Marvin Spevack has recently collected and re-published a collection of Isaac D'Israeli's "Pre-Victorian Essays on the History of Literature" under the title Isaac D'Israeli on Books (The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2004). The whole collection is a "good read" for bookish folk, but these two essays are of particular interest to bibliophiles. Spevack's selection is based on a 1969 reprint edition of The Works of Isaac D'Israeli, 6 volumes, 1881, with a variety of helpful notes and indexes (not reproduced here).
THE BIBLIOMANIA
(Curiosities, vol. 1, pp. 9-12)
... The BIBLIOMANIA, or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they themselves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called the madhouses of the human mind; and again, the tomb of books, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library. It was facetiously observed, these collections are not without a Lock on the Human Understanding. [1]
The BIBLIOMANIA never raged more violently than in our own times. It is fortunate that literature is in no ways injured by the follies of collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily protect the good. [2]
Some collectors place all their fame on the view of a splendid library, where volumes, arrayed in all the pomp of lettering, silk linings, triple gold bands, and tinted leather, are locked up in wire cases, and secured from the vulgar hands of the mere reader, dazzling our eyes like eastern beauties peering through their jalousies!
LA BRUYERE has touched on this mania with humour:-- "Of such a collector, as soon as I enter his house, I am ready to faint on the staircase, from a strong smell of Morocco leather. In vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, Etruscan bindings, and naming them one after another, as if he were showing a gallery of pictures! a gallery, by-the-bye, which he seldom traverses when alone, for he rarely reads; but me he offers to conduct through it! I thank him for his politeness, and as little as himself care to visit the tanhouse, which he calls his library."
LUCIAN has composed a biting invective against an ignorant possessor of a vast library, like him, who in the present day, after turning over the pages of an old book, chiefly admires the date. LUCIAN compares him to a pilot, who was never taught the science of navigation; to a rider who cannot keep his seat on a spirited horse; to a man who, not having the use of his feet, would conceal the defect by wearing embroidered shoes; but, alas! he cannot stand in them! He ludicrously compares him to Thersites wearing the armour of Achilles, tottering at every step; leering with his little eyes under his enormous helmet, and his hunchback raising the cuirass above his shoulders. Why do you buy so many books? You have no hair, and you purchase a comb; you are blind, and you will have a grand mirror; you are deaf, and you will have fine musical instruments! Your costly bindings are only a source of vexation, and you are continually discharging your librarians for not preserving them from the silent invasion of the worms, and the nibbling triumphs of the rats!
Such collectors will contemptuously smile at the collection of the amiable Melancthon. He possessed in his library only four authors,-- Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy the geographer.
Ancillon was a great collector of curious books, and dexterously defended himself when accused of the Bibliomania. He gave a good reason for buying the most elegant editions; which he did not consider merely as a literary luxury. [3] The less the eyes are fatigued in reading a work, the more liberty the mind feels to judge of it: and as we perceive more clearly the excellences and defects of a printed book than when in MS.; so we see them more pl y in good paper and clear type, than when the impression and paper are both bad. He always purchased first editions, and never waited for second ones; though it is the opinion of some that a first edition is only to be considered as an imperfect essay, which the author proposes to finish after he has tried the sentiments of the literary world. Bayle approves of Ancillon's plan. Those who wait for a book till it is reprinted, show plainly that they prefer the saving of a pistole to the acquisition of knowledge. With one of these persons, who waited for a second edition, which never appeared, a literary man argued, that it was better to have two editions of a book rather than to deprive himself of the advantage which the reading of the first might procure him. It has frequently happened, besides, that in second editions, the author omits, as well as adds, or makes alterations from prudential reasons; the displeasing truths which he corrects, as he might call them, are so many losses incurred by Truth itself. There is an advantage in comparing the first and subsequent editions; among other things, we feel great satisfaction in tracing the variations of a work after its revision. There are also other secrets, well known to the intelligent curious, who are versed in affairs relating to books. Many first editions are not to be purchased for the treble value of later ones. The collector we have noticed frequently said, as is related of Virgil, "I collect gold from Ennius's dung." I find, in some neglected authors, particular things, not elsewhere to be found. He read many of these, but not with equal attention-- "Sicut canis ad Nilum, bibens et fugiens?” like a dog at the Nile, drinking and running.
Fortunate are those who only consider a book for the utility and pleasure they may derive from its possession. Students, who know much, and still thirst to know more, may require this vast sea of books; yet in that sea they may suffer many shipwrecks.
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners!
