"I see the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa is made out very clearly, but there seem insuperable difficulties in proving Hengist and Horsa themselves. This strikes me as a characteristic of the author's[12] profession. He has to deal with parents actual and possible, but the offspring are seen evanescently, often loom in the distance, and sometimes can't be got to exist even when most desired.—Yours truly, J.H. BURTON."

[Footnote 12: The late Professor Simpson.]

Dr Simpson's really universal genius led him pretty deeply into archaeology, in which he sometimes, as on the present occasion, showed more zeal than knowledge.

One of the first summers at Craighouse was enlivened by a long visit from the African traveller, Captain Speke. Dr Burton met with him in the hospitable house of his friendly publisher, the late John Blackwood, at Strathtyrum. Captain Speke was then preparing, or endeavouring to prepare, for the press, his book, the 'Discovery of the Source of the Nile.' The truly gallant Captain being more practised in exploring than in writing, Mr Blackwood suggested his going home with Dr Burton, that he might have the benefit of his advice in the formation of his materials into a book. The family at Craighouse became warmly attached to their guest. He endeared himself by his simple unassuming character, and a peculiar sweetness of temper. The sorrow at Craighouse was great on hearing, during the following autumn, of his most lamentable death. He who had escaped so many dangers—was so well accustomed to firearms—accidentally shot by his own gun while partridge-shooting near his paternal home!

While at Craighouse, Dr Burton's library gradually increased from being an ordinary room full of books, to a collection numbering about 10,000 volumes. From his earliest years Dr Burton had been a collector of books, and Craighouse led to the increase of his collection in two ways. The distance from the town was an impediment to the use of the Advocates' Library in his historical studies, and there was space at Craighouse for any number of books. There were always rooms which could be taken into occupation when wanted; and to his life's end it was a favourite amusement of Dr Burton's to construct and erect shelves for his books.

In an article in 'Blackwood's Magazine' for August 1879, there occurs the following lively description of the impression made by the library on the mind of a visitor. Before the passage quoted was published, Dr Burton had left Craighouse for Morton House, but the description evidently refers to Craighouse:—

"We have had the privilege of dropping in upon him [Dr Burton clearly being meant, though not named] in what we might call his lair, if the word did not sound disrespectful. It was in a venerable, half-castellated, ivy-grown manor-house, among avenues of ancient trees, where the light had first to struggle through the foliage before it fell on the narrow windows, in walls that were many feet in thickness. And seldom, surely, has so rich a collection been stowed away in so strange a suite of rooms. Rooms, indeed, are hardly the word. The central point, where the proprietor wrote and studied, was a vaulted chamber, and all around was a labyrinth of passages to which you mounted or descended by a step or two; of odd nooks and sombre little corridors, and tiny apartments squeezed aside into corners, and lighted either from the corridor or by a lancet-window or a loophole. The floors were of polished oak or deal; the ceilings of stone or whitewashed; and as to the walls, you could see nothing of them for the panelling of shelves and the backs of the volumes. It was books—books—books—everywhere; the brilliant modern binding of recent works relieving the dull and far more appropriate tints of work-worn leather and time-stained vellum. To the visitor it seemed confusion worse confounded; though wherever his glance happened to fall, he had assurance of the treasures heaped at random around him. But his host carried the clue to the labyrinth in his brain, and could lay his hand on the spur of the moment on the book he happened to want. And with the wonders he had to offer for your admiration, you forgot the flight of time, till you woke up from your abstraction in the enchanted library, to inquire about the manuscript that was in course of publication."

In spring Dr Burton generally spent some time in London, partly on official business, partly in literary research at the British Museum.

He was elected a member of the Athenaeum Club without application or ballot, an honour which he valued highly. He delighted in the dignified and literary tone of the Club, and frequented it much when in London.

About 1867 the office of Historiographer-Royal becoming vacant, it was bestowed on Dr Burton, with a salary of L190 per annum, thus bringing his annual income to nearly L900, instead of L700. The compliment was enhanced by the fact of a Conservative Ministry being then in office. Dr Burton was a decided, though not aggressive, Liberal in politics.

Though personally more and more unsociable as years advanced, Dr Burton was excessively hospitable. He could not bear that any person, rich or poor, should leave his house unrefreshed, and he made both servants and children welcome to see their friends if these did not trespass on his time. A nervous inquiry in later years, if he heard of any guest being expected, was, "He, or she, will not meddle with me, will he?" Assured that the privacy of his library would be respected, any one was free to the rest of the house; and if they showed no disposition to intrude, Dr Burton would gradually become tame to them, and in some few instances appear to enjoy a temporary addition to the family circle. Such instances were, however, rare and ever rarer. He was strongly attached to his home and home circle, and preferred having no addition to it. A very partial parent to all his children, his sons were his special pride and happiness.

During the first years of Craighouse, his wife was able to accompany him in those long rambles on the Pentlands which were his favourite amusement. Afterwards, when she was unable for the exertion, he found pleasant companions in his sons.

Several times during those years he spent some weeks on the Continent. He generally wrote daily during all absences, but his letters, as already said, were for the most part brief,—chiefly craving for news from home, which was also written for him daily. If any accident prevented his receiving his daily letter, he expressed agonies of apprehension about all possible or impossible ills. In regard to the health of his family he was painfully anxious and apprehensive.

The subjoined letters are offered as specimens of his correspondence.

"ATHENAEUM CLUB, 29th June 1871.

"MY DEAR WILLIE,[13]—As you and I have often gone geologising together, I'll tell you how I got on at St Albans, where, I suppose you know, I saw cousin William.[14] You know the conglomerates. They are generally hard little stones in a casing of sandstone, lime, or other soft matter. I have known for thirty years, in a lapidary's window in Perth, a large piece of conglomerate, where all is hard and flinty, taking a beautiful polish. After much inquiry I found that this was got in Hertfordshire, where St Albans is. I could get no account of any rock of it, however. But as there was a committee of agriculturists smoking in the inn every evening, I joined them, and got my information.

[Footnote 13: Dr Burton's eldest son, then a boy of fifteen.]

[Footnote 14: William Burton, artist, son of Dr Burton's eldest brother.]

"It always occurs in cakes under the soil, and is very troublesome in ploughing. It is called the 'Mother stone,' or the 'Breeding stone,' from a supposition that it is the nursery of all the flints. When its nodules grow large enough, they set up as flints on their own account. There is therefore a great desire to extirpate it from the fields, and it might be found by their sides, or, as one man said, 'You may foind it anywheres, and you maint never foind it nowheres.' So I prowled about and got plenty, chipping off as much as I could conveniently carry.

"Tell Tucky and Cos[15] all this. I'm sure it will amuse them.—Your affectionate papa."

[Footnote 15: His two younger children.]

* * * * *

"STRASBURG, 8th August 1875.

"MY DEAR COSMO,[16]—You have been very industrious, and have earned your holidays, so I hope you will have a good swing of them before we begin our Latin exercises. Meanwhile I am going to give you a little lesson in history and geography suggested by my travels.

[Footnote 16: Dr Burton's youngest son, eleven or twelve years old.]

