velvet.” He did his best, and the volume now glows
luxuriously in its gilt edges and its inappropriate covering, and, alas!
with half-an-inch of its uncut margin taken off all round. How do I know
that? because the clever binder, seeing some MS. remarks on one of the
margins, turned the leaf down to avoid cutting them off, and that stern
witness will always testify, to the observant reader, the original size of
the book. This same binder, on another occasion, placed a unique fifteenth
century Indulgence in warm water, to separate it from the cover upon which
it was pasted, the result being that, when dry, it was so distorted as to
be useless. That man soon after passed to another world, where, we may
hope, his works have not followed him, and that his merits as a good
citizen and an honest man counterbalanced his de-merits as a binder.

Other similar instances will occur to the memory of many a reader, and
doubtless the same sin will be committed from time to time by certain
binders, who seem to have an ingrained antipathy to rough edges and large
margins, which of course are, in their view, made by Nature as food for
the shaving tub.

De Rome, a celebrated bookbinder of the eighteenth century, who was
nicknamed by Dibdin “The Great Cropper,” was, although in private life an
estimable man, much addicted to the vice of reducing the margins of all
books sent to him to bind. So far did he go, that he even spared not a
fine copy of Froissart’s Chronicles, on vellum, in which was the autograph
of the well-known book-lover, De Thou, but cropped it most cruelly.

Owners, too, have occasionally diseased minds with regard to margins. A
friend writes: “Your amusing anecdotes have brought to my memory several
biblioclasts whom I have known. One roughly cut the margins off his books
with a knife, hacking away very much like a hedger and ditcher. Large
paper volumes were his especial delight, as they gave more paper. The
slips thus obtained were used for index-making! Another, with the bump of
order unnaturally developed, had his folios and quartos all reduced, in
binding, to one size, so that they might look even on his bookshelves.”

This latter was, doubtless, cousin to him who deliberately cut down all
his books close to the text, because he had been several times annoyed by
readers who made marginal notes.

The indignities, too, suffered by some books in their lettering! Fancy an
early black-letter fifteenth-century quarto on Knighthood, labelled
“Tracts”; or a translation of Virgil, “Sermons”! The “Histories of Troy,”
printed by Caxton, still exists with “Eracles” on the back, as its title,
because that name occurs several times in the early chapters, and the
binder was too proud to seek advice. The words “Miscellaneous,” or “Old
Pieces,” were sometimes used when binders were at a loss for lettering,
and many other instances might be mentioned.

The rapid spread of printing throughout Europe in the latter part of the
fifteenth century caused a great fall in the value of plain un-illuminated
MSS., and the immediate consequence of this was the destruction of
numerous volumes written upon parchment, which were used by the binders to
strengthen the backs of their newly-printed rivals. These slips of vellum
or parchment are quite common in old books. Sometimes whole sheets are
used as fly-leaves, and often reveal the existence of most valuable works,
unknown before—proving, at the same time, the small value formerly
attached to them.

Many a bibliographer, while examining old books, has to his great
puzzlement come across short slips of parchment, nearly always from some
old manuscript, sticking out like “guards” from the midst of the leaves.
These suggest, at first, imperfections or damage done to the volume; but
if examined closely it will be found that they are always in the middle of
a paper section, and the real reason of their existence is just the same
as when two leaves of parchment occur here and there in a paper volume,
viz.: strength—strength to resist the lug which the strong thread
makes against the middle of each section. These slips represent old books
destroyed, and like the slips already noticed, should always be carefully
examined.

When valuable books have been evil-entreated, when they have become soiled
by dirty hands, or spoiled by water stains, or injured by grease spots,
nothing is more astonishing to the uninitiated than the transformation
they undergo in the hands of a skilful restorer. The covers are first
carefully dissected, the eye of the operator keeping a careful outlook for
any fragments of old MSS. or early printed books, which may have been used
by the original binder. No force should be applied to separate parts which
adhere together; a little warm water and care is sure to overcome that
difficulty. When all the sections are loose, the separate sheets are
placed singly in a bath of cold water, and allowed to remain there until
all the dirt has soaked out. If not sufficiently purified, a little
hydrochloric or oxalic acid, or caustic potash may be put in the water,
according as the stains are from grease or from ink. Here is where an
unpractised binder will probably injure a book for life. If the chemicals
are too strong, or the sheets remain too long in the bath, or are not
thoroughly cleansed from the bleach before they are re-sized, the certain
seeds of decay are planted in the paper, and although for a time the
leaves may look bright to the eye, and even crackle under the hand like
the soundest paper, yet in the course of a few years the enemy will
appear, the fibre will decay, and the existence of the books will
terminate in a state of white tinder.