[1]. An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a ms-judicieusement fait observer, l' entendement hurnain sous la clef." The great work and the great author alluded to, having quite escaped him!
[2]. The earliest satire on the mere book-collector is to be found in Barclay's translation of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," first printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1508. He thus announces his true position:
I am the first fool of the whole navie
To keepe the poupe, the helme, and eke the sayle:
For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I,
Of bookes to have greate plentie and apparayle.
Still I am busy bookes assembling,
For to have plenty it is a pleasaunt thing
In my conceyt, and to have them aye in hande:
But what they meane do I not understande.
But yet I have them in great reverence
And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure,
By often brushing and much diligence;
Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture,
Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure:
I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.
[3]. David Ancillon was born at Metz in 1617. From his earliest years his devotion to study was so great as to call for the interposition of his father, to prevent his health being seriously affected by it; he was described as "intemperately studious." The Jesuits of Metz gave him the free range of their college library; but his studies led him to Protestantism, and in 1633 he removed to Geneva, and devoted himself to the duties of the Reformed Church. Throughout an honourable life he retained unabated his love of books; and having a fortune by marriage, he gratified himself in constantly collecting them, so that he ultimately possessed one of the finest private libraries in France. For very many years his life passed peaceably and happily amid his books and his duties, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove him from his country. His noble library was scattered at waste-paper prices, "thus in a single day was destroyed the labour, care, and expense of forty-four years." He died seven years afterwards at Brandenburg.
A BIBLIOGNOSTE
(Curiosities, vol. 3, pp. 340-346)
A STARTLING literary prophecy, recently sent forth from our oracular literature, threatens the annihilation of public libraries, which are one day to moulder away!
Listen to the vaticinator! "As conservatories of mental treasures, their value in times of darkness and barbarity was incalculable; and even in these happier days, when men are incited to explore new regions of thought, they command respect as depots of methodical and well-ordered references for the researches of the curious. But what in one state of society is invaluable, may at another be worthless; and the progress which the world has made within a very few centuries has considerably reduced the estimation which is due to such establishments. We will say more—“ [1] but enough! This idea of striking into dust "the god of his idolatry," the Dagon of his devotion, is sufficient to terrify the bibliographer, who views only a blind Samson pulling down the pillars of his temple!
This future universal inundation of books, this superfluity of knowledge, in billions and trillions, overwhelms the imagination! It is now about four hundred years since the art of multiplying books has been discovered; and an arithmetician has attempted to calculate the incalculable of these four ages of typography, which he discovers have actually produced 3,641,960 works! Taking each work at three volumes, and reckoning only each impression to consist of three hundred copies, which is too little, the actual amount from the presses of Europe will give to 1816, 3,277,764,000 volumes! each of which being an inch thick, if placed on a line, would cover 6069 leagues! Leibnitz facetiously maintained that such would be the increase of literature, that future generations would find whole cities insufficient to contain their libraries. We are, however, indebted to the patriotic endeavours of our grocers and trunkmakers, alchemists of literature! they annihilate the gross bodies without injuring the finer spirits. We are still more indebted to that neglected race, the bibliographers!
The science of books, for so bibliography is sometimes dignified, may deserve the gratitude of a public, who are yet insensible of the useful zeal of those book-practitioners, the nature of whose labours is yet so imperfectly comprehended. Who is this vaticinator of the uselessness of public libraries? Is he a bibliognoste, or a bibliographe, or a bibliomane, or a bibliophile, or a bibliotaphe? A bibliothecaire, or a bibliopole, the prophet cannot be; for the bibliothecaire is too delightfully busied among his shelves, and the bibliopole is too profitably concerned in furnishing perpetual additions to admit of this hyperbolical terror of annihilation [2]
Unawares, we have dropped into that professional jargon which was chiefly forged by one who, though seated in the "scorner's chair," was the Thaumaturgus of books and manuscripts. The Abbé Rive had acquired a singular taste and curiosity, not without a fermenting dash of singular charlatanerie, in bibliography: the little volumes he occasionally put forth are things which but few hands have touched. He knew well, that for some books to be noised about, they should not be read: this was one of those recondite mysteries of his, which we may have occasion farther to reveal. This bibliographical hero was librarian to the most magnificent of book-collectors, the Duke de la Valliere. The Abbé Rive was a strong but ungovernable brute, rabid, surly, but tres-mordant. His master, whom I have discovered to have been the partner of the cur's tricks, would often pat him; and when the bibliognostes, and the bibliomanes were in the heat of contest, let his "bull-dog" loose among them, as the duke affectionately called his librarian. The "bull-dog" of bibliography appears, too, to have had the taste and appetite of the tiger of politics, but he hardly lived to join the festival of the guillotine. I judge of this by an expression he used to one complaining of his parish priest, whom he advised to give "une messe dans son ventre!" He had tried to exhaust his genius in La Chasse aux Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avises, and acted Cain with his brothers! All Europe was to receive from him new ideas concerning books and manuscripts. Yet all his mighty promises fumed away in projects; and though he appeared for ever correcting the blunders of others, this French Ritson left enough of his own to afford them a choice of revenge. His style of criticism was perfecdy Ritsonian. He describes one of his rivals as I'insolent et tres-insense auteur de l'Almanach de Gotha, on the simple subject of the origin of playing-cards!
