The
Scottish
text society
was founded in 1882.
was founded in 1882.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v12
The author has
been described by Dibdin as “the Atlas of Scottish Antiquaries
and Historians; bearing on his shoulders whatever has been
collected, and with pain separately endured by his predecessors';
one whom neither difficulties tire, nor dangers daunt. ' During
his previous migration to Maryland, he had made a collection of
"Treaties' and of Political Annals of the. . . Colonies. After his
return to Scotland, he wrote lives of Ruddiman, Sir David
Lyndsay and Mary queen of Scots. The Scottish section of his
library has been described as one of the most valuable collections
of works on the history and literature of Scotland ever formed
by a private individual. '1 In the next generation, Sir John
Graham Dalyell, author of The Darker Superstitions of Scotland
(1834), gave proof of being a remarkably versatile antiquary.
James Logan was a man of some note as the author of The
Scottish Gael, or Celtic Manners as preserved amongst the
Highlanders (1831), and also of the two illustrated folios on the
Clans of the Scottish Highlands (1843—9), regarded in their
day as one of the most valuable and interesting works of modern
times. ' Robert Stuart, the bookseller and antiquary of Glasgow,
produced, in his Caledonia Romana of 1845, 'a descriptive
account of the Roman antiquities of Scotland. ' John Stuart, of
Edinburgh, published, in 1856, The Sculptured Stones of Scotland,
besides editing, in 1869, The Book of Deer, and preparing for
publication, in 1872, Archaeological Essays by the eminent
physician, Sir James Young Simpson.
Contributions to Scottish Ethnology was the title of the first
important work of John Beddoe, who was born in Worcestershire
in 1826, and educated in the universities of London and Edinburgh,
and was president of the Anthropological society in 1869–70.
He subsequently wrote The Races of Britain (1885), and The
1 Cf. David Murray's David Laing, p. 33. The Antiquary was given to the world
by the author of Waverley' in 1815. The character of the whimsical virtuoso,
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, was partly founded on that of an old friend of Scott's
youth, George Constable, of Wallace Craigie, vear Dundee, while the scene in which
Edie Ochiltree interrupts the antiquary's ecstatic description of the Praetorium of
Agrippa by exclaiming, ' Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't,' is
an echo of an incident that actually happened to an antiquary of great learning and
acuteness, Sir John Clerk, of Penicuik, one of the barons of the Scottish court of
exchequer, when he conducted the English antiquary, Roger Gale, to the Roman station
of Birrenswark, in Dumfriesshire.
6
## p. 351 (#375) ############################################
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351
Scotland.
Ireland
Anthropological History of Europe (1891). The Archaeology and
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, published in 1851 by (Sir)
Daniel Wilson, afterwards president of the university of Toronto,
formed an epoch in the study of the earlier antiquities of Scotland,
and invested antiquities with all the charms of graceful literaturel.
Sir Daniel was also the author of 'Researches into the origin of
civilisation in the Old and the New World,' published under the title
Prehistoric Man, a work teeming with interesting matter clothed
in a clear and graphic style. The Rhind lectures in archaeology
were founded by Alexander Henry Rhind, who made a special
study of Scottish antiquities, and, during a visit to Egypt for the
benefit of his health, collected the materials for a work entitled
Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants (1862).
In Irish archaeology, the first name of permanent importance
is that of George Petrie. In 1833 he was appointed to super-
intend the historical and antiquarian sections of the ordnance
survey of Ireland.
It was originally proposed to add to the
maps of each district a memoir on its past history and its
ancient monuments, but, after one volume of the proposed series
had been issued, the work was suddenly dropped on the alleged
ground of expense. Petrie's three chief essays were the outcome
of his work on the survey. In his prize-essay, The Round Towers
of Ireland (1833), he dispelled the theory of their pagan origin by
proving that they were Christian belfries; and this essay was
expanded into his great work, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of
Ireland (1845). His second essay, Antiquities of Tara (1843),
was originally intended for the ordnance memoir on Meath. The
manuscript of the third, Irish Military Architecture, still remains
among the archives of the Royal Irish academy. As a landscape
painter, he had been attracted by the surpassing interest of Irish
antiquities. He traversed the whole country'in search of subjects
for his canvas, and, at the same time, made copious notes and
sketches of buildings,' besides collecting antiquities, and reaping
'a vast harvest of traditional music. ” Petrie, on joining the Irish
academy, arranged the small series of weapons and implements
presented by the king of Denmark. After his death, his own
collection was added, and, in 1857—62, all the antiquarian
acquisitions of the academy were described in an amply illus-
trated catalogue by the distinguished physician, Sir William
Wilde, who thus provided the quarry from which all later
1 The Westminster Review, April 1856, p. 384.
? Macalister, R. A. S. , in The Journal of the Ivernian Society, vol. v (1912), p. 30.
## p. 352 (#376) ############################################
352
[CH.
Archaeological Antiquaries
'1
6
>
writers on Irish antiquities draw their materials. ' The Royal
Irish academy had grown from a society established in Dublin
about 1782. The Kilkenny Archaeological society, founded in
1849, became, in 1869, the Royal Historical and Archaeological
Association of Ireland,' and, in 1890, the 'Royal Society of An-
tiquaries of Ireland. '
Turning from Ireland to India, we note that the Asiatic
society of Bengal was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784,
and that, in 1811, the eminent Sanskrit scholar, Horace Hayman
Wilson, was appointed secretary of that body. Wilson was also
an original member of the Royal Asiatic society, and director
of it from 1837 to his death in 1860. Most of his works were
specially connected with the Sanskrit language and literature? ; but
he was also an Indian antiquary. His Ariana Antiqua (1841)
is 'a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of
Afghanistan, including a chapter on the progress of discovery'
of Indian monuments, and a 'Memoir on the Topes' by Charles
Masson, the traveller in Balochistan. James Tod, who lived in
India from 1800 to 1823, published The Antiquities of Rajpootana,
ranked by cardinal Wiseman ‘among the most valuable, as well
as among the most beautiful works upon Eastern literature. '
As secretary of the Asiatic society of Bengal, Wilson was
succeeded, in 1832, by James Prinsep, who, as an assay-master in
northern India, collected the materials for his earliest work,
his Benares illustrated (1831). He also paid special attention
to the deciphering of inscriptions.
The Kharosthi alphabet, written from right to left, ceased to
be used in India in the third century of our era; while the
Brāhmi, written from left to right, is the source of all later
Indian alphabets. A collection of Prinsep's Essays on Indian
Antiquities, bearing on these and on cognate topics, was pub-
lished by Edward Thomas in 1858. Edwin Norris, in a paper
on 'the Kapur-di-Giri rock-inscription' (1845), pointed out the
method of deciphering an alphabet, which had been previously
unknown, thus making, in the words of H. H. Wilson, 'an
unexpected and interesting accession to our knowledge of the
palaeography and ancient history of India. ': The office of director-
general of the archaeological survey of India was ably filled from
1870 to 1885 by major-general Sir Alexander Cunningham, who
had made his mark in antiquarian literature by his Essay on the
>
: Cf. ante, p. 343.
1 Macalister, R. A. S. , l. c. vol. v (1913), p. 85.
3 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1845.
## p. 353 (#377) ############################################
Xv]
Literary Antiquaries 353
Architecture of the Temples of Kashmir (1848), followed by The
Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India (1854).
He also wrote The Ancient Geography of India (1871), and
published an important Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (1879).
James Fergusson, who went to India in 1829 as an indigo-
planter, settled in London in 1839, and devoted himself to
archaeological research. The author of the well-known IUus-
trated Hand-book of Architecture, which deals with the styles
of all ages and countries, was led by his early life in India
to take a special interest in its ancient architecture and its
religious institutions. Such was the origin of his Rock-cut
Temples of India (1864), his Tree and Serpent Worship, with
its illustrations from the sculptures of Buddhist topes (1863 and
1873), and his joint work The Cave Temples of India (1880).
The coins of ancient India were investigated by H. H. Wilson,
in his Ariana Antiqua; by James Prinsep in his Essays ; by
Edward Thomas in his Ancient Indian Weights; and by Sir
Alexander Cunningham, who also made a special study of the
coinage of the Hindu states of medieval India.
LITERARY ANTIQUARIES
“A literary antiquary’has been described by Isaac D’Israeli as 'that idler
whose life is passed in a perpetual voyage autour de ma chambre; fervent in
sagacious diligence, instinct with the enthusiasm of curious inquiry, critical as
well as erudite; he has to arbitrate between contending opinions, to resolve
the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at the remote; so busied
with other times, and so interested for other persons than those about him,
that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of books. '2
One of the foremost places among the literary and historical
antiquaries of England is due to Thomas Wright, of Trinity
college, Cambridge, who, in 1838, was associated with John
Mason Neale, and with the Irish antiquary, Thomas Crofton
Croker, in founding the Camden society. The society was
founded in honour of William Camden, author of Britannia
(1586); and it had for its purpose the printing of books and
documents connected with the early civil, ecclesiastical and
literary history of the British empire. Wright was further
associated, in 1840, with Croker, and with Alexander Dyce,
J. 0. Halliwell(-Phillipps) and John Payne Collier, in founding
the Percy society for publishing old ballads and lyrical pieces,
1 For further publications, see bibliography.
* Curiosities of Literature, vol. II, p. 493, ed. 1866.
E. L. XII.
CH. XV.
23
## p. 354 (#378) ############################################
354 Literary Antiquaries [CH.
so named in memory of Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore, the
first editor of Reliques of English Poetry (1765). Even in his
undergraduate days, Wright was an eager explorer of historic
manuscripts in the Cambridge libraries. In 1836, he published
four volumes of Early English Poetry, and, two years later,
A Series of Original Letters, illustrating the history of queen
Elizabeth and her times. In 1840 he edited, with notes and
glossary, The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman, and, in 1842,
produced his Biographia Literaria of the Anglo-Saxon period,
comprising 'a rich mass of materials, arranged with taste and
judgment. This was followed, two years later, by his Anecdota
Literaria, a collection of short poems in English, Latin and
French, illustrating the literature and history of England in the
thirteenth century. Among his many other works were essays on
subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions
and history of England in the middle ages; a history of domestic
manners and sentiments, and of caricature and grotesque in
literature and art, besides editions of Chaucer, and of the romance
of king Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.
An Account of the Public Records was published in 1832
by Charles Purton Cooper, who also prepared a catalogue
of the fine collection of old French law which he presented to
the library of Lincoln's inn. The labours of John Bruce, as
calendarer of state papers, and as editor for the Camden society
(1838–68), are noticed elsewhere? . Anecdotes and Traditions,
relating to early English history and literature, was published for
the same society by William John Thoms, who founded Notes and
Queries in 1849, and edited Stow's Survey of London in 1875.
