 Chapter Introductory of Gossip in a Library. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss. Chapter Introductory. Old blessed letters that combine in one all ages past and make one live with all. By you we do confer with who are gone and the dead living unto counsel call. By you the unborn shall have communion of what we feel and what doth us befall. Samuel Daniel, Newzophilus, 1602. Introductory. It is curious to reflect that the library in our customary sense is quite a modern institution. 300 years ago there were no public libraries in Europe. The Ambrosian at Milan dates from 1608. The Bodleian at Oxford from 1612. To these, Angela Rocha added his in Rome in 1620. But private collections of books always existed, and these with a haunt of learning, the little glimmering hearths over which knowledge spread her cold fingers in the darkest ages of the world. Today, although national and private munificence has increased the number of public libraries so widely that almost every reader is within reach of books, the private library still flourishes. There are men all through the civilized world to whom a book is a jewel. An individual possession of great price. I have been asked to gossip about my books, for I also am a bibliophile. But when I think of the great collections of fine books of the libraries of the Magnificent, I do not know whether I dare admit any stranger to glance at mine. The mayor of Queenborough feels as though he were a very important personage till royalty drives through his borough without noticing his scarf and his cocked hat. And then, for the first time, he observes how small the Queenborough town hall is. But if one is to gossip about books, it is perhaps as well that one should have some limits. I will leave the masters of bibliography to sing of greater matters and will launch upon no more daring voyage than one au tour de ma pauvre bibliothèque. I have heard that the late Mr. Edward Solly, a very pious and worshipful lover of books, under several examples of whose book plate I have lately reverently placed my own, was so anxious to fly all outward noise that he built himself a library in his garden. I have been told that the book stood there in perfect order, with the rose spray flapping at the window and great Japanese vases exhaling such odors as most annoy an insect nostril. The very bees would come to the window and sniff and boom indignantly away again. The silence there was perfect. It must have been in such a secluded library that Christian Menzelius was at work when he heard the male bookworm flap his wings and crow like a cock in calling to his mate. I feel sure that even Menzelius, a very courageous writer, would hardly pretend that he could hear such a shadow of all sound elsewhere. That is the library I should like to have. In my sleep, where dreams are multitude, I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden. The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man, a library in a garden. It sounds like having a castle in Spain or a sheep walk in Arcadia, and I suppose that merely to wish for it is to be what indignant journalists call a fadling hedonist. In the meanwhile, my books are scattered about in cases in different parts of a double sitting room, where the cat's carousel on one side and the hurdy-gurdy man girds up his loins on the other. A friend of Boethius had a library lined with slabs of ivory and pale green marble. I like to think of that when I am jealous of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, as the peasant thinks of the white czar when his master's banqueting hall dazzles him. If I cannot have cabinets of ebony and cedar, I may just as well have plain deal with common glass doors to keep the dust out. I detest your Persian apparatus. It is a curious reflection that the ordinary private person who collects objects of a modest luxury has nothing about him so old as his books. If a wave of the rod made everything around him disappear that did not exist a century ago, he would suddenly find himself with one or two sticks of furniture perhaps, but otherwise alone with his books. Let the work of another century pass, and certainly nothing but these little brown volumes would be left, so many caskets full of passion and tenderness, disappointed ambition, fruitless hope, self-torturing envy, conceit aware in maddening lucid moments of its own folly. I think if Metzelius had been worth his salt, those ears of his which heard the bookworm crow might have caught the echo of a sigh from beneath many a pathetic vellum cover. There is something awful to me of nights and when I'm alone in thinking of all the souls imprisoned in the ancient books around me. Not one, I suppose, but was ushered into the world with pride and glee with a flushed cheek and heightened pulse. Not one enjoyed a career that in all points justified those ample hopes and flattering promises. The outward and visible mark of the citizenship of the book lover is his book plate. There are many good bibliophiles who abide in the trenches and never proclaim their loyalty by a book plate. They are with us, but not of us. They lack the courage of their opinions. They collect with timidity or carelessness. They have no need for the moral. Such a man is liable to great temptations. He has brought face to face with that enemy of his species, the borrower, and dares not speak with him in the gate. If he had a book plate, he would say, Oh, certainly I will lend you this volume if it has not my book plate in it. Of course one makes a rule never to lend a book that has. He would say this in feign to look inside the volume, knowing right well that this safeguard against the borrower is there already. To have a book plate gives a collector great serenity and self-confidence. We have labored in a far more conscientious spirit since we had ours than we did before. A learned poet, Lord DeTabley, wrote a fascinating volume on book plates some years ago with copious illustrations. There is not, however, one specimen in his book, which I would exchange for mine, the work and the gift of one of the most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is coiled around him with the motto, I will not presume to translate this tag of a neck log, and I only venture to mention such an uninteresting matter that my indulgent readers may have a more vivid notion of what I call my library. Mr. Abbey's fine art is there always before me to keep my ideal high. To possess few books in those not too rich and rare for daily use has this advantage, that the possessor can make himself master of them all, can recollect their peculiarities and often remind himself of their contents. The man that has two or three thousand books can be familiar with them all. He that has thirty thousand can hardly have a speaking acquaintance with more than a few. The more conscientious he is, the more he becomes like Lucian Zamiter, who was so much occupied in rubbing the bindings of his books with sandalwood and saffron that he had no time left to study the contents. After all, with every due respect paid to states and editions and bindings and tall copies, the inside of the volume is really the essential part of it. The excuses for collecting, however, are more than satire is ready to admit. The first edition represents the author's first thought. In it we read his words as he sent them out to the world in his first heat with the type he chose and with such peculiarities of form as he selected to do most justice to his creation. We often discover little individual points in the first edition, which never occur again. And if it be conceited that there is an advantage in reading a book in the form which the author originally designed for it, then all the other refinements of the collector become so many acts of respect paid to this first virgin apparition, touching and suitable homage of cleanness and fit adornment. It is only when this homage becomes mere eye service when a book radically unworthy of such dignity is too delicately cultivated, too richly bound that a poor dilettantism comes in between the reader and what he reads. Indeed, the best of volumes may, in my estimation, be destroyed as a possession by a binding so sumptuous that no fingers dare to open it for perusal. To the futile splendors of Mr. Cobden Sanderson, a ten-penny book and a ten-pound binding, I say five. Perhaps the ideal library, after all, is a small one where the books are carefully selected and thoughtfully arranged in accordance with one central code of taste and intended to be respectfully consulted at any moment by the master of their destinies. If fortune made me possessor of one book of excessive value, I should hasten to part with it. In a little working library, to hold a first quartet of Hamlet would be like entertaining a reigning monarch in a small farmhouse at harvesting. Much has of late been written, however, and pleasantly written, about the collecting and preserving of books. It is not my intention here to add to this department of modern literature, but I shall select from among my volumes some which seem less known in detail to modern readers than they should be, and I shall give brief retrospective reviews of these as though they were new discoveries. In other cases where the personal history of a well-known book seems worth detaching from our critical estimate of it, that shall be the subject of my luckabration. Perhaps it may not be an unwelcome novelty to apply to old books a test we so familiarly apply to new ones. They will bear it well, for in their case there is no temptation to introduce any element of prejudice. Mr. Bledier himself does not fly into a passion over a squat volume published two centuries ago, even when, as in the case of the first edition of Harrington's Oceana, there is such a monstrous list of errata that the writer has to tell us, by way of excuse, that a spaniel has been questing among his papers. These scarce and neglected books are full of interesting things. Voltaire never made a more unfortunate observation than when he said that rare books were worth nothing, since if they were worth anything, they would not be rare. We know better nowadays, we know how much there is in them, which may appeal to only one man here and there, and yet to him with a voice like a clarion. There are books that have lain silent for a century and then have spoken with the trumpet of a prophecy. We shall disdain nothing, we shall have a little criticism, a little anecdote, a little bibliography, and our old book shall go back to the shelves before it has had time to be tedious in its babbling. End of Chapter Introductory Chapter 1 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss, Chapter 1 Camden's Britannia Britain, or a choreographical description of the most flourishing kingdoms England, Scotland, and Ireland in the lands adjoining. Out of the depth of antiquity, beautified with maps of the several shires of England, written first in Latin by William Camden, Clarenceau, K of A, translated newly into English by Philomond Holland, Londini, Impensis, Georgie, Bishop, and Johannes Norton, 1610. There is no more remarkable example of the difference between the readers of our light and hurrying age, those who obeyed Eliza and our James, than the fact that the book we have before us at this moment, a folio of some 1,100 pages, adorned, like a fighting elephant, with all the weightiest panoply of learning, was one of the most popular works of its time. It went through six editions, this