"Look at some map containing Holland. You find me land at Rotterdam, and go round by Arnheim to Nymegen. This town used to be strongly fortified. I rambled in the remains of the fortifications, like small hills and valleys covered with bright grass. I saw a quantity of fine mushrooms growing in them, and the tall yellow flowers known as Samson's rod. The reason of the fortification is this. The Hollanders were an industrious, frugal people, who made a fruitful country out of swamps and sand. Nymegen is in the border. It is the gate, as it were, to Holland, and the fortifications kept the gate shut against enemies.

"In the year 1704 there reigned in France Louis XIV., called Louis the Grand. He had greatly enlarged his dominions, taking one country after another. He possessed the whole between Holland and France, and now he was to besiege Nymegen and take Holland. The Hollanders said to the British: 'We have been good friends; you are strong. Surely you will not let this cruel king rob us of the fruits of our industry? Besides, if Louis takes one country after another he will be so strong that you will not be able to resist him—it is your interest as well as ours. Come and help us in our sore distress.'

"So Queen Anne sent over an army under Marlborough. Not only did he save Nymegen, but he took from King Louis the chief fortified town he had in the neighbourhood—Venlo,—and many others along the river Maas or Meuse. There was an alliance with the Germans, and when King Louis heard that a German army was going to join the British he said, 'Together they will be too strong for me, let us destroy the German army in the first place.' For this purpose he sent an army to the Danube.

"For reasons I may tell you afterwards, all great battles are fought on flat ground. Marlborough thought that if he could get his army over the hills and into the plains of the Danube, he could fight the French before they destroyed the Germans. Accordingly he crossed what is called the 'watershed' between the Rhine and the Danube. You will find it at Geislingen, between Heidelberg and here. There is always high ground, and generally a valley in it at the sources of streams running in different directions. You may see this in the Pentlands, where the burns on one side run into the Water of Leith, and those on the other into the Esk."

The end of this letter has unfortunately been lost.

The fragment above quoted serves to illustrate Dr Burton's strong interest in military history. His accounts of battles and battle-fields are allowed to be the most striking parts of his Histories. His interest in such subjects arose partly from the faint infantile recollections already described. He purchased and studied works on fortification and military strategy.

"ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W., 25th April 1877.

"MY DEAR LOVE,[17]—I got this morning your letter of Tuesday; very pleasant and refreshing, and more than once read over. But the exile can't hear too much from home, especially when the conditions are critical,[18] and I must not yet count that all critical conditions are at an end; so pray don't let a day pass without something being posted to me, though it should be but a card with the briefest inscription.

[Footnote 17: This letter is addressed to the writer.]

[Footnote 18: His youngest daughter had had a mild attack of scarlet fever, from which she was completely recovered before he left home.]

"I dined yesterday with the Vindicator,[19] when Horne, who you know is now Dean of Faculty, was in all his glory. On Monday I dined with Everest, dined also with Ellice and Colonel Mure, the member for Renfrewshire—rather too much gaiety, but I have no other engagement. I don't yet see when I shall get away, but will let you know whenever I myself know.

[Footnote 19: Mr Hosack, author of an ingenious and exhaustive work, 'Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers,' in which he vindicates the character of Queen Mary. Notwithstanding their difference of opinion on that fruitful subject of dispute, the two authors were fast friends.]

"I sent Will an engineering work yesterday, which I hope will profit and please him.—Love to all from your affectionate J.H. BURTON."

Constitutionally irritable, energetic, and utterly persistent, Dr Burton did not know what dulness or depression of spirits was. With grief he was indeed acquainted, and while such a feeling lasted it engrossed him; but his spirits were naturally elastic, and both by nature and on principle he discouraged in himself and others any dwelling on the sad or pathetic aspects of life. He has said that the nearest approach he had ever felt to low spirits was when he had finished some great work, and had not yet begun another.

Such blanks in his life were short, and ever shorter and fewer. He found necessary excitement in his work, and, when he joined his family, needed no particular encouragement or inducement to lead him to talk either about what he was doing or something else. As he advanced in years his family learned more and more to leave the choice of subjects of conversation entirely to him. Any subject not chosen by himself was apt to prove irritating. Sometimes even his own did. Often his irritations were amusing. If his wife, or some one else, chose to affect a ludicrous degree of ignorance on some of his special subjects, they might probably elicit a volley of information which would not have been vouchsafed to them in answer to a serious question. Old reminiscences sometimes led on to those laughable sayings in which Dr Burton's talk was rich. For instance,—He had once rented an old inn at Pettycur as summer quarters, and a favourite amusement, both at the time and afterwards, was to imagine and describe the visitors who might have called on him there in ignorance of the changed destination of the house. He would imagine and mimic the tones of a drouthy Highland drover demanding refreshment,—which, by the way, he would have been sure to get had he so applied to Dr Burton; of an entirely drunk Lowlander, persisting in representing himself as a bona fide traveller; of a highly Conservative old nobleman, posting up to town with his carriage-and-four in spite of railways: this story ended with, "A wicked and perverse generation shall come seeking a Sign, and no sign shall be given them."

He delighted in a sort of practical bull, or confusion of ideas, such as—"One may never have a widow all his life."

A favourite story was of a too hospitable elder in a country parish, who invited his minister to sup and spend the night in his house without his wife's consent. The wife sees a male figure in the darkish entrance of the house, and in her anger deals him a violent blow on the head with the family Bible, ejaculating, "That's for asking him to stay a' nicht." The husband, from an inner room, exclaims, "Eh, woman, ye have felled the minister!" On which the virago says to her victim, "My dear, I thocht it was yersel'!"

Ministers and clergy of all denominations are often the text of jokes.

Another story referred to an Episcopal clergyman, who was frequently too late in reaching his church, and whose curate on such occasions began to read the morning service instead of him, and had reached in one of the lessons the well-known verse, St John xiv. 6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," when his ecclesiastical superior, panting with exertion, reaches the reading-desk, pushes his curate from his place, and intones, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," adding a strictly private aside to his curate, "You the way, and the truth, and the life, indeed!"

Another minister arriving at church drenched with rain, and claiming sympathy from his wife, is told by her to "Gang up into the pu'pit; ye'll be dry eneuch there."

A story in a different spirit, said to have been reported to him by Lord Cockburn, is ascribed to a Scotch shepherd. A set of gentlemen were imprecating the prevailing east wind, and asked the shepherd if he could in any way defend that prevalent evil of his country. "Ay, sirs," said he; "it weets the sod, it slocks the yows [i.e., quenches the thirst of the ewes], and it's God's wull."

Many Aberdeenshire stories are valueless without Dr Burton's Aberdeen accent, which he could intensify at pleasure.

A reminiscence of college days at Aberdeen was of one of the professors there trying to discipline his unruly class, who came tumbling in while the professor was opening proceedings by reciting the Lord's Prayer in Latin, according to custom, and wound up his "In secula seculorum, amen," with "Quis loupavit ower the factions [Aberdeen for forms or benches], ille solvit doon a saxpence."

Two neat little mots relate, the one to the familiar subject of London eggs, the other, to the name of his youngest son. London grocers—as all Londoners know—label their eggs Fresh Eggs, and New-laid Eggs, only the respective prices of the different sorts or hard-bought experience pointing to the signification of the two appellations. Dr Burton on hearing this, said, "Oh, of course the New-laid Eggs become Fresh in time."