In 1834 the Surtees society was founded in honour of Robert
Surtees, author of a History of Durham published between 1816
and 1840. The purpose of the society was the publication of
ancient manuscripts bearing on the history and topography of
northern England. Among its active members were the brothers
James and John Raine ; canon Greenwell, who published several
works connected with the antiquities of the county and bishopric
of Durham ; and George William Kitchin, late dean of Durham,
who, in the early part of his career, had prepared the catalogue
of the library of Christ Church, Oxford.
The ten years from 1834 to 1844 were, in a special sense, the
age of the birth of book-clubs and book-societies. Thus, the
Camden society, already mentioned, was founded in 1838; and the
1 Cf. vol. XIII.
XIV
## p. 355 (#379) ############################################
Xv]
England
355
year 1840 saw the foundation of the Parker society, which had for
its main object 'the reprinting, without abridgment, alteration,
or omission, of the best works of the Fathers and early Writers
of the Reformed Church, published. . . between the accession of
Edward VI and the death of Elizabeth. ' The fifty-three volumes
-
published by the society ended with a general index in 1855.
The Percy and Shakespeare societies were founded in the same
year, and the Aelfric and Chetham societies in 1842. Of the last
two, the former had for its object the publication of Old English
and other documents illustrating the early state of England; the
latter, the printing of 'remains, historical and literary, connected
with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester. ' The
Caxton society, founded in 1844, aimed at bringing out works
illustrative of the history and miscellaneous literature of the
Middle Ages. ' The Sydenham society, founded in memory of the
English physician Thomas Sydenham, lasted from 1844 to 1858,
when it was succeeded by the New Sydenham society. The
Hakluyt society, for printing rare and unpublished voyages and
travels, was founded in 1846 ; the Early English Text society
in 1864; the Ballad and the Chaucer society in 1868; the
Harleian in 1869; the Wyclif in 1882; the Oxford Historical
society in 1882; the Selden society, for publishing ancient legal
records, in 1887; the London Bibliographical society and the
Viking club in 1892; and the Navy records society in 1897. The
Scottish book-clubs will be duly mentioned in the sequel. One
of the most generous contributors to the Scottish, as well as the
English, book-clubs of the middle of the nineteenth century, was
the scholarly and accomplished bibliographer, Beriah Botfield"
A project for a Corpus Historicum of early English history
was formed by Henry Petrie, keeper of the records in the
Tower. One large volume was published in 1848, with a
preface by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, who had been trained
under Petrie, and had already edited the Close Rolls, the Patent
Rolls, the Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, the Rotuli Normanniae,
the Chester Rolls, the Liberate Rolls and Modus Tenendi
Parliamentum (1846). His Descriptive catalogue of materials
relating to the history of Great Britain and Ireland filled three
volumes. He edited William of Malmesbury, continued John Le
Neve's Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, compiled an English syllabus
of documents in Rymer's Foedera and wrote memoirs of Henry
Bickersteth, Lord Langdale.
1 A list of his contributions will be found in the bibliography, vb.
17 35 $ ::.
Porn
29. tiful ferns saa 1:51
ses
1
23-2
## p. 356 (#380) ############################################
356
Literary Antiquaries [CH.
Lord Langdale was succeeded as master of the rolls by Sir
John Romilly, who held office from 1851 to 1873. It was under
his authority that the celebrated Rolls series came into being.
Early in the nineteenth century, at a meeting held at Spencer
house, it had been resolved to recommend the publication of a
complete collection of the sources of English history to the age
of the reformation. Henry Petrie had drawn up a scheme for the
approval of the government, and had been subsequently appointed
editor of the proposed series. But the standard which he had set
up was unduly high, and the scheme had been left in abeyance by
his death. However, in November 1856, Joseph Stevenson, the
archivist, who had been sub-commissioner of public records from
1834 to 1839, brought the subject under the consideration of the
lords of the treasury. His representations were referred to the
master of the rolls, who, on 26 January 1857, submitted proposals
for the publication of a series entitled Chronicles and Memorials
a
of Great Britain and Ireland from the Invasion of the Romans
to the Reign of Henry VIII. The proposals were adopted, and
the publication of the proposed series was authorised under
certain conditions: (1) that the works selected should be published
without mutilation or abridgment; (2) that the text should be
formed on a collation of the best manuscripts ; and (3) that the
editor should give an account of the manuscripts used by him, a
brief notice of the age in which the author wrote, and an explana-
tion of any chronological difficulties. This enterprise has done
more towards supplying a sound foundation for an accurate know-
ledge of medieval history than all preceding efforts put together!
Among the many literary antiquaries who made their mark
as editors of some of the volumes in this great series may be
mentioned John Sherren Brewer, Henry Richards Luard and
(above all) James Gairdner. The Historia Minor of Matthew
Paris was edited for the Rolls series in 1866–9 by Sir Frederic
Madden, head of the department of MSS in the British Museum
from 1837 to 1866. He also edited Layamon's Brut in 1847, and
Silvestre's Universal Palaeography, three years later. Three
volumes of the Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, in the Rolls series,
and four volumes of facsimiles of Old English charters, from 672
to the conquest, were edited by Sir Edward Bond, who was
principal librarian of the British Museum from 1878 to 1888. In
1873, he took part in founding the Palaeographical society in
1 Cf. Gardiner and Mullinger's Introduction to the Study of English History
(1881), pp. 219 f. See, also, post, vol. XIII.
## p. 357 (#381) ############################################
Xv]
England
357
conjunction with his successor in the office of principal librarian.
A transcript of The Register of the Company of Stationers of
London, from 1554 to 1640, was published in 1875 by Edward
Arber, who also edited The Term Catalogues, the seven volumes
entitled An English Garner, The English Scholar's Library and
the handy series issued under the title English Reprints.
The biographical and historical antiquities of Cambridge were
the field of research selected by Charles Henry Cooper, for many
years town clerk of Cambridge. His minute and painstaking
Annals of Cambridge appeared in four volumes in 1842–53,
while a fifth volume bringing the work down to 1850—6, with
an index to the whole, was added in 1908. The two volumes of
his Athenae Cantabrigienses, published in 1858 and 1861, supplied
materials for the lives of a large number of graduates of the
university, the first and second volumes including those who died
from 1500 to 1585, and from 1586 to 1609, respectively. The last
work which he produced in his lifetime was Memorials of Cam-
bridge, illustrated by Le Keux and Robert Farren. His Memoir of
Margaret Countess of Richmond and Derby was edited in 1874
by John Mayor, who appears to have tacitly contributed more
than half of the contents of the volume. In the course of an
obituary notice, written on 21 March 1866, the day of the
Cambridge antiquary’s death, Mayor said of Cooper:
It was because he clung with fond reverence to our "Sparta,' whose every
stone spoke to him of struggles and sacrifices and noble memories, that he
'adorned' it as no gownsman has done.
Sir Alexander Boswell, son of the biographer of Dr Johnson,
became a member of the Roxburghe club in 1819, and set the
example of printing the kind of books afterwards promulgated
with much success by Scottish book-clubs. In 1816–18 he printed,
at his private press at Auchinleck, works such as Churchyard's
Myrrour of man, and George Whetstone's Remembraunce of the
Life of Sir Nicolas Bacon. The greatest of the record-scholars
produced by Scotland was Thomas Thomson, principal clerk of
session from 1828 to 1852. Sir Walter Scott says of him in a
letter to George Ellis: ‘He understands more of old books, old
laws, and old history, than any man in Scotland. ' He edited
The Scots Acts and other documents for the Record commission,
but, by reason of either fastidiousness or indolence, he never
prepared the introductory volume, for which he had during many
years collected materials. The publication of Popular Ballads
and Songs, from tradition, manuscripts and scarce editions, by
## p. 358 (#382) ############################################
358
[ch.
Literary Antiquaries
Robert Jamieson, in Edinburgh, in 1806, was described by Scott
as having opened a new discovery respecting the original source
of the Scottish Ballads. '1 The author was afterwards associated
with Henry Weber and Scott in Illustrations of Northern An-
tiquities (1814).
Sir Walter Scott was the first president of the Bannatyne
club, founded in 1823 in memory of George Bannatyne, who wrote
out in 1568 a vast collection of Scottish poems in a folio volume
of 800 pages, now preserved in the Advocates' library, in
Edinburgh? . Scott was president of the club until his death in
1832; two years later, the Abbotsford club was founded in his
memory, for printing and publishing historical works connected
with his writings, and twenty-five works were thus produced from
1835 to 18643. Scott's place as president of the Bannatyne club
was filled for the next twenty years by Thomas Thomson, men-
tioned above. The first and only secretary, from its inauguration
in 1823 to its dissolution in 1861, was David Laing.
'It was a remarkable trio,' says David Murray in his monograph on Laing :
“they were the three men of the day most conversant with the literature of
Scotland; each an accomplished antiquary . . . ; all were distinguished in
sagacity, shrewdness, and geniality; but Thomson lacked the exactness,
method, energy, and business capacity of the other two 4. ?
Laing, who was a learned bookseller and, from 1837 to his
death in 1878, keeper of the library of the Writers to the Signet,
Edinburgh, edited a large number of works of Scottish poetry and
prose.
One of Laing's contemporaries, James Maidment, a Londoner
who spent a large part of his life in Edinburgh, printed some
rare tracts on the history and antiquities of Scotland (1822),
and edited works for the Bannatyne, Maitland, Abbotsford and
Hunterian clubs, as well as for the Spottiswoode society. Of these,
the Maitland club, founded at Glasgow in 1828, for the publication
of works illustrating the antiquities, history and literature of
Scotland, produced seventy-five volumes, in little more than
1. Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry,' p. 549 b of Poetical Works, ed. 1865.
* The entire text of the manuscript was issued by the Hunterian club, founded in
Glasgow in 1871 for reproducing the works of Scottish writers of the Elizabethan age;
it continued its activity until 1902.
3 List in Terry, O. S. , Catalogue of publications of Scottish Historical Societies and
kindred Clubs (Glasgow, 1909).
- David Murray, David Laing, Antiquary and Bibliographer,' in The Scottish
Historical Review, July 1914 ; separately printed in 1915.
5 See bibliography.
## p. 359 (#383) ############################################
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359
Scotland
6
thirty years, while the Spottiswoode society, founded in memory of
John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, published his
History of the Church and State of Scotland (1655 f. ) in 1851. On
the other side, the presbyterian History of the Sufferings of the
Church of Scotland from Restoration to Revolution, written by
Robert Wodrow, was published in 1828–30. The Wodrow society
was founded in his honour at Edinburgh in 1841, and continued to
flourish until about 1850, as an organisation mainly devoted to the
history of presbyterianism. In the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, a
work of wonderful accuracy and completeness, Hew Scott supplied
a list (with biographical details) of the ministers of every parish in
Scotland from the reformation to 1871.