vast antiquarian itinerary, before the natural demand of the vulgar released it from its Latin austerity, and the title page we have quoted is that of the earliest English edition, specially translated, under the author's eye, by Dr. Philomond Holland, a laborious schoolmaster of coventry. Once open to the general public, although then at the close of its first quarter of the century, the Britannia flourished with a new lease of life, and continued to bloom, like a literary magnolia, all down the 17th century. It is now as little read as other famous books of uncompromising size. The bookshelves of today are not fitted for the reception of these heroic folios, and if we want British antiquities now, we find them in tercer form, and more accurately, or at least more plausibly, annotated in the writings of later antiquaries. Giant Camden, molders at his cave's mouth, a huge and reverent form, seldom disturbed by puny passersby. But his once popular folio was the life work of a particularly interesting and human person, and without affecting to penetrate to the darkest corners of the cavern, it may be instructive to stand a little while on the threshold. When this first English edition of the Britannia was published, Camden was one of the most famous of living English writers. For one man of position who had heard of Shakespeare, there would be twenty, at least, who were quite familiar with the claims of the headmaster of Westminster and Clarence O. King of Arms. Camden was in his sixtieth year in 1610. He had enjoyed slow success, violent detraction, and final triumph. His health was poor, but he continued to write history, eager, as he says, to show that, quote, he had been a studious admirer of venerable antiquity, yet have I not been altogether an incurious spectator of modern occurrences," end quote. He stood easily first among the historians of his time. He was respected and adored by the court and by the universities, and that his fame might be completed by the chrism of detraction, his popularity was assured from year to year obliquely, which the papists scattered from their secret presses. It had not been without a struggle that Camden had attained this pinnacle, and the Britannia had been his elfin stock. This first English edition has the special interest of representing Camden's last thoughts. It is nominally a translation of the sixth Latin edition, but it has a good deal of additional matters applied to the Holland by the author, whereas later English issues containing fresh material are believed to be so far spurious. The Britannia grew with the life of Camden. He tells us that it was when he was a young man of six and twenty, lately started on his professional career as second master in Westminster school, that the famous Dutch geographer Abraham Ortelius, quote, dealt earnestly with me that I would illustrate this isle of Britain, end quote. This was no light task to undertake in 1577. The authorities were few, and these in the highest degree occasional are fragmentary. It was not a question of compiling a collection of topographical antiquities. The whole process had to be gone through, quote, from the egg, end quote. As a youth at Oxford, Camden had turned all his best attention to this branch of study, and what the ancients had written about England was intimately known to him. Anyone who looks at his book will see that the first 180 pages of the Britannia could be written by a scholar without stirring from his chair at Westminster. But when it came to the minute description of the counties, there was nothing for it but personal travel. And accordingly, Camden spent what holidays he could snatch from his labors as a school master in making a deliberate survey of the divisions of England. We possess some particulars of one of these journeys, that which occupied 1582, in which he started by Suffolk through Yorkshire and returned through Lancashire. He was a very rapid worker. He spared no pains, and in 1586, nine years after Ortelius set him going, his first draft was from the press. In later times, and when his accuracy had been cruelly impeached, he set forth his claims to attention with dignity. He said, quote, I have in no wise neglected such things as our most material to search and sift out the truth. I have attained to some skill of the most ancient British and Anglo-Saxon tongues. I have traveled over all England for the most part. I have been a skillful observer in each county. I have been diligent in the records of this realm. I have looked into most libraries, registers, and memorials of churches, cities, and corporations. I have poured upon many an old role and evidence that the honor of verity might in no wise be impeached, end quote. He was no slight task to undertake such a work on such a scale. It was hailed as a first glory in the Diadem of Elizabeth. Specialists in particular counties found that Camden knew more about their little circle than they themselves had taken all their lives to learn. Lombard, the great Kentish antiquary, said that he never knew Kent properly till he read of it in the Britannia. But Camden was not content to rest on his laurels. Still, year by year, he made his painful journeys through the length and breadth of the land. And still, as new editions were called forth, the book grew from octavo into folio. Suddenly, about 12 years after its first unchallenged appearance, there was issued, like a bolt out of the blue, a very nasty pamphlet called Discovery of Certain Errors published in the much commended Britannia, which created a fine storm in the antiquarian teapot. This attack was the work of a man who would otherwise be forgotten, Ralph Brooke, the York Herald. He had formerly been an admirer of Camden's, his quote, humble friend, end quote, he called himself. But when Camden was promoted over his head to be Clarence O. King of Arms, it seemed to Ralph Brooke that it became his duty to denounce the two successful antiquaries as a charlatan. He accordingly fired off the unpleasant little gun already mentioned, and for the moment he hit Camden rather hard. The author of the Britannia, to justify his new advancement, had introduced into a fresh edition of his book a good deal of information regarding the descent of Barons and other noble families. This was York Herald's own subject, and he was able to convict Camden of a startling number of negligences in what he calls, quote, many gross mistakings, end quote. The worst part of it was that York Herald had privately pointed out these blunders to Camden and that the latter had said it was too much trouble to alter them. This at least is what the enemy states in his attack, and if this be true, it can hardly be doubted that Camden had sailed too long in fair weather, or that he needed a squall to recall him to the duties of the helm. He answered Brooke, who replied with increased contemptuous tartness. It is admitted that Camden was indiscreet in his matter of reply, and that some genuine holes had been pricked in his heraldry, but the Britannia lay high out of the reach of fatal pedantic attack, and this little cloud over the reputation of the book passed entirely away and is remembered now only as a curiosity of literature. In the preface, the author quaintly admits that many have found a defect in this work that maps were not adjoined, which do allure the eyes by pleasant portraitures, yet my ability could not compass it. They must then have been added at the last by a generous afterthought, for this book is full of maps. The maritime ones are adorned with ships in full sail and bold sea monsters with curly tails. The inland ones are speckled with trees, and spires, and hillocks. In spite of these old-fashioned oddities, the maps are remarkably accurate. They are signed by John Norden and William Kipp, the master mapmakers of that reign. The book opens with an account of the first inhabitants of Britain and their manners and customs, how the Romans fared, and what antiquities lay left behind, with copious plates of Roman coins. By degrees we come down, through Saxons and Normans, to that work which was particularly Camden's topographical antiquarianism. He begins with Cornwall, quote, that region which, according to the geographers, is the first of all Britain, end quote, and then proceeds to what he calls Densherb, and Wiedewensherb, a county as he remarks, quote, Barbarus on the side, end quote. With page 822 he finds himself at the end of his last English county, Northumberland, looking across the tweed to Berwick, quote, the strongest hold in all Britain, end quote, where it is, quote, no marvel that soldiers without other light do play here all night long at Dice, considering the sidelight that the sunbeams cast all night long, end quote. This rather exaggerated statement is evidently that of a man accustomed to look upon Berwick as the northernmost point of his country, as we shall all do, no doubt, when Scotland has secured home rule. We are therefore not surprised to find Scotland added, in a kind of hurried appendix, in special honour to James I and VI. The introduction to the Scottish section is in a queer tone of inter. Camden knows little and cares less about the, quote, Commonwealth of the Scots, end quote, end quote, with all will lightly pass over it, end quote. In point of fact, he gets to Duncan's v. Head in 52 pages, and not without some considerable slips of information. Ireland interests him more, and he finally closes with a sheet of learned gossip about the outlying islands. The scope of Camden's work did not give Philemon Holland much opportunity for spreading the wings of his style. Anxious to present Camden fairly, the translator is curiously uneven in matter, now stately, now slip-shot, weaving melodious sentences, but forgetting to tie them up with a verb. He is commonly too busy with hard facts to be a euphuist. But here is a pretty and ingenious passage about Cambridge, unusually popular in matter, and exceedingly handsome in the mouth of an Oxford man. Quote, On this side, the bridge, where standeth the greater part by far of the city, you have a pleasant sight everywhere to the eye, what a fair streets orderly ranged, what of a number of churches, and of sixteen colleges, sacred mansions of the muses, wherein a number contain, and wherein the knowledge of the best arts and the skill in tongues so flourish that they may rightly be counted the fountains of literature, religion and all knowledge whatsoever, who right sweetly be due and sprinkle with most wholesome waters the gardens of the church and commonwealth through England. Nor is there wanting anything here that a man may require in the most flourishing university, were it not that the air is not unhealthful, a rising as it doth, out of a fennie ground hard by. And yet, per adventure, they that first founded a university in that place, allowed a Plato's judgment, for he, being of a very excellent and strong constitution of body, chose out the academia, an unwholesome place of Attica for to study in, and so the superfluous rankness of body which might overlay the mind, might be kept under by this temperature of the place." The poor scholars in the moldering garrets of Clare, looking over wasteland to the Uzi Cam, no doubt wished that their foundress had been less Spartan. Very little of the domestic architecture that Camden admired in Cambridge is now left. And yet, probably it and Oxford are the two places of all which he describes that it would give him least trouble to identify him to life again 300 years after the first appearance of his famous Britannia. End of chapter one. Chapter two of Gossip in a Library. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss. Chapter two. A Mirror for Magistrates. A Mirror for Magistrates. Being a true chronicle history of the untimely falls of such unfortunate princes and men of note as have happened since the first entrance of brute into this land, until this our latter age. Newly enlarged with the last part called a Winter Night's Vision, being an addition of such tragedies, especially famous, as are attempted in the former history with a poem annexed called England's Eliza at London, imprinted by Felix Kingston 1610. This huge quarter of 875 pages, all in verse, is the final form, no far from the latest impression, of a poetical miscellany which had been swelling and spreading for nearly 60 years without ever losing a single character. We may obtain some imperfect notion of the Mirror for Magistrates if we imagine a composite poem planned by Sir Walter Scott and contributed to by Wordsworth and Suddy being still issued generation after generation with additions by the youngest versifiers of today. The Mirror for Magistrates was conceived when Mary's proto-martyrs were burning at Smithfield and it was not finished until James I had been on the throne for seven years. From first to last, at least 16 writers had a finger in this pie and the youngest of them was not born when the eldest of them died. It is commonly said, even by such exact critics as the late Dean Church, that the Mirror for Magistrates was planned by the most famous of the poets who took part in its Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. If a very clever man is combined in any enterprise with people of less prominence, it is 10 to 1 that he gets all the credit of the adventure. But the evidence on this point goes to prove that it was not until the work was well advanced that Sackville contributed to it at all. The inventor of the Mirror for Magistrates seems rather to have been George Ferrer's pioneer and politician who was master of the king's pastimes at the very close of Henry VIII's reign. Ferrer's was ambitious to create a drama in England and lacked only genius to be the British escalus. The time was not right, but he was evidently very anxious to set the world tripping to his goat herds pipe. He advertised for help in these designs and the list of persons he wanted is an amusing one. He wanted to engage, quote, a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a physician, an apothecary, a master of requests, a civilian, a clown, two gentlemen ushers besides jugglers, tumblers, fools, friars, and such others, end quote. Fortune sent him from Oxford one William Baldwin who was most of these things, especially divine and poet, became Ferrer's confidential fact totem. The master and assistant master of pastimes were humming merrily on at their masks and triumphs when the king expired. Under Queen Mary, rebels might not flourish, but the friendship between Ferrer's and Baldwin did not cease. They planned a more dull, but more durable form of entertainment and the mirror for magistrates was started. Those who claim for Sackville this invention forget that he is not mentioned as a contributor to what was really the third edition in that when the first went to press, he was only 18 years of age. Ferrer is well comprehended the taste of his age when he conceived the notion of a series of poems in which famous kings and nobles should describe in their own persons the frailty and instability of worldly prosperity, even in those whom fortune seems most highly to favour. One of the most popular books of the preceding century had been Lidgate's version of Boccaccio's poems on the calamities of illustrious men, a vast monody in nine books, all harping on that single chord of the universal mutability of fortune. Lidgate's fall of princes had, by the time that Mary ascended the throne, existed in popular esteem for a hundred years. Its language and classification were now so antiquated as to be obsolete. It was time that princes should fall to a more modern measure. The first edition of Baldwin and Ferrer's book went to press early in 1555, but of this edition, only one or two fragments exist. It was, quote, hindered by the Lord Chancellor that then was, end quote, Stephen Gardner, and was entirely suppressed. The leaf in the British Museum is closely printed in double columns and suggests that Baldwin and Ferrer's meant to make a huge volume of it. The death of Mary removed the embargo and before Elizabeth had been queen for many months, the second or genuine first edition of the Mirror for Magistrates made its appearance a thin quarto charmingly printed in terms of type. This contained 20 lives. Hazel Wood, the only critic who has described this edition says 19, but he overlooked Ferrer's tale of hump-free Duke of Gloucester, and was the work, so Baldwin tells us, of seven persons besides himself. The first story in the book, a story which finally appears at page 276 of the edition before us, recounts the, quote, fall of Robert Trezeleon, Chief Justice of England, and other of his fellows, for misconstruing the laws and expounding them to serve the Prince's affections. Ado 1388, end quote. The manner in which this story is presented is a good example of the mode adopted throughout the miscellany. The corrupt judge and his fellow lawyers appear as in a mirror or like personages behind a faded sheet at the Chinois and lamentably recount their woes in chorus. The story of Trezeleon was written by Ferrer's, but the persons who speak it address his companion. Baldwin, we beseech thee with our names to begin, which supports Baldwin's claim to be looked upon as the editor of the whole book. It is very dreary, doggerel, it must be confessed, but no worse than the poetry indicted in England at that uninspired moment in the national history. A short example, a flower culled from any of these promiscuous thickets will suffice to give a general notion of the garden. Here is a part of the lament of the Lord Clifford. Because my father, Lord John Clifford, died slaying at St. Albans in his Prince's aid, against the Duke my heart from malice ordered, so that I could from wreck no way be stayed, but to avenge my father's death assayed all means I might, the Duke of York, to annoy, and all his kin and friends for to destroy. This made me with my bloody dagger wound his guiltless son that never against me stored. His father's body lying dead on ground to pierce with spear, eek with my cruel sword to part his neck with his head to board, invested with a royal paper crown from place to place to bear it up and down. But cruel he can never escape the scourge of shame, of horror, or of sudden death, repentant self that other sins may purge to fly from this, so sore the soul at slayeth. The spear dissolves the tyrant's bitter breath, for sudden vengeance suddenly alights on cruel deeds to quit their bloody spights. The only contribution to this earliest form of the mirror which is attributed to an eminent writer is the Edward the Fourth of Skelton, and this is one of the most tuneless of all. It reminds the ear of a whining ballad snuffled out in the street at night by some unhappy minstrel that has got no work to do. As Baldwin professes to quote from memory, Skelton being then dead, perhaps its patient suffered in his hands. This is not the place to enter my newtley into the history of the building up of this curious book. The next edition that of 1563 was enriched by Saxbill's funded induction and the tale of Buckingham, both of which are comparatively known so well and have been so often reprinted separately that I need not dwell upon them here. They occupy pages from 1565 to 271 and 433 to 455 of the volume before us. In 1574 a very voluminous contributed to the constantly swelling tide of verse appears. Thomas Blayner Hassett a soldier on service in Guernsey Castle, thought that the magisterial ladies had been neglected and proceeded in 1578 to sing the fall of the princess. It is needless to continue the role of poets, but it is worthwhile to point out the remarkable fact that each new candidate held up the mirror to the magistrate so precisely in the manner of his predecessors that it is difficult to distinguish Newton from Baldwin or Churchyard from Nichols. Richard Nichols, who is responsible for the collection in its final state was a person of adventure in the arch and understood the noble practice of the science of artillery. By the time it came down to him in 1610, the mirror from magistrates had attained such a size that he was obliged to omit what had formed a pleasing portion of it, the prose dialogues which knit the tales in verse together, such pleasant familiar chatter between the poets as, quote, Pharaohs, said Baldwin, take and mark them as they come, end quote, end the like. It was a pity to lose all this, but Nichols had additions of his own verse to make, 10 new legends entitled A Winter Night's Vision and A Long Eulogy Upon Queen Elizabeth, England's Eliza. He would have been more than human if he had not considered all this far more valuable than the old prose babbling in black letter. This copy of mine is of the greatest rarity, for it contains two dedicatory sonnets by Richard Nichols, one addressed to Lady Elizabeth Clear and the other to the Earl of Nottingham which seem to have been instantly suppressed and are only known to exist in this, and I believe one or two other examples of the book. These are, perhaps, worth reprinting for their curiosity. The first runs as follows, my muse that will unveil those Britain kings who unto her envisioned it appear craves leaves to strengthen her night-weathered wings in the warm sunshine of your golden clear. Where she, fair lady, tuning her chaste lays of England's empress to her hymn next string for your effect to hear that virgin's praise makes choice of your chaste self to hear her sing whose royal worth true virtue's paragon here made me dare to engrave your worthy name in hope that unto you the same alone will so excuse me of presumptuous blame that graceful entertain my muse may find and even bear such grace in thankful mind. The sonnet to the Earl of Nottingham, the famous admiral and quantum rival of Sir Walter Raleigh, is more interesting. As once that dove, true honors aged lord, hovering with wearied wings about your ark when Cuddy's towers did fall beneath your sword, to rest yourself did single out that bark. So, my meek muse from all that conquering route conducted through the sea's wild wilderness by your great self to grave their names about the Iberian pillars of jove circulies, most humbly craved your lordly lion's aid against monster envy while she tells your story of Britain's princes and that royal maid in whose chaste him her Cleo sings your glory. Which if, great lord, you grant, my muse shall frame mirrors most worthy your renowned name. But apparently the great lord would not grant permission and so the sonnet had to be rigorously suppressed. The mirror from magistrates has ceased to be more than a curiosity and a collector's rarity but it once assumed a very ambitious function. It was a serious attempt to build up, as a cathedral is built by successive architects, a great national epic, the work of many hands. In a gloomy season of English history, in a violent age of tyranny, fanaticism and legalized lawlessness, it endeavored to present to all whom it might concern a solemn succession of most crowned tyrants and lawmakers smitten by the cruel laws they had made. Sometimes, in its bold and not very delicate way, the mirror from magistrates is impressive still from its lofty moral tone, its gloomy fatalism and its contempt for temporary renown. As we read its somber pages we see the wheel of fortune revolving. The same motion which makes the tiara glitter one moment as the summit plunges it at the next into the pit of pain and oblivion. Steadily, uniformly, the unflinching poet-tasters grind out in their monotonous rhyme-royal how quote, Thomas Woolsey fell into great disgrace end quote. And how quote, Sir Anthony Woodville Lord Rivers was causeless imprisoned and cruelly wounded end quote. How quote, King Bess was devoured by wild beasts end quote. And how quote, Siegebert for his wicked life was thrust from his throne and miserably slain by a herdsman end quote. It gives us a strange feeling of sympathy to realize that the immense popularity of this book must have been mainly due to the fact that it comforted the multitudes who groaned under a harsh and violent despotism to be told over and over again that cruel kings and unjust judges habitually came at last to a bad end. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Gossip in a Library This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 3 A Poet in Prison The Shepherds Hunting Being Certain Egg Logs Written during the time of the author's imprisonment in the Marshall See by George Wither Gentlemen London, printed by W. White for George Norton and are to be sold at the sign of the Red Bull near Temple Bar 1615 If ever a man needed resuscitation in our antiquarian times, it was George Wither. When most of the Jacobean Poets sank into comfortable oblivion which merely meant being laid with a piece of camphor and cotton wool to keep fresh for us, Wither had the misfortune to be recollected. He became a byword of contempt in the age of Anne, persistently called him Withers best really by one distinguished person, Cleopatra Scuton's Page Boy. Swift, in the battle of the books, brings in this poet as the meanest common trooper that he can mention in his modern army. Poat speaks of him with the utmost freedom as wretched Withers. It is true that he lived too long and wrote too much, a great deal too much. Mr. Haslett gives the titles of more than his publications, and some of them are wonderfully unattractive. I should not like to be shut up on a rainy day with his salt upon salt, which seems to have lost its savor, nor do I yearn to blow upon his tuba pacifica, although it was quote, disposed of rather for love than money, end quote. The truth is that good George Wither lost his poetry early, was an upright, honest and patriotic man who unhappily developed into a scold and got into the bad habit of pouring out precautions, cautionary expressions, prophetic frenzies, epistles at random, personal contributions to the national humiliation, passages, raptures, and alarms. Until he really became the greatest bore in Christendom. It was Charles Lamb who swept away this whole tedious structure of Withers later writings, and showed us what a lovely poet he was in his youth. When the book before us was printed, George Wither was aged 27. He had just stepped genderly out of the Marcellsy prison and his poems reveal an amusing mixture of protest against having been put there at all and deprecation of being put there again. Let no one waste the tear of sensibility over that shell of the Marcellsy prison, which still I believe exists. The family of the darts languished in quite another place from the original Marcellsy of Withers time, although that also lay across the water in the South. It is said that the prison was used for the confinement of persons who had spoken loudly of dignitaries about the court. Wither, as we shall see, makes a great parade of telling us why he was imprisoned, but his language is obscure. Perhaps he was afraid to be explicit. In 1613, he had published a little volume of satires called Abuses Stripped and Whipped. This had been very popular running into six or seven editions within a short time, and someone in office, no doubt, had fitted on the fool's cap. Five years later, the poor poet would have had a chance of being shipped straight off to Virginia as a debauched person. As it was, the Marcellsy seems intolerably unpleasant. We gather, however, that he enjoyed some alleviations. He could say, like Lee Hunt, quote, the visits of my friends were the bright side of my captivity. I read verses without end and wrote almost as many, end quote. The poems we have before us were written in the Marcellsy. The book itself is very tiny and pretty, with a sort of leafy trellis work at the top and bottom of every page, almost suggesting a little posy of wildflowers thrown through the iron bars of the poet's cage and pressed between the pages of his manuscript. Nor is there any book of withers which breathes more deeply of the perfume of the fields than this which was written in the noisome seclusion of the Marcellsy. Although the title page assures us that these egg logs were written during the author's imprisonment, we may have a suspicion that the first three were composed just after his release. They are very distinct from the rest in form and character. To understand them, we must remember that in 1614, just before the imprisonment, Wither had taken a share with his bosom friend, William Brown, of the Inner Temple in bringing out a little volume of pastoral's called the Shepherd's Pipe. Brown, a poet who deserves well of all Devonshire men, was two years younger than Wither and had just begun to come before the public as the author of that charming, lazy, Virgillian poem of Britannia's pastoral's. There was something of Keats in Brown, an artist who let the world pass him by. Something of Shelley in Wither, a prophet who longed to set his seal on human progress. In the Shepherd's Pipe, Willie, William Brown, and Roger, Giotour, had been interlocutors and Christopher Brooke, another rhyming friend, had written a necklog under the name of Cutty. These personages reappear in the Shepherd's hunting and give us a glimpse of pleasant personal relations. In the first egglog, Willie comes to the Marsilsea one afternoon to condole with Roger but finds him very cheerful. The prisoner poet assures his friend that this barren place yield somewhat to relieve for I have found sufficient to content me and more true bliss than ever freedom lend me. And when he goes away when it is growing dark, rejoiced to find that the cage doth some birds good. Next morning he returns and brings Cutty, or Cutty, with him, for Cutty has news to tell the prisoner that all England is taking an interest in him and that this adversity has made him much more popular than he was before. But Willie and Cutty are extremely anxious to know what it was that caused Roger's imprisonment and at last he agrees to tell them. Hither, too, the poem has been written in Otabarima, a form which is sufficiently uncommon in our 17th century poetry to demand special notice in this case. In a prose post-cript to this book, Hither tells us that the title, The Shepherd's Hunting which he seems to feel needs explanation is due to the stationer or, as we should say now, to the publisher. But perhaps this was an afterthought for in the account he gives to Willie and Cutty, he certainly suggests the title himself. He represents himself as the shepherd given up to the delights of hunting the human passions through the soul. This simile seems a little confused because he represents these qualities not as the quarry but as the hounds and so the story of Actaeon is reversed. Instead of the hounds pursuing their master, the master hunts his dogs. At all events, the result is that he, quote, dips his staff in blood and onwards leads his thunder to the wood, end quote, where he is ignominiously captured by his majesty's gamekeeper. But the allegory hardly runs upon all fours. The next egg log represents again another visit to the prisoner and this time Willie and Cutty bring Alexis with them. Perhaps Alexis is John Davies of Herford another contributor to The Shepherd's Pipe. Roger starts his allegory again in the same satiric matter he had adopted to his hurt in abuses stripped and whipped. Wither becomes quite delightful again when cheerfulness breaks through this satirical philosophy and when he tells us, quote, but though that all the world's delight forsake me, I have a muse and she shall music make me whose airy notes, in spite of closest cages, shall give content to me and after ages end quote. They all felt certain of immortality these cheerful poets of Elizabeth and James and Prince Busterity has seen proper to admit the claim in more instances than might well have been expected. But the delightful part of The Shepherd's Hunting has yet to come. With the fourth egg log, a caged bird begins to sing like a lark at Heaven's Gate and it is the prisoned man who ought to be filled with thoughtful dumps that rallies his free friend Brown on his low spirits. It is time, he says, to be merry, quote, Corridan, with his bold route, hath already been about for the elder Shepherd's doll and fetched in the summer pole, whilst the rest have built a bower to defend them from a shower sealed so close with bows all green, Titan cannot pry the very wench's dream of their strawberries and cream, and each doth herself advance to be taken in to dance, end quote. What summer thoughts are these to come from a pale prisoner in the hot and putrid marshalcy. They are either symptoms of acute nostalgia or proofs of a cheerfulness that lifts their author above a mortal pitch. But Willie declines to join the Lady of the May at her high junkettings. He also has the ability to whisper them through roger's iron bars. There are those who, quote, my music do contend, end quote, who will none of the poetry of master William Brown of the inner temple. It is useless for him to wrestle with Brown's shepherds for the, quote, cups of turned maple root where upon the skillful man hath engraved the loves of pen, end quote, fine napkin wrought with blue, end quote. If those base clowns called critics are busy with his detraction, but Roger instructs him that verse is its own high reward, that the songs of a true poet will naturally arise like the moon out of and beyond all racks of envious cloud, and that the last thing he should do is to despair. He rises to his own greatest and best work in this encouragement of a true poet, and no one who reads such noble verses as these dare question Withers' claim to a fatui in the Academy of Parnassus, quote, if I verse do bravely tower as she makes swing, she gets power, yet the higher she doth soar, she's affronted still the more, till she to the highest have passed, then she rests with fame at last. Let for thee affright, but make forward in thy flight, for if I could match thy rhyme to the very stars I'd climb, there begin again and fly till I reached eternity." End quote. In the fifth egg log, Roger and Alexis compare notes about their early happiness in phrases of an odd comicksture. The pastoral character of the poetry has to be carried out, and so we read of how Roger, on a great occasion, played a match at football, quote, having scarce twenty saters on his side, end quote, against some of, quote, the best-tried ruffians in the land, end quote. Great Pan presided at that match by the banks of Thames, and though the saters and their laureate