Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 6

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the _borrowers_, not to say a word of the _purloiners_!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my _facetiously_, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a _tres-judicieus.e.m.e.nt_ fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef."

The great work and the great author alluded to, having quite escaped him!]

[Footnote 11: The earliest satire on the mere book-collector is to be found in Barclay's translation of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," first printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1508. He thus announces his true position:--

I am the first fool of the whole navie To keepe the poupe, the helme, and eke the sayle: For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I, Of bookes to have greate plentie and apparayle.

Still I am busy bookes a.s.sembling, For to have plenty it is a pleasaunt thing In my conceyt, and to have them aye in hande: But what they meane do I not understande.

But yet I have them in great reverence And honoure, saving them from filth and ordare, By often brushing and much diligence; Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture, Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure: I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.]

[Footnote 12: David Ancillon was born at Metz in 1617. From his earliest years his devotion to study was so great as to call for the interposition of his father, to prevent his health being seriously affected by it; he was described as "intemperately studious." The Jesuits of Metz gave him the free range of their college library; but his studies led him to Protestantism, and in 1633 he removed to Geneva, and devoted himself to the duties of the Reformed Church. Throughout an honourable life he retained unabated his love of books; and having a fortune by marriage, he gratified himself in constantly collecting them, so that he ultimately possessed one of the finest private libraries in France. For very many years his life pa.s.sed peaceably and happily amid his books and his duties, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove him from his country. His n.o.ble library was scattered at waste-paper prices, "thus in a single day was destroyed the labour, care, and expense of forty-four years." He died seven years afterwards at Brandenburg.]

LITERARY JOURNALS.

When writers were not numerous, and readers rare, the unsuccessful author fell insensibly into oblivion; he dissolved away in his own weakness. If he committed the private folly of printing what no one would purchase, he was not arraigned at the public tribunal--and the awful terrors of his day of judgment consisted only in the retributions of his publisher's final accounts. At length, a taste for literature spread through the body of the people; vanity induced the inexperienced and the ignorant to aspire to literary honours. To oppose these forcible entries into the haunts of the Muses, periodical criticism brandished its formidable weapon; and the fall of many, taught some of our greatest geniuses to rise. Multifarious writings produced multifarious strictures; and public criticism reached to such perfection, that taste was generally diffused, enlightening those whose occupations had otherwise never permitted them to judge of literary compositions.

The invention of REVIEWS, in the form which they have at length gradually a.s.sumed, could not have existed but in the most polished ages of literature: for without a constant supply of authors, and a refined spirit of criticism, they could not excite a perpetual interest among the lovers of literature. These publications were long the chronicles of taste and science, presenting the existing state of the public mind, while they formed a ready resource for those idle hours, which men of letters would not pa.s.s idly.

Their multiplicity has undoubtedly produced much evil; puerile critics and venal drudges manufacture reviews; hence that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and scandal of criticism. Pa.s.sions hostile to the peaceful truths of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the republic, and every literary virtue has been lost! In "Calamities of Authors" I have given the history of a literary conspiracy, conducted by a solitary critic, GILBERT STUART, against the historian HENRY.

These works may disgust by vapid panegyric, or gross invective; weary by uniform dulness, or tantalise by superficial knowledge. Sometimes merely written to catch the public attention, a malignity is indulged against authors, to season the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired those works in private, which he has condemned in his official capacity.

But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form an estimable journalist, who will inspire confidence, and give stability to his decisions.

To the lovers of literature these volumes, when they have outlived their year, are not unimportant. They const.i.tute a great portion of literary history, and are indeed the annals of the republic.

To our own reviews, we must add the old foreign journals, which are perhaps even more valuable to the man of letters. Of these the variety is considerable; and many of their writers are now known. They delight our curiosity by opening new views, and light up in observing minds many projects of works, wanted in our own literature. GIBBON feasted on them; and while he turned them over with constant pleasure, derived accurate notions of works, which no student could himself have verified; of many works a notion is sufficient.

The origin of literary journals was the happy project of DENIS DE SALLO, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris. In 1665 appeared his _Journal des Scavans_. He published his essay in the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, his footman! Was this a mere stroke of humour, or designed to insinuate that the freedom of criticism could only be allowed to his lacquey? The work, however, met with so favourable a reception, that SALLO had the satisfaction of seeing it, the following year, imitated throughout Europe, and his Journal, at the same time, translated into various languages. But as most authors lay themselves open to an acute critic, the animadversions of SALLO were given with such asperity of criticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin called the gazettes of this new Aristarchus, Hebdomadary Flams!