The Scottish text society
was founded in 1882.
The editorial work that had been left unfinished by the dilatory
and fastidious Thomas Thomson was taken up after his death by
Cosmo Innes, a man of singular charm and geniality, who filled the
chair of constitutional law in Edinburgh from 1846 to his death in
1874. His style was lucid and engaging, and the object of his latest
publication, Lectures on Scotch legal antiquities, was 'to lead
the student of law from the daily practice of his profession to the
historical and archaeological conditions connected with its techni-
calities. " He also did a vast amount of work for the Bannatyne,
''
Maitland and Spalding clubs. This last, so named after John
Spalding, of Aberdeen (A. 1650), author of The History of. . .
Scotland . . . from 1624 to 1645, was founded, in 1839, for publishing
the historical, genealogical, topographical and literary remains of
the north-east counties of Scotland. Dissolved in 1870, it was
revived as the New Spalding club in 1886. One of the principal
founders of the original club was Joseph Robertson, who edited
eight of its thirty-eight volumes. Robertson, whose comparatively
short life of fifty-six years was outspanned by that of Cosmo Innes,
was one of the most erudite and accurate of the antiquaries
of Scotland. He was curator of the historical department of the
Edinburgh Register house from 1853 to his death in 1866, and
edited the Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae (1864), and many other
volumes for the above-mentioned clubs, notably Illustrations
of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen
and Banff (1843—62).
'It is in the Scotch book-clubs,' says John Hill Burton, in his Book-
Hunter, óthat Joseph Robertson has had the opportunity of exercising those
subtle powers of investigation and critical acumen, peculiarly his own, which
1 The Athenaeum, no. 2358.
1
## p. 360 (#384) ############################################
360 Literary Antiquaries [CH.
have had a perceptible and substantial effect in raising archaeology out of
that quackish repute which it had long to endure under the name of anti-
quarianism. '1
1
Sir Archibald Campbell Lawrie, before becoming a judge in
Ceylon from 1892 to 1901, produced admirable examples of anti-
quarian work in his Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, and in
bis Annals of Malcolm and William His Index to the Scots
Acts is an enormous folio, methodically arranged and practically
forming an index to the history of Scotland.
In Ireland, Thomas Crofton Croker's Researches in the South
of Ireland (1824) were followed by his Fairy Legends and
Traditions, his Legends of the Lakes, and his Popular Songs
(1839). John O'Donovan, who has been described as 'probably
the greatest native Irish scholar who ever lived,' obtained
an appointment in the Record office in 1826 and in the
ordnance survey in 1829, and devoted his whole life to the
elucidation of Irish history, topography and antiquities. Besides
providing a Grammar of the Irish Language (1845), he ably
edited and annotated a series of important texts, culminating
in his monumental edition of The Annals of . . . the Four Masters
(1848–51). The rest of his life was spent on the preliminary
labours required for the herculean task of editing The Ancient
Laws of Ireland? His colleague in the ordnance survey, and
his connection by marriage, Eugene O'Curry, was professor of
Irish history and archaeology in the catholic university of
Ireland. O'Curry's lectures entitled Manuscript Materials for
Ancient Irish History, and Manners and Customs of the Irish,
are still indispensable to all serious students of the past of
Ireland. '3
Sir Samuel Ferguson, whose eminent services to Irish
antiquities were recognised by his appointment in 1867 as the
first deputy-keeper of the public records of Ireland, was knighted
eleven years later for his successful reorganisation of the records
department. As an Irish poet, he aimed at embodying in modern
poetry the old Irish tales of heroes and saints and histories of
places. His Ogham inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland
was edited in 1887 by Lady Ferguson James Henthorn Todd, who
became librarian of Trinity college, Dublin, in 1852, classified the
3
1 The Book-Hunter (1862); “Some Book-Club Men. '
1
2 Cf. Macalister, R. A. S. , in The Journal of the Ivernian Society, vol. v (1912—13),
pp. 31, 83 f.
3 Ibid. p. 84.
## p. 361 (#385) ############################################
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361
manuscripts and compiled a catalogue, founded the Archaeological
society in 1840, acted as its secretary and contributed to its
publications and, finally, published his masterpiece, St Patrick,
Apostle of Ireland (1864). William Reeves, who ultimately became
bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, published Ecclesiastical
Antiquities of Down and Connor in 1847, and, ten years later,
elaborately edited for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic society,
and for the Bannatyne club, The Life of St Columba by Adamnan.
The Irish Archaeological society, founded in 1840, has had for its
occasional collaborators several clubs of kindred objects, the
Ossianic, the Iona and the Celtic. Of these, the Iona was founded
in 1833, while the Celtic, founded in 1845, was merged in the Irish
Archaeological society in 1853.
Patrick Weston Joyce, principal of the training college,
Dublin, was also a commissioner for the publication of Ancient
Laws of Ireland. His love of Irish songs and of folk-music
bore fruit in his Ancient Irish Music (1882), Irish Music and
Song and Irish Peasant Songs in the English Language
(1909). It also led him to many lonely places, where he collected
half-forgotten local names, and thus prepared himself for the
production of what may, probably, prove to be the most perma-
nent of his works, The Origin and History of Irish Names of
Places (1869, etc. ). Of his various histories of Ireland, which were
familiar as household words in his own land and among his
countrymen in the colonies, the most important was The Social
History of Ancient Ireland (1893).
The historical antiquary, Sir John Thomas Gilbert, secretary
to the public record office of Ireland from 1867 to 1875, wrote
Celtic Records and Historic Literature of Ireland (1861), and
edited Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland from the
Archives of the City of Dublin (1870), as well as Facsimiles of
the National Manuscripts of Ireland (1874–1880). These last
have been recognised as equally interesting in their historic,
palaeographic and artistic aspects? .
Whitley Stokes, who had studied Irish philology from an early
age, returned to England in 1882 after a legal career of twenty
years in India He took part in editing a series of Irish and
Celtic texts, and was associated with John Strachan in Thesaurus
Palaeo-Hibernicus (1901—3). Robert Atkinson, successively
1 An early copy of his Old Celtic Romances (1879), sent to Tennyson by Alfred
Perceval Graves, inspired the poet laureate in The Voyage of Maeldune.
2 Cf, a later volume.
'volux
,ون به ته وه
## p. 362 (#386) ############################################
362
[ch.
Bibliographers
professor of Romance languages and of Sanskrit in Trinity college,
Dublin, was also familiar with Tamil, Telegu, Hebrew, Persian,
Arabic, Chinese, Celtic and Coptic. He edited the Norman-
French poem, La Vie de Seint Auban, The Book of Leinster, The
Book of Ballymote, a collection of pieces, prose and verse, in the
Irish language, and a middle Irish work, The Passions and
Homilies from the Leabhar Breac (1897). In the following year,
he was joint editor of two volumes of the Irish Liber Hymnorum.
6
BIBLIOGRAPHERS
Bibliography has been defined as the systematic description
and history of books, their authorship, publication, editions, etc.
It is only the handmaid of literature; it cannot be identified with
literature any more than the bibliographer (as such) can be
regarded as an author. But, although bibliography has only an
ancillary position, it has, nevertheless, a lofty aim. The biblio-
grapher aims at completeness ; he dares not make any invidious
selection; of his domain, it may be said, as of the grave, that 'the
small and great are there'; and works of comparatively slight
importance have an undoubted right to his recognition.
In fact,
the only way in which he can conscientiously escape from this
obligation is by labelling his list a 'select bibliography. The
author, on the other hand, must always be making a selection out
of all the possible words which he may use ; and, against breaking
this law of selection, he is sufficiently warned by the proverb: tout
dire est rien dire. Sometimes, however, a bibliographer may
produce a work which may rank as literature. A Dibdin may
write a romance on bibliomania, and an Andrew Lang, who
himself describes bibliography as 'the quaint duenna of literature,'
may discourse on it with all his wonted charm ; but bibliographers,
as such, are not authors, and it is only because of their loyal services
to letters that they can claim a place in these pages.
The importance of a first-hand knowledge of books has been
recognised by all bibliographers worthy of the name. It was the
leading principle which guided Joseph Ames, a native of Yarmouth
and a prosperous inhabitant of Wapping, in preparing the materials
for his account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600. Dis-
carding printed lists, and resorting to the title-pages of the books
themselves, he also secured the direct cooperation of others in
gathering information respecting the 215 English printers with
whom he proposed to deal. He thus succeeded in producing his
Typographical Antiquities (1749).
## p. 363 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
England
363
One of the first of English bibliographers, both in order
of time and in talent, was Samuel Paterson, bookseller and
auctioneer. We are told that ‘his talent at cataloguizing was
unrivalled’; and that “perhaps we never had a bookseller who
knew so much of the contents of books generally. We also learn
that his catalogues were masterly, and, some of them, perfect
models of their kind. He was on terms of intimacy with his
older contemporary, Dr Johnson, who has himself a fair claim to
be regarded as a bibliographer. He took part in cataloguing the
Harleian library in 1742. In the preface to this work he observes
that 'by means of Catalogues only can it be known, what has
been written on every part of Learning. ' "The philosopher's
curiosity,' he adds elsewhere, 'may be influenced by a catalogue
of the works of Boyle or of Bacon, as Themistocles was kept
awake by the trophies of Miltiades. '1 Johnson, as he says of Pope,
certainly was, in his early life, a man of great literary curiosity’;
and he understood the whims and foibles of the bibliophile and
collector. 'In the purchase of old books,' he remarks, 'let me
recommend to you to inquire with great caution whether they are
perfect. ” He approved of the famous collection of editions of
Horace by James Douglas, whose catalogue was ultimately
published in 1739; and he adds: 'Every man should try to collect
one book in that manner, and present it to a public library. ? ?
William Beloe, a pupil of Samuel Parr, and a graduate of
Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, produced, in 1806–12, six
volumes entitled Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, in
which he had the advantage of having a large number of rare works
placed at his service by many eminent owners of libraries. Beloe's
Sexagenarian, published in two volumes after his death, contains
anecdotes of the author's literary contemporaries; but the notices
of Porson are known to be inaccuratet. Bibliographia Poetica, a
catalogue of English poets of the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries,
with a short account of their works, was published by Joseph Ritson
in 1802. It was severely handled by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges
in his Censura Literaria. In allusion to Ritson's abusive, yet often
just, Observations on Warton's History of English Poetry, he adds
that, above all men, the late Laureat, whom this pitiable critic has
loaded with the coarsest epithets, has taught us what use to make
2
3
1 The Adventurer, no. 81.
Croker's edn of Boswell, vol. II, p. 63.
