Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/255

Rh scribed! And let it be said, that John duke of Roxburgh both deserved well of his country and the book cause."

Mr Dibdin gives many other instructive particulars respecting this sale. He mentions that the duke's library occupied a range of apartments in the second floor of his house; and in a room adjoining, and into which the library opened, "slept and died" the illustrious collector himself. "All his migrations," says Mr Dibdin, " were confined to these two rooms. When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed upon which this bibliomaniacal duke had expired, I felt as I trust I ought to have felt, upon the occasion!" He also informs us that a gentleman who bought many articles was generally understood to be an agent of the emperor Napoleon, but at last turned out to have been a secret emissary of the duke of Devonshire. A letter which he received from Sir Walter Scott on the occasion of this sale, is too characteristic to be omitted. "The Roxburgh sale," says the author of Marmion, "sets my teeth on edge. But if I can trust mine eyes, there are now twelve masons at work on a cottage and offices at this little farm, which I purchased last year. Item, I have planted thirty acres, and am in the act of walling a garden. Item, I have a wife and four bairns crying, as our old song has it, 'porridge ever mair.' So, on the whole, my teeth must get off the edge, as those of the fox with the grapes in the fable. Abbotsford, by Melrose, 3rd May, 1812."

It would be improper, in a memoir of the duke of Roxburgh, to omit a circumstance so honourable to his name as the formation of the society called the "Roxburgh." "The number of noblemen and gentlemen," says Sir Walter Scott, "distinguished by their taste for this species of literature, who assembled there [at the sale] from day to day, and lamented or boasted the event of the competition, was unexampled ; and in short the concourse of attendants terminated in the formation of a society of about thirty amateurs, having the learned and amiable earl Spencer at their head, who agreed to constitute a club, which should have for its object of union the common love of rare and curious volumes, and should be distinguished by the name of that nobleman, at the dispersion of whose library the proposal had taken its rise, and who had been personally known to most of the members. We are not sure whether the publication of rare tracts was an original object of their friendly re-union, or, if it was not, how and when it came to be engrafted thereupon. Early, however, after the formation of the Roxburgh Club, it became one of its rules, that each member should present the society, at such time as he might find most convenient, with an edition of a curious manuscript, or the reprint of some ancient tract, the selection being left at the pleasure of the individual himself. These books were to be printed in a handsome manner, and uniformly, and were to be distributed among the gentlemen of the club. * * * * Under this system, the Roxburgh Club has proceeded and flourished for many years, and produced upwards of forty reprints of scarce and curious tracts, among which many are highly interesting, not only from their value, but also their intrinsic merit."

It remains only to be added, that this association has been the model of several others in different parts of the world. We are aware, at least, of La Societe des Biblioglyphes in Paris, and the Bannatyne, Maitland, and Abbotsford Clubs in our own country. Such institutions show that a taste for literary antiquities is extending amongst us; yet it must also be stated, that the desire of forming libraries such as that of the duke of Roxburgh is much on the decline, and that if his grace's stock had been brought to the hammer in our own day, it would have neither created the sensation which it did create, nor brought such "astounding" prices.