Everything which diminishes the interest of a book is inimical to its
preservation, and in fact is its enemy. Therefore, a few words upon the
destruction of old bindings.

I remember purchasing many years ago at a suburban book stall, a perfect
copy of Moxon’s Mechanic Exercises, now a scarce work. The volumes were
uncut, and had the original marble covers. They looked so attractive in
their old fashioned dress, that I at once determined to preserve it. My
binder soon made for them a neat wooden box in the shape of a book, with
morocco back properly lettered, where I trust the originals will be
preserved from dust and injury for many a long year.

Old covers, whether boards or paper, should always be retained if in any
state approaching decency. A case, which can be embellished to any extent
looks every whit as well upon the shelf! and gives even greater protection
than binding. It has also this great advantage: it does not deprive your
descendants of the opportunity of seeing for themselves exactly in what
dress the book buyers of four centuries ago received their volumes.

CHAPTER IX. COLLECTORS.

AFTER all, two-legged depredators, who ought to have known better, have
perhaps done as much real damage in libraries as any other enemy. I do not
refer to thieves, who, if they injure the owners, do no harm to the books
themselves by merely transferring them from one set of bookshelves to
another. Nor do I refer to certain readers who frequent our public
libraries, and, to save themselves the trouble of copying, will cut out
whole articles from magazines or encyclopaedias. Such depredations are not
frequent, and only occur with books easily replaced, and do not therefore
call for more than a passing mention; but it is a serious matter when
Nature produces such a wicked old biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the
founders of the Society of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last
century, went about the country, from library to library, tearing away
title pages from rare books of all sizes. These he sorted out into
nationalities and towns, and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript
notes, and miscellaneous collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred
folio volumes, now preserved in the British Museum. That they are of
service as materials in compiling a general history of printing cannot be
denied, but the destruction of many rare books was the result, and more
than counter-balanced any benefit bibliographers will ever receive from
them. When here and there throughout those volumes you meet with titles of
books now either unknown entirely, or of the greatest rarity; when you
find the Colophon from the end, or the “insigne typographi” from the first
leaf of a rare “fifteener,” pasted down with dozens of others, varying in
value, you cannot bless the memory of the antiquarian shoemaker, John
Bagford. His portrait, a half-length, painted by Howard, was engraved by
Vertue, and re-engraved for the Bibliographical Decameron.

A bad example often finds imitators, and every season there crop up for
public sale one or two such collections, formed by bibliomaniacs, who,
although calling themselves bibliophiles, ought really to be ranked among
the worst enemies of books.

The following is copied from a trade catalogue, dated April, 1880, and
affords a fair idea of the extent to which these heartless destroyers will
go:—

“MISSAL ILLUMINATIONS.

FIFTY DIFFERENT CAPITAL LETTERS on VELLUM; all in rich Gold and
Colours. Many 3 inches square: the floral decorations are of great beauty,
ranging from the XIIth to XVth century. Mounted on stout card-board.
IN NICE PRESERVATION, L6 6s.