3 Ibid. vol. VIII, p. 277 ; cf. David Murray's Bibliography : its Scope and Methods,
Glasgow, 1915, pp. 3, 7, 8, 53, 54.
• Many passages were omitted in the second edition published in 1818.
## p. 364 (#388) ############################################
364
[CH.
Bibliographers
of dark and forgotten materials. '1 Ritson's Select Collection of
English Songs (1783 and 1813) won the praise of Sir Walter
Scott, who, however, describes his Collection of all the Songs etc.
on Robin Hood (1795, etc. ), as a notable illustration of the ex-
cellences and defects of his system? He was a laborious and
accurate investigator, but there was an almost morbid bitterness in
his criticisms of other men's labours. His place in the literary
world is thus summed up in The Pursuits of Literature :
In Theron's form, mark Ritson next contend;
Fierce, meagre, pale, no commentator's friend 3.
Scott, in his song One Volume More, calls him as bitter as gall, and
as sharp as a razor. ' His critical powers were, however, well applied
in his detection and exposure of the Ireland forgeries in 1795.
Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, 'a name to all the book-tribe
dear, produced, in the ten volumes of his Censura Literaria, of
1805—9 and 1815, 'titles, abstracts, and opinions of OLD ENGLISH
BOOKS. ' He also published The British Bibliographer (1810—14),
and Restituta ; or Titles, Extracts, and Characters of OLD BOOKS
in English Literature Revived (1814–16). He printed a large
number of rare Elizabethan texts at the private press of his son,
Lee priory, near Canterbury.
A literary interest of a wide range is represented by the dis-
cursive works of Isaac D’Israeli, entitled Curiosities and Amenities
of Literature, and Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. Curiosities
of Literature begins with essays on libraries and on bibliomania,
and ends with the “Life and Habits of a Literary Antiquary’;
it also includes a passage, to our present purpose, in the chapter
on the Bibliognoste':
Many secrets we discover in bibliography. . . . Bibliography will show what
has been done, and suggest to our invention what is wanted. Many have
often protracted their journey in a road which has already been worn out by
the wheels which had traversed it: bibliography unrolls the whole map of
the country we propose travelling over-the post-roads and the by-paths.
Of Calamities of Authors it was said by Southey :
The matter is as amusing as any lover of light reading can desire, and of
such a desultory kind that a comment might easily be made as extensive as
the text4.
The second series of Curiosities was published in 1823; and, ten
:
1 Vol. 1 (1805), p. 55.
? See Scott's introductory remarks to his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, p. 549 a
of Poetical Works, ed. 1865.
3 [Mathias, T. G. ] See Dialogue 1, 11. 245 f.
* The Quarterly Review, vol. vIII (1812), p. 93.
## p. 365 (#389) ############################################
xv]
365
Englana
years later, Allan Cunningham said of these works in general that,
while they shed abundance of light on the character and condition
of literary men, and show us the state of genius in this land, they
have all the attractions, for general readers, of the best romances. '1
Among collectors of books a prominent place must be assigned
to the duke of Roxburghe, whose books were ultimately sold in
10,120 lots on 18 May 1812, and on forty-five subsequent days.
The excitement then produced by the competition between
Lord Spencer and the future duke of Marlborough for the
Valdarfer Boccaccio, printed at Venice in 1471, led to the
formation of the Roxburghe club, with Lord Spencer as presi-
dent and Dibdin as secretary. Much literary work of high value
was accomplished by this club, when it had outgrown the pedantries
in which it had been reared, and had come under the fostering
care of the scholarly Beriah Botfield', and had secured the services
of men like Sir Frederic Madden, and Thomas Wright. In 1819
the duke of Marlborough's books were sold and the Boccaccio
was now secured by Lord Spencer (who died in 1832), and thus
passed, with the rest of the Althorp collection, into the hands
of Mrs Rylands in 1892, and into the John Rylands library at
Manchester, founded by her in 1899.
150,000 volumes were collected by Richard Heber, the half-
brother of bishop Reginald Heber, at a total expense of more
than £100,000, and were sold in 1834—7 for not much more than
half that sum. From his very childhood he was an eager book-
collector; and, in his maturer years, as library after library was
sold, he added to his stores the choicest treasures from the shelves of
great collectors such as Richard Farmer, George Steevens, the duke
of Roxburghe, Benjamin Heath, Malone and Sir Mark Masterman
Sykes. On hearing that a curious book was for sale, he would
himself enter a mail-coach and travel three, four, or five hundred
miles to obtain it, fearful to entrust his commission to a letter.
He had a library at Hodnet, a second in Pimlico, a third in West-
minster, besides those at Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent
and other places in the Low Countries, and in Germany: Heber
knew his books, and was an expert bibliographer. He was the
'Atticus' of Dibdin's Bibliomania, and the friend of Scott, who
has commemorated him in the introduction to the sixth canto of
1 Biographical and Critical History of British Literature of the last Fifty Years,
Paris, 1834, p. 241, reprinted from The Athenaeum, 14 December 1833, p. 851.
2 See ante, p. 355.
3 The Gentleman's Magazine, January 1834.
## p. 366 (#390) ############################################
366
Bibliographers
[ch.
Marmion. He was also a generous lender of rare volumes to
needy scholars and black-letter editors.
In 1809 John Ferriar, of Manchester, who, in his Illustra-
tions of Sterne, ‘has traced our author through the hidden
sources whence he borrowed most of his striking and peculiar
expressions,'' addressed to Richard Heber a poetical epistle
entitled Bibliomania, large portions of which are quoted by
Dibdin, who borrowed the name as the title of his own amusing
and instructive romance. Here is one of these quotations :
At ev'ry auction, bent on fresh supplies,
He cons his catalogue with anxious eyes :
Where'er the slim Italics mark the page,
Curious and rare his ardent mind engage. (1. 29)
It was in 1802 that Thomas Frognall Dibdin published the first
edition of his Introduction to the Greek and Latin Classics. This
was followed, in 1809, by the first issue of his Bibliomania, a small
octavo volume of 87 pages, an enlarged edition of which appeared
in 1811, with A Bibliographical Romance added to the former
title, while a third edition, that of 1842, includes a key to the
several characters in the story. On receiving a copy of the second
edition, Isaac D'Israeli wrote to the author: 'I have not yet
recovered from the delightful delirium into which your Biblio-
mania has completely thrown me. ' After fully describing the
various symptoms of the form of madness known as bibliomania,
the author suggests several cures for the disease, the fifth and
last being the study of bibliography.
The first edition of Dibdin's Bibliomania was followed by the
four volumes of his enlarged edition (1810—19) of Ames's Typo-
graphical Antiquities, already mentioned? Dibdin was librarian
to Lord Spencer, at Althorp, and, in that capacity, prepared
Bibliotheca Spenceriana. The four volumes of this catalogue,
published in 1814, were soon followed by a supplement in 1815, by
the two volumes entitled Aedes Althorpianae, being a description
of the house and its artistic treasures (1822), and, finally, by a
seventh volume, containing the catalogue of the Cassano library.
The author, in reviewing the result of his endeavours, has the
satisfaction of adding:
I have done every thing in my power to establish, on a firm foundation,
the celebrity of a library of which the remembrance can only perish with
every other record of individual fame.
1 See Scott's Prefatory Memoir to Sterne in John Ballantyne's The Novelist's
Library, vol. v (1823), pp. xvii f.
2 Ante, p. 362.
## p. 367 (#391) ############################################
XV]
England
367
3?
9
6
Of the three royal octavo volumes entitled The Bibliographical
Decameron, or Ten Days' Pleasant Discourse upon illuminated
Manuscripts, and subjects connected with Early Engraving,
Topography, and Bibliography (1817), Isaac D’Israeli wrote: 'The
volumes not only exceed my expectation, but even my imagination. '
Overtures were made for the re-publication of this beautifully
illustrated work in France; but they were too late. The costly
woodcuts, which had been executed for its production, had already
been purposely destroyed by Dibdin and his friends, who had used
them to feed the fire on a convivial occasion. In 1821 Dibdin
published his Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque
Tour in France and Germany. Scott welcomed this 'splendid
work' as one of the most handsome which ever came from
the British Press. ' Dibdin's Library Companion (1824) has
been severely criticised by some, but has been more justly re-
garded by others as a work of considerable value. It was followed
in 1827 by the fourth edition of his Introduction to the Greek
and Latin Classics, and by an anonymous pamphlet entitled
Bibliophobia: “Remarks on the present languid and depressed
state of Literature and the Book Trade' (1831), an entertaining,
but, in some respects, melancholy work. His Reminiscences of
a Literary Life, 'a store-house of biographical and bibliographical
anecdote,' appeared in 1836, succeeded in 1838 by his Biblio-
graphical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern
Counties of England, a handsome work, but inferior to that on
his tour in France and Germany. Dibdin must have been well
content with the tribute paid him by Scott for the charm with
which he had invested the dry details of bibliography:
You have contrived to strew flowers over a path which, in other hands,
would have proved a very dull one; and all Bibliomanes must remember you
long, as he (sic) who first united their antiquarian details with good-humoured
raillery and cheerfulness.
The library of the duke of Sussex was catalogued in two
splendid volumes (1827—39) by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who,
apart from his publications on the history of medicine, pro-
duced in 1849 a Life of Lord Nelson, including upwards of six
hundred letters and documents, then published for the first
time. The keeper of the Lambeth manuscripts from 1837 to
1848 was Samuel Roffey Maitland, who published, in 1843, a
list of some of the early printed books in that library, and, in
1845, an index of the English books printed before 1600. His
historical productions are noticed elsewhere?
1 See vol. XIII.
## p. 368 (#392) ############################################
368
[CH.
Bibliographers
Memoirs of Libraries, together with a practical hand-book
of library economy, was published in 1859 by Edward Edwards,
who subsequently wrote Lives of the Founders of the British
Museum (1870). The plan of the great reading-room of that
Museum was first formed by Antonio (afterwards Sir Anthony)
Panizzi, keeper of the printed books from 1837, and chief librarian
from 1856 to 1866. In addition to many other public services, it
was owing to Panizzi's personal influence that, in 1846, the bequest
of the Grenville library was obtained for the Museum.