_Billevesees hebdomadaires!_ and Menage having published a law book, which Sallo had treated with severe raillery, he entered into a long argument to prove, according to Justinian, that a lawyer is not allowed to defame another lawyer, &c.: _Senatori maledicere non licet, remaledicere jus fasque est_. Others loudly declaimed against this new species of imperial tyranny, and this attempt to regulate the public opinion by that of an individual. Sallo, after having published only his third volume, felt the irritated wasps of literature thronging so thick about him, that he very gladly abdicated the throne of criticism. The journal is said to have suffered a short interruption by a remonstrance from the nuncio of the pope, for the energy with which Sallo had defended the liberties of the Gallican church.

Intimidated by the fate of SALLO, his successor, the Abbe GALLOIS, flourished in a milder reign. He contented himself with giving the t.i.tles of books, accompanied with extracts; and he was more useful than interesting. The public, who had been so much amused by the raillery and severity of the founder of this dynasty of new critics, now murmured at the want of that salt and acidity by which they had relished the fugitive collation. They were not satisfied with having the most beautiful, or the most curious parts of a new work brought together; they wished for the unreasonable entertainment of railing and raillery.

At length another objection was conjured up against the review; mathematicians complained that they were neglected to make room for experiments in natural philosophy; the historian sickened over works of natural history; the antiquaries would have nothing but discoveries of MSS. or fragments of antiquity. Medical works were called for by one party, and reprobated by another. In a word, each reader wished only to have accounts of books, which were interesting to his profession or his taste. But a review is a work presented to the public at large, and written for more than one country. In spite of all these difficulties, this work was carried to a vast extent. An _index_ to the _Journal des Scavans_ has been arranged on a critical plan, occupying ten volumes in quarto, which may be considered as a most useful instrument to obtain the science and literature of the entire century.

The next celebrated reviewer is BAYLE, who undertook, in 1684, his _Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_. He possessed the art, acquired by habit, of reading a book by his fingers, as it has been happily expressed; and of comprising, in concise extracts, a just notion of a book, without the addition of irrelevant matter. Lively, neat, and full of that attic salt which gives a relish to the driest disquisitions, for the first time the ladies and all the _beau-monde_ took an interest in the labours of the critic. He wreathed the rod of criticism with roses. Yet even BAYLE, who declared himself to be a reporter, and not a judge, BAYLE, the discreet sceptic, could not long satisfy his readers.

His panegyric was thought somewhat prodigal; his fluency of style somewhat too familiar; and others affected not to relish his gaiety. In his latter volumes, to still the clamour, he a.s.sumed the cold sobriety of an historian: and has bequeathed no mean legacy to the literary world, in thirty-six small volumes of criticism, closed in 1687. These were continued by Bernard, with inferior skill; and by Basnage more successfully, in his _Histoire des Ouvrages des Scavans_.

The contemporary and the antagonist of BAYLE was LE CLERC. His firm industry has produced three _Bibliotheques_--_Universelle et Historique_, _Choisie_, and _Ancienne et Moderne_; forming in all eighty-two volumes, which, complete, bear a high price. Inferior to BAYLE in the more pleasing talents, he is perhaps superior in erudition, and shows great skill in a.n.a.lysis: but his hand drops no flowers! GIBBON resorted to Le Clerc's volumes at his leisure, "as an inexhaustible source of amus.e.m.e.nt and instruction." Apostolo Zeno's _Giornale del Litterati d'Italia_, from 1710 to 1733, is valuable.

BEAUSOBRE and L'ENFANT, two learned Protestants, wrote a _Bibliotheque Germanique_, from 1720 to 1740, in 50 volumes. Our own literature is interested by the "_Bibliotheque Britannique_," written by some literary Frenchmen, noticed by La Croze, in his "Voyage Litteraire," who designates the writers in this most tantalising manner: "Les auteurs sont gens de merite, et qui entendent tous parfaitement l'Anglois; Messrs. S.B., le M.D., et le savant Mr. D." Posterity has been partially let into the secret: De Missy was one of the contributors, and Warburton communicated his project of an edition of Velleius Patereulus. This useful account of English books begins in 1733, and closes in 1747, Hague, 23 vols.: to this we must add the _Journal Britannique_, in 18 vols., by Dr. MATY, a foreign physician residing in London; this Journal exhibits a view of the state of English literature from 1750 to 1755.