Mr. Proeme is a man well known to the London dealers in old books. He is
wealthy, and cares not what he spends to carry out his bibliographical
craze, which is the collection of title pages. These he ruthlessly
extracts, frequently leaving the decapitated carcase of the books, for
which he cares not, behind him. Unlike the destroyer Bagford, he has no
useful object in view, but simply follows a senseless kind of
classification. For instance: One set of volumes contains nothing but
copper-plate engraved titles, and woe betide the grand old Dutch folios of
the seventeenth century if they cross his path. Another is a volume of
coarse or quaint titles, which certainly answer the end of showing how
idiotic and conceited some authors have been. Here you find Dr. Sib’s
“Bowels opened in Divers Sermons,” 1650, cheek by jowl with the discourse
attributed falsely to Huntington, the Calvinist, “Die and be damned,” with
many others too coarse to be quoted. The odd titles adopted for his poems
by Taylor, the water-poet, enliven several pages, and make one’s mouth
water for the books themselves. A third volume includes only such titles
as have the printer’s device. If you shut your eyes to the injury done by
such collectors, you may, to a certain extent, enjoy the collection, for
there is great beauty in some titles; but such a pursuit is neither useful
nor meritorious. By and by the end comes, and then dispersion follows
collection, and the volumes, which probably Cost L200 each in their
formation, will be knocked down to a dealer for L10, finally gravitating
into the South Kensington Library, or some public museum, as a
bibliographical curiosity. The following has just been sold (July, 1880)
by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, in the Dunn-Gardinier collection,
lot 1592:—

“TITLEPAGES AND FRONTISPIECES.

A Collection of upwards of 800 ENGRAVED TITLES AND FRONTISPIECES,
ENGLISH AND FOREIGN (some very fine and curious) taken from old books
and neatly mounted on cartridge paper in 3 vol, half morocco gilt. imp.
folio.”

The only collection of title-pages which has afforded me unalloyed
pleasure is a handsome folio, published by the directors of the Plantin
Museum, Antwerp, in 1877, just after the purchase of that wonderful
typographical storehouse. It is called “Titels en Portretten gesneden naar
P. P. Rubens voor de Plantijnsche Drukkerij,” and it contains thirty-five
grand title pages, reprinted from the original seventeenth century plates,
designed by Rubens himself between the years 1612 and 1640, for various
publications which issued from the celebrated Plantin Printing Office. In
the same Museum are preserved in Rubens’ own handwriting his charge for
each design, duly receipted at foot.

I have now before me a fine copy of “Coclusiones siue decisiones antique
dnor’ de Rota,” printed by Gutenberg’s partner, Schoeffer, in the year
1477. It is perfect, except in a most vital part, the Colophon, which has
been cut out by some barbaric “Collector,” and which should read thus:
“Pridie nonis Januarii Mcccclxxvij, in Civitate Moguntina, impressorie
Petrus Schoyffer de Gernsheym,” followed by his well-known mark, two
shields.

A similar mania arose at the beginning of this century for collections of
illuminated initials, which were taken from MSS., and arranged on the
pages of a blank book in alphabetical order. Some of our cathedral
libraries suffered severely from depredations of this kind. At Lincoln, in
the early part of this century, the boys put on their robes in the
library, a room close to the choir. Here were numerous old MSS., and eight
or ten rare Caxtons. The choir boys used often to amuse themselves, while
waiting for the signal to “fall in,” by cutting out with their pen-knives
the illuminated initials and vignettes, which they would take into the
choir with them and pass round from one to another. The Dean and Chapter
of those days were not much better, for they let Dr. Dibdin have all their
Caxtons for a “consideration.” He made a little catalogue of them, which
he called “A Lincolne Nosegaye.” Eventually they were absorbed into the
collection at Althorp.

The late Mr. Caspari was a “destroyer” of books. His rare collection of
early woodcuts, exhibited in 1877 at the Caxton Celebration, had been
frequently augmented by the purchase of illustrated books, the plates of
which were taken out, and mounted on Bristol boards, to enrich his
collection. He once showed me the remains of a fine copy of “Theurdanck,”
which he had served so, and I have now before me several of the leaves
which he then gave me, and which, for beauty of engraving and cleverness
of typography, surpasses any typographical work known to me. It was
printed for the Emperor Maximilian, by Hans Schonsperger, of Nuremberg,
and, to make it unique, all the punches were cut on purpose, and as many
as seven or eight varieties of each letter, which, together with the
clever way in which the ornamental flourishes are carried above and below
the line, has led even experienced printers to deny its being typography.
It is, nevertheless, entirely from cast types. A copy in good condition
costs about L50.