The Abbé Rive was one of those men of letters, of whom there are not a few who pass all their lives in preparations. Dr. Dibdin, since the above was written, has witnessed the confusion of the mind and the gigantic industry of our bibliognoste, which consisted of many trunks full of memoranda. The description will show the reader to what hard hunting these book-hunters voluntarily doom themselves, with little hope of obtaining fame! "In one trunk were about six thousand notices of MSS. of all ages. In another were wedged about twelve thousand descriptions of books in all languages, except those of French and Italian; sometimes with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of papers relating to the History of the Troubadours. In a fourth was a collection of memoranda and literary sketches connected with the invention of arts and sciences, with pieces exclusively bibliographical. A fifth trunk contained between two and three thousand cards, written upon each side, respecting a collection of prints. In a sixth trunk were contained his papers respecting earthquakes, volcanoes, and geographical subjects. [3] This Ajax flagellifer of the bibliographical tribe, who was, as Dr. Dibdin observes, "the terror of his acquaintance, and the pride of his patron," is said to have been in private a very different man from his public character; all which may be true, without altering a shade of that public character. The French Revolution showed how men, mild and even kind in domestic life, were sanguinary and ferocious in their public.
The rabid Abbé Rive gloried in terrifying, without enlightening his rivals; he exulted that he was devoting to "the rods of criticism and the laughter of Europe the bibliopoles," or dealers in books, who would not get by heart his "Catechism" of a thousand and one questions and answers: it broke the slumbers of honest De Bure, who had found life was alieady too short for his own "Bibliographie Instructive."
The Abbé Rive had contrived to catch the shades of the appellatives necessary to discriminate book amateurs; and of the first term he is acknowledged to be the inventor.
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 minutia 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.
I shall catch our bibliognoste in the hour of book-rapture! It will produce a collection of bibliographical writers, and show to the second-sighted Edinburgher what human contrivances have been raised by the art of more painful writers than himself-either to postpone the day of universal annihilation, or to preserve for our posterity, three centuries hence, the knowledge which now so busily occupies us, and transmit to them something more than what Bacon calls "Inventories" of our literary treasures.
"Histories, and literary bibfiotheques (or bibliothecas), will always present to us," says La Rive, "an immense harvest of errors, till the authors of such catalogues shall be fully impressed by the importance of their art; and, as it were, reading in the most distant ages of the future the literary good and evil which they may produce, force a triumph from the pure devotion to truth, in spite of all the disgusts which their professional tasks involve; still patiently enduring the heavy chains which bind down those who give themselves up to this pursuit, with a passion which resembles heroism.
"The catalogues of bibliotheques fixes (or critical, historical, and classified accounts of writers) have engendered that enormous swarm ofbibliographical errors, which have spread their roots, in greater or less quantities, in all our bibliographers." He has here furnished a long list, which I shall preserve in the note. [4]
.
The list, though curious, is by no means complete. Such are the men of whom the Abbé Rive speaks with more respect than his accustomed courtesy. "If such," says he, "cannot escape from errors, who shall? I have only marked them out to prove the importance of bibliographical history. A writer of this sort must occupy himself with more regard for his reputation than his own profit, and yield himself up entirely to the study of books."
The mere knowledge of books, which has been called an erudition of titlepages, may be sufficient to occupy the life of some; and while the wits and "the million" are ridiculing these hunters of editions, who force their passage through secluded spots, as well as course in the open fields, it will be found that this art of book-knowledge may turn out to be a very philosophical pursuit, and that men of great name have devoted themselves to labours more frequently contemned than comprehended. Apostolo Zeno, a poet, a critic, and a true man ofletters, considered it as no small portion of his glory to have annotated Fontanini, who, himself an eminent prelate, had passed his life in forming his Bibliotheca Itahtma. Zeno did not consider that to correct errors and to enrich by information this catalogue of Italian writers was a mean task. The enthusiasm of the Abbé Rive considered bibliography as a sublime pursuit, exclaiming on Zeno's commentary on Fontanini-- "He chained together the knowledge of whole generations for posterity, and he read in future ages."