Two bibliographical works of the highest importance were
produced by a London bookseller, William Thomas Lowndes:
(1) the four volumes of The Bibliographer's Manual of English
Literature, 'containing an account of rare, curious, and useful
books relating to Great Britain and Ireland, from the invention
of printing, with bibliographical and critical notices, etc. ,' the
first systematic work of the kind published in England (1834);
and (2) The British Librarian, or "book-collector's guide to the
formation of a library' (parts 1–11, 1839). The Bibliographer's
Manual was enlarged, with revisions and corrections, and with
interesting prefatory notes, in 1857—8, etc.
been described by Dibdin as “the Atlas of Scottish Antiquaries
and Historians; bearing on his shoulders whatever has been
collected, and with pain separately endured by his predecessors';
one whom neither difficulties tire, nor dangers daunt. ' During
his previous migration to Maryland, he had made a collection of
"Treaties' and of Political Annals of the. . . Colonies. After his
return to Scotland, he wrote lives of Ruddiman, Sir David
Lyndsay and Mary queen of Scots. The Scottish section of his
library has been described as one of the most valuable collections
of works on the history and literature of Scotland ever formed
by a private individual. '1 In the next generation, Sir John
Graham Dalyell, author of The Darker Superstitions of Scotland
(1834), gave proof of being a remarkably versatile antiquary.
James Logan was a man of some note as the author of The
Scottish Gael, or Celtic Manners as preserved amongst the
Highlanders (1831), and also of the two illustrated folios on the
Clans of the Scottish Highlands (1843—9), regarded in their
day as one of the most valuable and interesting works of modern
times. ' Robert Stuart, the bookseller and antiquary of Glasgow,
produced, in his Caledonia Romana of 1845, 'a descriptive
account of the Roman antiquities of Scotland. ' John Stuart, of
Edinburgh, published, in 1856, The Sculptured Stones of Scotland,
besides editing, in 1869, The Book of Deer, and preparing for
publication, in 1872, Archaeological Essays by the eminent
physician, Sir James Young Simpson.
Contributions to Scottish Ethnology was the title of the first
important work of John Beddoe, who was born in Worcestershire
in 1826, and educated in the universities of London and Edinburgh,
and was president of the Anthropological society in 1869–70.
He subsequently wrote The Races of Britain (1885), and The
1 Cf. David Murray's David Laing, p. 33. The Antiquary was given to the world
by the author of Waverley' in 1815. The character of the whimsical virtuoso,
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, was partly founded on that of an old friend of Scott's
youth, George Constable, of Wallace Craigie, vear Dundee, while the scene in which
Edie Ochiltree interrupts the antiquary's ecstatic description of the Praetorium of
Agrippa by exclaiming, ' Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't,' is
an echo of an incident that actually happened to an antiquary of great learning and
acuteness, Sir John Clerk, of Penicuik, one of the barons of the Scottish court of
exchequer, when he conducted the English antiquary, Roger Gale, to the Roman station
of Birrenswark, in Dumfriesshire.
6
## p. 351 (#375) ############################################
Xv]
351
Scotland.
Ireland
Anthropological History of Europe (1891). The Archaeology and
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, published in 1851 by (Sir)
Daniel Wilson, afterwards president of the university of Toronto,
formed an epoch in the study of the earlier antiquities of Scotland,
and invested antiquities with all the charms of graceful literaturel.
Sir Daniel was also the author of 'Researches into the origin of
civilisation in the Old and the New World,' published under the title
Prehistoric Man, a work teeming with interesting matter clothed
in a clear and graphic style. The Rhind lectures in archaeology
were founded by Alexander Henry Rhind, who made a special
study of Scottish antiquities, and, during a visit to Egypt for the
benefit of his health, collected the materials for a work entitled
Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants (1862).
In Irish archaeology, the first name of permanent importance
is that of George Petrie. In 1833 he was appointed to super-
intend the historical and antiquarian sections of the ordnance
survey of Ireland.
It was originally proposed to add to the
maps of each district a memoir on its past history and its
ancient monuments, but, after one volume of the proposed series
had been issued, the work was suddenly dropped on the alleged
ground of expense. Petrie's three chief essays were the outcome
of his work on the survey. In his prize-essay, The Round Towers
of Ireland (1833), he dispelled the theory of their pagan origin by
proving that they were Christian belfries; and this essay was
expanded into his great work, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of
Ireland (1845). His second essay, Antiquities of Tara (1843),
was originally intended for the ordnance memoir on Meath. The
manuscript of the third, Irish Military Architecture, still remains
among the archives of the Royal Irish academy. As a landscape
painter, he had been attracted by the surpassing interest of Irish
antiquities. He traversed the whole country'in search of subjects
for his canvas, and, at the same time, made copious notes and
sketches of buildings,' besides collecting antiquities, and reaping
'a vast harvest of traditional music. ” Petrie, on joining the Irish
academy, arranged the small series of weapons and implements
presented by the king of Denmark. After his death, his own
collection was added, and, in 1857—62, all the antiquarian
acquisitions of the academy were described in an amply illus-
trated catalogue by the distinguished physician, Sir William
Wilde, who thus provided the quarry from which all later
1 The Westminster Review, April 1856, p. 384.
? Macalister, R. A. S. , in The Journal of the Ivernian Society, vol. v (1912), p. 30.
## p. 352 (#376) ############################################
352
[CH.
Archaeological Antiquaries
'1
6
>
writers on Irish antiquities draw their materials. ' The Royal
Irish academy had grown from a society established in Dublin
about 1782. The Kilkenny Archaeological society, founded in
1849, became, in 1869, the Royal Historical and Archaeological
Association of Ireland,' and, in 1890, the 'Royal Society of An-
tiquaries of Ireland. '
Turning from Ireland to India, we note that the Asiatic
society of Bengal was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784,
and that, in 1811, the eminent Sanskrit scholar, Horace Hayman
Wilson, was appointed secretary of that body. Wilson was also
an original member of the Royal Asiatic society, and director
of it from 1837 to his death in 1860. Most of his works were
specially connected with the Sanskrit language and literature? ; but
he was also an Indian antiquary. His Ariana Antiqua (1841)
is 'a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities and Coins of
Afghanistan, including a chapter on the progress of discovery'
of Indian monuments, and a 'Memoir on the Topes' by Charles
Masson, the traveller in Balochistan. James Tod, who lived in
India from 1800 to 1823, published The Antiquities of Rajpootana,
ranked by cardinal Wiseman ‘among the most valuable, as well
as among the most beautiful works upon Eastern literature. '
As secretary of the Asiatic society of Bengal, Wilson was
succeeded, in 1832, by James Prinsep, who, as an assay-master in
northern India, collected the materials for his earliest work,
his Benares illustrated (1831). He also paid special attention
to the deciphering of inscriptions.
The Kharosthi alphabet, written from right to left, ceased to
be used in India in the third century of our era; while the
Brāhmi, written from left to right, is the source of all later
Indian alphabets. A collection of Prinsep's Essays on Indian
Antiquities, bearing on these and on cognate topics, was pub-
lished by Edward Thomas in 1858. Edwin Norris, in a paper
on 'the Kapur-di-Giri rock-inscription' (1845), pointed out the
method of deciphering an alphabet, which had been previously
unknown, thus making, in the words of H. H. Wilson, 'an
unexpected and interesting accession to our knowledge of the
palaeography and ancient history of India. ': The office of director-
general of the archaeological survey of India was ably filled from
1870 to 1885 by major-general Sir Alexander Cunningham, who
had made his mark in antiquarian literature by his Essay on the
>
: Cf. ante, p. 343.
1 Macalister, R. A. S. , l. c. vol. v (1913), p. 85.
3 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1845.
## p. 353 (#377) ############################################
Xv]
Literary Antiquaries 353
Architecture of the Temples of Kashmir (1848), followed by The
Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India (1854).
He also wrote The Ancient Geography of India (1871), and
published an important Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (1879).
James Fergusson, who went to India in 1829 as an indigo-
planter, settled in London in 1839, and devoted himself to
archaeological research. The author of the well-known IUus-
trated Hand-book of Architecture, which deals with the styles
of all ages and countries, was led by his early life in India
to take a special interest in its ancient architecture and its
religious institutions. Such was the origin of his Rock-cut
Temples of India (1864), his Tree and Serpent Worship, with
its illustrations from the sculptures of Buddhist topes (1863 and
1873), and his joint work The Cave Temples of India (1880).
The coins of ancient India were investigated by H. H. Wilson,
in his Ariana Antiqua; by James Prinsep in his Essays ; by
Edward Thomas in his Ancient Indian Weights; and by Sir
Alexander Cunningham, who also made a special study of the
coinage of the Hindu states of medieval India.
LITERARY ANTIQUARIES
“A literary antiquary’has been described by Isaac D’Israeli as 'that idler
whose life is passed in a perpetual voyage autour de ma chambre; fervent in
sagacious diligence, instinct with the enthusiasm of curious inquiry, critical as
well as erudite; he has to arbitrate between contending opinions, to resolve
the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at the remote; so busied
with other times, and so interested for other persons than those about him,
that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of books. '2
One of the foremost places among the literary and historical
antiquaries of England is due to Thomas Wright, of Trinity
college, Cambridge, who, in 1838, was associated with John
Mason Neale, and with the Irish antiquary, Thomas Crofton
Croker, in founding the Camden society. The society was
founded in honour of William Camden, author of Britannia
(1586); and it had for its purpose the printing of books and
documents connected with the early civil, ecclesiastical and
literary history of the British empire. Wright was further
associated, in 1840, with Croker, and with Alexander Dyce,
J. 0. Halliwell(-Phillipps) and John Payne Collier, in founding
the Percy society for publishing old ballads and lyrical pieces,
1 For further publications, see bibliography.
* Curiosities of Literature, vol. II, p. 493, ed. 1866.
E. L. XII.
CH. XV.
23
## p. 354 (#378) ############################################
354 Literary Antiquaries [CH.
so named in memory of Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore, the
first editor of Reliques of English Poetry (1765). Even in his
undergraduate days, Wright was an eager explorer of historic
manuscripts in the Cambridge libraries. In 1836, he published
four volumes of Early English Poetry, and, two years later,
A Series of Original Letters, illustrating the history of queen
Elizabeth and her times. In 1840 he edited, with notes and
glossary, The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman, and, in 1842,
produced his Biographia Literaria of the Anglo-Saxon period,
comprising 'a rich mass of materials, arranged with taste and
judgment. This was followed, two years later, by his Anecdota
Literaria, a collection of short poems in English, Latin and
French, illustrating the literature and history of England in the
thirteenth century. Among his many other works were essays on
subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions
and history of England in the middle ages; a history of domestic
manners and sentiments, and of caricature and grotesque in
literature and art, besides editions of Chaucer, and of the romance
of king Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.
An Account of the Public Records was published in 1832
by Charles Purton Cooper, who also prepared a catalogue
of the fine collection of old French law which he presented to
the library of Lincoln's inn. The labours of John Bruce, as
calendarer of state papers, and as editor for the Camden society
(1838–68), are noticed elsewhere? . Anecdotes and Traditions,
relating to early English history and literature, was published for
the same society by William John Thoms, who founded Notes and
Queries in 1849, and edited Stow's Survey of London in 1875.