Many years since I purchased, at Messrs. Sotheby’s, a large lot of MS.
leaves on vellum, some being whole sections of a book, but mostly single
leaves. Many were so mutilated by the excision of initials as to be
worthless, but those with poor initials, or with none, were quite good,
and when sorted out I found I had got large portions of nearly twenty
different MSS., mostly Horae, showing twelve varieties of fifteenth
century handwriting in Latin, French, Dutch, and German. I had each sort
bound separately, and they now form an interesting collection.

Portrait collectors have destroyed many books by abstracting the
frontispiece to add to their treasures, and when once a book is made
imperfect, its march to destruction is rapid. This is why books like
Atkyns’ “Origin and Growth of Printing,” 4o, 1664, have become impossible
to get.

When issued, Atkyns’ pamphlet had a fine frontispiece, by Logan,
containing portraits of King Charles II, attended by Archbishop Sheldon,
the Duke of Albermarle, and the Earl of Clarendon. As portraits of these
celebrities (excepting, of course, the King) are extremely rare,
collectors have bought up this 4o tract of Atkyns’, whenever it has been
offered, and torn away the frontispiece to adorn their collection.

This is why, if you take up any sale catalogue of old books, you are
certain to find here and there, appended to the description, “Wanting the
title,” “Wanting two plates,” or “Wanting the last page.”

It is quite common to find in old MSS., especially fifteenth century, both
vellum and paper, the blank margins of leaves cut away. This will be from
the side edge or from the foot, and the recurrence of this mutilation
puzzled me for many years. It arose from the scarcity of paper in former
times, so that when a message had to be sent which required more
exactitude than could be entrusted to the stupid memory of a household
messenger, the Master or Chaplain went to the library, and, not having
paper to use, took down an old book, and cut from its broad margins one or
more slips to serve his present need.

I feel quite inclined to reckon among “enemies” those bibliomaniacs and
over-careful possessors, who, being unable to carry their treasures into
the next world, do all they can to hinder their usefulness in this. What a
difficulty there is to obtain admission to the curious library of old
Samuel Pepys, the well-known diarist. There it is at Magdalene College,
Cambridge, in the identical book-cases provided for the books by Pepys
himself; but no one can gain admission except in company of two Fellows of
the College, and if a single book be lost, the whole library goes away to
a neighbouring college. However willing and anxious to oblige, it is
evident that no one can use the library at the expense of the time, if not
temper, of two Fellows. Some similar restrictions are in force at the
Teylerian Museum, Haarlem, where a lifelong imprisonment is inflicted upon
its many treasures.

Some centuries ago a valuable collection of books was left to the
Guildford Endowed Grammar School. The schoolmaster was to be held
personally responsible for the safety of every volume, which, if lost, he
was bound to replace. I am told that one master, to minimize his risk as
much as possible, took the following barbarous course:—As soon as he
was in possession, he raised the boards of the schoolroom floor, and,
having carefully packed all the books between the joists, had the boards
nailed down again. Little recked he how many rats and mice made their
nests there; he was bound to account some day for every single volume, and
he saw no way so safe as rigid imprisonment.

The late Sir Thomas Phillipps, of Middle Hill, was a remarkable instance
of a bibliotaph. He bought bibliographical treasures simply to bury them.
His mansion was crammed with books; he purchased whole libraries, and
never even saw what he had bought. Among some of his purchases was the
first book printed in the English language, “The Recuyell of the Histories
of Troye,” translated and printed by William Caxton, for the Duchess of
Burgundy, sister to our Edward IV. It is true, though almost incredible,
that Sir Thomas could never find this volume, although it is doubtless
still in the collection, and no wonder, when cases of books bought twenty
years before his death were never opened, and the only knowledge of their
contents which he possessed was the Sale Catalogue or the bookseller’s
invoice.

CHAPTER X. SERVANTS AND CHILDREN.

READER! are you married? Have you offspring, boys especially I mean, say
between six and twelve years of age? Have you also a literary workshop,
supplied with choice tools, some for use, some for ornament, where you
pass pleasant hours? and is—ah! there’s the rub!—is there a
special hand-maid, whose special duty it is to keep your den daily dusted
and in order? Plead you guilty to these indictments? then am I sure of a
sympathetic co-sufferer.