There are few things by which we can so well trace the history of the human mind as by a classed catalogue, with dates of the flrst publication of books; even the relative prices of books at different periods, their decline and then their rise, and again their fall, form a chapter in this history of the human mind; we become critics even by this literary chronology, and this appraisement of auctioneers. The favourite book of every age is a certain picture of the people. The gradual depreciation of a great author marks a change in knowledge or in taste.
But it is imagined that we are not interested in the history of indifferent writers, and scarcely in that of the secondary ones. If none but great originals should claim our attention, in the course of two thousand years we should not count twenty authors! Every book, whatever be its character, may be considered as a new experiment made by the human understanding; and as a book is a sort of individual representation, not a solitary volume exists but may be personified, and described as a human being. Hints start discoveries: they are usually found in very different authors who could go no further; and, the historian of obscure books is often preserving for men of genius indications of knowledge, which without his intervention we should not possess! Many secrets we discover in bibliography. Great writers, unskilled in this science of books, have frequendy used defective editions, as Hume did the castrated Whitelocke; or, like Robertson, they are ignorant of even the sources of the knowledge they would give the public; or they compose on a subject which too late they discover had been anticipated. Bibliography will show what has been done, and suggest to our invention what is wanted. Many have often protracted their journey in a road which had already been worn out by the wheels which had traversed it: bibliography unrolls the whole map of the country we purpose travelling over-the post-roads and the by-paths.
Every half-century, indeed, the obstructions multiply; and the Edinburgh prediction, should it approximate to the event it has foreseen, may more reasonably terrify a far distant posterity. Mazzuchelli declared, after his laborious researches in Italian literature, that one of his more recent predecessors, who had commenced a similar work, had collected notices of forty thousand writers-and yet, he adds, my work must increase that number to ten thousand more! Mazzuchelli said this in 1753; and the amount of neady a century must now be added, for the presses of Italy have not been inactive.
But the literature of Germany, of France, and of England has exceeded the multiplicity of the productions of Italy, and an appalling population of authors swarm before the imagination. [5] Hail then the peaceful spirit of the literary historian, which sitting amidst the night of time, by the monuments of genius, trims the sepulchral lamps of the human mind! Hail to the literary Reaumur, who by the clearness of his glasses makes even the minute interesting, and reveals to us the world of insects! These are guardian spirits who, at the close of every century standing on its ascent, trace out the old roads we had pursued, and with a lighter line indicate the new ones which are opening, from the imperfect attempts, and even the errors of our predecessors!
[1]. "Edinburgh Review," vol. xxxiv. 384.
[2]. Will this writer pardon me for ranking him, for a moment, among those "generalisers" of the age who excel in what a critical friend has happily discriminated as ambitious writing? that is, writing on any topic, and not least strikingly on that of which they know least; men otherwise of fine taste, and who excel in every charm of composition.
[3]. The late Wm. Upcott possessed, in a large degree, a similar taste for miscellaneous collections. He never threw an old hat away, but used it as a receptacle for certain "cuttings" from books and periodicals on some peculiar subjects. He had filled a room wit:.. hats and trunks thus crammed; but they were sacrificed at his death for want of necessary arrangement.
[4]. Gessner, Simler, Bellarmin, L'Abbe, Mabillon, Montfaucon, Moreri, Bayle, Baillet, Niceron, Dupin, Cave, Warton, Casimir Gudin, Le Long, Goujet, Wolfius, John Albert Fabricius, Argelati, Tiraboschi, Nicholas Antonio, Walchius, Struvius, Brucker, Scheuchzer, Linnxus, Seguier, Haller, Adamson, Manget, Kestner, Eloy, Douglas, Weidler, Hailbronner, Montucia, Lalande, Bailly, Quadrio, Morhoff, Stollius, Funccius, Schelhorn, Engles, Beyer, Gerdesius, V ogts, Freytag, David Clement, Chevillier, Maittaire, Orlandi, Prosper Marchand, Schoeplin, De Boze, Abbé Sallier, and de Saint Leger.
[5]. The British Museum Library now numbers more than 500,000 volumes. The catalogue alone forms a small library.
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