The writer wished to bestow the name of David on her youngest son, in addition to that of Cosmo, in memory of her husband's young brother David, whom she had heard described as an interesting child at the time of his early death. Dr Burton opposed this wish, not desiring to diminish the compliment to the child's grandfather and name-father, Cosmo Innes. The child was ultimately christened Cosmo Innes—thus, as his father said, remaining entirely Cosmetic.

Two legal stories were told respectively of Lord ——and Lord Corehouse:—

Lord —— is pronouncing sentence on an assassin who had stabbed a soldier: "You did not only maliciously, wickedly, and feloniously stab or cut his person, thereby depriving him of his life, but did also sever the band of his military breeches, which are her Majesty's."

Lord Corehouse is listening to the pleading of an advocate who describes some performance which, as he says, "could be done as easily as your Lordship could leap out of your breeches." Lord Corehouse interrupts: "Mr ——, the saltatory feat which you are pleased to ascribe to me is not one which I have ever attempted, and I do not feel sure that if I did I could perform it with any of that ease which you suppose."

Enough, perhaps, of such reminiscences, which, written, may fail altogether of their effect when spoken.

The writer recollects vaguely an immense number, of which confused images present themselves. Crocodiles with their hands in their breeches-pockets. Persons throwing off their coats and waistcoats like Newfoundland dogs. A master and man sleeping; master on the boards a-top, and the man in the bed; master remarking in the morning he would have preferred the lower station, but for the concetty o' the thing.

Coming down early one morning in great spirits at the prospect of a long day's outing with his son, he said to the boy—

"I am not an early riser, As you may surmise, sir; But when I'm on a ploy, sir, I feel just like a boy, sir."

No chance rhyme or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt the subject under discussion.

The following childish little poem seems worth preservation now. It was presented to his daughter Matilda on the death of her little dog. She happening to visit a relative, who was physician in a lunatic asylum, and showing the little poem, it was printed in the 'Asylum Magazine,' from which it was copied into the 'Animal World:'

LAMENT FOR FOXEY.

Poor little Foxey, With your coaxy Little way, You're gone for aye. I'll no longer hark To your garrulous bark, See the fleeching grimace Of your comical face, Nor be touched by your yelping When you get a skelping. You had no orthodoxy Poor Foxey, Nor a commanding spirit, Nor any great merit. The reason for sorrow, then, what is it? Just that you're missed, And that's all That shall befall The rest of us, Even the best of us. An empty chair Somewhere, To be filled by another Some day or other. Sick cur or hero in his prime, It's a matter of time. The world is growing, growing, The blank is going, going, And will be gone anon.



CHAPTER VI.

LITERARY LIFE (continued).

Illness—Resignation of office—Sale of Craighouse—Morton—Domestic life—'Queen Anne'—Letters about ballad-lore—Singular incident connected with it—Letters from abroad.

In the end of the year 1877 Dr Burton had the first severe illness of his life. On the 18th day of December of that year, Mrs Cunningham, widow of Lord Cunningham, died at Morton House, which had been the summer home of her twenty years of widowhood, and at which illness had detained her during the winter of 1877. The editor of the 'Scotsman' applied to Dr Burton for an obituary notice of Mrs Cunningham—an old friend of his, and still older of his wife. He was then too ill to be applied to on any subject, or to be told of his old friend's death.

For several days at that time he was alarmingly ill from bronchitis, accompanied by unusually high fever. This passed off but slowly. The bodily health and strength appeared to be fully restored at the end of a few weeks, but there was an undefinable change. Shortly after this illness, though not in consequence of it, Dr Burton resigned his office of Prison Manager. He retired on an allowance of two-thirds of his former salary, remaining chairman of the Board of Prisons and Statistics, of which he was an honorary member.

He had not fully regained strength when, to the unspeakable sorrow of its inmates, they learned that Craighouse was sold to the Committee of the Lunatic Asylum, was to be immediately adapted to the purposes of an asylum, and that they must quit it at Whitsuntide.

They had held it first on a lease, then on a second short lease, but afterwards had merely rented it from year to year, not imagining that any other tenant would covet it with all its pretty heavy responsibilities. Dr Burton had, from his natural irritability, sometimes said he would prefer to be elsewhere; but when it came to finding some other place which would hold his books—some place not too far to move them to—to the abandonment of his own carpentery, &c.,—he lamented the departure as much as others. His one proviso as to the new abode was, that it was not to be in the town, or nearer the town than Craighouse.

The whole spring Dr Burton's family sought in all directions for a suitable abode, and at last pitched on that left vacant by Mrs Cunningham's death as most nearly combining all the various requisites. On the 20th of May 1878 the flitting from Craighouse to Morton was completed. Morton is fully two miles farther from Edinburgh than Craighouse, the approach to it from the town being a continuous ascent on to a shoulder of the Pentlands. Its situation is pretty and entirely rural, but with nothing of the unrivalled beauty of that of Craighouse, which commanded a view extending from North Berwick Law to Ben Lomond, yet lay well sheltered among its lovely hills and splendid trees. The great drawback of Morton House, for Dr Burton's family, lay in the greater distance from the town. The time spent in travelling the up-hill road was a serious loss, to say nothing of the fatigue. Dr Burton never would allow this to be a disadvantage, so far as he was concerned, but the writer is persuaded it was seriously prejudicial to his health.

During the summer of this year Dr Burton was invited to Oxford to receive the honour of a D.C.L. degree. He went, and was highly delighted with his visit. He had some years previously received a similar compliment from the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Burton, by way of setting a good example to his family, who continued to lament the loss of Craighouse, attached himself excessively to Morton. He was farther attached to it by the recollection of having been Mrs Cunningham's guest there. It was one of the very few houses at which he occasionally dined after he went to Craighouse. Soon after he had gone to Craighouse, he formed a resolution against dining out in the town. His neighbours in the country were so few that he had no reason to dread too frequent invitations from them; and he occasionally dined, as has been said, with Mrs Cunningham at Morton, and with his nearest neighbour, equally at Craighouse as at Morton, Mr John Skelton, at the beautiful Hermitage of Braid. Dr Burton was generally invited by the latter to meet his distinguished friend, the historian, Mr Anthony Froude. He may during these years have been once or twice a guest at Colinton House, then inhabited by Lord Dunfermline, and as often at Bonally, the house of his old friend the late Professor Hodgson. During his residence at Morton, Dr Burton and his family dined with their neighbours, Mr and Mrs Stevenson, at Swanston Cottage, once. On one occasion he was persuaded to actually drive with his wife as far as Duddingston, where he dined and enjoyed a pleasant summer evening with Professor and Mrs Laurie and their family. Once he went still farther and dined with his old friend Mr Jenner, at Easter Duddingston. Mr Jenner and he had been associated with Lord Murray, Angus Fletcher, and others, in the foundation of the First Ragged School, as it was then called, in Edinburgh, and had remained friends ever since. On the Committee of the Ragged School splitting up on the question of religious instruction, all the gentlemen named had espoused the principle carried out in the United Industrial School—that of combined secular and separate religious instruction.