Dust! it is all a delusion. It is not the dust that makes women anxious to
invade the inmost recesses of your Sanctum—it is an ingrained
curiosity. And this feminine weakness, which dates from Eve, is a common
motive in the stories of our oldest literature and Folk-lore. What made
Fatima so anxious to know the contents of the room forbidden her by
Bluebeard? It was positively nothing to her, and its contents caused not
the slightest annoyance to anybody. That story has a bad moral, and it
would, in many ways, have been more satisfactory had the heroine been left
to take her place in the blood-stained chamber, side by side with her
peccant predecessors. Why need the women-folk (God forgive me!) bother
themselves about the inside of a man’s library, and whether it wants
dusting or not? My boys’ playroom, in which is a carpenter’s bench, a
lathe, and no end of litter, is never tidied—perhaps it can’t be, or
perhaps their youthful vigour won’t stand it—but my workroom must
needs be dusted daily, with the delusive promise that each book and paper
shall be replaced exactly where it was. The damage done by such continued
treatment is incalculable. At certain times these observances are kept
more religiously than others; but especially should the book-lover,
married or single, beware of the Ides of March. So soon as February is
dead and gone, a feeling of unrest seizes the housewife’s mind. This
increases day by day, and becomes dominant towards the middle of the
month, about which period sundry hints are thrown out as to whether you
are likely to be absent for a day or two. Beware! the fever called “Spring
Clean” is on, and unless you stand firm, you will rue it. Go away, if the
Fates so will, but take the key of your own domain with you.

Do not misunderstand. Not for a moment would I advocate dust and dirt;
they are enemies, and should be routed; but let the necessary routing be
done under your own eye. Explain where caution must be used, and in what
cases tenderness is a virtue; and if one Eve in the family can be
indoctrinated with book-reverence you are a happy man; her price is above
that of rubies; she will prolong your life. Books MUST now and then be
taken clean out of their shelves, but they should be tended lovingly and
with judgment. If the dusting can be done just outside the room so much
the better. The books removed, the shelf should be lifted quite out of its
bearings, cleansed and wiped, and then each volume should be taken
separately, and gently rubbed on back and sides with a soft cloth. In
returning the volumes to their places, notice should be taken of the
binding, and especially when the books are in whole calf or morocco care
should be taken not to let them rub together. The best bound books are
soonest injured, and quickly deteriorate in bad company. Certain volumes,
indeed, have evil tempers, and will scratch the faces of all their
neighbours who are too familiar with them. Such are books with metal
clasps and rivets on their edges; and such, again, are those abominable
old rascals, chiefly born in the fifteenth century, who are proud of being
dressed in REAL boards with brass corners, and pass their lives with
fearful knobs and metal bosses, mostly five in number, firmly fixed on one
of their sides. If the tendencies of such ruffians are not curbed, they
will do as much mischief to their gentle neighbours as when a “collie”
worries the sheep. These evil results may always be minimized by placing a
piece of millboard between the culprit and his victim. I have seen lovely
bindings sadly marked by such uncanny neighbours.

When your books are being “dusted,” don’t impute too much common sense to
your assistants; take their ignorance for granted, and tell them at once
never to lift any book by one of its covers; that treatment is sure to
strain the back, and ten to one the weight will be at the same time
miscalculated, and the volume will fall. Your female “help,” too, dearly
loves a good tall pile to work at and, as a rule, her notions of the
centre of gravity are not accurate, leading often to a general downfall,
and the damage of many a corner. Again, if not supervised and instructed,
she is very apt to rub the dust into, instead of off, the edges. Each
volume should be held tightly, so as to prevent the leaves from gaping,
and then wiped from the back to the fore-edge. A soft brush will be found
useful if there is much dust. The whole exterior should also be rubbed
with a soft cloth, and then the covers should be opened and the hinges of
the binding examined; for mildew WILL assert itself both inside and
outside certain books, and that most pertinaciously. It has unaccountable
likes and dislikes. Some bindings seem positively to invite damp, and
mildew will attack these when no other books on the same shelf show any
signs of it. When discovered, carefully wipe it away, and then let the
book remain a few days standing open, in the driest and airiest spot you
can select. Great care should be taken not to let grit, such as blows in
at the open window from many a dusty road, be upon your duster, or you
will probably find fine scratches, like an outline map of Europe, all over
your smooth calf, by which your heart and eye, as well as your book, will
be wounded.