leader were worsted, the moral victory, as people call it, remained with the latter. All this was an allegory, and indeed we walk in the very shadow of innuendo all through the shepherds hunting. The moral of the whole thing is that eternal ditty of tuneful youth, all for verse and the world well lost, the enemy is around them on all sides, jailers of the marshalsy and envious critics, the evil shepherds that preside over grates of steel and noisome beds of straw. But youth does not know what it's mocking answer to all these, quote, let them disdain and fret till they are weary. We in ourselves have that shall make us merry, which he that once, and had the power to know it, would give his life, and he might die a poet, end quote. It was no small thing to be suffering for Apollo's sake in 1614. Shakespeare might hear of it at least as he strolled with some friend on the banks of Avon. A greater than Shakespeare, as most men thought in those days, Ben Johnson himself, might talk the matter over, quote, at those lyric feasts made at the sun, the dog, the triple tongue, end quote. For had not he himself languished in a worse dungeon, and under a heavier charge than wither, to be seven and twenty, to be in trouble with the government verses, and to have other young poets in a ferment of enthusiasm clinging like swallows to the prison bars, how delicious a torment, and to know that it will soon be over, and that the sweet, pure meadows lie just outside the reek of southern, that summer lingers still, and that shepherds pipe and play, that fame is sitting by her cheerful phone with a garland for the weary head, and that lasses, quote, who more excel than the sweet voiced Philomel, end quote, are ready to cluster around the interesting captive and lead him away in daisy chains, what could be more consolatory? And we close the little dainty volume with its delicate perfume of friendship and poetry and hope. End of chapter three. Chapter four of gossip in a library. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith. Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss. Chapter four. Death's dual. Death's dual, or a consolation to the soul against the dying life and living death of the body delivered in a sermon at Whitehall before the King's Majesty in the beginning of Lent 1630. By that late learned and reverend divine, John Dunn, Doctor in Divinity and Dean of St. Paul's, London. Being his last sermon and called by his Majesty's household, the doctor's own funeral sermon. London, printed by Thomas Harper for Richard Redmer and Benjamin Fisher, and are to be sold at the sign of the Talbot and Aldersgate Street 1632. The value of this tiny quarto with the enormous title depends entirely, so far as the collector is concerned, on whether or no it possesses the frontispiece. So many people not having the fear of books before their eyes have divorced the latter from the former, that a perfect copy of Death's dual is quite captured, over which the young bibliophile may venture to glory, but let him not fancy that he has a prize if his copy does not possess the portrait plate. One has but to glance for a moment at this frontispiece to see that there is here something very much out of the common. It is engraved in the best 17th century style and represents, apparently, the head and bust of a dead man wrapped in a winding sheet. His eyes are shut, the mouth is drawn, and nothing was ever seen more ghastly. Yet it is not really the picture of a dead man. It represents the result of one of the grimmest freaks that ever entered into a pious mind. In the early part of March, 1630, 1631, the great Dr. Dunn, Dean of St. Paul's, being desperately ill and not likely to recover, called a woodcarver into the denary and ordered a small urn just large enough to hold his feet and a board as long as his body to be produced. When these articles were ready, they were brought into his study, which was first warmed, and then the old man stripped off his clothes, wrapped himself in a winding sheet, which was open only so far as to reveal the face and beard, and then stood upright in the little wooden urn, supported by leaning against the board. His limbs were arranged like those of dead persons, and when his eyes had been closed, a painter was introduced into the room and desired to make a full-length and full-size picture of this terrific object, this solemn theatrical presentment of life in death. The frontispiece of Death's stool gives a reproduction of the upper part of this picture. It was said to be a remarkably truthful portrait of the great poet and divine, and it certainly agrees in all its proportions with the accredited portrait of Don as a young man. It appears, for Walton's account is not precise, that it was afterstanding for this grim picture, but before it's being finished, that the dean preached his last sermon, that which is here printed. He had come up from ethics in great physical weakness in order not to miss his appointment to preach in his cathedral before the king on the first Friday in Lent. He entered the pulpit with so emaciated a frame and a face so pale and haggard, and spoke with a voice so faint and hollow that at the end, the king himself turned to one of his sweet and whispered, the dean has preached his own funeral sermon. So indeed it proved to be, for he presently withdrew to his bed and summoned his friends around to take a solemn farewell. He died very gradually after about a fortnight, his last words being, not in distress or anguish, but as it would seem, in visionary rapture, quote, I were miserable if I might not die, end quote. All this fortnight, into the moment of his death, the terrible life-size portrait of himself in his winding sheet stood near his bedside where it could be the quote hourly object, end quote of his attention. So one of the greatest churchmen of the 17th century and one of the greatest, if the most eccentric, of its lyrical poets passed away in the very plump of death on the 31st of March, 1631. And there was something eminently calculated to arrest and move the imagination in such an end as this, and people were eager to read the discourse which the quote, sacred quote, of his majesty himself had styled the dean's new-world sermon. It was therefore printed in 1632. As sermons of the period go, it is not long, yet it takes a full hour to read it slowly aloud, and we may thus estimate the strain which it must have given to the worn-out voice and body of the dean to deliver it. The present writer once heard a very eminent churchman, who was also a great poet, preach his last sermon at the age of 90. This was the Danish bishop Gruntwig. In that case, the effort of speaking, the extraction, as it seemed, of the sepulchral voice from the shrunken and ashen face did not last more than 10 minutes. But the English divines of the Jacobian age, like their Scottish brethren of today, were accustomed to stupendous efforts of endurance from that very diaconate. The sermon is one of the most creepy fragments of theological literature it would be easy to find. It takes as its text the words from the 68th Psalm, quote, and unto God the Lord belong the issues of death, end quote. In long stern sentences of sonorous magnificence, adorned with fine similes and gorgeous words, as the funeral trappings of a king might be with gold lace, the dying poet shrinks from no physical horror and no ghostly terror of the great crisis which he was himself to be the first to pass through. That which we call life, he says, and our blood seems to turn chilly in our veins as we listen, is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy and our infancy dies in youth and youth and rest die in age. And age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these youth out of infancy or age out of youth arise so as a phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake end quote. We can comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-well relatives went to the theater to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred pleasure from awful language of this kind in the pulpit. There is not much that we should call doctrine, no pensive or consolatory teaching, no appeal to souls in the modern sense. The effect aimed at is that of horror, of solemn preparation for the advent of death as by one who fears in the flutter of mortality to lose some peculiarity of the skeleton some jag of the vast crooked side of the specter. The most ingenious of poets the most subtle of divines whose life had been spent in examining man and the crucible of his own alchemist fancy seems anxious to preserve to the very least his powers of unflinching spiritual observation. The Dean of St. Paul's whose reputation for learned sanctity and scarcely suffice to shelter him from scandal on the ground of his fantastic defensive suicide was familiar with the idea of death and greeted him as a welcome old friend whose face he was glad to look on long and closely. The leaves at the end of this little book are filled up with copies of funeral verses on Dean Dunn. These are unsigned but we know from other sources to whom to attribute them each is by an eminent man. The first was written by Dr. Henry King then the Royal Chaplain and afterward Bishop of Chichester to whom the Dean had left besides a model in gold of the Synod of Dort that painting of himself in the winding sheet of which we have already spoken. This portrait Dr. King put into the hands of Nicholas Stone and the sculptor who made a reproduction of it in white marble with a little urn concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral of which King was chief residentiary and may still be seen in the present Cathedral King's elegy is very prosy in starting but improves as it goes along and is most ingenious throughout. These are the words in which he refers to the appearance of the dying preacher Pope. Thou like the dying swan didst lately sing thy mournful dirge and audience of the King when pale looks and weak accents of thy breath presented so to life that peace of death that it was feared and prophesied by all thou vidler capest to preach thy funeral. The other elegy is believed to have been written by a young man of twenty one modestly and enthusiastically seeking the company of the most famous London wits. This was Edward Hyde thirty years later to become Earl of Clarendon and finally to leave behind him manuscripts which should prove him the first great English historian. His verses here bespeak his good intention but no facility in rhyming. It was left for the ryper disciples of the great divine to sing his funerals in more effective numbers of the crowd of poets who attended him with music to the grave none expressed his merits in such excellent verses or with so much critical judgment as Thomas Karoo the King's sower in ordinary. It is not so well known but that we quote some lines from it quote the fire that fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir which kindled first by thy Promethean breath load here a while lies quenched now in thy death the muses garden with pedantic weeds or spread was purged by thee the lazy seeds of servile imitation thrown away and fresh invention planted. Thou didst pay the debts of our penurious bankrupt age. End quote Quote what so ever wrong by ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue redeemed and opened us a mind of rich and pregnant fancy drawn a line of masculine expression which had good old Orpheus seen or all the ancient brood our superstitious fools