With these exceptions, and that of a very few visitors at home, the life at Morton was entirely domestic. During the whole of his three years' stay at Morton, Dr Burton always hoped to induce the remains of his circle of old friends to dine with him once more. They had become few indeed—were limited to Professor Blackie and Dr John Brown. He never succeeded in persuading these gentlemen to come. Insuperable difficulties on one side or other always intervened. During these three years there never was any social gathering at Morton except entertainments which Dr Burton's family gave to the country people, and which sometimes included a few young friends as assistants. Dr Burton was no longer called on to visit his office daily. To attend the Board meetings once a-week was sufficient.

As soon as he had finished his 'History of Scotland' in 1870, he conceived the project of writing a 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne.' It was an ambitious attempt. Lord Macaulay's too early death had prevented his performing the task, and Mr Thackeray was understood to have contemplated it, but to have shrunk from its vastness. Dr Burton had been collecting material for this work in all his summer tours during the past ten years, and in all his visits to the British Museum while in London. He had written a great part of it before he was interrupted by his illness in the end of '77, and the removal from Craighouse early in '78. The most marked change in Dr Burton after that illness was in his impaired power of mental application. His general health was good, even strong; he still enjoyed long rambles with his sons, and walked to town and back at his former rapid rate; but now that he had no longer any office work, now that he might sit and read or write all day if he would, he did not do so. Instead of, as formerly, resenting all interruption while engaged in his library, he seemed to seek every excuse for leaving it and his literary occupation. Though not rising earlier than formerly, he would go to bed comparatively early, and several times a-day would propose to his wife to go to visit her flowers, to do a little gardening, to go and feed the fowls—in short, to share in any little diversion going.

A visit of the writer's to her sister in Argyleshire gave occasion for the following notes on ballad-lore, in which Major Mackay of Carskey, Mrs Burton's brother-in-law, was also strong:—

"MORTON, 2d May 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I recollect having come across the ballad incident you mention upwards of fifty years ago, when I was zealous in ballad-lore. If it had been in one of those accepted as genuine and poetical I would have remembered the ballad, but my impression is that it was condemned as a fabrication for this and other neologies. The button is not a conspicuous item of female attire as of the male, and Shakespeare has been attacked for the vulgarity of even making Lear say, 'Prithee, undo this button,' though I think it fine.

"If the Major is curious in ballad-lore, I can give him abundant information in it. For the musical item, the best collection I know is Motherwell's, both for good poetic taste in selection, and the tunes accompanying some of the contents....—Your affectionate

"J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"MORTON, Wednesday Evening, 8th May 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—Looking for the ballad you want, and not finding it by recollection, I came by accident to the very line—

'When she cam' to her father's land The tenants a' cam' her to see; Never a word she could speak to them, But the buttons aff her claes would flee.'

The ballad is known by the title of The Marchioness of Douglas, but better known by the—

'O waly, waly, up yon bank, And waly, waly, doon yon brae.'

It was printed first in Jamieson's collection—1806; again in Chambers's, p. 150. The 'waly' has been by Cockney critics called Scotch for 'wail ye.' The word may come from the same etymological source as 'wail,' but it is a Scots adverb, indicative of the intensity of sorrow.

"It will be hard to find any one who is my master in ballad-lore (though other things have of late taken the preponderance). My services in the cause are certified by Robert Chambers in his collection, published in 1829—fifty years ago.

"I had then collected several versions from old people in Aberdeenshire. While writing this it dawns on my recollection that I lost the bulk of the collection, and that some years ago I got a letter from America, written by some one publishing Scots ballads, asking me to help him. Making a search for any remnant of the old collection, I found one ballad only, and sent it. Then came the odd conclusion—he had the rest of the collection, as he found by comparison of handwriting.

"This little affair coming in upon others of so much more moment to me—I can't tell exactly how many years ago—was forgotten utterly until your inquiry about the 'buttons' brought it up. When I am through with 'Queen Anne' I may look back on it and other trifles....

"I do not think I have any news for you. Mary says the violet roots were sent on Monday.—Your affectionate

"J.H. BURTON."

In the summer of 1879 Dr Burton went abroad for the last time, for the purpose of tracing the course of Marlborough's campaigns. From his daily letters home a few passages may be selected:—

"MONS, 18th June 1879.

"MY DEAR WILL,—I think you may well write to Ratisbon after receiving this.

"I leave the Low Country when I have completed my inquiries.

"What little remains belongs to the Danube district, which I shall haunt for the remainder of my time. It got its name because the Romans found it a ratis-bona, or good pier for crossing. It is by the Germans called Regensberg, or the town of rain.—N.B. I went through the old Scots College there when its inmates had been driven out, and the only article I found left behind was a large umbrella. After three days' cessation the thunder and torrents have returned yesterday. I walked three hours in rain, which soused me, and then I had as long of sunshine to dry me, and arrived in very comfortable condition, but I had been starved and was afraid to make up by a heavy supper; I had consequently, after a long sleep, such an appetite, that though I had breakfast, I joined the table d'hote dinner at one o'clock.

"Yesterday and the day before I went over the marching grounds of our army in 1709, especially the battle-field of Malplaquet. If you look into any of the histories of the period, or lives of Marlborough in the library, you will see all about it. They are concentrated in the room which I latterly used, and are concentrated opposite to the fireplace.

"I have had extreme interest in pursuing my inquiries, yet don't I long to go about in some country where one can get a drink of pure water by the roadside, such as you and I have enjoyed on occasion. The country people only get it in deep draw-wells. They have plenty of water for their agriculture—too much; it is like the Ancient Mariner's complaint—'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' The peasantry are amply provided with brandy. I passed yesterday about thirty houses where they get it for two sous, not quite a penny a glass. I wonder all your friends at Brown Brothers' do not swarm to such a land....

"I have no doubt everything is beautiful, I hope also fruitful, about Morton. I feel sure of one thing, that mamma has abundance of her favourite flowers.—Love to all from your affectionate papa, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"REGENSBERG, 21st June 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I have but a scrap of paper available....

"Fine weather at last. Eating cherries. Last night I got a comfortable sleep for nothing. For reasons good no doubt, but unknown, the train stopped from 9 P.M. to 5 A.M., at a country station. I lay on a bench, with my head on my small bag, and never had a sounder sleep.—Your affectionate

J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"DONAUWOeRTH, 27th June 1879.

"MY DEAR COS,—This afternoon I expect to be at Blenheim, and so at the farthest limits of my battle-fields. I spoke of not going to the Alps, in consideration of the depressing of our neighbours the Pentlands; but being so close to them, I can't resist a step farther, and then the Pentlands are not so very ill used, for they are put much on a level with the Grampians. At the beginning of next week I expect to be moving homewards, and I still think, as I wrote to mamma, the last place to catch me at, before taking to the water, is Antwerp.

"This is a very fishy place, not of the Danube rolling majestically not many yards from where I am writing, but of the sea. The inn I am in is called the Krebs or Crab, round the corner is the Crawfish, and somewhere else the Shrimps.

"I wonder what you are now all doing in the Belvidere,[20] and what projects you are all making for the summer, and whether you have ripe strawberries, and there is good promise of cherries and apples; and so, with kind love to all, adieu from your affectionate papa, J.H. BURTON."

[Footnote 20: A tower within the grounds of Morton, used by his sons as a workshop.]