“Helps” are very apt to fill the shelves too tightly, so that to extract a
book you have to use force, often to the injury of the top-bands. Beware
of this mistake. It frequently occurs through not noticing that one small
book is purposely placed at each end of the shelf, beneath the movable
shelf-supports, thus not only saving space, but preventing the injury
which a book shelf-high would be sure to receive from uneven pressure.

After all, the best guide in these, as in many other matters, is “common
sense,” a quality which in olden times must have been much more “common”
than in these days, else the phrase would never have become rooted in our
common tongue.

Children, with all their innocence, are often guilty of book-murder. I
must confess to having once taken down “Humphrey’s History of Writing,”
which contains many brightly-coloured plates, to amuse a sick daughter.
The object was certainly gained, but the consequences of so bad a
precedent were disastrous. That copy (which, I am glad to say, was easily
re-placed), notwithstanding great care on my part, became soiled and torn,
and at last was given up to Nursery martyrdom. Can I regret it? surely
not, for, although bibliographically sinful, who can weigh the amount of
real pleasure received, and actual pain ignored, by the patient in the
contemplation of those beautifully-blended colours?

A neighbour of mine some few years ago suffered severely from a
propensity, apparently irresistible, in one of his daughters to tear his
library books. She was six years old, and would go quietly to a shelf and
take down a book or two, and having torn a dozen leaves or so down the
middle, would replace the volumes, fragments and all, in their places, the
damage being undiscovered until the books were wanted for use. Reprimand,
expostulation and even punishment were of no avail; but a single
“whipping” effected a cure.

Boys, however, are by far more destructive than girls, and have,
naturally, no reverence for age, whether in man or books. Who does not
fear a schoolboy with his first pocket-knife? As Wordsworth did not say:—

Pleased, too, are they, if, with mouths full of candy, and sticky fingers,
they can pull in and out the books on your bottom shelves, little knowing
the damage and pain they will cause. One would fain cry out, calling on
the Shade of Horace to pardon the false quantity—

What boys CAN do may be gathered from the following true story, sent me by
a correspondent who was the immediate sufferer:—

One summer day he met in town an acquaintance who for many years had been
abroad; and finding his appetite for old books as keen as ever, invited
him home to have a mental feed upon “fifteeners” and other bibliographical
dainties, preliminary to the coarser pleasures enjoyed at the
dinner-table. The “home” was an old mansion in the outskirts of London,
whose very architecture was suggestive of black-letter and sheep-skin. The
weather, alas! was rainy, and, as they approached the house, loud peals of
laughter reached their ears. The children were keeping a birthday with a
few young friends. The damp forbad all outdoor play, and, having been left
too much to their own devices, they had invaded the library. It was just
after the Battle of Balaclava, and the heroism of the combatants on that
hard-fought field was in everybody’s mouth. So the mischievous young imps
divided themselves into two opposing camps—Britons and Russians. The
Russian division was just inside the door, behind ramparts formed of old
folios and quartos taken from the bottom shelves and piled to the height
of about four feet. It was a wall of old fathers, fifteenth century
chronicles, county histories, Chaucer, Lydgate, and such like. Some few
yards off were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as
missiles, with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe.
Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly, paterfamilias
receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition of “Paradise Lost” in
the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly escaping a closer personal
acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet than he had ever had before. Finale:
great outburst of wrath, and rapid retreat of the combatants, many wounded
(volumes) being left on the field.

POSTSCRIPTUM.

ALTHOUGH, strictly speaking, the following anecdote does not illustrate
any form of real injury to books, it is so racy, and in these days of
extravagant biddings so tantalizing, that I must step just outside the
strict line of pertinence in order to place it on record, It was sent to
me, as a personal experience, by my friend, Mr. George Clulow, a
well-known bibliophile, and “Xylographer” to “Ye Sette of ye Odde
Volumes.” The date is 1881. He writes:—

“Apropos of the Gainsborough ‘find,’ of which you tell in ‘The
Enemies of Books,’ I should like to narrate an experience of my own, of
some twenty years ago:

“Late one evening, at my father’s house, I saw a catalogue of a sale of
furniture, farm implements and books, which was announced to take place on
the following morning at a country rectory in Derbyshire, some four miles
from the nearest railway station.