GIBBON bestows a high character on the journalist, who sometimes "aspires to the character of a poet and a philosopher; one of the last disciples of the school of Fontenelle."

MATY'S son produced here a review known to the curious, his style and decisions often discover haste and heat, with some striking observations: alluding to his father, in his motto, Maty applies Virgil's description of the young Ascanius, "Sequitur _patrem_ non pa.s.sibus aequis." He says he only holds a _monthly conversation_ with the public. His obstinate resolution of carrying on this review without an a.s.sociate, has shown its folly and its danger; for a fatal illness produced a cessation, at once, of his periodical labours and his life.

Other reviews, are the _Memoires de Trevoux_, written by the Jesuits.

Their caustic censure and vivacity of style made them redoubtable in their day; they did not even spare their brothers. The _Journal Litteraire_, printed at the Hague, was chiefly composed by Prosper Marchand, Sallengre, and Van Effen, who were then young writers. This list may be augmented by other journals, which sometimes merit preservation in the history of modern literature.

Our early English journals notice only a few publications, with little ac.u.men. Of these, the "Memoirs of Literature," and the "Present State of the Republic of Letters," are the best. The Monthly Review, the venerable (now the deceased) mother of our journals, commenced in 1749.

It is impossible to form a literary journal in a manner such as might be wished; it must be the work of many, of different tempers and talents.

An individual, however versatile and extensive his genius, would soon be exhausted. Such a regular labour occasioned Bayle a dangerous illness, and Maty fell a victim to his Review. A prospect always extending as we proceed, the frequent novelty of the matter, the pride of considering one's self as the arbiter of literature, animate a journalist at the commencement of his career; but the literary Hercules becomes fatigued; and to supply his craving pages he gives copious extracts, till the journal becomes tedious, or fails in variety. The Abbe Gallois was frequently diverted from continuing his journal, and Fontenelle remarks, that this occupation was too restrictive for a mind so extensive as his; the Abbe could not resist the charms of revelling in a new work, and gratifying any sudden curiosity which seized him; this interrupted perpetually the regularity which the public expects from a journalist.

The character of a perfect journalist would be only an ideal portrait; there are, however, some acquirements which are indispensable. He must be tolerably acquainted with the subjects he treats on; no _common_ acquirement! He must possess the _literary history of his own times_; a science which, Fontenelle observes, is almost distinct from any other.

It is the result of an active curiosity, which takes a lively interest in the tastes and pursuits of the age, while it saves the journalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. A fine feeling of the various manners of writers, with a style adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the untractable, should be his study; but candour is the brightest gem of criticism! He ought not to throw everything into the crucible, nor should he suffer the whole to pa.s.s as if he trembled to touch it. Lampoons and satires in time will lose their effect, as well as panegyrics. He must learn to resist the seductions of his own pen: the pretension of composing a treatise on the _subject_, rather than on the _book_ he criticises--proud of insinuating that he gives, in a dozen pages, what the author himself has not been able to perform in his volumes. Should he gain confidence by a popular delusion, and by unworthy conduct, he may chance to be mortified by the pardon or by the chastis.e.m.e.nt of insulted genius. The most n.o.ble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

RECOVERY OF Ma.n.u.sCRIPTS.

Our ancient cla.s.sics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation.

Many have perished: many are but fragments; and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has left us some, not of the highest value; which, however, have proved very useful, as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional prejudice.

We lost a great number of ancient authors by the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the _papyrus_. They could find no subst.i.tute, and knew no other expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman ma.n.u.scripts, and industriously defaced pages once imagined to have been immortal! The most elegant compositions of cla.s.sic Rome were converted into the psalms of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus "hide their diminished heads" to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers; these were preferred, because their volume being the greatest, most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or Horace; and it is to this circ.u.mstance that Juvenal, Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have accused them. At Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the lines of a parchment but half effaced, on which they had subst.i.tuted a book of the Bible; and a recent discovery of Cicero _De Republica_, which lay concealed under some monkish writing, shows the fate of ancient ma.n.u.scripts.[13]

That the Monks had not in high veneration the _profane_ authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the cla.s.sics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign: when a monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw--because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog! In this manner they expressed an _itching_ for those _dogs_ Virgil or Horace![14]

There have been ages when, for the possession of a ma.n.u.script, some would transfer an estate, or leave in p.a.w.n for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a ma.n.u.script was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to have a copy made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused: because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile, at an anterior period, when a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of wheat and rye.