* * * * *

"DEGGENDORF, BAYERISCHER WALD, 1st July 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I had a misgiving that I had given a false prospect of reaching me at Regensburg, so I came round that way again, and was rewarded by yours of the 24th, and Willy's of what he calls the 22d July.

"I did not pursue the plan I spoke of to Cos, of getting a peep of the Alps, my investigations cutting off the time assigned to it. But I have gone into a siding here to see the much-boasted, and, it would seem, newly discovered touring ground of the Wald.

"I have got through my work now, but I can still find some in the neighbourhood of Antwerp,—so that is my point, and there I shall hope for letters.

When I last went to Blenheim, some five years ago, the railway only reached a point some fifteen miles from it, and I could not get back to my inn until its opening at five o'clock. Now there is train all the way. It must be supported by agricultural produce. Such wealth of fertility I never saw. I think, standing at any point in the great haugh of the Danube, I could see as much grain as all Scotland could produce. This had a curious social influence, causing me some hardships.

"The towns are all conglomerates of farm-steadings. The country was of old so cursed by war, that a steading in the fields was a lost affair. The old habit still rules, and in a town the size, say, of Linlithgow, there is not a shop or an inn except the store, whence the farmers draw their oceans of beer in great jugs, or sometimes meet to quaff it on the premises. I had to bribe the owner of such an establishment to give me brown bread and cheese; hard living of this kind, however, suits my constitution. Luckily, in consideration, I suppose, of there being no refuge for belated travellers, the station-master had a nice clean bedroom, which he was entitled to let.

"I propose remaining here till to-morrow, that I may have a glimpse of the much-lauded Wald.—Love to all from your affectionate goodman, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"EGER, 4th July 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—The best account I can give you of where I am is, that I expect to reach Leipzic this evening. But it will still be some time ere I reach Antwerp, and you may as well write me somewhat. If any letters I get there prompt me to return with the least possible delay, I shall do so, but otherwise I shall wait, occupying myself in the Netherlands for the Antwerp steamer on Saturday, the 12th I think it is, to-morrow week.

"In going into the Bayerischer Wald I went where it was not easy to get speedily out, though I found a railway right through just opened. The night before last I slept, I suppose, some 4000 or 5000 feet above the sea, in a huge garret with some twenty beds in it. Somebody was sound asleep in one, but disappeared before I awoke. I supposed the house to have been temporary, for accommodating the workers making the railway, but I found it to be the hospice of the old road across the mountains. It has been a sort of pilgrimage, I think—gasthaus zur Landes Grenze.

"The scenery is naught in comparison with the Scots Highlands, or even our Pentlands. It is only in Scotland and the Lakes that hills of humble height look Alpine. The Wald is something like your Harz, but higher; so adieu.—Love to all from J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"THALE, Monday, 5th July 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I think you know this place. I found that if anything out of the direct line to Antwerp, it was only so to the extent of its short side line, some ten miles or so. When scenery is good, I enjoy a second visit to it more than the first, and this was specially so in the present instance; for in my visit from Grund, I took the most difficult and least profitable course, by climbing laterally to the level of the Ross Treppe, instead of going along the stream, and seeing the variety of cleft granite, unexampled, I think, elsewhere in that class of rock....

"I am longing to see your beautiful gardens, and all—but have nothing to grumble at—health never better.—Affectionate remembrances to the rest, from your affectionate gudeman, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"ANTWERP, 11th July 1879.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—To my great contentment I received here this morning your three letters, the latest dated on the 9th. I expect to-morrow, at 8 p.m., to sail by the steamer Windsor.

"I have had a grand time of it—everything going right with me, and yet I have a longing for home.

"From sultry, the weather has drifted into cold and rain. Yesterday the rain poured powerfully all morning, and having some arrears of sleep to make up, I slumbered as long as it continued. Adieu, my dear.—Yours,

"J.H. BURTON."

During this summer, Dr Burton and his eldest son walked from Morton to North Berwick and back in the same day, a walk of at least fifty miles. In former years sixty was an ordinary day's work. Once during Captain Speke's stay at Craighouse, Dr Burton traversed a distance within twenty-four hours, which Captain Speke computed at seventy miles.



CHAPTER VII.

THE END.

Sale of library—Letters from Shetland and Aberdeen—Winter illness—Charities—Recovery—Magazine articles again—Literary executorship of late Mr Edward Ellice—Rev. James White of Methlick—Last illness and death—Concluding remarks—Burial at Dalmeny.

Would that in biography, as in romance, the story might end at its brightest point! But the true tale must follow its subject through the valley of the shadow of death, and on to his grave.

The remainder of '79 and beginning of '80 were spent at Morton in finishing the 'History of the Reign of Queen Anne;' but the work did not go on with the ease and pleasure of former works, and on its conclusion, Dr Burton formed the resolution to sell his library. This determination was combated by his family and friends, as well as by his friendly publisher, with all the arguments in their power, but in vain. Dr Burton never would allow that parting with his treasured volumes, the collection of which had been the pride of his life, cost him a pang. He had done with his books, he said. They were no book-hunter's library, but a collection made for use, and, that use over, had better be again turned into money. Dr Burton did not contemplate undertaking any other great work; and the possession of so extensive a library forced him to live in a larger house than was convenient, and rendered leaving it very troublesome. In the proceeds of its sale Dr Burton was again disappointed. But before it could be brought to sale, while he was engaged in the laborious task of cataloguing his books for sale, he refreshed himself by a summer trip to Shetland, taking Aberdeen on his return journey, where he had the gratification of being present at the baptism of his little grandchild, the daughter of Dr and Mrs Rodger.

He wrote from Lerwick, 8th July 1880:—

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I am not in what might be called an interesting country—low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty—but a new country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I saw a valuable archaeological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads were all paved, and went straight over hill and across valley—never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have been fully identified. But there, as well as in other places, where it has been questioned if the Romans ever were—any road strewn or surfaced with stones that have been laid down in the paving of the road, is adopted as a Roman road. I have often supposed that this conclusion was too readily adopted. And to-day I walked for some distance on a road that has all the requisites—yet no one is wild enough to say that the Romans were in Shetland. The weather to-day was warmer than I have yet known it, the sun, such as he is, having nearly the whole twenty-four hours to do his work in. The next stage will be Kirkwall, then Wick.

"I shall intimate my motions as I find them coming up for consideration. I feel very elastic. There is nothing in my mind demanding either hard work or anxious adjustment. The 'Queen Anne' pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion. Then came immediately various cares and troubles, accompanied by the not very severe, but tedious, drudgery of the index; but I am not going to grumble more, since I am at present in comparative freedom and idleness.—Yours, my dear love, J.H. BURTON."

The next is dated merely Sunday.

"MY DEAR LOVE,— ... The weather here has been divine, with daylight, one may say, for twenty-four hours. The people are kind and cleanly, and all the necessaries of life are abundant. I do not know when I have enjoyed better health. There is nothing abnormal about me, except the extent of my appetite. Walking thirty miles here, is less fatiguing than from Morton to Edinburgh.

"Love to all the household, and remembrances to guests, from yours affectionately, J.H. BURTON."

* * * * *

"DOUGLAS HOTEL, ABERDEEN, 14th July 1880.