“It was summer time—the country at its best—and with the
attraction of an old book, I decided on a day’s holiday, and eight o’clock
the next morning found me in the train for C——, and after a
variation in my programme, caused by my having walked three miles west
before I discovered that my destination was three miles east of the
railway station, I arrived at the rectory at noon, and found assembled
some thirty or forty of the neighbouring farmers, their wives,
men-servants and maid-servants, all seemingly bent on a day’s idling,
rather than business. The sale was announced for noon, but it was an hour
later before the auctioneer put in an appearance, and the first operation
in which he took part, and in which he invited my assistance, was to make
a hearty meal of bread and cheese and beer in the rectory kitchen. This
over, the business of the day began by a sundry collection of pots, pans,
and kettles being brought to the competition of the public, followed by
some lots of bedding, etc. The catalogue gave books as the first part of
the sale, and, as three o’clock was reached, my patience was gone, and I
protested to the auctioneer against his not selling in accordance with his
catalogue. To this he replied that there was not time enough, and that he
would sell the books to-morrow! This was too much for me, and I suggested
that he had broken faith with the buyers, and had brought me to C——
on a false pretence. This, however, did not seem to disturb his good
humour, or to make him unhappy, and his answer was to call ‘Bill,’ who was
acting as porter, and to tell him to give the gentleman the key of the
‘book room,’ and to bring down any of the books he might pick out, and he
‘would sell ’em.’ I followed ‘Bill,’ and soon found myself in a charming
nook of a library, full of books, mostly old divinity, but with a large
number of the best miscellaneous literature of the sixteenth century,
English and foreign. A very short look over the shelves produced some
thirty Black Letter books, three or four illuminated missals, and some
book rarities of a more recent date. ‘Bill’ took them downstairs, and I
wondered what would happen! I was not long in doubt, for book by book, and
in lots of two and three, my selection was knocked down in rapid
succession, at prices varying from 1s. 6d. to 3s. 6d.,
this latter sum seeming to be the utmost limit to the speculative turn of
my competitors. The bonne bouche of the lot was, however, kept back
by the auctioneer, because, as he said, it was ‘a pretty book,’ and I
began to respect his critical judgment, for ‘a pretty book’ it was, being
a large paper copy of Dibdin’s Bibliographical Decameron, three volumes,
in the original binding. Suffice it to say that, including this charming
book, my purchases did not amount to L13, and I had pretty well a
cart-load of books for my money—more than I wanted much! Having
brought them home, I ‘weeded them out,’ and the ‘weeding’ realised four
times what I gave for the whole, leaving me with some real book treasures.

“Some weeks afterwards I heard that the remainder of the books were
literally treated as waste lumber, and carted off to the neighbouring
town, and were to be had, any one of them, for sixpence, from a cobbler
who had allowed his shop to be used as a store house for them. The news of
their being there reached the ears of an old bookseller in one of the
large towns, and he, I think, cleared out the lot. So curious an instance
of the most total ignorance on the part of the sellers, and I may add on
the part of the possible buyers also, I think is worth noting.”

How would the reader in this Year of Grace, 1887, like such an experience
as that?

CONCLUSION.

IT is a great pity that there should be so many distinct enemies at work
for the destruction of literature, and that they should so often be
allowed to work out their sad end. Looked at rightly, the possession of
any old book is a sacred trust, which a conscientious owner or guardian
would as soon think of ignoring as a parent would of neglecting his child.
An old book, whatever its subject or internal merits, is truly a portion
of the national history; we may imitate it and print it in fac-simile, but
we can never exactly reproduce it; and as an historical document it should
be carefully preserved.

I do not envy any man that absence of sentiment which makes some people
careless of the memorials of their ancestors, and whose blood can be
warmed up only by talking of horses or the price of hops. To them solitude
means ennui, and anybody’s company is preferable to their own. What
an immense amount of calm enjoyment and mental renovation do such men
miss. Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add a
hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile;
while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day
has struggled in the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and
anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as
he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and
every book is a personal friend!

INDEX.