Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/219

 10 s. x. AUG. 29,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

179

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Book-Hunter. By John Hill Burton. Edited by J. Herbert Slater. (Routledge & Sons.)

THERE was never a time in which book-hunting and the pleasures of bibliography were so widely followed as to-day ; thus it is odd that there are so few books available on such pursuits. With the exception of Mr. Andrew Lang's 'The Library,' and the pleasant collection of ' Bouquiniana ' which came to us a few years ago from M. B. H. Gausseron, we recall no volumes of bookish gossip, no records of the many happy wanderers who seek and ponder over the bargains now best displayed in Charing Cross Road, since Booksellers' Row is no more. If there are no new books, it is well to revive the old, and Burton's not less than classic volume makes a very welcome reappearance in a series which has given us many delightful books, " The London Library." Mr. J. Herbert Slater is the editor of this issue, and lends his expert hand to various brief foot-notes. We are rather dis-

we feel sure, little known to latter-day searchers after literary treasures. A memoir by Mrs. Burton was prefixed to the large-paper edition of 'The Book-Hunter' (1882), and he was eminent as a writer apart from this, his most successful book. The dignity of history, which he was abused for sacrificing in his more serious work, is now less considered than the qualities of accuracy and research, in which he was probably ahead of his time.

To the vivid account of Papaverius (De Quincey) the editor adds the note that "De Quincey was always being ' snowed up,' as he called it ; that is to say, choked in his lodgings with accumulated piles of papers and manuscripts. When that happened, he simply locked the door of his room, walked out, and secured another. Six of these storehouses existed at the time of his death."

The existence of a recent edition of the 'Cena Trimalchionis ' is mentioned ; there have been at least three published of late years. Those dumpy little books the Elzevirs have, the editor notes,

"with a very few exceptions fallen to abysmal

depths in the estimations of literary Nimrods."

The Shakespearian correction on p. 44 exhibits the casual methods of Burton. The celebrated emendation concerning Dame Quickly' s account of Falstaffs end is mentioned. If we had been edit- ing the book, we should have added the reference ('King Henry V.,' Act II. sc. iii., near the begin- ning) ; the name of the emender, Warburton ; and the right text, which is not a " Table of Greenfield," but " of green fields," so that only the first word has to be altered. The whole passage is exhaus- tively discussed in Prof. Lounsoury's 'The First Editors of Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald ' (Nutt, 1906). Burton has also misquoted Wordsworth on p. 255, and he or the printer is a little slack in matters of Latin.

As regards misprints, it is noted by Burton tha they are the cause of detecting plagiarisms. This is sometimes the case to-day where a scholar pre tends to reprint a text from the original MS., and copies a printed transcript which contains, as

a sufferer complained to us, "copyright errors."" The folly which makes stupid errors of printing valuable in first editions is indefensible, but will ilways, it seems, be rampant, collectors of books >eing often people, as Burton hints, who care chiefly for title-pages a*nd a possession which does not go so far as perusal. The editor explains in a
 * oot-note that " books do not, as a rule, become

more important by reason of the errors noticeable n them, unless such errors constitute the dis- tinguishing marks of an earlier issue than the one commonly recognized as such, and the book itself s of sufficient importance to render such distinc- tion a matter of exceptional interest." But in many cases, we imagine, the error must have been discovered in the course of printing, so that it only indicates the earlier part of a first edition. We lave, personally, no desire to possess a rarity noted in the Catalogue of the Dickens Exhibition now on- show in Piccadilly a first edition of 'Martin Chuzzlewit' in which "100" is printed on the title-page, instead of " 100." The notes add some interesting details as to the

gices realized by famous book-sales. That of eber's collection in 1834 occupied 202 days, and thus is still what is vulgarly called a " record " for the number of books dispersed ; but the sum total realized has been passed by the Libraries of Beck- ford and the Earl of Ashburnham.

In the section on ' The Gleaner and his Harvest r a note points out that Ruskin's ' On the Construc- tion of Sheepf olds' still deceives farmers into- buying it. Finds in the way of old books are now- adays rarer than they were ; indeed, the notes remark that " the publicity given to the discovery or sale of a really rare or valuable book is so wide- spread that the old-fashioned Book-hunter can hardly be said to exist. His knowledge is available to all who read the newspapers or the reports of the auction sales, and there is little or no room for him."

There is nothing really surprising in the changes of prices for books : they follow the laws of demand and supply, like other things, apart from the value attached, to mere rarity by bibliomaniacs. This value is often absurd in the case of suppressed pamphlets, or works whose limited issue or private printing was justified by their unimportance. A small proportion of book-hunters have real literary taste, and no desire to possess first editions which they cannot read with comfort. There is one rise in price in modern times which indicates a literary discovery, but two poets and two scholars gentry a good deal rarer than book-lovers were concerned in it. In his account of FitzGerald's ' Omar Khay- yam ' ('Edward FitzGerald' in "English Men of Letters") Mr. A. C. Benson quotes the following from Mr. Swinburne :

" Two friends of Rossetti's Mr. Whitley Stokes and Mr. Ormsby told him (he told me) of this wonderful little pamphlet for sale on a stall in St. Martin's Lane, to which Mr. Quaritch, finding that the British public unanimously declined to give a shilling for it, had relegated it to be dis- posed of for a penny. Having read it, Rossetti and I invested upwards of sixpence apiece or possibly threepence I would not wish to exaggerate our extravagance in copies at that not exorbitant price. Next day we thought we might get some more presents among our friends, but the man at the stall asked twopence ! Rossetti expostulated with him in terms of such humorously indignant