"MY DEAR LOVE,— ... I had some fun yesterday with a class of people I detest—those who, because a man has been studious, and has written books, count that he is public property, who may be hailed by any one like a mountebank or street musician.

"There were some forty or fifty at dinner, and I found from the tenor of the conversation that I was taken for the American Judge Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of school and college friends.—Love to all, from your affectionate

"J.H. BURTON.

"P.S.—On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse Barbara. I was able to call on Mat.'s old friend, Mrs Burroughs; her husband, now General, was out. They live in great grandeur, on about the dreariest hillside Nature ever created."

[Footnote 21: A rather amusing comment on this letter is conveyed in the following extract from one addressed to Dr Burton's publishers, by Mr George M'Crie, a grandson of the eminent Scotch divine of the same name:—

"In the month of July last year, I happened to be travelling southward, in the steamer St Magnus, from Orkney. Before calling at Wick, and while the tourists on board were gazing at John o' Groat's House, I was spoken to by an elderly gentleman, on the 'bridge,' regarding some of the steamer's arrangements. I satisfied his curiosity as well as I was able, and thought no more of the matter. We had a large number of passengers, and I did not notice him again until we were coming out together in a boat, after a ramble on shore at Pulteneytown. A fellow-passenger, who had previously noticed the elderly gentleman and myself in conversation, then whispered to me, 'A celebrated literary man that, sir, with whom you were speaking before we went ashore; no other than the famous Judge Haliburton of America, the author of "Sam Slick."' Some doubt, I must confess, crossed my mind at this stage. I surely had heard of the Judge's death some years before, but thinking, very pardonably, that I must be mistaken, I replied, 'Oh, indeed!' and viewed my late acquaintance with some curiosity. I am imaginative, but it was difficult, in truth, to connect this staid and sober personage with the idea of the American satirist, however proverbially dissimilar authors may be to their own creations. However, I am no hunter after celebrities, literary or otherwise, and I would not, in all likelihood, have taken any steps to further conversation with the one in question, had he not, by chance, been seated close beside me on the quarterdeck when we resumed our journey south. The steamer was rolling heavily, and his seat was not a comfortable one. I gave him a camp-stool which I had secured, and in return he kindly again entered into conversation with me. We talked about many things, but I could not help thinking that the American author seemed well informed, for a transatlantic stranger, regarding the coast, the route generally, and, singularly enough, regarding Scottish antiquities. At last an observation, which I timidly hazarded regarding the United States, showed me, in the reply it received, that I was hopelessly at sea regarding my fellow-passenger's identity. Before we came to Aberdeen he had told me that his name was John Hill Burton. The similarity of the sound of the names had misled my too easily persuaded informant and my own credulous self. I had taken the author of the 'Book-hunter' for the author of the 'Clockmaker'!

"Dr Hill Burton most kindly continued to converse with me for several hours after we had exchanged cards. My own is a name not unconnected with Scottish ecclesiastical history, and this, to him, was a sufficient topic. Being an Edinburgh man by birth, I ought to have known him by sight, but I have been absent from my native city for many years, and may be excused for not recognising one of Edinburgh's most distinguished dwellers, now unhappily lost to us.

"G.M. M'C."]

* * * * *

"BANCHORY, 16th July 1880.

"MY DEAR LOVE,—I am here in the scene of many recollections going back to boyhood, and the interest of them takes a zest from knowing that you, too, must have stored up associations with the spot, though of a later period. I think the avenue trees at Blackhall were cut down before your day. They are not now much missed in the general landscape. The lapse of half a century has given such a growth to the surrounding plantations, that where I remember bare hills, or freshly planted and uglier than bare, there are now great stretches deserving to be called forest land."

* * * * *

Dr Burton returned from this pleasant little trip well, and in good spirits, but the winter was one of illness.

On the 8th of November it was found necessary to call in medical advice on account of a severe exoema affecting chiefly one leg. The doctor ordered confinement to bed, besides other remedies. On the 8th of December these had proved successful, and Dr Burton was able to be up, and, at Christmas, to assist his wife in carrying gifts to all their poor neighbours—a plan substituted that year for the first time instead of a Christmas-tree for the same class of people.

Dr Burton was always much interested in the Christmas-tree, and used to contribute largely to it what he called trash—i.e., cheap fancy articles, if he happened to be in London before Christmas-time, or money if he did not. His mode of visiting poor people was peculiar. He no sooner heard of any plan of benevolence towards them than he was determined it should be immediately carried out, and utterly impatient of all preparations. He chose to carry a basket, the heavier the better, but would on no account enter a cottage, still less speak to an inmate. He preferred such expeditions in the dark, that he might successfully hide himself outside while his wife went in to distribute his bounty.

On the 8th of January 1881 a recurrence of the former symptoms again obliged him to take to bed. On the 8th of February he was able to rise and go down to the library.

On the 8th of March he again became ill, and towards the end of that month had an alarming attack of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs. Slight hope was entertained of his recovery for some days, but this illness appeared a turning-point, and by the 8th of April he was able to come down-stairs. No more 8ths were marked by disaster or recovery till again the 8th of August.

During the summer Dr Burton appeared to have recovered completely. He wrote several articles for 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and took regular walks, first with his wife, and, when his walking power improved so as to exceed hers, with his son. He also began to edit the literary remains of the late Mr Edward Ellice, to whom he was joint literary executor along with Mrs Ellice.

At the time of the General Assembly Dr Burton had the pleasure of seeing once more his valued friend, the Rev. James White, minister of Methlick. This gentleman had been his schoolfellow at the Grammar School in Aberdeen. The two old friends spent a pleasant summer evening together at Morton. On the Saturday before his own death Dr Burton learned that of Mr White. "Ah! so Jamie White's gone," he said, "and without the catalogues." The last part of his sentence referred to old class lists in which Joannes Burton and Jacobus White's names appear next each other. They believed themselves the last survivors of their Grammar School class.

On Tuesday, 2d August, he walked into Edinburgh and out again as usual, though his family drove in at the same time that he walked, and drove out again also at the same time, in the hope that he would avail himself of a seat in the pony-carriage, at least for part of the way. His aversion to driving clung to him. He did not appear fatigued, declared himself the better for the walk, and even next day still boasted of the advantage which he thought he always gained from a long walk. On Thursday, 4th August, he became very hoarse, and complained of sore throat. On Friday these complaints were better. On Saturday, 6th, he slept almost the whole day, rousing himself to take food when required, and always intending to rise, but as the shades of evening fell announcing his intention of "making a day of it," and being very active and down in good time next day.

On Sunday, 7th, he did come down as early as usual, and did not complain, but appeared languid, lying on the sofa the greater part of the day,—a thing he had never done before. He read and talked as usual. He sat at table with his family at dinner for the last time. It was observed that he looked ill, so ill that his wife resolved to send for the doctor as soon as possible next day, which was Monday, again the 8th, of August. The night had passed quietly, but on the doctor's arrival he pronounced the case very grave. The lungs were much congested, and the heart's action weak. The day brought no aggravation of the symptoms; again the night was quiet.

On Tuesday, 9th August, there was a slight improvement, which continued throughout the night.

On Wednesday, 10th, the improvement seemed more marked till about ten A.M. About that time a change in the countenance was observed. On the doctor's visit about twelve he pronounced the case all but hopeless, and five hours later life was extinct. Consciousness remained till almost the last moment. The illness was attended by no bodily pain, little even of uneasiness, and the mind was calm and placid throughout.

