The Book-Hunter by John Hill Burton (top 10 non fiction books of all time .txt) đź“•
[Footnote 1: Marischal College. Mr M'Lean's descriptions refer to King's; but the two colleges, close together, must have been pretty similar in their manners and customs even before they were, as they now are, formally united.]
[Footnote 2: Life in a Northern University. By Neil M'Lean, author of 'Memoirs of Marshal Keith,' 'Romance of the Seal and Whale Fishing,' &c., &c. Glasgow; John S. Marr & Sons: London; Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1874.]
Another quotation from Mr M'Lean may be allowed, as embodying the descriptions often given by Dr Burton of the motley crew of competitors for the scholarships and bursaries dispensed by the university: "Gazing round the room, I noted that my competitors consisted of raw-boned red-haired Highlandmen, fresh from their nati
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[73] See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. By Joseph Ritson.
[74] Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 454.
[75] The editor of the Life prints the following note by Mr Raine, the coadjutor of Surtees in his investigations into the history of the North of England: "I one evening in looking through Scott's Minstrelsy wrote opposite to this dirge, Aut Robertus aut Diabolus. Surtees called shortly after, and, pouncing upon the remark, justified me by his conversation on the subject, in adding to my note, Ita, teste seipso."—P. 87.
[76] Among other volumes of interest, the Chetham has issued a very valuable and amusing collection of documents about the siege of Preston, and other incidents of the insurrection of 1715 in Lancashire.
[77] I remember hearing of an instance at a jury trial in Scotland, where counsel had an extremely subtle point of genealogy to make out, and no one but a ploughman witness, totally destitute of the genealogical faculty, to assist him to it. His plan—and probably a very judicious one in the general case—was to get the witness on a table-land of broad unmistakable principle, and then by degrees lure him farther on. Thus he got the witness readily to admit that his own mother was older than himself, but no exertion of ingenuity could get his intellect a step beyond that broad admission.
[78] "An Informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented remnant of the suffering anti-popish, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, anti-sectarian, only true church of Christ in Scotland."
[79] The applicability of this to Varro has been questioned. It is a matter in which every one is entitled to hold his own opinion. To say nothing of the other extant shreds of his writings—and I never found any one who had anything to say for them—I cannot account even the De Re Rustica as much higher in literary rank than a Farmers' and Gardeners' Calendar. No doubt it is valuable, as any such means of insight into the practical life of the Egyptians or the Ph[oe]nicians would be, even were it less methodical than what we have from Varro. But this, or other writing like it, will hardly account for his great fame among contemporaries. Look, for instance, to Cicero at the outset of the Academics: "Tu ætatem patriæ, tu descriptiones temporum, tu sacrorum jura, tu sacerdotum munera, tu domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedem regionum et locorum, tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera officia, causas aperuiste: plurimumque poetis nostris omninoque latinis, et literis luminis attulisti, et verbis: atque ipse varium et elegans omni fere numero poema fecisti: philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti—ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum." Laudation could scarcely be pitched in higher tone towards the works of the great Youatt, or Mr Huxtable's contributions to the department of literature devoted to manure and pigs. The De Re Rustica, written when its author was eighty years old, seems to have been about the last of what he calls his seven times seventy works, and it is natural to suppose that somewhere in the remaining four hundred and eighty-nine lay the merits which excited such encomiums. The story about Gregory the Great suppressing the best of Varro's works to hide St Augustine's pilferings from them, would be a valuable curiosity of literature if it could be established.
[80] Miscel. of Irish Arch. Soc., i. 120.
[81] See Mr Muir's very curious volume on "Characteristics of Old Church Architecture in the Mainland and Western Islands of Scotland."
[82] "Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Cuthberti."—Spalding Club.
[83] It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between some of the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and that of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very handsome country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the native Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House—so called, doubtless, in commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on missionaries and others coming within Wordsworth's description of
"A being not too wise and good
For human nature's daily food."
[84] See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the Early Interlaced Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. French of Bolton." Privately printed.
[85] Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can find employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at a "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruticulose, and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in the 22d volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
decorative illustration
decorative illustration
INDEX.Aberdeen laird, an, described by his wife, 10 et seq.
Adams, Dr Francis, an eminent Greek scholar, 264 et seq.
Adventures of Saints, 396, 397.
Advertisements, reading of, 156 et seq.
—curious historical interest of, 160 et seq.
Aidan and Columba, 383.
Ailbhe, St, and the cranes, 390.
Albania, a poem, reprinted by Leyden, 196.
Alexandrian Library, destruction of, by fire, 211.
Almanacs, as affording profitable reading, 155 et seq.
Amateur book-hunters, 106 et seq.
Ambrosian Library, the, at Milan, 198.
American collections dealing with early American history, 189 et seq.
Americans duplicating old European Libraries, 174
—in relation to art and letters, ib.