admire and hold their lead more precious than thy burnished gold now hath been their ex-checker let others carve the rest it will suffice I on thy grave this epitaph in size. Here lies a king that ruled as he thought fit the universal monarchy of wit. Here lies two flamens in both these the best Apollo's first at last the true gods priest end quote there was no full memoir of Dr. Dunn until it was the privilege of the present writer in 1900 to publish his life and letters in two substantial volumes since then in 1912 these poetical works have been edited and sifted with remarkable delicacy and judgment by Professor Greerson it is now therefore as easy as it can be expected ever to be to follow the career of this extraordinary man with all its cold and hot fits its rage of lyrical amativeness its Roman passion and the high and clouded austerity of its final Anglicanism Dunn is one of the most fascinating in some ways one of the most inscrutable figures in our literature and we may contemplate him with instruction from his first wild escapade into the Azores down to his voluntary penitence in the pulpit and the winding sheet End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Gossip in a Library this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss Chapter 5 Gerard's Herbal The Herbal or General History of Plants gathered by John Gerard of London Master in Chiroergy very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson the Apothecary of London London Printed by Adam Islip Joyce Norton and Richard Whittaker in the year 1633 The proverb says that a door must be either open or shut The Bibliophile is apt to think that a book should be either little or big For my own part I become more and more attached to dumpy twelves But that does not preclude a certain discreet fondness for folios If a man collects books his library ought to contain an herbal But if he has but room for one that should be the best The luxurious and sufficient thing I think is to possess what booksellers call the right edition of Gerard That is to say the volume described under this paper There is no handsomer book to be found none more stately or imposing than this magnificent folio of 1600 pages with its close, elaborate letterpress its innumerable plates and John Payne's fine frontispiece in compartments with Theophrastus and Ascorides facing one another and the author below them holding in his right hand the newfound treasure of the potato plant This edition of 1633 is the final development of what had been a slow growth The 16th century witnessed a great revival almost a creation of the science of botany People began to translate the great materia medica of the Greek physician diascorides of Anisarba and to comment upon it The Germans were the first to append woodcuts to their botanical descriptions and it is Otto Brun Felsius in 1530 who has the credit of being the originator of such figures In 1554 there was published the first great herbal that of Rembertus Codonius body physician to the Emperor Maximilian II who wrote in Dutch An English translation of this in 1578 by Henry Light was the earliest important herbal in our language Five years later in 1583 a certain doctor priest translated all the botanical works of Dodonius with much greater fullness than Light had done and this volume was the germ of Gerard's far more famous production John Gerard was a Cheshire man born in 1545 who came up to London and practiced there as a surgeon According to his editor and continuator Thomas Johnson who speaks of Gerard with startling freedom this excellent man was by no means well equipped for the task of compiling a great herbal he knew so little Latin according to this two-handed friend that he imagined Leonard Fuchsius who was a German contemporary of his own to be one of the ancients but Johnson is a little too zealous in magnifying his own office he brings a worse accusation against Gerard if I understand him rightly to charge him with using doctor priest's manuscript collections after his death without giving that physician the credit of his labors when Johnson made this accusation Gerard had been dead 26 years in any case it seems certain that Gerard's original herbal which beyond question surpassed all its predecessors when it was printed in folio in 1597 was built up upon the groundwork of priest's translation of Dodonius nearly 40 years later Thomas Johnson himself a celebrated botanist took up the book and spared no pains to reissue it in perfect form the result is the great volume before us an elephant of long books a noblest of all the English Herbal's Johnson was 72 years of age when he got this gigantic work off his hands and he lived 11 years longer to enjoy his legitimate success the great charm of this book at the present time consists in the copious woodcuts of these there are more than 2000 each a careful and original plant itself in the course of two centuries and a half with all the advance and appliances we have not improved a wit on the original artist of Gerard's in Johnson's time the drawings are all in strong outline with very little attempt at shading but the characteristics of each plant are given with a truth and a simplicity which are almost Japanese in no case is this more extraordinary than in that of the orchids or satirians as they were called on the days of the old herbalist here in a succession of little figures each not more than 6 inches high peculiarity of every portion of a full grown flowering specimen of each species is given with absolute perfection without being slurred over on the one hand or exaggerated on the other for instance the little variety called ladies tresses sparranthes which throws a spiral head of pale green blossoms out of dry pastures appears here with small bells hanging on a twisted stem as accurately as the best photograph could give it although the process of woodcutting as then practiced in England was very rude and although almost illustrations of the period are rough and inartistic it is plain that in every instance the botanist himself drew the form with which he was already intelligently familiar on the block with the living plant lying at his side the plan on which the herbalist lays out his letterpress is methodical in the extreme he begins by describing his plant then gives its habitat then discusses its nomenclature and ends with a medical account of its nature and virtues it is of course to be expected that we should find the line old names of plants enshrined in Gerard's pages for instance, he gives to the deadly nightshade the name which now lingers only in a corner of debenture the dwell as an instance of his style I may quote a passage from what he has to say about the virtues or rather vices of this plant quote banish it from your gardens and the use of it also being a plant so furious and deadly for it bringeth such as have eaten thereof into a dead sleep wherein many have died as hath been often seen and proved by experience both in England and elsewhere but to give you an example hereof not be amiss it came to pass the three boys of Whizbeach in the Isle of Ely did eat of the pleasant and beautiful fruit hereof two whereof died in less than eight hours after they had eaten of them the third child had a quantity of honey and water mixed together given him to drink causing him to vomit often God blessed this means and the child recovered banish therefore these pernicious plants out of your gardens and all places near to your houses where children do resort end quote Gerard has continually to stop his description that he may repeat to his readers some anecdote which he remembers now it is how quote master Cartwright a gentleman of Grey's Inn who was grievously wounded into the lungs end quote cured with the herb called Saracen's compound quote and that by God's permission in short space end quote now it is to tell us that he has found yellow archangel rowing under a sequestered hedge on the left hand as you go from the village of Hampstead near London to the church end quote or that quote this amiable and pleasant kind of primrose a sort of ox lip was first brought to light by Mr. Hasketh quote a diligent searcher after simples end quote in a Yorkshire wood while the groundlings were crowding to see new plays by Shirley and Massinger the editor of this volume was examining fresh varieties of auricula in quote the gardens of Mr. Tradescant and Mr. Tuggy end quote it is wonderful how modern the latter statement sounds and how ancient the former but the garden seems the one spot on earth where history does not assert itself and no doubt when Nero was fiddling over the blaze of Rome there were florists counting the petals of rival roses at pastem as peacefully and conscientiously as any gardeners of today the herbalist and his editor write from personal experience this gives them a great advantage in dealing with superstitions if there was anything which people were certain about in the early part of the 17th century it was that the Mandrake only grew under a gallows where the dead body of a man had fallen to pieces and that when it was dug up it gave a great shriek which was fatal to the nearest living thing Gerard contemptuously rejects all these and other tales as old wives dreams he and his servants have often digged up mandrakes and are not only still alive but listened in vain for the dreadful scream it might be supposed that such a statement from so eminent an authority would settle the point but we find Sir Thomas Brown in the next generation battling these identical popular errors in the pages of his pseudo-doxia epidemica in the like manner the historical evidence seems to have been of no use in persuading the public that mistletoe was not generated out of bird lime dropped by thrushes into the boughs of trees or that its berries were not desperately poisonous to observe and state the truth is not enough the ears of those to whom it is proclaimed must be ready to accept it our good herbalist however cannot get through his 1600 and solemn pages without one slip after accompanying him dutifully so far we double up with uncontrollable laughter on page 1587 for here begins the chapter which treats of the goose tree barnacle tree or the tree bearing geese but even here the habit of genuine observation clings to him the picture represents a group of stalked barnacles those shrimps fixed by their antennae which modern science I believe calls lipas anatifera by the side of these stands a little goose and the suggestion of course is that the latter has slipped out of the former although the draftsman has been far too conscientious to represent the occurrence yet the letterpress is confident that in the north parts of Scotland there are trees on which grow white shells which ripen and then opening drop little living geese into the waves below Gerard himself averse that from Guernsey and Jersey he brought home with him to London shells like limpets containing little feathery objects which no doubt were the fowls called barnacles and quote it is almost needless to say that these objects really were the plumos and flexible ciri which the barnacles throw out to catch their food with and which lie like a tiny feather brush just within the valves of the shell when the creature is dead Gerard was plainly unable to refuse credence to the mass of evidence which presented itself to him on this subject yet he closes with a hint that this seems rather a quote fabulous breed end quote of geese with the barnacle goose tree the herbal proper closes in