Since the beginning of illness, nine months before, the natural irritability, or impatience of temper, had been diminishing. Dr Burton was by no means, as all his friends seemed to suppose, a fretful or unreasonable invalid. With but few exceptions he was gentle and grateful to his attendants, especially to his wife. He was perfectly aware of his own condition, though never directly told it. His friend Mr Belcombe, the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Morningside, called for him on Tuesday, 9th August, was received by him with pleasure, and spent some time with him. Dr Burton had been brought up an Episcopalian, and continued attached to the Moderate party in that Church through life.

It can hardly be expected that the writer should offer a critical estimate of one so lately dead, and so nearly related to her. In the preceding sketch she has endeavoured to inform the public on all particulars in which they might be supposed interested in the life of a man who served them during life with considerable acceptance. His voluminous works may speak for themselves, or find a more competent exponent than the present writer. She has endeavoured to give a picture of himself.

John Hill Burton can never have been handsome, and he so determinedly neglected his person as to increase its natural defects. His greatest mental defect was an almost entire want of imagination. From this cause the characters of those nearest and dearest to him remained to his life's end a sealed book.

He was fond of talking, and still fonder of writing, about character; but even his liveliest pictures, such as that of De Quincey the opium-eater, are but a collection of external habits or peculiarities, not necessarily bearing at all on the real nature—the inner man. His was the sort of mind which more naturally classifies than individualises, in this agreeing with the late Mr Buckle, who appreciated Dr Burton's historical labours, and was in his turn appreciated by him. To both, individual character seemed a small subject not worth study.

The characters of women, especially, were by Dr Burton all placed in the same category. He conceived of them all as baby-worshippers, flower-lovers, &c.—all alike.

Dr Burton was excessively kind-hearted within the limits placed by this great want. To any sorrow or suffering which he could understand he craved with characteristic impatience to carry immediate relief; and the greatest enjoyment of his life, especially of its later years, was to give pleasure to children, poor people, or the lower animals. Many humble folks will remember the bunches of flowers he thrust silently into their hands, and the refreshment he never failed to press on their acceptance in his own peculiar manner.

He was liberal of money to a fault. He never refused any application even from a street beggar. He quite allowed that these ought not to be encouraged, but he urged that the municipality ought to take charge of them, and prevent their appealing to the compassion of the public, who could not, as he said, be expected to perform the disagreeable task of disciplining vagrants at the wages of a penny a case. No printer's devil or other chance messenger failed to receive his sixpence or shilling, besides a comfortable meal. It was his constant custom to ask his sons if any of their wants were unsupplied, if they required money for furnishing their workshop or laboratory, or for any of their studies or amusements. It is but just to them to add that the question was almost always answered in the negative.

Many of the "motley crew" along with whom Dr Burton received his education fell into difficulties in the course of their lives. An application from one of them always met with a prompt response. To send double the amount asked on such occasions was his rule, if money was the object desired. In his earlier life he would also spare no trouble in endeavouring to help these unfortunates to help themselves. As he grew old he was less zealous, probably from being less sanguine of success, in this service.

On Saturday the 13th of August the mortal remains of John Hill Burton were laid beside those of his infant child in the lovely little churchyard of Dalmeny. It had been at first intended that he should be buried in the Dean Cemetery, where his mother and his first wife were interred, and where his valued friend William Brodie[22] had erected a beautiful monument over their graves; but after orders had been given to this effect, his wife became strongly possessed by the wish to carry out his repeatedly expressed injunction to have him laid in Dalmeny.

[Footnote 22: Since deceased—October 30, 1881—and also buried there.]

KATHARINE BURTON. MORTON, 20th September 1881.



THE BOOK-HUNTER.

PART I.—HIS NATURE.

Introductory.

Of the Title under which the contents of the following pages are ranged I have no better justification to offer than that it appeared to suit their discursive tenor. If they laid any claim to a scientific character, or professed to contain an exposition of any established department of knowledge, it might have been their privilege to appear under a title of Greek derivation, with all the dignities and immunities conceded by immemorial deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very reverence it is held in—the strong disinclination on the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who does it—makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student once into palaeozoology, and he takes your other hard names—your ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron—for granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a question whether a term is categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be described as suncategorematic, one may take up a very absolute positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful protection, and called itself Archaeology. An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems as it were to be rescued from the heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If it be large and shapeless, it may take rank as an amorphous megalith; and it is on record that the owner of some muirland acres, finding them described in a learned work as "richly megalithic," became suddenly excited by hopes which were quickly extinguished when the import of the term was fully explained to him. Should there be any remains of sculpture on such a stone, it becomes a lithoglyph or a hieroglyph; and if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of title of honour, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.

The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of Greek designations lately reached its climax, in an attempt to save thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.

It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify the class of men to whom the following sketches are devoted by an appropriate scientific title, a difficulty would start up at the very beginning. As the reader will perhaps see, from the tenor of my discourse, I would find it difficult to say whether I should give them a good name or a bad—to speak more scientifically, and of course more clearly, whether I should characterise them by a predicate eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole, I am content with my first idea, and continue to stick to the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all the more assurance that it has been tolerated, and even liked, by readers of the kind I am most ambitious of pleasing.[23]

[Footnote 23: To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avises of Jean Joseph Rive:—

"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book."—"A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements."—"A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy."—"A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure."—"A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases."

The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive, is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a classifier of books; and bibliopee, "l'art d'ecrire ou de composer des livres," or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author. Of the dignity with which this writer can invest the objects of his nomenclature, take the following specimen from his description of the bibliographe:—

"Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and nothing more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it.

"Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all sciences, it would appear that all subjects should come under the consideration of the bibliographe; languages, logic, criticism, philosophy, eloquence, mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are no strangers to him; the history of printing and of celebrated printers is familiar to him, as well as all the operations of the typographic art. He is continually occupied with the works of the ancients and the moderns; he makes it his business to know books useful, rare, and curious, not only by their titles and form, but by their contents; he spends his life in analysing, classifying, and describing them. He seeks out those which are recommended by talented authors; he runs through libraries and cabinets to increase the sum of his knowledge; he studies authors who have treated of the science of books, he points out their errors; he chooses from among new productions those which bear the stamp of genius, and which will live in men's memories; he ransacks periodicals to keep himself well up to the discoveries of his age, and compare them with those of ages past; he is greedy of all works which treat of libraries, particularly catalogues, when they are well constructed and well arranged, and their price adds to their value. Such is the genuine Bibliographe." This reminds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly defined their own science as the knowledge of things human and divine.]

Few wiser things have ever been said than that remark of Byron's, that "man is an unfortunate fellow, and ever will be." Perhaps the originality of the fundamental idea it expresses may be questioned, on the ground that the same warning has been enounced in far more solemn language, and from a far more august authority. But there is originality in the vulgar everyday-world way of putting the idea, and this makes it suit the present purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be dealt with, there is no intention to be either devout or philosophical about it, but to treat it in a thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in this temper to judge of its place among the defects and ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, if we human creatures sometimes did this, and discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics, according as our temperament and training are of the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest of criminals. But such has been my own unfortunate experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who has floundered a little out of the straight path, and being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms which come so readily to the lips of the censors, who at heart believe themselves spotless,—just as complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this and that, come from the fat lips of the millionaire, when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, and his forcing-frames.