—combating for rarities, 175
—ransacking and anatomising private collections, 178.
Ancient literature, considerable amount of, lost, 324.
Angelo MaĂŻ of the Vatican, 229
—recovery by him of Institute of Gaius, 326.
Annotating of books a crime and a virtue, 185 et seq.
Antiquarianism known as archæology, 3.
Architecture, Church, of the early British Christians, 372.
Ardsnischen, Pastor of, buying a Greek New Testament, 60.
Armagh, Book of, 388 et seq.
Assessed Taxes Department in relation to decay of libraries, 192.
Astor, John Jacob, the bequest of, 174.
Astorian Library, wealth of the, 176 et seq.
Atticus as a dealer and capitalist publisher, 108 note.
Attorneys in Norwich, in Norfolk, and in Suffolk, 141 et seq.
Auchinleck Press, account of, 294 et seq.
Auctioneers: Carfrae, 60 et seq.
—Evans, 93 et seq.
—anecdote of a Cockney auctioneer, 178.
Auction-haunter different from prowler, 88 et seq.
Authors and compositors, 77 et seq.
Bacon commending brevity of old Scots Acts, 146.
Bailiff, the, and the writ, 136 note.
Baillet, Adrien, librarian and author of Jugemens des Savans, 230 et seq.
Ballad fabricating, 306.
Bannatyne Club, 284 et seq.
—Scott's song for festivities of, 285.
Barclay, Colonel, a Quaker, anecdote of, 9 note.
Bargain hunters and their leanings, 162.
Baskerville, the Birmingham printer, inaccuracy of, 67.
Bede on the Saints, 379.
Bentham, words in one sentence of an Act of Parliament counted by, 144.
Bethune, Rev. Dr, Waltonian Library of, 87 et seq.
Bible, inaccurate editions of, 67 et seq.
—old editions comparatively numerous, 218.
Bibliognoste, definition of, 5 note.
Bibliographe, definition of, 5 note.
Bibliographers, function of, a cruel one, 237 et seq.
—victimising each other, 242.
Bibliographical Decameron, various quotations from, 93, 294 et seq.
Bibliographies, 233 et seq.
—on special subjects, 235
—those devoted to the best books, 239.
Bibliomane, definition of, 5.
Bibliomania a disease, 13.
"Bibliomania," Dibdin's, quotations from, 18
—Ferriar's, quotation from, 86, 87 note.
Bibliophile, definition of, 5.
Bibliotaphe, definition of, 5.
Bibliothèque bleue, anecdote connected with the, 50.
Bibliuguiancie discussed by Peignot, 220.
"Bill-books" of compositors, 79 et seq.
Binders, famous, 28.
Bindings, "Inchrule" Brewer's love of, 28
—bindings as relics, 30.
Boccaccio, editio princeps of, 91
—cause of its extreme rarity, 92
—sold at the Roxburghe Library sale, 94 et seq.
Bodleian Library, origin of, 198.
Bohemian of literature, 108 et seq.
Bohun, Edmond, a Jacobite and last English licenser, 208.
Bollandus, his great work on the Saints, 355 et seq.
—the persistent labours of his successors, 356.
Book-caterers, 20 et seq.
Book-clubs, 243 et seq.
—their structure, 251
—advantages of, 255 et seq.
—confining their attention to books of non-members, 257
—the Sydenham Club, 265
—the Roxburghe Club, ib. et seq., &c.
—their gradual growth, 266 et seq.
—Dibdin's description of the origin of the Roxburghe Club, 267
—their secrecy, 271
—the Bannatyne Club, 284 et seq.
—book-club men, ib. et seq.
—character of their editors, 307, 315
—value of such clubs to history, 309
—their literature, 311
—Camden Club, ib.
—Chetham Club, 312
—Surtees Club, ib.
—Maitland Club, ib.
—Spalding Club, ib.
—Irish Archæological and other Clubs, ib. et seq.
—purity of text of book-club literature, and consequent historical value, 322 et seq., 327
—as art unions, 404 et seq.
Book-hunters as creators of libraries, 168 et seq., 197
—as preservers of literature, 205 et seq.
—as chiffoniers, 219
—as discoverers of valuable and curious books, 224
—as librarians, 227 et seq.
—their clubs, 243 et seq.
—various titles of, 5, 6
—vision of mighty book-hunters, 14
—book-hunters as bibliothaptes and bibliolytes, 54 et seq.
—classification of, 64 et seq.
—as Rubricists, 63
—as aspirants after large paper copies, 86
—their place in the dispensations of Providence, 101 et seq.
—the harmlessness and advantages of their disease, 102 et seq.
—book-hunters and dealers, 104
—in relation to other hobby-riders, 105
—their lack of mercenary spirit, ib. et seq.
—in the amateur phase, 106 et seq.
—their freedom from low company, 109
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