In 1834 the Surtees society was founded in honour of Robert
Surtees, author of a History of Durham published between 1816
and 1840. The purpose of the society was the publication of
ancient manuscripts bearing on the history and topography of
northern England. Among its active members were the brothers
James and John Raine ; canon Greenwell, who published several
works connected with the antiquities of the county and bishopric
of Durham ; and George William Kitchin, late dean of Durham,
who, in the early part of his career, had prepared the catalogue
of the library of Christ Church, Oxford.
The ten years from 1834 to 1844 were, in a special sense, the
age of the birth of book-clubs and book-societies. Thus, the
Camden society, already mentioned, was founded in 1838; and the
1 Cf. vol. XIII.
XIV
## p. 355 (#379) ############################################
Xv]
England
355
year 1840 saw the foundation of the Parker society, which had for
its main object 'the reprinting, without abridgment, alteration,
or omission, of the best works of the Fathers and early Writers
of the Reformed Church, published. . . between the accession of
Edward VI and the death of Elizabeth. ' The fifty-three volumes
-
published by the society ended with a general index in 1855.
The Percy and Shakespeare societies were founded in the same
year, and the Aelfric and Chetham societies in 1842. Of the last
two, the former had for its object the publication of Old English
and other documents illustrating the early state of England; the
latter, the printing of 'remains, historical and literary, connected
with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester. ' The
Caxton society, founded in 1844, aimed at bringing out works
illustrative of the history and miscellaneous literature of the
Middle Ages. ' The Sydenham society, founded in memory of the
English physician Thomas Sydenham, lasted from 1844 to 1858,
when it was succeeded by the New Sydenham society. The
Hakluyt society, for printing rare and unpublished voyages and
travels, was founded in 1846 ; the Early English Text society
in 1864; the Ballad and the Chaucer society in 1868; the
Harleian in 1869; the Wyclif in 1882; the Oxford Historical
society in 1882; the Selden society, for publishing ancient legal
records, in 1887; the London Bibliographical society and the
Viking club in 1892; and the Navy records society in 1897. The
Scottish book-clubs will be duly mentioned in the sequel. One
of the most generous contributors to the Scottish, as well as the
English, book-clubs of the middle of the nineteenth century, was
the scholarly and accomplished bibliographer, Beriah Botfield"
A project for a Corpus Historicum of early English history
was formed by Henry Petrie, keeper of the records in the
Tower. One large volume was published in 1848, with a
preface by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, who had been trained
under Petrie, and had already edited the Close Rolls, the Patent
Rolls, the Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, the Rotuli Normanniae,
the Chester Rolls, the Liberate Rolls and Modus Tenendi
Parliamentum (1846). His Descriptive catalogue of materials
relating to the history of Great Britain and Ireland filled three
volumes. He edited William of Malmesbury, continued John Le
Neve's Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, compiled an English syllabus
of documents in Rymer's Foedera and wrote memoirs of Henry
Bickersteth, Lord Langdale.
1 A list of his contributions will be found in the bibliography, vb.
17 35 $ ::.
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## p. 356 (#380) ############################################
356
Literary Antiquaries [CH.
Lord Langdale was succeeded as master of the rolls by Sir
John Romilly, who held office from 1851 to 1873. It was under
his authority that the celebrated Rolls series came into being.
Early in the nineteenth century, at a meeting held at Spencer
house, it had been resolved to recommend the publication of a
complete collection of the sources of English history to the age
of the reformation. Henry Petrie had drawn up a scheme for the
approval of the government, and had been subsequently appointed
editor of the proposed series. But the standard which he had set
up was unduly high, and the scheme had been left in abeyance by
his death. However, in November 1856, Joseph Stevenson, the
archivist, who had been sub-commissioner of public records from
1834 to 1839, brought the subject under the consideration of the
lords of the treasury. His representations were referred to the
master of the rolls, who, on 26 January 1857, submitted proposals
for the publication of a series entitled Chronicles and Memorials
a
of Great Britain and Ireland from the Invasion of the Romans
to the Reign of Henry VIII. The proposals were adopted, and
the publication of the proposed series was authorised under
certain conditions: (1) that the works selected should be published
without mutilation or abridgment; (2) that the text should be
formed on a collation of the best manuscripts ; and (3) that the
editor should give an account of the manuscripts used by him, a
brief notice of the age in which the author wrote, and an explana-
tion of any chronological difficulties. This enterprise has done
more towards supplying a sound foundation for an accurate know-
ledge of medieval history than all preceding efforts put together!
Among the many literary antiquaries who made their mark
as editors of some of the volumes in this great series may be
mentioned John Sherren Brewer, Henry Richards Luard and
(above all) James Gairdner. The Historia Minor of Matthew
Paris was edited for the Rolls series in 1866–9 by Sir Frederic
Madden, head of the department of MSS in the British Museum
from 1837 to 1866. He also edited Layamon's Brut in 1847, and
Silvestre's Universal Palaeography, three years later. Three
volumes of the Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, in the Rolls series,
and four volumes of facsimiles of Old English charters, from 672
to the conquest, were edited by Sir Edward Bond, who was
principal librarian of the British Museum from 1878 to 1888. In
1873, he took part in founding the Palaeographical society in
1 Cf. Gardiner and Mullinger's Introduction to the Study of English History
(1881), pp. 219 f. See, also, post, vol. XIII.
## p. 357 (#381) ############################################
Xv]
England
357
conjunction with his successor in the office of principal librarian.
A transcript of The Register of the Company of Stationers of
London, from 1554 to 1640, was published in 1875 by Edward
Arber, who also edited The Term Catalogues, the seven volumes
entitled An English Garner, The English Scholar's Library and
the handy series issued under the title English Reprints.
The biographical and historical antiquities of Cambridge were
the field of research selected by Charles Henry Cooper, for many
years town clerk of Cambridge. His minute and painstaking
Annals of Cambridge appeared in four volumes in 1842–53,
while a fifth volume bringing the work down to 1850—6, with
an index to the whole, was added in 1908. The two volumes of
his Athenae Cantabrigienses, published in 1858 and 1861, supplied
materials for the lives of a large number of graduates of the
university, the first and second volumes including those who died
from 1500 to 1585, and from 1586 to 1609, respectively. The last
work which he produced in his lifetime was Memorials of Cam-
bridge, illustrated by Le Keux and Robert Farren. His Memoir of
Margaret Countess of Richmond and Derby was edited in 1874
by John Mayor, who appears to have tacitly contributed more
than half of the contents of the volume. In the course of an
obituary notice, written on 21 March 1866, the day of the
Cambridge antiquary’s death, Mayor said of Cooper:
It was because he clung with fond reverence to our "Sparta,' whose every
stone spoke to him of struggles and sacrifices and noble memories, that he
'adorned' it as no gownsman has done.
Sir Alexander Boswell, son of the biographer of Dr Johnson,
became a member of the Roxburghe club in 1819, and set the
example of printing the kind of books afterwards promulgated
with much success by Scottish book-clubs. In 1816–18 he printed,
at his private press at Auchinleck, works such as Churchyard's
Myrrour of man, and George Whetstone's Remembraunce of the
Life of Sir Nicolas Bacon. The greatest of the record-scholars
produced by Scotland was Thomas Thomson, principal clerk of
session from 1828 to 1852. Sir Walter Scott says of him in a
letter to George Ellis: ‘He understands more of old books, old
laws, and old history, than any man in Scotland. ' He edited
The Scots Acts and other documents for the Record commission,
but, by reason of either fastidiousness or indolence, he never
prepared the introductory volume, for which he had during many
years collected materials. The publication of Popular Ballads
and Songs, from tradition, manuscripts and scarce editions, by
## p. 358 (#382) ############################################
358
[ch.
Literary Antiquaries
Robert Jamieson, in Edinburgh, in 1806, was described by Scott
as having opened a new discovery respecting the original source
of the Scottish Ballads. '1 The author was afterwards associated
with Henry Weber and Scott in Illustrations of Northern An-
tiquities (1814).
Sir Walter Scott was the first president of the Bannatyne
club, founded in 1823 in memory of George Bannatyne, who wrote
out in 1568 a vast collection of Scottish poems in a folio volume
of 800 pages, now preserved in the Advocates' library, in
Edinburgh? . Scott was president of the club until his death in
1832; two years later, the Abbotsford club was founded in his
memory, for printing and publishing historical works connected
with his writings, and twenty-five works were thus produced from
1835 to 18643. Scott's place as president of the Bannatyne club
was filled for the next twenty years by Thomas Thomson, men-
tioned above. The first and only secretary, from its inauguration
in 1823 to its dissolution in 1861, was David Laing.
'It was a remarkable trio,' says David Murray in his monograph on Laing :
“they were the three men of the day most conversant with the literature of
Scotland; each an accomplished antiquary . . . ; all were distinguished in
sagacity, shrewdness, and geniality; but Thomson lacked the exactness,
method, energy, and business capacity of the other two 4. ?
Laing, who was a learned bookseller and, from 1837 to his
death in 1878, keeper of the library of the Writers to the Signet,
Edinburgh, edited a large number of works of Scottish poetry and
prose.
One of Laing's contemporaries, James Maidment, a Londoner
who spent a large part of his life in Edinburgh, printed some
rare tracts on the history and antiquities of Scotland (1822),
and edited works for the Bannatyne, Maitland, Abbotsford and
Hunterian clubs, as well as for the Spottiswoode society. Of these,
the Maitland club, founded at Glasgow in 1828, for the publication
of works illustrating the antiquities, history and literature of
Scotland, produced seventy-five volumes, in little more than
1. Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry,' p. 549 b of Poetical Works, ed. 1865.
* The entire text of the manuscript was issued by the Hunterian club, founded in
Glasgow in 1871 for reproducing the works of Scottish writers of the Elizabethan age;
it continued its activity until 1902.
3 List in Terry, O. S. , Catalogue of publications of Scottish Historical Societies and
kindred Clubs (Glasgow, 1909).
- David Murray, David Laing, Antiquary and Bibliographer,' in The Scottish
Historical Review, July 1914 ; separately printed in 1915.
5 See bibliography.
## p. 359 (#383) ############################################
Xv]
359
Scotland
6
thirty years, while the Spottiswoode society, founded in memory of
John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, published his
History of the Church and State of Scotland (1655 f. ) in 1851. On
the other side, the presbyterian History of the Sufferings of the
Church of Scotland from Restoration to Revolution, written by
Robert Wodrow, was published in 1828–30. The Wodrow society
was founded in his honour at Edinburgh in 1841, and continued to
flourish until about 1850, as an organisation mainly devoted to the
history of presbyterianism. In the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, a
work of wonderful accuracy and completeness, Hew Scott supplied
a list (with biographical details) of the ministers of every parish in
Scotland from the reformation to 1871.