these quaint words quote and thus having through God's assistance discourse somewhat at large of grasses herbs, shrubs trees and bosses and certain excrescences of the earth with other things moe incident to the history thereof we conclude and end our present volume with this wonder of England for the which God's name be ever honored and praised end quote and so at last the goose tree receives the highest sanction end of chapter 5 chapter 6 of gossip in a library this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith gossip in a library by Edmund Goss chapter 6 pheromone pheromone or the history of France a new romance in four parts written originally in French by the author of Cassandra and Cleopatra and now elegantly rendered into English London printed by James Cottrell for Samuel Speed at the rainbow in Fleet Street near the inner temple gate folio 1662 there is no better instance of the fact that books will not live by good works alone than is offered by the utterly neglected heroic novels of the 17th century at the opening of the reign of Louis XIV in France several writers in the general dearth of prose fiction began to supply the public in Paris with a series of long romances which for at least a generation absorbed the attention of the ladies and reigned unopposed in every boudoir I wonder whether my lady readers have ever attempted to realize how their sisters of 200 years ago spent their time in an English country house of 1650 there were no magazines no newspapers no long tennis or croquet no afternoon teas or glee concerts no mothers meetings or xenon omissions no free social intercourse with neighbors none of the thousand and one agreeable diversions with which the life of a modern girl is diversified on the other hand the ladies of the house had their needlework to attend to they had to stitch in a clout as it was called they had to attend to the duties of a housekeeper and when the sun shone they tended the garden perhaps they rode or drove in a stately fashion but through long hours they sat over their embroidery frames with solemn old tapestries which lined their walls and during these sedate performances they required a long-winded polite, unexciting, stately book that might be read aloud by terms the heroic novel as provided by Gambreville Palplenade and Mademoiselle d'Escuderly supplied this want to perfection the sentiments in these novels were the most elevated class and tedious as they seem nowadays to us it was the sentiments almost more than the action which fascinated contemporary opinion Madame de Savigne herself the brightest and wittiest of women confessed herself to be a fly in the spider's web of their attractions quote the beauty of the sentiments she writes the violence of the passions the grandeur of the events the miraculous success of their redoubtable sores all draw me on as though I were still a little girl end quote in these modern days of success we may still start to learn that the Parisian publisher of Le Grand Sireuse made 100,000 crowns by that work from the appearance of its first volume in 1649 to its close in 1653 the quality so admirably summed up by Madame de Savigne were those which appealed most directly to public feeling in France there really were heroes in that day the age of chivalric passions had not passed great loves, great hates great emotions of all kinds were conceivable and within personal experience when La Rocheville-Cole wrote to Madame de D'Angue the famous lines which may be thus translated to win that wonder of the world a smile from her bright eyes I fought my king and would have hurled the gods out of their skies end quote he was breathing the very atmosphere of the heroic novels their extraordinary artificial elevation of tone was partly the spirit of the age it was also partly founded on a new literary ideal the tone of Greek romance no book had been read in France with greater avidity in the 16th century translation of the old novel Heliodorus and in the Polexandres and Clarisse we see what this Greek spirit of romance could blossom into when grafted upon the stock of Louis XIV the vogue of these heroic novels in England has been has been best stated for the whole subject has been met with neglect from successive historians of literature it has been asserted that they were not read in England until after the restoration nothing is further from the truth Charles I read Cassandra in prison while we find Dorothy Osborn in her exquisite letters to Sir William Temple assiduously studying one heroic novel after another through the years of Cromwell's rule she reads Le Grand Cyrus while she has the egg she desires Temple to tell her quote which amont you have most compassion for when you have read what each one says for himself end quote she and the king read them in the original but soon there arrived English translations and imitations these began to appear a good deal sooner than bibliographers than prepared to admit of the Astri of Dufay which however is properly a link between the Arcadia of Sydney and the genuine heroic novel there was an English version as early as 1620 but of the real thing the first importation was Polexandra in 1647 followed by Cassandra and Ibrahim in 1652 Arteminis in 1653 Cleopatra in 1654-8 and Clélie in 1655 all it will be observed published in England before the close of the Commonwealth Dorothy Osborn who had studied the French originals turned up her nose at these translations she says that they were quote so disguised they whom their old acquaintance hardly knew them end quote they had moreover changed their form in France they had come out in an infinite number of small manageable tones for instance Calprenade published his Cleopatra in 23 volumes but the English Cleopatra is all contained in one monstrous elephant folio Arteminis the English translation of Le Grand Cyrus is worse still for it is comprised in five such folios many of the originals were translated over and over again so popular were they and as the heroic novels of any eminence in France were limited in number it would be easy by patiently hunting the translations up and old libraries a complete list of them the principal heroic novels were eight in all of these there is but one the Almahid of Mademoiselle Discuterie which we have not already mentioned and the original publication of the whole school is confined within less than 30 years the best master in a bad class of lumbering and tiresome fiction was the author of the book which is the text La Calprenade whose full name was nothing less than Gautier du Coste de la Calprenade was a Gascon gentleman of the guards of whose personal history the most notorious fact is that he had the temerity to marry a woman who had already buried five husbands some historians relate that she proceeded to poison number six but this does not appear to be certain while it does appear that Calprenade lived in the married state for 15 years a longer respite than the antecedents of madame gave him any right to anticipate he made a great fame with his two huge roman novels Cassandra and Cleopatra and then some years later he produced a third pheromone which was taken out of early french history the translator in the version before us says of this book that it is not a romance but a history adorned with some excellent flourishes of language and loves in which you may delightfully trace the author's learned pen through all those historians who wrote of the times he treats of end quote in other words with his king of the canaries and his vanishing islands and his necromancers and his dragons who are fairyland and while Mademoiselle de Scuderia elaborately builds up a romantic picture of her own times in clay me for instance where the 370s several characters introduced are said to be all acquaintances of the author Calprenade attempted to produce something like a proper historical novel introducing invention but embroidering it upon some sort of genuine framework of fact to describe the plot of pheromone or of any other heroic novel would be a desperate task the great number of personages introduced in pairs the intrigues of each couple forming a separate thread wound into the complex web of the plot is alone enough to make any following of the story a great difficulty on the flyleaf of a copy of Cleopatra for me some dear lady of the 17th century has very conscientiously written out quote a list of the pairs of lovers and there are 13 pairs pheromone begins almost in the same manner as a novel by the late Mr. G.P.R. James might when the book opens we discover the amorous macromine and the valiant genieble sallying forth along the bank of a river on two beautiful horses of the best genet race throughout the book all the men are valiant all the ladies are passionate and chaste the heroes enter the lists covered with rubies loosely embroidered over circuits of gold and silk tissue their heads quote shine with gold enamel and precious stones end quote they are mounted upon horses whose whiteness might out via the purest snow upon the frozen Alps end quote they pierce into woodland dels where they by chance discover renowned princesses non-pariles of beauty in imminent danger and release them they attack hordes of deadly pirates and scatter their bodies and yet for all their warlike fire and force they are as gentle as marmosets in a ladies' moudoir they are especially admirable in the putting forth of sentiments in glowsing over a subtle difficulty in love in tying a knot of silk or fastening a lock of hair to their bonnet they will steal into a cabinet so softly that a lady who is seated there in a reverie will know a droid that they will seize a paper on which he has sketched a couplet will complete it pass away and she not know whence the poetical miracle has come in valor in courtesy, in magnificence they have no rival just as the ladies whom they court are unique in beauty in purity in passion and in strength in pheromon the letters which pass between the princes Unimonde and Prince Balamir would form a small volume by themselves an easy introduction to the art of polite letter writing Mademoiselle de Scuderie actually preceded this and published a collection of model correspondence which was called bodily from the huge storehouse of her own romances from Le Grand Cyprus to Clélie these interchanges of letters were kept up by the severity of the heroines it was not thought proper that the lady should yield her hand until a gentleman had exhausted the resources of language and had spent years of amorous labor on her conquest when Roger Boyle in 1654 published his novel of Partonisa in four volumes Dorothy Osborn objected to the ease and succeeded she complains that ladies are also kind they make no sport this particular 1662 translation of pheromon appears to be very rare if not unique at all events I find it in none of the bibliographies nor has the British Museum Library a copy of it the preface is signed JD the version is probably therefore from the Pan of John Davies who helped Love Day to finish his enormous translation of Cleopatra in 1665 in 1677 there came out another version of pheromon by John Phillips and this is common enough some day perhaps these alethin teen old romances may come into fashion again and we may obtain a precise list of them present no corner of our literary history is more thoroughly neglected again footnote since this was written a French critic of eminence Monsieur Jussiron has made in the English novel in the time of Shakespeare 1890 a delightful contribution