In those times, ma.n.u.scripts were important articles of commerce; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for p.a.w.n. A student of Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in p.a.w.n a ma.n.u.script of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more cla.s.sic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their adventures of ma.n.u.script-hunting are very amusing; and their raptures, their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their censures, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as the discovery or an author little known, or not known at all. "Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I intreat you, my Poggio, send me the ma.n.u.script as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and some paid high for ma.n.u.scripts not authentic; the knave played on the bungling amateur of ma.n.u.scripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse.

But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed; he who had been most successful in acquiring ma.n.u.scripts was envied by the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a ma.n.u.script of Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that in these vast importations into Italy of ma.n.u.scripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek ma.n.u.scripts, laments that he had chosen more profane than sacred writers; which circ.u.mstance he tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with theological works, but did not highly value profane writers!

These ma.n.u.scripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial or Maximus is uncertain; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six hundred volumes was then considered as an extraordinary collection.

Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, Poggio the Florentine stands distinguished; but he complains that his zeal was not a.s.sisted by the great. He found under a heap of rubbish in a decayed coffer, in a tower belonging to the monastery of St. Gallo, the work of Quintilian. He is indignant at its forlorn situation; at least, he cries, it should have been preserved in the library of the monks; but I found it _in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere_--and to his great joy drew it out of its grave! The monks have been complimented as the preservers of literature, but by facts, like the present, their real affection may be doubted.

The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is wanting, was likewise discovered in a monastery of Westphalia. It is a curious circ.u.mstance in literary history, that we should owe Tacitus to this single copy; for the Roman emperor of that name had copies of the works of his ill.u.s.trious ancestor placed in all the libraries of the empire, and every year had ten copies transcribed; but the Roman libraries seem to have been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed nothing against the teeth of time.

The original ma.n.u.script of Justinian's Pandects was discovered by the Pisans, when they took a city in Calabria; that vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa; and when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, was transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved.

It sometimes happened that ma.n.u.scripts were discovered in the last agonies of existence. Papirius Ma.s.son found, in the house of a bookbinder of Lyons, the works of Agobard; the mechanic was on the point of using the ma.n.u.scripts to line the covers of his books.[15] A page of the second decade of Livy, it is said, was found by a man of letters in the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore--but arrived too late! The man had finished the last page of Livy--about a week before.

Many works have undoubtedly perished in this ma.n.u.script state. By a pet.i.tion of Dr. Dee to Queen Mary, in the Cotton library, it appears that Cicero's treatise _De Republica_ was once extant in this country.

Huet observes that Petronius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury, who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of the Roman bard. Raimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the papal court, possessed two books of Cicero "on Glory," which he presented to Petrarch, who lent them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by extreme want, the old man p.a.w.ned them, and returning home died suddenly without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ecstasy, and tells us that he had studied them perpetually. Two centuries afterwards, this treatise on Glory by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books bequeathed to a monastery of nuns, but when inquired after was missing. It was supposed that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that household, purloined it, and after transcribing as much of it as he could into his own writings, had destroyed the original. Alcyonius, in his book _De Exilio_, the critics observed, had many splendid pa.s.sages which stood isolated in his work, and were quite above his genius. The beggar, or in this case the thief, was detected by mending his rags with patches of purple and gold.

In this age of ma.n.u.script, there is reason to believe, that when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown work, he did not make the fairest use of it, but cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries.

Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having found a Greek ma.n.u.script of Procopius _De Bello Gothico_, translated it into Latin, and published the work; but concealing the author's name, it pa.s.sed as his own, till another ma.n.u.script of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed among his works a treatise, obtained by one of his domestics bringing in a fish rolled in a leaf of written paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish market, till he found the ma.n.u.script out of which it had been torn. He published it, under the t.i.tle _De Officio Episcopi_. Machiavelli acted more adroitly in a similar case; a ma.n.u.script of the Apophthegms of the Ancients by Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those which pleased him, and put them into the mouth of his hero Castrucio Castricani.

In more recent times, we might collect many curious anecdotes concerning ma.n.u.scripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures--an original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures.

This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided in this country; and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library exhibiting marks of dilapidation.