The Scottish text society
was founded in 1882.
The editorial work that had been left unfinished by the dilatory
and fastidious Thomas Thomson was taken up after his death by
Cosmo Innes, a man of singular charm and geniality, who filled the
chair of constitutional law in Edinburgh from 1846 to his death in
1874. His style was lucid and engaging, and the object of his latest
publication, Lectures on Scotch legal antiquities, was 'to lead
the student of law from the daily practice of his profession to the
historical and archaeological conditions connected with its techni-
calities. " He also did a vast amount of work for the Bannatyne,
''
Maitland and Spalding clubs. This last, so named after John
Spalding, of Aberdeen (A. 1650), author of The History of. . .
Scotland . . . from 1624 to 1645, was founded, in 1839, for publishing
the historical, genealogical, topographical and literary remains of
the north-east counties of Scotland. Dissolved in 1870, it was
revived as the New Spalding club in 1886. One of the principal
founders of the original club was Joseph Robertson, who edited
eight of its thirty-eight volumes. Robertson, whose comparatively
short life of fifty-six years was outspanned by that of Cosmo Innes,
was one of the most erudite and accurate of the antiquaries
of Scotland. He was curator of the historical department of the
Edinburgh Register house from 1853 to his death in 1866, and
edited the Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae (1864), and many other
volumes for the above-mentioned clubs, notably Illustrations
of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen
and Banff (1843—62).
'It is in the Scotch book-clubs,' says John Hill Burton, in his Book-
Hunter, óthat Joseph Robertson has had the opportunity of exercising those
subtle powers of investigation and critical acumen, peculiarly his own, which
1 The Athenaeum, no. 2358.
1
## p. 360 (#384) ############################################
360 Literary Antiquaries [CH.
have had a perceptible and substantial effect in raising archaeology out of
that quackish repute which it had long to endure under the name of anti-
quarianism. '1
1
Sir Archibald Campbell Lawrie, before becoming a judge in
Ceylon from 1892 to 1901, produced admirable examples of anti-
quarian work in his Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, and in
bis Annals of Malcolm and William His Index to the Scots
Acts is an enormous folio, methodically arranged and practically
forming an index to the history of Scotland.
In Ireland, Thomas Crofton Croker's Researches in the South
of Ireland (1824) were followed by his Fairy Legends and
Traditions, his Legends of the Lakes, and his Popular Songs
(1839). John O'Donovan, who has been described as 'probably
the greatest native Irish scholar who ever lived,' obtained
an appointment in the Record office in 1826 and in the
ordnance survey in 1829, and devoted his whole life to the
elucidation of Irish history, topography and antiquities. Besides
providing a Grammar of the Irish Language (1845), he ably
edited and annotated a series of important texts, culminating
in his monumental edition of The Annals of . . . the Four Masters
(1848–51). The rest of his life was spent on the preliminary
labours required for the herculean task of editing The Ancient
Laws of Ireland? His colleague in the ordnance survey, and
his connection by marriage, Eugene O'Curry, was professor of
Irish history and archaeology in the catholic university of
Ireland. O'Curry's lectures entitled Manuscript Materials for
Ancient Irish History, and Manners and Customs of the Irish,
are still indispensable to all serious students of the past of
Ireland. '3
Sir Samuel Ferguson, whose eminent services to Irish
antiquities were recognised by his appointment in 1867 as the
first deputy-keeper of the public records of Ireland, was knighted
eleven years later for his successful reorganisation of the records
department. As an Irish poet, he aimed at embodying in modern
poetry the old Irish tales of heroes and saints and histories of
places. His Ogham inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland
was edited in 1887 by Lady Ferguson James Henthorn Todd, who
became librarian of Trinity college, Dublin, in 1852, classified the
3
1 The Book-Hunter (1862); “Some Book-Club Men. '
1
2 Cf. Macalister, R. A. S. , in The Journal of the Ivernian Society, vol. v (1912—13),
pp. 31, 83 f.
3 Ibid. p. 84.
## p. 361 (#385) ############################################
Xv]
Ireland
361
manuscripts and compiled a catalogue, founded the Archaeological
society in 1840, acted as its secretary and contributed to its
publications and, finally, published his masterpiece, St Patrick,
Apostle of Ireland (1864). William Reeves, who ultimately became
bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, published Ecclesiastical
Antiquities of Down and Connor in 1847, and, ten years later,
elaborately edited for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic society,
and for the Bannatyne club, The Life of St Columba by Adamnan.
The Irish Archaeological society, founded in 1840, has had for its
occasional collaborators several clubs of kindred objects, the
Ossianic, the Iona and the Celtic. Of these, the Iona was founded
in 1833, while the Celtic, founded in 1845, was merged in the Irish
Archaeological society in 1853.
Patrick Weston Joyce, principal of the training college,
Dublin, was also a commissioner for the publication of Ancient
Laws of Ireland. His love of Irish songs and of folk-music
bore fruit in his Ancient Irish Music (1882), Irish Music and
Song and Irish Peasant Songs in the English Language
(1909). It also led him to many lonely places, where he collected
half-forgotten local names, and thus prepared himself for the
production of what may, probably, prove to be the most perma-
nent of his works, The Origin and History of Irish Names of
Places (1869, etc. ). Of his various histories of Ireland, which were
familiar as household words in his own land and among his
countrymen in the colonies, the most important was The Social
History of Ancient Ireland (1893).
The historical antiquary, Sir John Thomas Gilbert, secretary
to the public record office of Ireland from 1867 to 1875, wrote
Celtic Records and Historic Literature of Ireland (1861), and
edited Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland from the
Archives of the City of Dublin (1870), as well as Facsimiles of
the National Manuscripts of Ireland (1874–1880). These last
have been recognised as equally interesting in their historic,
palaeographic and artistic aspects? .
Whitley Stokes, who had studied Irish philology from an early
age, returned to England in 1882 after a legal career of twenty
years in India He took part in editing a series of Irish and
Celtic texts, and was associated with John Strachan in Thesaurus
Palaeo-Hibernicus (1901—3). Robert Atkinson, successively
1 An early copy of his Old Celtic Romances (1879), sent to Tennyson by Alfred
Perceval Graves, inspired the poet laureate in The Voyage of Maeldune.
2 Cf, a later volume.
'volux
,ون به ته وه
## p. 362 (#386) ############################################
362
[ch.
Bibliographers
professor of Romance languages and of Sanskrit in Trinity college,
Dublin, was also familiar with Tamil, Telegu, Hebrew, Persian,
Arabic, Chinese, Celtic and Coptic. He edited the Norman-
French poem, La Vie de Seint Auban, The Book of Leinster, The
Book of Ballymote, a collection of pieces, prose and verse, in the
Irish language, and a middle Irish work, The Passions and
Homilies from the Leabhar Breac (1897). In the following year,
he was joint editor of two volumes of the Irish Liber Hymnorum.
6
BIBLIOGRAPHERS
Bibliography has been defined as the systematic description
and history of books, their authorship, publication, editions, etc.
It is only the handmaid of literature; it cannot be identified with
literature any more than the bibliographer (as such) can be
regarded as an author. But, although bibliography has only an
ancillary position, it has, nevertheless, a lofty aim. The biblio-
grapher aims at completeness ; he dares not make any invidious
selection; of his domain, it may be said, as of the grave, that 'the
small and great are there'; and works of comparatively slight
importance have an undoubted right to his recognition.
In fact,
the only way in which he can conscientiously escape from this
obligation is by labelling his list a 'select bibliography. The
author, on the other hand, must always be making a selection out
of all the possible words which he may use ; and, against breaking
this law of selection, he is sufficiently warned by the proverb: tout
dire est rien dire. Sometimes, however, a bibliographer may
produce a work which may rank as literature. A Dibdin may
write a romance on bibliomania, and an Andrew Lang, who
himself describes bibliography as 'the quaint duenna of literature,'
may discourse on it with all his wonted charm ; but bibliographers,
as such, are not authors, and it is only because of their loyal services
to letters that they can claim a place in these pages.
The importance of a first-hand knowledge of books has been
recognised by all bibliographers worthy of the name. It was the
leading principle which guided Joseph Ames, a native of Yarmouth
and a prosperous inhabitant of Wapping, in preparing the materials
for his account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600. Dis-
carding printed lists, and resorting to the title-pages of the books
themselves, he also secured the direct cooperation of others in
gathering information respecting the 215 English printers with
whom he proposed to deal. He thus succeeded in producing his
Typographical Antiquities (1749).
## p. 363 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
England
363
One of the first of English bibliographers, both in order
of time and in talent, was Samuel Paterson, bookseller and
auctioneer. We are told that ‘his talent at cataloguizing was
unrivalled’; and that “perhaps we never had a bookseller who
knew so much of the contents of books generally. We also learn
that his catalogues were masterly, and, some of them, perfect
models of their kind. He was on terms of intimacy with his
older contemporary, Dr Johnson, who has himself a fair claim to
be regarded as a bibliographer. He took part in cataloguing the
Harleian library in 1742. In the preface to this work he observes
that 'by means of Catalogues only can it be known, what has
been written on every part of Learning. ' "The philosopher's
curiosity,' he adds elsewhere, 'may be influenced by a catalogue
of the works of Boyle or of Bacon, as Themistocles was kept
awake by the trophies of Miltiades. '1 Johnson, as he says of Pope,
certainly was, in his early life, a man of great literary curiosity’;
and he understood the whims and foibles of the bibliophile and
collector. 'In the purchase of old books,' he remarks, 'let me
recommend to you to inquire with great caution whether they are
perfect. ” He approved of the famous collection of editions of
Horace by James Douglas, whose catalogue was ultimately
published in 1739; and he adds: 'Every man should try to collect
one book in that manner, and present it to a public library. ? ?
William Beloe, a pupil of Samuel Parr, and a graduate of
Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, produced, in 1806–12, six
volumes entitled Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, in
which he had the advantage of having a large number of rare works
placed at his service by many eminent owners of libraries. Beloe's
Sexagenarian, published in two volumes after his death, contains
anecdotes of the author's literary contemporaries; but the notices
of Porson are known to be inaccuratet. Bibliographia Poetica, a
catalogue of English poets of the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries,
with a short account of their works, was published by Joseph Ritson
in 1802. It was severely handled by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges
in his Censura Literaria. In allusion to Ritson's abusive, yet often
just, Observations on Warton's History of English Poetry, he adds
that, above all men, the late Laureat, whom this pitiable critic has
loaded with the coarsest epithets, has taught us what use to make
2
3
1 The Adventurer, no. 81.
Croker's edn of Boswell, vol. II, p. 63.