to this portion of our literary history the earlier part of the last chapter of that volume may be recommended to all readers curious about the vogue of the heroic novel but Monsieur Jussiron does not happen to mention pheromon nor to cover the exact round of my little study end footnote end chapter 6 chapter 7 of Gossip in a Library this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Eugene Smith Gossip in a Library by Edmund Goss chapter 7 a volume of old plays in his Ballad of the Book Hunter Andrew Lang describes how in Bridges' Baggy at the Knees the bibliophile hunts in all weathers quote no dismal stall escapes his eye he turns or tomes of low degrees their soil romanticists may lie for restoration comedies end quote that speaks straight to my heart for of all my weaknesses the weakest is that weakness of mine for restoration plays from 1660 down to 1710 nothing in dramatic form comes amiss and I have great schemes like the boards on which people play the game of Solitaire in which space is left for every drama needed to make this portion of my library complete it is scarcely literature I confess it is a sport, a long game which I shall probably be still playing at with three moldy old tragedies in one opera yet needed to complete my set when the reaper comes to carry me where there is no amassing expecting it would hardly be credited how much pleasure I have drained out of these dramas since I began to collect them judiciously in my still-callow youth I admit only first editions but that is not so rigorous as it sounds since at least half of the poor old things never went into a second as long as it is congrieved and dried and outweigh of course it is literature by order even Shadwell and Mrs. Bain in Southern art literature Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as legitimate literary curiosity but there are depths below this where there is no excuse but sheer collecta neomania plays by people who never got into any schedule of English letters that ever was planned dramatic non-entities stage innocence cradles if only they were published in quarto I find room for them I am not quite so pleased to get these anonymities I must confess as I am to get a clean, tall editio princepts of the orphan or of love for love but I neither reject nor despise them each of them counts one each serves to fill a place on my solitaire board each hurries on that dreadful possible time coming when my collection shall be complete and I shall have nothing to do but break my collecting rod and bury it fathoms deep a volume has just come in which happens to have nothing in it but those forgotten plays whose very names are unknown to the historians of literature first comes the Roman Empress by William Joyner printed in 1671 Joyner was an Oxford man a fellow of Magdalene College the little that has been recorded about him makes one wish to know more he became persuaded of the truth of the Catholic faith and made a voluntary resignation of his Oxford fellowship he had to do something and so he wrote this tragedy which he dedicated to Sir Charles Sedley the poet and got acted at the theater royal which contains two good actors' names Mohan and Canastem and it seems that it enjoyed a considerable success but doubtless the stage was too rough a field for the general's Oxford scholar he retired into a sequestered country village where he lingered on till 1706 when he was nearly 90 but Joyner was none of the worst of poets in the segment of the Royal Empress which is by no means despicably versed quote Oh thou bright glorious morning thou oriental springtime of the day who with thy mixed vermilion colors paintest the sky these hills and plains thou dost return in thy accustomed manner but with thee shall Nair return through his Roman tragedy there runs a pensive vein of sadness as though the poet were thinking less of his Orelia and his Valentius than of the lost common room in the arcades of Magdalene to be no more revisited our next play is a worse one but much more pretentious it is the Usurper of 1668 the first of four dramas published by the Honorable Edward Howard one of Dryden's aristocratic brothers-in-law Edward Howard is memorable for a couplet constantly quoted from his epic poem of the British Princes quote a vest as admired Forteger had on which from a naked picked his grandsire won end quote poor Howard has received the laughter of generations for representing Forteger's grandsire as thus having stripped one who was bare already but this is the wickedness of some ancient wag perhaps of Dryden himself who loved to laugh at his brother-in-law at all events the first that I suppose only addition of the British Princes is before me at this moment and the second of these lines certainly runs quote close his grandsire won end quote thus do the critics leaping one after another like so many sheep follow the same wrong track in this case for a couple of centuries the Usurper is a tragedy in which a parasite quote a most perfidious villain end quote plays a mysterious part he is let off to be hanged at last much to the reader satisfaction who murmurs in the words of R. L. Stevenson quote there's an end of that end quote but though the Usurper is dull we reach a lower depth and muddier leaves of wit in the Carnival a comedy by major Thomas Porter of 1664 it is odd however that the very worst production if it be more than 200 years old is sure to contain some little thing interesting to a modern student the Carnival has one such peculiarity whenever any of the characters is left alone on the stage he begins to soliloquize in the stanza of Grey's Churchyard Elegy this is a very quaint innovation and one which possibly occurred to brave major Porter in one of the marches but the man who perseveres is always rewarded and the fourth play in our volume really repays us for pushing on so far here is a piece of wild and ghostly poetry that is well worth digging out of the Duke of Newcastle's humorous lovers quote at curfew time and at the dead of night I will appear thy conscious soul to fright make signs and beckon thee my ghost to follow to Sattergrove's and Churchyard's where we'll hello to darker caves in solitary woods to fatal whirlpools and consuming floods I'll tempt thee to pass by the unlucky you blasted with cursed droppings of mildew under an oak that near bore leaf my moan shall there by the mandrakes groans the winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty and how thy want of love did murder me and when the cock shall crow and day grow near then in a flash of fire I'll disappear end quote but I cannot persuade myself that his grace of Newcastle wrote those lines himself published in 1677 they were as much of a portent as a man in trunk holds and a slash doublet the Duke had died a month or two before the play was published he had grown to be in extreme old age the most venerable figure of the restoration and it is possible that the humorous lovers may have been a relic of his Jacobian youth he might very well have written it so old was he in Shakespeare's lifetime but the Duke of Newcastle was never a very skillful poet and it is known that he paid James Shirley to help him with his plays I feel convinced that if all men had their own the invocation I have just quoted would fly back into the works of Shirley and so no doubt would the following quaintest bit of conceited fancy it is part of a fantastical feast which Boldman promises to the widow of his heart quote the twinkling star shall to our wish make a grand salad in a dish snow for our sugar shall not fail fine candied ice comfits of hail for oranges yield clouds will squeeze the milky way will turn to cheese sunbeams will catch shall stand in place of hotter ginger nutmegs, mace sun setting clouds for roses sweet and violet skies strewed for our feet the sphere shall for our music play while spirits dance the time away end quote this is extravagant enough but surely very picturesque I seem to see the supper room of some Elizabethan castle after an elaborate royal mask the Duchess who has been dancing richly attired in sky-colored silk with his gilt wings on her shoulders is attended to the refreshments by the florid Duke personating the river Thamesis with a robe of cloth of silver around him it seems the sort of thing a poet so habited might be expected to say between a galleyard and a caranto at first sight we seem to have reached a really good rhetorical play when we arrive at Bancroft's tragedy of Sertorius published in 1679 and so it would be if Dryden and Lee had never written but its seeming excellence is greatly lessened when we recollect that all for love and Dithridaptis two great poems which are almost good plays appeared in 1678 and inspired our poor imitative Bancroft Sertorius is written in smooth and well-sustained blank verse which is however nowhere quite good enough to be quoted I suspect that John Bancroft was a very interesting man he was a surgeon and his practice particularly in the theatrical and literary world he acquired it is said from his patients quote a passion for the muses end quote and an inclination to follow in the steps of those who me cured or killed Bancroft wrote an epilogue to Sertorius in which he says that quote our poet to learned critics does submit but scorns those little vermin of the pit who noise and nonsense event instead of wit end quote and no doubt Bancroft had aims more professional than those of the professional playwrights themselves he wrote three plays and lived until 1696 one fancies the discreet and fervent poet surgeon laden with his secrets and his confidences why did he not write memoirs and tell us what it was that drove that Lee mad and how Otway really died and what Dryden's habits were why did he not pervade magnificent indiscretions whispered under the great periwig of witcherly or repeat that splendid story about Etheridge and my Lord Mulgrey alas we would have given a wilderness of Sertorius's for such a series of memoirs the volume of plays is not exhausted here is Weston's Amazon Queen of 1667 written in pompous rhymed heroics here is The Fortune Hunters a comedy of 1689 the only play of that brave fellow James Carlisle who being brought up an actor preferred to be rather than to personate a hero and died in gallant fight for William of Orange at the battle of Offram here is Mr. Anthony a comedy written by the right honorable the Earl of Orary and printed in 1690 a piece never republished among works and therefore of some special interest but I am sure my readers exhausted even if the volume is not and I spare him any further examination of these obscure dramas lest he should say as Peter Pindar did of Dr. Johnson that I quote set wheels on wheels in motion such a clatter to force up one poor nippercan of water the ocean labor with tremendous roar to heave a cockle shell upon the shore end quote I will close therefore with one suggestion to the special student of comparative literature namely that it is sometimes in the minor writings of an age where the bias of personal genius is not strongly felt that the general phenomena of the time are most clearly observed the Amazon Queen is in rhymed verse because in 1667 this was the fashionable form for dramatic poetry Sertorius is in regular and somewhat restrained blank verse because in 1679 the fashion had once more a chopped round what in Dryden or Otway might be the fourth of originality may be safely taken as the drift of the age in these imitative and floating non-entities end of chapter 7