No; it is hard to choose between the two. The man who has no defect or crack in his character—no tinge of even the minor immoralities—no fantastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet—no preposterous hobby—such a man, walking straight along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle, is a very dangerous character, no doubt; of such all children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel an innate loathing. And yet it is questionable if your perfectionised Sir Charles Grandison is quite so dangerous a character as your "miserable sinner," vociferously conscious that he is the frailest of the frail, and that he can do no good thing of himself. And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of these two characteristics have been known so to alternate in one disposition as to render it evident that each is but the same moral nature under a different external aspect,—the mask, cowl, varnish, crust, or whatever you like to call it, having been adapted to the external conditions of the man—that is, to the society he mixes in, the set he belongs to, the habits of the age, and the way in which he proposes to get on in life. It is when the occasion arises for the mask being thrown aside, or when the internal passions burst like a volcano through the crust, that terrible events take place, and the world throbs with the excitement of some wonderful criminal trial.[24]

[Footnote 24: It has often been observed that it is among the Society of Friends, who keep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that these make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey, in one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man of great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded by insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the system of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, which I am not prepared either to support or contradict. After describing the system of restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at once—the force of passion and of youth—not unfrequently records its own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. And, further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases—strange and elaborate affections of the nervous system—are found exclusively among the young men and women of the Quaker Society; that they are known and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham; that they assume a new type and a more inveterate character in the second or third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted; and, finally, that if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community itself—the Quaker body—does not increase, but, on the contrary, is rather on the wane."

There exist many good stories which have for their point the passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in his Description of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and the pugilist. He was a colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen wild work in his day; but in his old age a change came over him, and, becoming a follower of George Fox, he retired to spend his latter days on his ancestral estate in Kincardineshire. Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot hinder thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist; for shouldst thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he may prove too strong, not only for me, but for thee." There was no use of attempting to answer such an argument.]

The present, however, is not an inquiry into the first principles either of ethics or of physiology. The object of this rambling preamble is to win from the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards the human frailty which I propose to examine and lay bare before him, trusting that he will treat it neither with the haughty disdain of the immaculate, nor the grim charity of the "miserable sinner:" that he may even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet kindly remember that, in comparison with many others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's side. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid fathers are permitted to exercise by the licence of the existing school of French fiction.[25] Neither will it exact such extensive toleration as that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her sister lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her own "was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, daedlin, drucken body—wi' nae ill practices aboot him ava!" But all things in their own time and place. To understand the due weight and bearing of this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to remember that its happy owner had probably spent her youth in that golden age when it was deemed churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest filled his stoup at the fountain of the flowing hogshead; and if the darker days of dear claret came upon her times, there was still to fall back upon the silver age of smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a really hospitable country-house were an anker of whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on the bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar with a spade in it,—all for the manufacture of toddy.

[Footnote 25: In the renowned Dame aux Camelias, the respectable, rigid, and rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous ayez une maitresse, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un galant homme doit payer l'amour d'une fille entretenue, c'est on ne peut mieux; mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour elle, que vous permettiez que la bruit de votre vie scandaleuse arrive jusqu'au fond de ma province, et jette l'ombre d'une tache sur le nom honorable que je vous ai donne—voila ce qui ne peut etre, voila ce qui ne sera pas."

So even the French novelists draw the line "somewhere," and in other departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than many good uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one very popular novel the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming-table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having committed forgery, plots with the Mephistopheles of the story to buy his own safety at the price of his wife's honour. This might seem bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper, by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason to suspect his master of having indulged, once at least, if not oftener, in brandy-and-water!]

The habits of that age have passed away, and with them the drunken laird and the widely tolerant wife. The advancing civilisation which has nearly extinguished this class of frailties among those who have the amplest means of indulgence in them, is, no doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous ground—dangerous, I mean, to the frail but amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted. Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call attention to a special type of human frailty, since the world is full of people who will be prepared to deal with and cure it, provided only that they are to have their own way with the disease and the patient, and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of locking him up, dieting him, and taking possession of his worldly goods and interests, as one who, by his irrational habits, or his outrages on the laws of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other neology, has satisfactorily established his utter incapacity to take charge of his own affairs. No! This is not a cruel age; the rack, the wheel, the boot, the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks, have disappeared; death-punishment is dwindling away; and if convicts have not their full rations of cooked meat, or get damaged coffee or sour milk, or are inadequately supplied with flannels and clean linen, there will be an outcry and an inquiry, and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage of his influence, and learn to look better after the administration of patronage. But, at the same time, the area of punishment—or of "treatment," as it is mildly termed—becomes alarmingly widened, and people require to look sharply into themselves lest they should be tainted with any little frailty or peculiarity which may transfer them from the class of free self-regulators to that of persons under "treatment." In Owen's parallelograms there were to be no prisons: he admitted no power in one man to inflict punishment upon another for merely obeying the dictates of natural propensities which could not be resisted. But, at the same time, there were to be "hospitals" in which not only the physically diseased, but also the mentally and morally diseased, were to be detained until they were cured; and when we reflect that the laws of the parallelogram were very stringent and minute, and required to be absolutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole machinery of society would come to pieces, like a watch with a broken spring,—it is clear that these hospitals would have contained a very large proportion of the unrationalised population.

There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of communism now among us, and it is therefore with some little misgiving that one sets down anything that may betray a brother's weakness, and lay bare the diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeed, the bad name that proverbially hangs the dog has already been given to the one under consideration, for bibliomania is older in the technology of this kind of nosology than dipsomania, which is now understood to be an almost established ground for seclusion, and deprivation of the management of one's own affairs. There is one ground of consolation, however,—the people who, being all right themselves, have undertaken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford time for idle reading. There is a good chance, therefore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed, and the harmless class, on whose peculiar frailties the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go at large.

So having spoken, I now propose to make the reader acquainted with some characteristic specimens of the class.



A Vision of Mighty Book-Hunters.

As the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now—tall, straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms into benignity as he inspects a pretty little clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge of by their wiser neighbours is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency—or, it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief—to have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through their favourite taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon containing 372 copies of rare editions of the Bible? All were fish that came to his net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a stall—and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, and secures with frantic impetuosity, "at any price," a great fish he has been patiently watching year after year. His hunting-grounds were wide and distant, and there were mysterious rumours about the numbers of copies, all identically the same in edition and minor individualities, which he possessed of certain books. I have known him, indeed, when beaten at an auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so be it—but I daresay I have ten or twelve copies at home, if I could lay hands on them."

It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector buys his first duplicate. It is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon—the first pawning of the silver spoons—or any other terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and hardened; and it is observable in the career of this class of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandonment to its propensities. The Archdeacon had long passed this stage ere he crossed my path, and had become thoroughly hardened. He was not remarkable for local attachment; and in moving from place to place, his spoil, packed in innumerable great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain unreleased during the whole period of his tarrying in his new abode, so that they were removed to the next stage of his journey through life with modified inconvenience.