3 Ibid. vol. VIII, p. 277 ; cf. David Murray's Bibliography : its Scope and Methods,
Glasgow, 1915, pp. 3, 7, 8, 53, 54.
• Many passages were omitted in the second edition published in 1818.
## p. 364 (#388) ############################################
364
[CH.
Bibliographers
of dark and forgotten materials. '1 Ritson's Select Collection of
English Songs (1783 and 1813) won the praise of Sir Walter
Scott, who, however, describes his Collection of all the Songs etc.
on Robin Hood (1795, etc. ), as a notable illustration of the ex-
cellences and defects of his system? He was a laborious and
accurate investigator, but there was an almost morbid bitterness in
his criticisms of other men's labours. His place in the literary
world is thus summed up in The Pursuits of Literature :
In Theron's form, mark Ritson next contend;
Fierce, meagre, pale, no commentator's friend 3.
Scott, in his song One Volume More, calls him as bitter as gall, and
as sharp as a razor. ' His critical powers were, however, well applied
in his detection and exposure of the Ireland forgeries in 1795.
Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, 'a name to all the book-tribe
dear, produced, in the ten volumes of his Censura Literaria, of
1805—9 and 1815, 'titles, abstracts, and opinions of OLD ENGLISH
BOOKS. ' He also published The British Bibliographer (1810—14),
and Restituta ; or Titles, Extracts, and Characters of OLD BOOKS
in English Literature Revived (1814–16). He printed a large
number of rare Elizabethan texts at the private press of his son,
Lee priory, near Canterbury.
A literary interest of a wide range is represented by the dis-
cursive works of Isaac D’Israeli, entitled Curiosities and Amenities
of Literature, and Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. Curiosities
of Literature begins with essays on libraries and on bibliomania,
and ends with the “Life and Habits of a Literary Antiquary’;
it also includes a passage, to our present purpose, in the chapter
on the Bibliognoste':
Many secrets we discover in bibliography. . . . Bibliography will show what
has been done, and suggest to our invention what is wanted. Many have
often protracted their journey in a road which has already been worn out by
the wheels which had traversed it: bibliography unrolls the whole map of
the country we propose travelling over-the post-roads and the by-paths.
Of Calamities of Authors it was said by Southey :
The matter is as amusing as any lover of light reading can desire, and of
such a desultory kind that a comment might easily be made as extensive as
the text4.
The second series of Curiosities was published in 1823; and, ten
:
1 Vol. 1 (1805), p. 55.
? See Scott's introductory remarks to his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, p. 549 a
of Poetical Works, ed. 1865.
3 [Mathias, T. G. ] See Dialogue 1, 11. 245 f.
* The Quarterly Review, vol. vIII (1812), p. 93.
## p. 365 (#389) ############################################
xv]
365
Englana
years later, Allan Cunningham said of these works in general that,
while they shed abundance of light on the character and condition
of literary men, and show us the state of genius in this land, they
have all the attractions, for general readers, of the best romances. '1
Among collectors of books a prominent place must be assigned
to the duke of Roxburghe, whose books were ultimately sold in
10,120 lots on 18 May 1812, and on forty-five subsequent days.
The excitement then produced by the competition between
Lord Spencer and the future duke of Marlborough for the
Valdarfer Boccaccio, printed at Venice in 1471, led to the
formation of the Roxburghe club, with Lord Spencer as presi-
dent and Dibdin as secretary. Much literary work of high value
was accomplished by this club, when it had outgrown the pedantries
in which it had been reared, and had come under the fostering
care of the scholarly Beriah Botfield', and had secured the services
of men like Sir Frederic Madden, and Thomas Wright. In 1819
the duke of Marlborough's books were sold and the Boccaccio
was now secured by Lord Spencer (who died in 1832), and thus
passed, with the rest of the Althorp collection, into the hands
of Mrs Rylands in 1892, and into the John Rylands library at
Manchester, founded by her in 1899.
150,000 volumes were collected by Richard Heber, the half-
brother of bishop Reginald Heber, at a total expense of more
than £100,000, and were sold in 1834—7 for not much more than
half that sum. From his very childhood he was an eager book-
collector; and, in his maturer years, as library after library was
sold, he added to his stores the choicest treasures from the shelves of
great collectors such as Richard Farmer, George Steevens, the duke
of Roxburghe, Benjamin Heath, Malone and Sir Mark Masterman
Sykes. On hearing that a curious book was for sale, he would
himself enter a mail-coach and travel three, four, or five hundred
miles to obtain it, fearful to entrust his commission to a letter.
He had a library at Hodnet, a second in Pimlico, a third in West-
minster, besides those at Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent
and other places in the Low Countries, and in Germany: Heber
knew his books, and was an expert bibliographer. He was the
'Atticus' of Dibdin's Bibliomania, and the friend of Scott, who
has commemorated him in the introduction to the sixth canto of
1 Biographical and Critical History of British Literature of the last Fifty Years,
Paris, 1834, p. 241, reprinted from The Athenaeum, 14 December 1833, p. 851.
2 See ante, p. 355.
3 The Gentleman's Magazine, January 1834.
## p. 366 (#390) ############################################
366
Bibliographers
[ch.
Marmion. He was also a generous lender of rare volumes to
needy scholars and black-letter editors.
In 1809 John Ferriar, of Manchester, who, in his Illustra-
tions of Sterne, ‘has traced our author through the hidden
sources whence he borrowed most of his striking and peculiar
expressions,'' addressed to Richard Heber a poetical epistle
entitled Bibliomania, large portions of which are quoted by
Dibdin, who borrowed the name as the title of his own amusing
and instructive romance. Here is one of these quotations :
At ev'ry auction, bent on fresh supplies,
He cons his catalogue with anxious eyes :
Where'er the slim Italics mark the page,
Curious and rare his ardent mind engage. (1. 29)
It was in 1802 that Thomas Frognall Dibdin published the first
edition of his Introduction to the Greek and Latin Classics. This
was followed, in 1809, by the first issue of his Bibliomania, a small
octavo volume of 87 pages, an enlarged edition of which appeared
in 1811, with A Bibliographical Romance added to the former
title, while a third edition, that of 1842, includes a key to the
several characters in the story. On receiving a copy of the second
edition, Isaac D'Israeli wrote to the author: 'I have not yet
recovered from the delightful delirium into which your Biblio-
mania has completely thrown me. ' After fully describing the
various symptoms of the form of madness known as bibliomania,
the author suggests several cures for the disease, the fifth and
last being the study of bibliography.
The first edition of Dibdin's Bibliomania was followed by the
four volumes of his enlarged edition (1810—19) of Ames's Typo-
graphical Antiquities, already mentioned? Dibdin was librarian
to Lord Spencer, at Althorp, and, in that capacity, prepared
Bibliotheca Spenceriana. The four volumes of this catalogue,
published in 1814, were soon followed by a supplement in 1815, by
the two volumes entitled Aedes Althorpianae, being a description
of the house and its artistic treasures (1822), and, finally, by a
seventh volume, containing the catalogue of the Cassano library.
The author, in reviewing the result of his endeavours, has the
satisfaction of adding:
I have done every thing in my power to establish, on a firm foundation,
the celebrity of a library of which the remembrance can only perish with
every other record of individual fame.
1 See Scott's Prefatory Memoir to Sterne in John Ballantyne's The Novelist's
Library, vol. v (1823), pp. xvii f.
2 Ante, p. 362.
## p. 367 (#391) ############################################
XV]
England
367
3?
9
6
Of the three royal octavo volumes entitled The Bibliographical
Decameron, or Ten Days' Pleasant Discourse upon illuminated
Manuscripts, and subjects connected with Early Engraving,
Topography, and Bibliography (1817), Isaac D’Israeli wrote: 'The
volumes not only exceed my expectation, but even my imagination. '
Overtures were made for the re-publication of this beautifully
illustrated work in France; but they were too late. The costly
woodcuts, which had been executed for its production, had already
been purposely destroyed by Dibdin and his friends, who had used
them to feed the fire on a convivial occasion. In 1821 Dibdin
published his Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque
Tour in France and Germany. Scott welcomed this 'splendid
work' as one of the most handsome which ever came from
the British Press. ' Dibdin's Library Companion (1824) has
been severely criticised by some, but has been more justly re-
garded by others as a work of considerable value. It was followed
in 1827 by the fourth edition of his Introduction to the Greek
and Latin Classics, and by an anonymous pamphlet entitled
Bibliophobia: “Remarks on the present languid and depressed
state of Literature and the Book Trade' (1831), an entertaining,
but, in some respects, melancholy work. His Reminiscences of
a Literary Life, 'a store-house of biographical and bibliographical
anecdote,' appeared in 1836, succeeded in 1838 by his Biblio-
graphical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern
Counties of England, a handsome work, but inferior to that on
his tour in France and Germany. Dibdin must have been well
content with the tribute paid him by Scott for the charm with
which he had invested the dry details of bibliography:
You have contrived to strew flowers over a path which, in other hands,
would have proved a very dull one; and all Bibliomanes must remember you
long, as he (sic) who first united their antiquarian details with good-humoured
raillery and cheerfulness.
The library of the duke of Sussex was catalogued in two
splendid volumes (1827—39) by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who,
apart from his publications on the history of medicine, pro-
duced in 1849 a Life of Lord Nelson, including upwards of six
hundred letters and documents, then published for the first
time. The keeper of the Lambeth manuscripts from 1837 to
1848 was Samuel Roffey Maitland, who published, in 1843, a
list of some of the early printed books in that library, and, in
1845, an index of the English books printed before 1600. His
historical productions are noticed elsewhere?
1 See vol. XIII.
## p. 368 (#392) ############################################
368
[CH.
Bibliographers
Memoirs of Libraries, together with a practical hand-book
of library economy, was published in 1859 by Edward Edwards,
who subsequently wrote Lives of the Founders of the British
Museum (1870). The plan of the great reading-room of that
Museum was first formed by Antonio (afterwards Sir Anthony)
Panizzi, keeper of the printed books from 1837, and chief librarian
from 1856 to 1866. In addition to many other public services, it
was owing to Panizzi's personal influence that, in 1846, the bequest
of the Grenville library was obtained for the Museum.
Two bibliographical works of the highest importance were
produced by a London bookseller, William Thomas Lowndes:
(1) the four volumes of The Bibliographer's Manual of English
Literature, 'containing an account of rare, curious, and useful
books relating to Great Britain and Ireland, from the invention
of printing, with bibliographical and critical notices, etc. ,' the
first systematic work of the kind published in England (1834);
and (2) The British Librarian, or "book-collector's guide to the
formation of a library' (parts 1–11, 1839). The Bibliographer's
Manual was enlarged, with revisions and corrections, and with
interesting prefatory notes, in 1857—8, etc.
